Chapter Seven
I SHUT THE passenger-side door of the FPMP-issue Lexus SUV harder than I meant to, and Evelyn climbed stiffly into the back seat. She didn’t say a word as she buckled her seatbelt, but she held herself like she’d just pulled a muscle.
“Well,” she said after too long a pause. “That was... deeply unsettling.”
No kidding.
I kept my eyes on the side mirror, watching Boswell peer at us through the window of his trash-packed van as Jacob wended his way out of the parking lot.
“What’s your standard protocol in a case like this?” Evelyn asked.
“There is no standard,” I said. “Not when it comes to ghosts.” Not to mention Boswell himself.
Thinking back to the review, it could’ve gone either way: paranoid delusion or actual haunting.
What were the chances of it being both? Then again, maybe it wasn’t really a chicken-and-egg conundrum.
A constant barrage of half-seen, half-heard interference was enough to keep even a well-adjusted guy looking over his shoulder.
Add a propensity to paranoia, and is it any surprise if it ends up with a van full of bottled urine? “We’ll need to re-check the apartment.”
“Great,” Evelyn said, way too fast. “I’d love to see it.”
I turned around in my seat to face her, and brought out the big guns: FPMP terminology. “We’re talking potential non-physical entity.”
She didn’t flinch. “I know that. But it would be incredibly valuable for me to see your process in the field.”
“Might not be the worst idea,” Jacob said, keeping his eyes on the road. “She could potentially catch something we miss.”
I blinked at him. “She’s not a medium.”
“No,” Jacob agreed. “But she would still bring something to the table.”
“I understand your hesitation,” she told me. “But I promise not to get in the way. Consider it an interdisciplinary opportunity.”
It all sounded so incredibly reasonable. She wasn’t some random person off the street, she was FPMP. Heck, she was a certified psych, with all the insider knowledge that entailed.
But she was also from National. And I didn’t want to cozy up with them any more than I absolutely had to. I turned back around and stared through the windshield. The traffic ahead had slowed to a crawl.
Everyone was silent, waiting on me. Evelyn didn’t plead, and Jacob didn’t argue for her. But the one casual remark about her “bringing something to the table” spoke loud and clear. That…and the fact that he was heading toward the apartment rather than making to drop our passenger off at HQ.
Do I like being steamrolled by Jacob? Of course not, though once in a while I need to let him get his way.
In this case, what finally made me give in wasn’t so much the desire to pick my battles, but my sense that he probably had a reason for wanting her there.
“Fine,” I told Evelyn, “you can come along. But you’re not a trained Stiff.
If I give the order, you disengage. No questions asked. ”
“Understood.”
Hopefully I wasn’t about to regret my decision.
Maintenance showed us into the apartment with a shrug, and I let the bland whiteness of the space wash over me as Jacob and Evelyn filed in. The place looked just like it had when I combed through it the day before. An empty, freshly-painted dump.
I headed for the bedroom, the location where both Boswell and I had noticed…
something. Police procedure would discourage me from drawing any conclusions until I knew the facts.
Blood spots, powder burns, a line of cocaine next to a rolled up C-note—all of that is deemed as a “substance” until the lab confirms otherwise.
But it’s natural to draw conclusions. And the fact that Boswell had claimed there was a dead woman in the bedroom was something I couldn’t unhear.
I did my best to keep an open mind.
I paced the bedroom, concentrating hard enough that sweat beaded on my forehead. Nothing. The closet was empty, the corners vacant, the air still. Not even a fleeting shadow.
“Anything?” Jacob asked from the doorway.
I shook my head. “Not a damn thing.”
Jacob turned to where our guest hovered uncertainly near the bedroom entrance. “What would your lab do in a situation like this?”
She shifted her weight, glancing between us. “I wouldn’t want to overstep. This is Agent Bayne’s investigation.”
Jacob gave her an encouraging nod. “But you might have some valuable insight.”
Plus, she was a psych, herself. “Fresh eyes couldn’t hurt,” I said.
She scanned the room and then gave a helpless shrug. “This isn’t the lab,” she said apologetically. “There are just too many variables.”
True enough. Most of the time, my life felt like one big, unpredictable variable.
I turned back to the room. The shadow I thought I’d picked up on last time had moved from the kitchen to the bedroom. The “woman” Boswell claimed to see had run into the closet. I positioned Jacob and Evelyn well out of the path and went in for another look.
Shifting my focus to my inner eye was routine by now, but performance anxiety rears its head whenever my talent’s not working in front of an audience. I can do this, I reminded myself. Hell, I spent years popping Auracels to stop doing this. But when I scanned the bedroom, I found nothing.
I stared so long, a niggling headache formed across the back of my head. Still nothing. Eventually, I huffed out a sigh and shook my head in disgust, and Evelyn said, “Maybe Mood Blaster would help.”
It wasn’t what she said, or the way she said it—kind and encouraging—but the fact that she was the first person who didn’t seem even the slightest bit embarrassed on my behalf over the silliness of the app.
I hesitated, and she added, “I’d really love to see it in action.”
There wasn’t much to see. I popped in my earbuds, called up the app, and dismissed level 18 to navigate back to the home screen.
Binaural tones pulsed as I steered the rocket ship through the space rocks.
But they felt less intuitive after the upgrade, and the competitive part of my brain that I swore didn’t exist wanted nothing more than to go back and round up more Floatalongs.
When I felt the slight disorientation that hinted I was in Alpha, I opened my eyes.
No ghost.
“Too many variables,” Evelyn said. “Even if the app is effective, there might be nothing here for a medium to see.”
Not to mention that some ghosts only showed up after dark, and repeaters are often tied to their time of death. I’d need to get hold of Boswell again and narrow down a timeline.
But did he take my call? Of course not.
“May as well wrap up for the day,” I said, pocketing my phone. “Right now, I’m getting a whole lot of nothing.”
Jacob nodded. “Back to the office, then? We can regroup, figure out our next move.”
We headed out to the car and set off. Soon, the neighborhood changed from quiet residential into the kind of mixed-use strip where you could get your taxes done, buy a bong, and have your eyebrows waxed in one block.
We hit a red light and something wafted through the vents.
Garlic, oregano, and the little burnt rim of a cup-shaped slice of pepperoni filled with grease.
I hadn’t even realized I was hungry.
Evelyn sat forward so fast, the seat-back creaked.
“That smells incredible! Wait—is it deep-dish? I’ve never had real Chicago-style pizza.”
A purist would say Chicago deep-dish is nothing whatsoever like actual pizza. The crust is too oily. The pie is too thick. And there’s way too much cheese.
As if there’s ever a possibility of too much cheese.
“I wouldn’t mind grabbing a bite,” I said cautiously, expecting my husband to shut it down due to his pathological aversion to dietary fat.
Jacob surprised me by flipping on his blinker and swinging into the lot. “Can’t let Dr. Hall leave Chicago without showing her what she’s been missing.”
I blinked at him. “Seriously?”
“What? I can’t enjoy pizza now?”
“You added kale to your breakfast scramble.”
“Guess that means I can afford a little indulgence.”
Huh. Had I known it would pay this kind of dividend, I would’ve started stocking the fridge with kale myself.
Mario’s was your basic hole in the wall, with sticky formica booths, drop ceilings, and a faded Italian flag tacked behind the register. No one there appeared to be Italian, given that they were all speaking Spanish. But who cared, as long as the parmesan and hot pepper shakers were full?
You can’t just grab a slice of Chicago deep dish and run out the door, not unless you want second-degree burns. The slab is so hefty, it’s more like a casserole than a slice. And even I, with my tendency to eat everything on the run, wouldn’t dream of approaching it without a knife and fork.
It’s not just a pizza…it’s a commitment. It takes a good forty-five minutes from oven to table. And once it arrives, it’s a good ten minutes before you can eat it without scalding a layer of flesh off the roof of your mouth.
But it’s so damn worth it.
Still, that left us with an hour to sit there and think about my lackluster performance back at the crappy apartment.
As we all awkwardly sipped water and tried to ignore our stomachs rumbling, Evelyn said, “I won’t claim to be an expert in mediumship, but Bethany tells me you’ve got a great track record.
It must be frustrating to be searching for something that might not even be there to begin with. ”
I shrugged. “You could say the same for any evidence.” Though it wasn’t a murder investigation.
“But you are an expert in your field,” Jacob said to Evelyn, smoothly turning the conversation away from my distinct lack of results. Carl would’ve just sat there and watched me sweat. “And research must be just as frustrating as investigative work.”
“I try to remind myself that every failure rules something out. That’s still progress…at least that’s what I tell myself whenever I come up with a lot of nothing.”
“And that’s exactly why we need people like you in the lab,” Jacob said. “You stress-test new ideas in the lab so Vic doesn’t have to do it in the field.” He gave her one of his killer smiles. “That commercial app you created already helps Vic function. It’s made a huge difference in our lives.”
Evelyn made a flustered noise and a blush stole over the tops of her ears. I reminded myself how overwhelming Jacob’s attention could be when you weren’t used to it. But the arrival of the pizza saved her from having to figure out how to be graceful in the face of a barrage of compliments.
Our attention turned toward the pizza, and we assured her the crushed tomatoes on top were normal, and never fear, there’d be no lack of cheese.
I was surprised Jacob went in for a second slice.
I usually go for three, but regret my decision and bail a few bites into the third. Evelyn could barely finish one.
Food is grounding, or so I’ve conjectured.
Not that I’d be able to tune out a full-fledged ghost, if one happened to be complaining about a mozzarella-prompted heart attack within range of my sixth sense.
But our subtle bodies—those various energetic selves that nest together inside us like expensive Tupperware—have an influence on one another.
And digesting a good pound of cheese takes some serious resources.
I scraped some flaky crumbs into a napkin before they ended up on my suit. “Does pizza do anything for empathy?” I wasn’t always clear how other talents worked.
Evelyn gave a small laugh. “I think we can all commiserate when our waistbands get snug.”
Maybe a distraction was a distraction, regardless of which plane of existence it occupied.
“But what does that mean for Mood Blaster? It induces brainwaves—”
“Induce is a strong word. More like it invites.”
I waved away the distinction. “But the brain is a physical hunk of meat. Is it just a matter of the alpha wave letting me get out of my own way? Or is there some kind of connective tissue between the subtle bodies?”
Evelyn’s eyes lit up. “That’s exactly the type of question that keeps us in the lab till two in the morning. We don’t know—not yet. But when you think about how far the field of psych research has come, maybe someday soon we’ll have some good answers.”
And just like that, the day didn’t seem like a total loss. I hadn’t seen a ghost. I hadn’t cracked the case. But I’d shared a pizza with the creator of the only thing that ever let me feel halfway normal. That had to count for something.
Yes, she was a scientist, and yes, she was from National, but I liked Evelyn.
And Jacob clearly did, too. Though it was only when she swore to herself and grabbed a napkin to scrub at a spot of tomato sauce on her lapel that I felt emboldened enough to ask, “This might be a long shot, but is there any chance you can get me back to my old Mood Blaster?”
Evelyn opened her mouth, closed it again, then offered a sheepish smile.
“Okay, this is probably overstepping, but… I’ve been working on a new piece of tech that builds on the principles of Mood Blaster.
No doubt you get a dozen pitches a week from people who think they’ve cracked some psychic code.
But my latest work might actually be useful.
If you’re open to it, I could show you.”
Top-secret, cutting-edge FPMP tech. What could possibly go wrong?