Chapter Thirty-Nine
THE POLICY WAS clear. Jacob had been injured in the line of duty. He had to be checked over by a medical professional.
My husband was not pleased.
“It’s nothing. I’m fine.”
If a stun-gun disruption to his nervous system was nothing, I’d hate to see something. “I’m in charge, remember? Sit down and stop glaring at me—I’m not gonna budge.”
Jacob worked his jaw a few times…but parked his butt on a nearby radiator without argument.
He wasn’t the only one banged up. Poor Boswell looked like a prize fighter who’d been scraped off the floor of the ring, and Evelyn was walking gingerly.
But the two of them focused on the myna bird on the light fixture while Haskel tried to lure it down with a grape.
Eventually, Boswell just reached up and grabbed the thing—surprisingly gently, for such an ungainly guy—and handed it over to its frazzled owner.
Sarah had come out of the fray with just a couple of scratches, and Sledge had some finger-shaped bruises forming on his neck. Although the fight had gone out of him, I’d separated him from Sarah. She was in the kitchen and he was in the bathroom.
But while I could keep them apart physically, reintegrated Sarah wasn’t willing to let things go, even if she had to yell her truth through the wall.
“I hate your stupid face! I hate your stupid arms! I hate your stupid six-pack! I hate your everything! I’m sick of hiding from you—and I don’t have to!
Never talk to me again! No Insta, no Snapchat, no nothing!
Or, I swear to god, I’ll post that picture of you when you were a zitty little butterball.
Yeah, that’s right, I kept it—and I’ll show that thing to everyone you know! ”
And Sledge? Not a peep. In fact, he’d gone into the can without any argument at all. Just a neutral, “Okay.”
Even so, I was with Sarah. I still hated his stupid face.
A team showed up from HQ in unassuming navy uniforms. They could have been anything, from plumbers to pest control.
But the one in charge flashed her F-Pimp credentials—not just a medic but a full-fledged MD, and a precog P-2 designation, to boot.
I wondered if she’d seen this coming. Heck knows, there wasn’t much to see anymore, just a few banged up people and a scattering of feathers and salt.
The doctor pulled out a pen light and shone it in my face. “Pupils equal and responsive.”
I winced away. “Don’t worry about me. Agent Marks stopped a stun gun with his neck.”
“And he’ll be taken care of. But I’m assessing you.” Of course. NPs were second class citizens as far as admin was concerned. And, like it or not, I couldn’t challenge that assumption.
She clipped a thingy to my finger and took a reading. “Your pulse is elevated, but that’s to be expected. You don’t need stitches.”
Stitches? For what? She unpacketed an alcohol swab and dabbed the bridge of my nose. Ow.
“Use an icepack for the swelling.” She then launched into an extensive line of questioning about the last time I’d taken any medication, in particular any psyactives or antipsyactives.
I told her about the mugwort, then clarified that was the day before.
“That only hangs around in your system for half a day. So, you’re sure.
You haven’t utilized any psyactives today? None at all?”
My eyes went to a chipped piece of plastic on the floor where the SPECs had fallen.
Talk about a psyactive—those things were in the same league as a GhosTV.
Maybe even more. Back when television went digital, Jacob and I marveled at all the channels the new antenna could pick up.
The SPECs were a lot like that, because they boosted my one-channel brain to pick up all kinds of crazy shows.
The potential was massive. All those subtle bodies packed into our physical shells—imagine being able to tease them all apart and see what each one could do.
If the empathic talent had its own body, likely the same could be said for telepaths and precogs and clairvoyants.
And maybe the TKs were the ones who could wrangle their subtle bodies best.
All of which had implications for psychiatry.
They didn’t even know how so many medications actually worked.
Maybe the meds functioned on some kind of psyactive level, and changed the way the physical body interacted with one of its subtle counterparts.
Seeing how people acted when their empathic body was gone, I had to wonder if certain mental issues had more to do with the subtle bodies than the physical brain.
The question was, how would they test for it? Lock me in a room…and instead of a dead woman’s wig, I’d be stuck with a pair of glasses. No, I reasoned, that was then and this is now. They’d find a more humane way.
And yet…could I really be so sure of that?
“Just the mugwort yesterday,” I told the doctor. “No other psyactives.”
Once the doctor was through with me, she moved on to Evelyn, the next-most-important psychic in the room. Evelyn had fallen hard on one hip and strained a good few muscles, but nothing appeared to be broken. She promised she’d follow up with her clinic in DC nonetheless.
I noted she didn’t mention the SPECs, either.
Boswell had taken the worst beating, but once medics staunched his bloody nose, they put his face back together with superglue and slathered it with antibiotic ointment. He’d probably scar. And he’d probably look even tougher now. Poor doofus.
I caught up with him in the bedroom, gazing at the spot where Sarah’s fragment no longer lived.
Possession leaves a scar that all the superglue in the world won’t fix, and the sense of violation is something you never forget.
“Now you see why I can’t exorcise you,” I told him.
“It would only leave room for something else to fill the vacuum. Something that has no business being there.”
“So I’m stuck with someone always watching me.”
Yeah, welcome to the club. “We’ll work on it,” I promised. “I’ll teach you everything I know.” And who knows, maybe once he got a better handle on his subtle bodies, he’d get better at separating the actual threats from the imaginary ones. Though I wasn’t gonna hold my breath.
Once Boswell was patched up, Evelyn was dispatched to the airport, and Sledge was hauled off to the FPMP for “observation,” the ride home was…
interesting. Not because I was at the steering wheel for a change, since I hadn’t been stun-gunned.
And not because I was trying to figure out who was more right about Evelyn: Jacob, or me.
But because Sarah simply wouldn’t shut up.
“—and then my manicurist expected a tip, even though she’d literally just raised her rates by ten bucks. Can you believe it? But you can’t go just anywhere, ’cos you end up with nail fugus—ew—and that never goes away—”
I squinted at the crosswalk. Only one repeater, or maybe it was a ghost. Either way, pretty scant.
Not anyone I’d mistake for a walking, talking, living person.
Regardless, I did swerve a little to keep the car out of it.
My white ballon felt deflated. And after the bloody bike helmet guy, I wasn’t taking any chances.
Sarah’s chatter washed over me as I mentally backtracked through the past few days in light of the fact that Jacob had been staking out Evelyn the whole time.
He’d been way too good at acting more or less like himself.
Even so, there were a few pregnant pauses that I was too quick to dismiss.
Maybe it should have been a tip-off that he let my psychic supply kit run dry.
But I could totally see him leaving all the tedious paperwork for me.
“So how long would I be at the police station if I pressed charges against Zach?”
Jacob said, “Actually, it would be the district attorney who—”
Sarah plowed right over him. “Because I’ve gotta do something about this hair, too. If I can even get an appointment.”
Jacob encouraged her to give a statement. He downplayed how traumatizing it would probably be, but we’d make sure F-Pimp set her up with a good victim’s advocate. Now that she was integrated, though, Sarah seemed pretty resilient. Either that, or she wasn’t a very deep thinker.
“What even happened to Zach back there?”
I wasn’t sure how technical she wanted to get, so I countered her question with a question. “What did it seem like to you?”
I glanced at her in the rearview as she screwed up her mouth to one side and gave it some serious thought.
“Honestly? Everything was all wonky when I was outside myself. But after Zach punched you, it kinda looked like karma gave him a cosmic bitch-slap. Like when you drop the channel switcher and one of the batteries rolls under the couch.”
Eh, close enough.
“So, is it permanent?” Sarah asked. “Or will whatever fell out of him grow back?”
I hadn’t even considered that. “Hard to say.” But given what I’d glimpsed of the dark rift, how it seemed to stretch into oblivion, I’d wager the emotional self that Zachary Sledge had spent his whole life perfecting was gone for good. “Seems like poetic justice.”
“That’s dumb, what does it even rhyme with? I was just asking cos he seems a little spacy now.”
“There’s no quick fix for that,” I said.
“Too bad. When he goes to jail…I was really hoping he’d suffer.”