Chapter Thirty-Seven
AS JACOB BEGGED me not to use the SPECs, his voice was controlled…barely. But his dark eyes were filled with emotion. Empaths might not be able to feel it, but I knew Jacob was vulnerable inside. No matter what he did or didn’t project.
I hated that I couldn’t just wash my hands of the whole thing. But what choice did I have? “Jacob, I can’t leave Sarah’s body to traipse off to Disney while her spirit keeps Boswell prisoner.”
“Talk her out of it somehow. You got her here, didn’t you?”
Sure I did. By telling her she could have the last word with her jerk of an ex. “That’s the thing. I was just stringing her along.”
“Then keep stringing. And give her a push.”
“Fine. I’ll give it one more shot—for your sake.” Hopefully Boswell would be able to pitch in and help.
We went back into the fray. It looked like another preschool slap-fight at first glance, but eventually I figured out that Sarah’s spirit (in Boswell) was trying to give her own body some kind of up-do to hide the hacked-off hair. And the body was none too thrilled.
Evelyn, meanwhile, was watching the whole thing through narrowed eyes, with her arms crossed firmly as if to shield herself from whatever emotional storm we’d brewed up.
“Okay, Sarah, here’s the deal,” I said. Both Boswell and the body paused their swatting. “We don’t know how long this process will take, and we want to make sure we’ve got it right. So we need everyone to start getting on the same page. Right now. So that you’re ready when Zach gets here.”
An equally blank look regarded me from two very different faces.
I addressed the one who’d hijacked Boswell. “Get back inside your own body.”
“I’m working on it,” she said petulantly. “This is all new to me. You can’t just expect me to know how everything is supposed to happen.”
I turned to the body. “Are you blocking her?”
The body shrugged. “I’m not doing anything.”
For a high-level psych, I’m not actually into all that woo-woo talk about the universe.
But there’s something to be said for rightness—the way things just pop into place when they’re supposed to be there.
Like two jigsaw puzzle pieces meant to fit together.
This rightness is the only reason my exorcisms are effective—because when it’s all said and done, what I do is toddler-slap at ghosts and let the veil do the rest. And it works—because etheric entities don’t belong on this plane.
And the grand balance does the heavy lifting to help me put things right.
“You should fit inside your own body a hell of a lot better than you do in Boswell’s,” I told the spirit. “Try harder.”
“I am trying!”
“Okay…how about this? Try less. Just clear your mind. And center your thoughts. And think about what it feels like to be yourself.”
She scrunched up Boswell’s face. “I dunno what to tell you. It’s, like, really hard.”
“Boswell,” I snapped, in an attempt to appeal to his spirit. “Help her out, here.”
Evelyn approached, pointedly circling me to avoid Jacob. She held out a familiar black case and said, “I tweaked the intensity of the ramp. It should be a lot smoother this time.”
“You don’t need those,” Jacob said.
“Is that your professional opinion, Agent Marks?” Evelyn asked. I’d never heard her sound so cold.
“Based on my twelve years as a PsyCop, my specialized FPMP training, and the fact that I know Vic better than anyone…yes, it is.”
“If Vic were able to reunite the forms, he would have done so by now. Isn’t that right?”
I shifted uncomfortably. “There’s something to be said for doing a simple countdown so we’re all going in the same direction. No sense in playing tug-of-war if you don’t have to.”
“Push and shove all you want,” Evelyn said. “But you’ll only be straining against a door marked ‘pull.’ Your talent is etheric, not empathic. You need more range.”
I worried that Evelyn was right, and maybe Jacob was biased, and he thought a little too highly of my abilities. Or maybe he’d just seen me do enough impossible things that he was starting to expect it. Either way, I really didn’t want to do the exact opposite of what he was asking.
Evelyn leaned in to me and said, “Mr. Boswell is worried. And Sarah’s emotions seem eager to me…maybe too eager.”
“Listen to me, Sarah.” I planted myself in front of Boswell and sucked down white light for all I was worth. I imagined it flowing to me. Surrounding me. Surrounding us. “Just be calm. Focus on your body and let yourself go where you belong.”
“But what about Zach? You told me Zach would be here so I could break it off with him for good.”
“He’s hardly gonna take you seriously if you’re a middle-aged man.”
“I don’t care—you said he’d be here, and he isn’t.”
“We’ve got his number—we’ll give him a call. Just as soon as you get back in your own body.”
“No way. Not good enough. I’m staying right where I am until Zach gets here.”
We were all so focused on the Sarahs that no one noticed someone else had joined the party…until that someone spoke. “Then, here I am.”
If I’d never heard that smarmy, smug tone of voice again, it would be too soon.
Zachary Sledge.
We all whirled around. Jacob said, “The front door was locked.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I said, “there’s a trick window in back.” And apparently everyone and their brother knew it. Sledge was stalking the place…and the agent assigned to watch for him deserved a big, fat non-satisfactory grade on their next evaluation.
Sledge filled the bedroom door, all attitude and muscle. He even managed to stand like a douchebag, with his chest thrust out and a stance that was too wide, like he thought he had some kind of superpowers. And in his grip was a familiar black and tan flecked bird.
He petted its head with a cupped hand in a gesture that was oozing with threat. Murray Haskel was right to be scared of the guy. Reporting his bird wasn’t the only thing Sledge was capable of.
“What’re we all talking about?” he asked.
“You don’t need to stop on account of me.
” He grinned even wider, and when nobody volunteered anything, he turned to Sarah’s body.
“Wow, babe, you’ve really let yourself go.
But don’t worry. I know that once you settle back down with me, you’ll try harder to be the person you’re capable of being. ”
He was so focused on his ex that he didn’t see the random doofus coming.
I’d never seen Boswell’s lumbering body move so fast—but Sarah was driving. One minute they were right there with me, sharing in the white light, and the next they were elbowing Evelyn out of the way to lunge at Sledge.
Well, shit.
Sarah’d had no intention of reuniting with her body. She wanted to even the playing field—as someone who stood a chance of doing some real damage. And now she had sheer size on her side.
No wonder Sarah’s emotional self was eager. It didn’t just want the last word with Zach. It wanted payback. I could only imagine what a rush it would be to confront someone who’d hurt you, now bigger and stronger and fully able to lay the guy out.
“What the fu—?” Zach ducked and dodged. The bird erupted from his grasp and fluttered up to the ceiling fixture, where it landed on the light with a disconcerting haw-haw-haw.
Pounding on the front door. The downstairs neighbor’s voice calling out, “Give her back!”
No time for that. Sarah might have toddler-level fighting skills—but she was big now, and she was pissed.
“Dude, I will hurt you,” Sledge spluttered as he broke free from Boswell’s massive hands. They grabbed again, as if Sarah would gladly use them to rip her ex’s head clean off.
“On the ground,” Jacob barked at Boswell’s body. Like I kept salt in the pocket of my suit coat, Jacob kept a zip tie in his, and he was angling with it to subdue the attacker.
I should assist—all my training said so—but Boswell’s body moved like it was on PCP—erratic, with no regard for its own welfare. Because it was just temporary. And the consciousness running it wouldn’t pay any of the consequences.
Evelyn pressed the SPECs into my hand. “Get her out of there. Before she does serious damage.”
Zachary Sledge wound up and socked Boswell square in the face—and for a split second, a subtle body jerked out of alignment and snapped back in. I couldn’t say for sure, but it looked more like Boswell’s etheric form than Sarah’s.
A broken jaw would heal. But what if the possession was forever?
Boswell’s nose was gushing like a spigot—hopefully it wasn’t busted—but he kept coming at Sledge. For all I knew, Sarah didn’t feel the pain. Or since it wasn’t her body, she didn’t care.
A normal man would’ve hit Sledge back. But nothing about this was normal, and instead of decking him, Boswell went at him with a move that was part bear hug, part Sumo wrestler.
I took it for lack of fighting skill. But then, when she got Boswell’s arms around him, Sarah said, “Now!”
A click. A crackle. A startling smell of ozone…and Jacob buckled to the floor.
Sarah’s body had launched itself into the scuffle. With the stun gun she must’ve lifted from the Walgreens security guard.
With Jacob out of the way, the body gave it another click and jabbed at Sledge. It missed. Barely.
Everything in me was screaming at me to see to Jacob—he’d be fine, I reasoned. Or he wouldn’t, depending on how he fell. But zaps like that weren’t lethal. On the force, some showoff cadets even volunteered to be tazered during training.
It still took everything I had to focus on the active threat—so I didn’t end up on the floor right beside Jacob. I grabbed Boswell’s arm and twisted it behind his back. The guy was built like a side of beef, and even my training didn’t give me much of an advantage.
Thankfully, I wasn’t the only conscious FPMP operative left in the room. In a move borne from training, Evelyn dropped her purse and jabbed Sarah’s body in the elbow joint with three fingers, sending the stun gun skittering across the hardwood.