“And you know what the worst part is?” he said. “It’s not the criminals trying to take us out. It’s regular people.” I couldn’t say I was particularly shocked. Maybe I’d never thought so-ciety would thank us for all the monsters we helped put away. At the very least, it would be nice to be allowed to live in peace…but deep down inside, maybe I never expected even that much. Not in the long run. “Someone who’s going to feel threatened by another poor schmuck’s ESP probably felt the same way fifteen years ago. It’s likely a charismatic instigator met up with the right hotheads at the right time, and convinced them to start a movement, and now they’ve got somewhere to channel the hate.”
My assessment didn’t make Jacob feel better. Poor guy. He just wasn’t accustomed to being hated.
While it was only eleven o’clock in the morning, and while I usually am a morning person, I’d managed to drift off by the time Lyle showed up with lunch. I lurched awake with some difficulty, feeling bone-tired, disoriented, and of course sore from wrestling the GhosTV out of its crate two days ago. Even so, the delightful smell of chicken simmered in salsa verde urged my laggy body to shake off the dregs of sleep. I sat up and ran my fingers through my hair while Jacob retrieved a twenty out of his wallet to pay Lyle for our food.
“Not there,” he said, as Lyle moved to put the bag on the GhosTV.
“This isn’t…what is…” Lyle did a triple-take at the worn console.
“Where did this old thing come from? I can have the security guards move it to the dumpster.”
“It’s ours,” Jacob said calmly.
Lyle looked as if he thought he was getting punked. “This? The TV?
That’s what the big delivery was?”
“It’s a long story.”
I stood up, grabbed the bag out of Lyle’s hand and started rifling through it. I was so enthusiastic the paper tore. There were chips in there. Warm, crunchy corn tortilla chips that stained the bag dark where the oil wicked out of them…and there was probably extra salsa in there too, but I’d shoved a whole handful in my mouth without even checking for those little plastic tubs. Salt. Grease. Corn. Really good, even with a pointy triangular corner digging into my soft palate.
Jacob looked at me sideways. “I’m starving,” I said. A few flecks of corn chip blew out of my mouth as I spoke.
“You don’t say.”
Lyle flushed a bit—no doubt vicariously embarrassed for me—but I couldn’t stop eating. I jammed in another few chips. Also pointy. He started to back toward the door, unsure where to look: at me, eating like I’d developed a sudden and profound tapeworm, or at the seventies-style TV in the middle of the room. No doubt I came off so weird he was relieved I hadn’t taken him up on that “quickie.” And that was some trick, coming off as weird in a building full of Psychs where the fact that I spoke to the dearly departed was par for the course.
He was just about to make a run for it when Jacob slid between him and the only exit, and said, “Got a minute? I have a few more questions for you.”
“Well, I…” he looked as if he might try to give Jacob the slip and run for his life, but then he glanced at the decoy bed, which had obviously been slept in, and said, “sure. I’m happy to help.” I sat back down on my bed, tore the bag the rest of the way open, and pulled out one of the burritos. It felt like it weighed a pound. I unwrapped an end and briefly considered swallowing it whole, boa constrictor-style, but supposed it would be less of a choking hazard if I chewed it first.
Jacob gestured for Lyle to have a seat at the desk, which was piled high with packing crates, while he settled himself on the decoy bed. “I was wondering about Katrina’s relationship with the missing women.”
Lyle crossed his legs and bobbed the top leg up and down anxiously.
“Well…it’s no secret she and Debbie didn’t exactly see eye to eye.
Lisa? Everyone liked Lisa, although she was fairly shy and kept to herself.” He gave an awkward laugh. “Other than the rendezvous with Bert.”
Ha ha. My stomach throbbed, and I realized my burrito was half gone—and I hadn’t even dripped any sour cream or guac onto my shirt. Gravity probably hadn’t had a chance to affect it, I’d inhaled it so quickly. Even as I thought as much, I swallowed another huge bite half-chewed.
“And Karen?” Jacob prompted.
“Oh, Karen got under everyone’s skin.” More nervous laughter, and I hoped to God there wasn’t gonna be a comment about Chekotah’s foreskin in there anywhere, or I’d probably go Linda Blair on him and cover him in guac. Thankfully, he refrained from making any such remark. “It was always Karen, Karen, Karen. Her room wasn’t big enough. The classes weren’t advanced enough. Her instructors didn’t give her enough attention. And none of us realized how talented she was. Level six, at least.”
“I fought oo idn’ do ’evels?” I said.
Somehow, Lyle understood. “We don’t. But everyone knows about them. You’d need to be dead to not know about them. And some of the students were tested before they got here, so of course they throw their ranks around. It’s human nature to try to figure out where you stack up against everyone else. Especially if you see them as your competition.”
“And Karen was competitive?” Jacob suggested.
“Competitive! You’d think the girl was training for the Psych Olympics.”
“In ’ight ’orker?” I swallowed a wad of rice, chicken, and flour tortilla, and repeated, “In the ‘light worker’ games? How could anyone here know whether they were a medium or not, let alone how strong they are, if there aren’t any ghosts here to talk to?” Aside from the blood ghost, anyway.
“She was no medium—she was an astral traveler. Said she could run astral loops around Katrina and remember every last bit of her projection.”
Jacob and I both turned to look at the GhosTV. Lyle followed our gazes, then stood up, reached behind it, and pulled the plug from the wall.
Jacob narrowed his eyes. “What are you doing?” Lyle stared at the power cord in his hand for a beat, blinked, and then said, “It’s safer this way. Old building, old electronics. Total fire hazard.” He flushed harder.
“So was Karen just trying to get a rise out of Katrina,” I said, “or was she really that good?”
Lyle shrugged. “I dunno. She certainly seemed to think she was God’s gift.”
I looked down and my burrito was gone. I finished the chips. Then I pulled the lid off the salsa fresca and drank it.
Jacob stood and offered a hand to Lyle, who shook it, albeit a bit hesitantly. “Thanks—for the information, and the food. Vic was…really hungry.”
Lyle paused in the doorway, gave that nervous laugh of his again, and said, “It’s so weird you should get me talking about Karen just now.
That’s exactly how she used to eat.”
• • •
Jacob didn’t say a word when I finished his burrito, too. He did watch me, but he held his tongue. And when I was done, I felt like I could have eaten more, but the sheer pain of my stomach being stuffed to capacity would’ve prevented it.
“I suppose you could look online and see if I’m supposed to carbo-load before I go for a spin,” I said. I was so full that even talking hurt.
Jacob weighed his reply carefully. “I think…we might want to go more slowly with your projections. We’ve been acting like there aren’t any physical consequences, when obviously, there are.”
“Yeah, but…I really feel like we’re on the verge of something. Don’t you?”
He didn’t deny it.
“It’s probably shitty of me to admit this,” I added, “but if it were a bunch of strangers involved? Yeah. I’d pace myself. But not for Lisa.” I settled back down and did my best to ignore the fact that my stomach was straining against my waistband like the distended belly of an African kid in one of those dollar-a-day charity commercials.
“Whaddaya say? Let’s see what’s playing on the projection channel.” Jacob picked up the GhosTV’s power cord and looked at the prongs.
“So what was the deal with Lyle?” he said. “Did he know what this thing was? Maybe angling to get it for himself, see if he could uncover a latent Psych ability?”
“That wouldn’t make any sense—how could he know what it did? Who would have told him? And if he did actually know, he would never have assumed we’d be willing to toss it in the trash, so he wouldn’t have even suggested it.”
“He did seem sincere,” Jacob mused, and even without Carolyn there to verify it, I suspected he knew what he was talking about.
He plugged in the set and turned it on. Static.
I relaxed, and I listened as Jacob went through the script, and I let my mind wander. What
was
Lyle’s deal with the GhosTV? Maybe it offended his Ikea-honed sensibilities, something mundane like that.
It wouldn’t be useful for anyone other than a medium—a light worker—because its wavelengths were tuned to subtle bodies and not whatever psychic stuff made a dreamer dream, a TK bend spoons, or a Carolyn spot lies. Right?
I sighed. Even with Dreyfuss’ explanation, I couldn’t claim to have any real idea what the GhosTV actually did.
Jacob finished the projection script. I could’ve sworn I felt him staring at me expectantly, maybe even holding his breath. I cracked one eyelid open. “It’s a no-go. My stomach hurts.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have had that second burrito.” I sat up and pressed my palm against my stomach. It felt rock-hard, and not with a six-pack, either. “No kidding.”
“The full stomach is probably anchoring you to the physical. Chalk it up to the learning curve. What about seeing spirits—can you still do that?”
Without a handy-dandy ghost to glance at, I couldn’t say for sure.
But speaking from experience, I didn’t think my eating binge would matter. When a ghost got in my face, the only things I knew of that would keep them at bay were a tab of Auracel…or a carefully sancti-fied space.
“Vic?”
I’d been staring at the snowy screen, hard. “What if Chekotah knew about the blood ghost?”
“Okay,” Jacob said. “I’ll buy that. He’s a medium, isn’t he? Calls himself a shaman, but when you come right down to it….”
“When you come right down to it and cram it into the parameters we’re used to working with, him talking to ‘the ancestors,’ chances are he’s basically a medium.” I shuddered at my memory of my stunted attempts to project into one of Chekotah’s sacred spaces. “So what if he knows she’s around—feels her, hears her, catches some kind of vibe, even if it’s not quite as visual as the one I get—and….” And that was about it. Maybe his room was ghost-shielded because at some point he’d pissed off a spirit and he wanted to keep her out.
But I didn’t see what that would have to do with Lisa.
Jacob waited for me to put the pieces together, but when it became obvious there really was no second piece, he said, “You told me the blood ghost wouldn’t talk to you. Maybe she couldn’t hear you.
Maybe we should turn the GhosTV to the setting that allowed you to see that really old repeater so you can try to interview her.” Again with the blood ghost—though I shouldn’t have been surprised that Jacob would manage to steer me back to the ghost angle. Plus I only had myself to blame for eating that second burrito. Who knows, I thought. Maybe I’d get lucky. Maybe, if the blood ghost had a bone to pick with Chekotah, once I was able to communicate with her, she’d be able to tell me something about him I could actually use.
Jacob consulted his notes and turned the knobs to the ghost channel. “Okay.” He turned to look at me. A webwork of thick red veins shot from his jaw up to his cheekbones, and his forehead bulged.
“Anything?”
Crap. Where to begin? “Uh, yeah…I think it’s on.” We had no idea of what kind of range we could expect out of the GhosTV, but since our options were either leaving it in our room or dragging it downstairs, across the lobby and over to the instructors’
wing, we opted to take the subtle approach and hope the signal was strong enough to carry. Lunch was just letting out, and the PsyTrain students were filtering out of the big cafeteria in twos and threes. I almost strode right by, until I realized one of them was glowing.
“Hold on,” I told Jacob. I backed against the wall and pulled my phone out of my pocket, and toggled the vibrate on and off a few times so it would appear that I was actually doing something with it.
“Look busy. I need to see something.”
Jacob pulled out his notepad and pretended to consult it. “Anything I can help you with?”
I was about to tell him no, but then I decided a few notes might not be a bad idea. “Here’s what I’ve got. Caucasian female, fifty, glowing.” I looked harder. “Asian man, thirty…” I looked harder at him to try and figure out what I was seeing. “Uh…transparent skin. Black male, forties…oh, hell, he has a third eye, literally.” The two burritos and the bag of chips might have made a move to come back up, but they were packed in too tightly to budge.
“Want to tell me what this is all about?” Jacob said.
“The GhosTV. Apparently, what’s playing now is
PsyTrain’s Got Talent.
” Some people just looked like people, but most of them, it turned out, had an extra eye or see-through skin—and the special effects varied in strength, with some of them so visible I couldn’t tell the difference between the talent and physical reality, but some of them flickering in and out of visual range. Only a handful of the students were glowing, unless I missed it because it was a soft glow that settled around them like a trick of the light. But once it was all said and done, what had initially looked like a big free-for-all turned out to be a surprisingly limited range of talents.
If the different window-dressing indicated different talents, chances were that the glowers, third eyes and thin-skins represented precogs, clairvoyants, telepaths and empaths. I wasn’t sure what correspond-ed to what, just that those were the most common flavors of Psych.
After the cafeteria had emptied and I’d detailed the last thin-skinned student, I said, “And guess who’s got a mystery talent? Dreyfuss. He’s got extra eyeballs, and they glow like a pair of headlights.” Jacob cleared his throat, shifted, and didn’t write anything down.
“What?” I said.
He chewed on whatever was bothering him for a minute, like maybe he didn’t want to ask, but in the end he couldn’t resist. “What about me?” he said quietly.