At least, I didn’t think it was. When I looked at it, I saw three arms…no, wait, multiple arms…each of them occupying a different place in the trajectory of the movement I thought I’d made. And then, I felt a snap, and all of my arms lined up.
That tracer-thing I’d seen happening to Faun Windsong, back when I’d viewed her with the psychic channel playing? I was doing it. Big time.
And I felt every last incongruity of it.
“Fuck.” That was about the most succinct way I could express my frustration. I dropped the necklace, because I couldn’t tell where my hand really was as opposed to where it felt like it was—and on top of that, where it looked like it was to me, and whether or not I’d moved my fingers, or just thought I had.
“Are you okay?” Jacob was down beside me so quick I heard his knees crack against the tile floor.
“I….” I wasn’t. But I couldn’t just say that, not to him. He must’ve had his own psyactive trip to deal with. And besides, what could he do about it? A crash behind me. I turned, felt the queasiness of multiple, unsynchronized turns snapping into alignment at the end of the motion, and saw Con Dreyfuss with his hands out, eyes unfocused, and an uncomfortable-looking butterfly chair on its side in front of him.
“Just a little disoriented. I’m cool.”
He then tripped over the chair and went sprawling. And I probably shouldn’t have felt glad about it, but at least, I reasoned, I could be fairly sure he’d swallowed the same green and white pill that was currently coursing through my veins. “I’m okay,” he insisted.
Jacob pressed his mouth to my ear and said, “What’s with him?”
“His eyes are messed up. What about you—are you okay? Do you feel anything?”
“Muscle cramps.”
“Hold onto my arm,” I told him. “It doesn’t feel…right.”
He grabbed hold of my arm, no questions asked.
“What’re you doing?” Faun sounded bemused.
I ignored her and told Jacob, “Okay, now move it around.” He pumped my arm up and down a couple of times. No tracers. Not on that arm, anyway. The opposite side of my body felt like it was fanning out from the anchor point of his grasp. I couldn’t see his red shield, not like I could under the influence of the GhosTV, but it seemed to be there anyway. Would he understand what I meant if I asked him to hold my subtle bodies in, if I told him I felt like they had all come loose? I wouldn’t know unless I tried. “Hey, I need you to—” I saw movement on the wall behind Faun Windsong’s couch. Light. A finger of light snaking upwards, as if the wall was splitting open and a bare 1000-watt lightbulb was shining behind it. The crack was slow at first, and small, but then it shot up toward the ceiling, took a right turn and shot across, parallel to the corner where the wall met the ceiling.
“Do you see that?” I whispered.
“What?”
Damn it. It was right behind Faun Windsong’s head. I pulled my hand out of Jacob’s grasp and went for the necklace. Getting it back around Faun’s neck where it was supposed to be was the only quick course of action I could think of. Only my hand wasn’t closing around the necklace. Did I feel something? Was that it? I made another grab.
Used tissue, moist. No necklace. Damn, damn, damn!
Another crash behind me, and Dreyfuss said, “I’m gonna stay on the floor for now.”
“The necklace,” I said.
I’d expected Jacob to hand it to me, but instead it was Dreyfuss who said, “To your right.”
I moved my hand right, and sure enough, there it was. Only Dreyfuss couldn’t have seen it, not from behind me where he was flailing around on the floor. So his sixth sense really was in overdrive just as much as mine. And his funky eyeballs didn’t need to be lined up with something to see it. I grabbed the necklace and tried to slam it down on Faun, but the swing went wild. I punched her in the arm and dropped it again. Meanwhile, the crack of light took another right turn and crawled down the wall until it disappeared behind the couch. “Jacob…” once it formed a rectangle, the glowing cranked up even harder, and the section of wall in the center began to…dissolve.
“Put the necklace back on her. Now.”
Jacob grasped Faun by her uninjured hand and gave her an alley-oop. He was moving fast and efficient, but Faun was like a floppy rag doll. Who’s to say if Jacob would’ve moved faster if he could see the big, honking, scary-assed door to another dimension opening directly behind her head. But I knew in my gut that the only one who had a visual on it was me.
“Now,” I said, and somehow, despite the feeling that my muscles were brittle enough to shatter if I forced them into motion, I rose into a crouch, and then stood.
The cold light shining from the magic door was scary, but once my psychic eyes adjusted to the brightness, the figures lurking beyond it were ten times worse. The figure in the forefront resolved itself as it moved closer, and closer still, and the haze of overbright light receded, and revealed the stain down the front of her dress where her heart had been torn from her chest, and that long, wet stain was pulsing blackish red. I wasn’t sure what scared me more, all that blood, or the look in her eyes. Because sane people’s eyes didn’t look that way—I know that for a fact.
Most of the cops I’ve worked with over the years have a particular fear of crazy people. Not just because crazies are so unpredict-able, but for some deeper, subconscious reason, like the fear that their mental imbalance might be somehow contagious. Luckily, I shed that phobia probably a week after they locked me in the loony bin.
Nutjobs are people too, after all, and unless they’ve got a history of violence or maybe a weapon, I don’t find them any more intimidat-ing than your average joe. So here’s the part that was spooking me: most nutjobs think they’re sane, at least on some level, and so Karen Frugali’s astral form shouldn’t have been staring out through those glittery, crazy-girl eyes.
But Karen saw herself as crazy.
And crazy Karen looked pretty damn happy to see Faun Windsong without her lucky necklace on.
She didn’t just reach for Faun Windsong’s head. She reached
into
it, like a horror-flick zombie looking to grab a quick snack. Faun gasped—a small inhalation, as if maybe she’d just remembered something.
She’d felt it, though. She’d definitely felt it.
“And here comes our buddy, Lyle,” Dreyfuss said, “just in time.
Detective Marks, keep him in the hall, would you?” Jacob started to turn toward the door, and I snapped, “Stay with Faun.” He listened to me and not the federal agent on the floor behind me—I give him that much credit. But even though he finally got that ugly-assed necklace fastened around Faun Windsong’s neck, he was too late. Karen had already broken through.
She felt around inside Faun’s head as if she was searching for the last piece of chocolate in a plastic jack o’ lantern full of cheap lollipops, and the moment she seized on whatever it was she’d been looking for, I saw it. Karen’s face lit up in a wide, brutal smile that showed way too many teeth. Faun Windsong’s face changed, too. Her look of mere surprise shifted, intensified, and became fear.
Karen clutched hard, and she pulled.
I thought I was the only one who saw the top of Faun’s head stretch—but then Jacob dropped her and jumped back with a very un-Jacob-like, “What the fuck?” and I realized that Karen had somehow managed to bridge the gap between astral and physical.
I tried to shove Jacob back toward Faun, but my arm wasn’t where I thought it was and I only managed a girly slap across his shoulder.
“Hold onto her,” I barked. “Protect her.” Faun’s head stretched like taffy, and glistening globs of ectoplasm burst from the point at which her physical body stretched into the astral. That, I gather, Jacob saw—the slimy stretched head—and he didn’t budge. She howled, and it didn’t sound like a human howl. It didn’t even sound like an animal howl, or anything else from the physical world. I tried to give Jacob another shove toward her, and might as well have been beating him up with a wet noodle. “Go on, protect her. Isn’t that what your talent is for?”
“What’s happening?” Dreyfuss demanded, but if he couldn’t see anything while he was hopped up on psyactives—not in the sense people normally see things—I didn’t have the luxury of calling “time out” to explain things to him.
I said, “Karen Frugali.” Hopefully that’d convey enough.
Her head snapped up at the sound of her name—yeah, she could hear me all right. Her crazy astral eyes met mine, confirming that she knew I could see her—while I was physical and she was astral. How’s that for a parlor trick?
Jacob forced himself to take Faun Windsong by the shoulders, even though her head was stretched two feet into the astral, and she was covered in slime and making that horrible, hollow, bone-chilling wail.
“Karen’s pulling on her,” I said. “Pull back.” And then another voice joined the fracas. “Oh. My. God.” I recognized it from the Mexican restaurant, so I didn’t need to risk a disorienting glance over my shoulder to know Lyle had just graced us with his presence. Some photo op.
Dreyfuss tried to round him up. “Don’t move. Stay calm—” but stretched heads had never been among the psychic phenomena on PsyTrain’s lesson plan. Lyle started shrieking, louder even than Faun Windsong.
Karen set her jaw and started hauling at Faun’s head even harder.
Faun’s face was at least four feet long now and her features looked like a melted multicolor candle. Her screaming sounded echoey, and more astral than physical. “Grab her fucking head,” I told Jacob.
Because he was the one who’d always wanted to dig in, and get his psychic hands dirty, right? Well, here was his chance.
He didn’t want to—I could tell he was straining to do what I’d ordered.
Hell, if he’d actually wanted to touch it, I’d probably have good reason to be squicked by the extent of his Psych fetish. But he summoned up his courage, and he forced himself to wrap his hands around that long, slimy, rubbery, wailing thing that had been a human head mere seconds ago, and he pulled.
“Red energy,” I told him. “You’re stronger than a damn necklace. Suck white light and send your red energy up to zap her free.” Even though I couldn’t see what Jacob was doing, it must have had some effect. When Karen saw what was going on, she blazed sparkly-astral and pulled even harder, gaining a few more inches on Jacob.
The weird wailing sound Faun made was so far away now, when Lyle drew breath to keep panicking, I realized there were more voices—small and distant, but definitely voices—coming from behind Karen.
“Police. Drop it. Drop it now. I will shoot.”
An astral cop? A female astral cop, at that…and then the slight Spanish accent clicked in, and everything else fell away—Jacob and Faun, Dreyfuss and Lyle, and the world’s loudest Quiet Room. Because that was Lisa’s voice. Lisa.
I surged forward and found myself face to face with crazy-eyed Karen…which didn’t make sense, because how could I be in the doorway when the astral door was way up by the ceiling, and I was half-crippled with drug-induced muscle cramps. Only I didn’t feel crampy at all. I looked down and saw the top of Jacob’s head. Then I glanced over my shoulder and saw myself.
I’d projected…standing up.
It was useless to look at my physical body, stooped and glassy-eyed—it only gave me vertigo. What was the worst thing that could happen, anyway? I’d fall over? I’ve survived worse. Or maybe someone else could carjack me while I wasn’t behind the wheel…but no time to think of that. Not now. I poured all my focus into Karen Frugali, co-ordinating with Lisa to get her to let go of Faun. “Drop it,” I shouted, directly in her face—and I felt the familiarity of my holster on my left side, and the gel insoles of my work shoes. I wasn’t ex-Hardcore Vic, a guy with no hobbies besides pretend-jogging and porn. I was an astral cop too, and now I was on-duty. “Police. Drop it. Now.” I’m not sure whether she would have been scared of my astral gun or not—heck, I didn’t even know if my astral gun was even loaded—but that dumb training session with Sando I’d endured came back to me clear as ectoplasm, and instead of worrying about guns and bullets and how they would or wouldn’t function in the astral, I grabbed her by the wrist, leaned in, and snap-pull-pop, I’d jarred her funny bone.
While I hadn’t expected it to work…I hadn’t exactly thought it would fail, either. I think my sliver of confidence was the catalyst that converted the physical maneuver into its astral equivalent. Karen let go of Faun’s head and screamed—if you could call it screaming. It sounded more like the squeal of brakes right before a car crash.
“Watch it, Vic. She’s dangerous.” Lisa. My God, it was so good to hear her voi…wow. There she was. I’d expected her in a J-Lo type velour tracksuit, or maybe a poorly-fitted woman’s blazer, but astral Lisa was wearing the navy uniform of a beat cop, complete with a mascu-line black tie and a big, gold badge over her heart. She held her gun like she meant business, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if she was a better shot than me. The weird thing was, in the astral…Lisa didn’t quite look like Lisa, not the way I thought of her. Astral Lisa was plainer. Harder. Like if you saw her from the wrong angle and you didn’t notice the tight single braid down her back, you might mistake her for a short Mexican guy with thin eyebrows and biggish hips.
“Don’t let her pull you in.” Debbie—holy hell, astral Debbie looked like a pinup girl. She could give Betty Page a run for her money. She didn’t glow as brightly as Karen, though. Neither did Lisa. Or that weaselly little dark-haired kid beside her…Chekotah. Cripes, Chekotah really was as pathetic as Dreyfuss said.
I didn’t think I needed to worry about Karen trying to pull me in. Just the opposite. “Get out,” she bellowed, and her voice was like thunder. It knocked me back a couple of feet, and the magic door began to dim. I could make out the texture of the stucco wall behind it, or through it…or however it was situated in relation to the physical.
I started to feel panicky around the edges, because Lisa and Debbie—and that weirdo Chekotah—were within reach, and since I had no intention of taking one of those evil psyactives again, I needed to figure out how to bring them back to the physical
now
. I sucked white light and rushed back toward the door. The closer I came to it, the more defined it became. But Karen was right on the threshold this time…and now she had the astral axe in her hands.