Chapter Fifteen
WE WAITED IN the car while an F-Pimp cleanup crew descended on the corner store…
and not just to mop up the Florida Water I’d spewed around.
Whereas we used to call it a day once a ghost was handled, nowadays we phoned it in so the FPMP could figure out what needed following up.
Our colleagues might find the victim of Bloody Hands buried under the floorboards…
or a blue-haired grocery clerk might need to sign an NDA to receive a nice chunk of hush-money.
But whatever the fallout, they’d deal with it.
True, I didn’t quite trust the Federal Psychic Monitoring Program…but I was grateful the organization was in place to handle the details so I didn’t have to.
Maybe none of that mattered, as long as I had Jacob. He couldn’t see Bloody Hands, but he definitely felt the ghost. And he’d put himself between me and the threat without a second thought.
My hand dropped to cover his where it rested on the seat between us, and I smoothed my thumb along his pinkie.
Our car was probably bugged, so I couldn’t be too specific…
but that was okay for what I had to tell him.
“In case I don’t say it enough, I just want you to know how much it means to me that you’re in my corner. ”
“Vic….” He sounded unusually somber.
“It’s true.” I gave his hand a squeeze. “Having someone I can trust, well…. I don’t take it for granted. Just thought it needed saying.”
Jacob did the half-shrug that passed for a blush on him. “We’re partners,” he said simply.
Maybe so. But that didn’t necessarily guarantee someone would step in front of a ghost for you. It was instinctive to save yourself. But Jacob’s instinct was to step between me and any threat.
Later that night, the office told us that nearly a century ago, Bloody Hands had actually confessed to his wife’s murder, though her body had never been found.
What did I recommend? Well, if it had been Helen’s ghost begging me for justice, I might have leaned toward searching the place.
But the shop owner seemed to have enough on his plate without the government tearing up the floorboards.
And who knows, maybe business would pick up, now that his store was no longer haunted.
I often wondered what civilians could feel in a place like that—if the reason haunted spots were so desolate was because the heebie-jeebies drove everyone away. The next day, I sought out Evelyn, who was just finishing up with Bethany. Not doing yoga, either…but testing out her SPECs.
“Anything new?” I asked them. “If that’s not top-secret, classified, need-to-know-basis intel.”
Bethany was easily as demanding of herself as she was of her students. She tossed her long, dark hair in annoyance. “Not a single projection.”
“Maybe it just takes time,” I said—though I wasn’t really sold on that idea.
Back when I’d put on those SPECs, I felt a difference right away.
So, it’s possible that what I truly meant was, maybe they didn’t have any effect on the astral plane.
All mediums weren’t created equal. And while we were all connected to our subtle bodies with a different type of tether than most people, we weren’t all attuned to the same body.
Bethany couldn’t see a ghost if it was standing right beside her.
And I couldn’t astral project without a GhosTV.
“Ghost emotions,” I blurted out. Both women stared.
I backed my brain up a few paces. “I was thinking about this haunted store and…well, I was just wondering, if a sizeable chunk of the population is borderline empath, could an empath get a read from a ghost? Or would ghost emotions not register because they only exist on the etheric plane?”
“That would make a fascinating study,” Evelyn said, “but it would be hard to prove anything.”
“Right. Because there aren’t exactly a bunch of test ghosts around here eager to satisfy our curiosity.”
“Not only that,” she said, “but the planes of being are largely undocumented. Mystical traditions often speak of many different subtle bodies beyond the astral.”
I’d seen evidence of that myself in Camp Hell, tripping hard on fucked-up, experimental psyactives—waving my own hand in front of my eyes and watching tracers of multiple hands follow.
It was an experience I hoped never to repeat…which was why I hesitated when Evelyn opened up the SPECs case and offered the glasses to me, saying, “Since you’re here, would you mind indulging my curiosity?”
“I, uh….”
Whether it was my spike of emotions or just the look on my face, Evelyn quickly sensed my hesitation.
“It’s totally off the record. But my time in Chicago is so limited. And it would really speed things along in this preliminary fact-finding phase if I knew that Bethany wasn’t the only Medium who sensed no distortions in this location.”
I knew the yoga room was clean—and not just because Bethany went around barefoot and would feel even the smallest fleck of crud.
I psychically scrubbed every inch of the FPMP building on a regular basis.
And aside from the repeaters upstairs left over from the organization’s old regime, the building was metaphysically spotless.
Still…it couldn’t hurt to make sure no habit demons had crept into the yoga studio. I didn’t think anyone was addicted to sun salutations. But weirder things had happened.
As I reached for the SPECs, though, my phone rang. I gave it a quick glance, hoping it was someone I could ignore, but dreading the probability that it wasn’t. The name that popped up made me wince: my new paranoid buddy, Noah Boswell.
Given how hard I’d been chasing him down, I supposed I couldn’t let him go to voicemail.
“Yeah,” I said drily.
“So you really did give me your card! I thought this whole agent thing might be a cover for something else.”
A spy disguised as…a spy? Not a bad idea. “You can’t be too careful. So did you have any additional info on the apartment, or…?”
“I think you know exactly what I’ve got.”
I did not have the patience for this. “You’ll need to be more specific.”
“Not until you come down here and look me in the eye.”
“Okay, I’ll meet you at your old apartment.”
“Oh no. I’m not giving you time to construct a cover story. I’m here. Now. And I’m not leaving until you see me.”
Just then, a text came through from security stating I had a visitor. “I’ll be right down.”
“Is it Mr. Boswell?” Evelyn guessed.
“Yeah…and the call is coming from inside the building.”
The FPMP main floor lobby was mainly for show, as most of the agents come and go through the parking ramp elevator bank.
But the street-level guards knew me from my periodic forays to exorcise the building’s perimeter.
They never seemed particularly grateful for my efforts to keep the place ghost-free.
But they shot me a look of relief when I came down to handle Boswell.
I was surprised to see Jacob had beat me to the punch and was already there…but not surprised that he’d made no headway, as Boswell ranted and raved in his face. Jacob is normally great at defusing situations. But Boswell was anything but normal.
“I know my rights,” Boswell was saying. “You can’t implant without consent.
Even prisoners have bodily autonomy. Look it up: Washington v.
Harper. So if I say no to biometric tracking, that means no.
My heartbeat, my breath, my brainwaves—they’re mine.
Not for research, not for ‘wellness apps,’ not for predictive profiling.
I’m not fooling around—I demand the device be removed this instant, or I swear, you’ll have a raft of attorneys at your door—and more publicity than you ever hoped for. ”
Evelyn followed me off the elevator. “He’s truly upset.”
Ya think? I did my best to hurry to Jacob’s side without startling anyone by breaking into a jog. “What’s going on?” I asked in my most neutral voice.
“Finally,” Boswell snapped. “Someone who’s willing to admit exactly what this place is all about.”
“He knows,” I told Jacob, so he could drop whatever “nothing to see here” act he might’ve been playing.
It’s not like the title of the organization played coy with a name like Project Wingnut.
For anyone who’d actually heard of the Federal Psychic Monitoring Program, the standard operating procedure was right in the name.
I joined the two of them and tried to pivot the conversation deeper into the lobby, so as not to make the place seem too interesting to a random passerby. Then I lowered my voice and said, “What’s all this about an implant?”
I was hoping he’d have some story about alien abduction at the ready—something implausible—but instead Boswell narrowed his eyes. “As if you don’t know. You’re the one who planted it on me!”
“Me?” I said. “I’m incapable of planting anything. Just ask the yellow spot on my lawn where the grass seed goes to die.”
“Oh, really?” He shoved his thumb in my face in an accusatory A-Okay. “Then what’s this?”
I scowled. “It’s…a splinter.”
“Yeah, right. That I just so happened to pick up while you were questioning me.”
“You mean, while you were voluntarily talking to me. On the old, weathered wooden planter.”
“Well, obviously you’d insert it when you had a rational explanation.”
“Excuse me,” Evelyn said gently. “May I?”
Despite how tactfully she’d said it, I fully expected Boswell to refuse. But he glanced down at the name badge clipped to her lapel—Dr. E. Hall—and actually entrusted his thumb to her.
“It is a splinter,” I said, “isn’t it?”
Evelyn pulled a small multitool from her pocket and coaxed out the tiny fleck of wood. “Probably. But nanotechnology is always evolving. I’m happy to put it under the microscope and make sure.”
“What else would it be?” Boswell glanced in alarm at his thumb. “A microdose of some kind of neurotoxin?”
“Don’t worry,” Evelyn said calmly. “There was no capillary involvement. It didn’t penetrate past your epidermis.”