PsyCop 6: GhosTV (39 page)

Debbie chugged a giant mimosa, then flagged down the waitress and asked for another. I wondered if I might come down faster if I had one myself—or at least a Valium—but I decided the green and white pill was too potent to risk mixing it with anything else.

“What’s taking them so long with the food?” Debbie said. The waitress had taken our orders less than five minutes ago. “I think my stomach is digesting itself.”

If projecting my astral form gave me an atomic tapeworm, I couldn’t imagine how hungry I would end up if I’d been fully astral, like the girls were. Which I hadn’t known was even possible—but we’d all seen it, so apparently it was. Psych tends to be like that. Full of big, hairy surprises you’d just as soon do without.

Lisa didn’t complain about being hungry. In fact, she didn’t say anything at all. She stared down at the edge of the formica tabletop like she was sorry she’d ever been born. Even though I’ve never been sentimental, I knew enough to see that I should probably offer her some kind of comfort—though the thought of anyone being comforted by
me
was a laugh and a half. I was glad to see her, of course I was.

But now that the glow had worn off the giddy relief, I also wanted to grab her by the shoulders, shake her a few times, and ask her what the hell she’d been thinking, inviting a scumbag like Chekotah into her bed.

Jacob reached down, took her hand and squeezed it. He was good at things like that—acting like a normal person should.

“While we’re waiting for the food,” Dreyfuss suggested to Debbie, “maybe you could treat us to a reading from your dream journal and shed some light on what happened.”

Debbie knocked back most of the second giant mimosa, pulled a few sheets of folded paper from her pocket, and began. “I’m in my bathroom fixing my hair, and I’m going to see Detective Bayne in a few minutes, and I’m thinking about this book on automatic writing with a yellow cover when suddenly I feel dizzy and really cold. And then I was in the biology lab at Chemeketa Community College, and Karen was there. And she said I couldn’t go anywhere until I finished my lab notes. Only she wouldn’t give me a pen. How could I finish my lab notes without a pen? Then I saw Lisa was there, over by the refrigera-tor full of shrink-wrapped frogs and fetal pigs. She was working hard on a computer, and she told me I needed to focus. And I said what good would focusing do if I didn’t have a pen?”

“What are you talking about?” Lisa said, when Debbie paused to finish off her mimosa. “That never happened.”

Debbie frowned down at her notes. “I guess that depends on your definition of
happened
.”

“What did
you
see?” Dreyfuss asked Lisa.

“I remember being cold and dizzy, but then I was somewhere else. It was misty, I guess. And Karen was there.”

“What did she look like?” I asked.

“Pretty much the same as always.” No blood? I gather she would have mentioned the blood, unless Karen
usually
looked like she’d just had open-heart surgery and left before they stitched her back up.

Which I kind of doubted. “She was mad at me—she was always pissed off about something—but then I realized she knew about…Bert.” Lisa stared down at the table as if that was all she had the energy to say.

“And you remember when Debbie showed up?” Dreyfuss prompted.

“Uh huh. It was better with Professor March there because we could pray together, and it was easier then for the angels to help us.” Debbie had been busy trying to get the waitress’ attention and order another mimosa, but Lisa’s description of events stopped her mid-wave. “I haven’t prayed since I missed my period after I slept with Arthur Mirar on a dare from my cousin Junie. You told me you would type up my lab notes on your computer, so we started working together.”

Subjective, much?

“So you didn’t see the angels?” Lisa asked her.

The waitress finally emerged from the kitchen then, and she had the busboy in tow. It took two people to haul the groaning platters of pancakes and omelets to the table. Debbie asked for her third giant mimosa, but after that, we were all carefully silent as they laid out the food, refilled the coffee, and made sure we didn’t want anything else…although, with the equivalent of breakfast for twelve, I don’t see what else we could possibly need.

I hacked off a big wedge of a pancake stack with the edge of my fork, crammed it into my mouth and swallowed it. Then I started to hiccup.

“Put more syrup on there,” Debbie said, “or you’ll choke.” Lisa was more practical. She started with the eggs. They went down faster. She ate them grimly, as if she would just as soon starve.

Debbie washed down a mouthful of pancakes with a swig of coffee followed by more mimosa, and then she said, “What difference does it make if I saw angels or not? I don’t go for organized religion. You know that.”

Lisa shrugged. If she was feeling shitty about herself, and the angels were willing to help her anyway, I imagine it really would suck to be told they were just symbolism being spewed out by her own brain while it tried to make sense of what it was seeing.

The only two people who weren’t inhaling their food were also the only two who were more interested in listening than talking. Instead of speculating on what had happened, therefore contaminating whatever the three of us actually did remember, Jacob and Dreyfuss started making arrangements to get us back to Chicago. Dreyfuss invited Lisa and Debbie to come with us. Debbie looked at him like he was nuts, and said something about being a “West Coast girl” around a mouthful of corned beef hash. Lisa said she’d think about it.

What I wanted was to talk to Lisa alone, but crowd logistics were keeping that from happening. Or maybe I managed to subconsciously avoid a one-on-one because I was scared I might lay into her about the piss-poor judgment she’d displayed in sleeping with Chekotah, and then she’d never want to come back home. Still, by the end of breakfast, despite the fact that her stomach must’ve been as painfully stuffed as mine was and the thought of getting on a plane was pretty damn daunting, she told Dreyfuss she would pack her bags.

And when she did, I felt more optimistic than I had in a long, long time. I don’t think it struck her as weird that I stole a play out of Jacob’s playbook, covered her hand with mine, and squeezed.

• • •

Once the GhosTV was crated up and transferred to FedEx’s capable hands, we ended up taking a van to L.A.X. and flying commercial back to Chicago. My overtaxed adrenal glands grudgingly surged into fight-or-flight mode as we passed through the gate, but nobody stopped us, or seemed alarmed about our sidearms, or even made us take off our shoes. A quick glance at my boarding pass showed a four-figure number that I’d taken at first as a seating assignment, but then I realized was the cost of the last-minute, first class ticket. I supposed it was a veritable bargain compared to the cost of flying us there on a Learjet.

The interior of the 757 was, of course, nowhere near as snazzy as the white leather opulence of my first official flight—but I frankly felt a lot better having a hundred-some-odd people around, as opposed to being alone with Dreyfuss. Not that he spooked me anymore, at least not to the extent that he used to. It wasn’t just a matter of familiarity, of knowing what he looked like with pillow marks on his face, or finding long, curly hairs in the sink when I went to shave. It was that whole astral conversation where I’d actually seen eye to eye with him, if only on one particular issue. And maybe the notion that I remembered it, while he likely didn’t.

It also helped that I now knew who the FPMP’s remote viewer was.

’Cos if I let that classified info leak to the right nutjob, Dreyfuss would end up with a higher bounty on his head than me.

Jacob climbed into his window seat, then I stuffed my garment bag into the overhead compartment and moved to plunk down beside him. A cheerful stewardess with blindingly white teeth checked my ticket and directed me instead to the window seat across the aisle.

Jacob raised an eyebrow and caught my eye, but I shrugged. I was nearly forty. I should be able to survive having a few feet of space between us for the duration of the flight. And then Lisa deflated into the seat next to mine, and I decided that maybe things were looking up. Con Dreyfuss parked himself beside Jacob. Better Jacob than me.

He’s made of patience.

Lisa was inscrutable behind her big, dark Jackie-O sunglasses. I wondered if she’d been crying again—she cries an awful lot, for a cop—or if she was so wrung out that she was past tears. She looked over at me and gave me a tight, somewhat chagrined smile.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey.” She took off her glasses. I don’t think she’d been crying recently…but her eyes were a bit puffy. We both stared at each other. I don’t think either of us knew where to begin. A few other first-class passengers herded up the aisle, leading awkwardly with carry-on bags that jostled Lisa in the shoulder. Some of them grabbed pillows and blankets from the overhead and settled into their seats like they were at a pajama party. I didn’t look for a pillow. Neither did Lisa.

I dug Faun Windsong’s necklace out of my pocket and put it in Lisa’s lap. “I think you should take this…it’s nothing to look at, but it’ll keep you safe.”

Lisa plunked it right back in my lap. “What do I want with that thing?”

“But, wait. It’s really real.”

We played “hot potato” with it a few times, and finally Lisa said, “I don’t care what it can do. I don’t want it—I can take care of myself.

Give it to someone who needs the protection. Someone like…” her mouth worked as she consulted the
si-no
, “…Crash.” Crash? I supposed I could visualize it hanging from the epaulet of his leather jacket. And I supposed, as Psychs went, he did need more protection than Lisa, or me, or Jacob, since his talent wasn’t strong enough to really give him much of an advantage, and since he didn’t carry a sidearm.

Yes, it did make sense. Though I wasn’t sure it was really the
si-no
’s idea. Maybe Lisa just didn’t want a reminder of the whole Chekotah fiasco.

I couldn’t think of anything to say. Trying not to be critical of her taking up with Chekotah was like trying
not
to think of an elephant—good luck with that—so I figured I might as well throw it out there so we could get past it. “It happens to the best of us,” I said, meaning sleeping with someone we totally regret later. But at the same time, she blurted out, “You did your best.”

We both stopped, then, and tried to figure out where the other one was headed with that. But considering that she made it sound as if I’d given something my best shot and then failed, I said, “I did my best with what?”

“Well, with…that TV set. Trying to help me.”

Trying? It seemed to me I’d done more than just try.

“I mean,” she went on, “you couldn’t have known that every time you turned it on, Karen got stronger. I was saving up my energy, praying hard, getting strong enough to open the door myself…but then suddenly she was twice as powerful as before.” What? Whoa. The thought that I’d been feeding Karen’s mojo the whole time knocked me off my high horse with a swift kick in the pants. “I guess that makes sense. I didn’t actually know she was a medium until fairly late in the game.” Even if I had, I’d felt such a sense of ownership in regards to the GhosTV that it probably wouldn’t have occurred to me that I wasn’t the only Psych in the path of its waves. And then there was the other area in which I hadn’t been particularly helpful: Chekotah’s sacred space. I waited to see if Lisa had witnessed me hacking through Chekotah’s defenses with the astral axe and leaving him wide open to attack—but if she did, she didn’t mention it.

“I didn’t know you were the one writing those messages.” I sounded somewhat defensive even though I was trying not to. “I didn’t know you could send automatic writing from the astral. Hell, I didn’t even know you
were
astral.”

Lisa shook her head. “Not me, I didn’t do it. The angels did. When I saw that no matter how strong I got, Karen would always be stronger, the
si-no
told me to pray to them. So I did, and they sent you the message.”

While I pondered who the purported “angels” could be, and what they might look like through
my
jaded eyes, the captain sent a message of his own over the speaker system—one that I didn’t understand any better than the automatic writing. A stewardess did a pantomime of what we should do if an airmask dropped down from a compartment over the ceiling. It was nearly impossible to focus on the instructions, but I figured if it came to the point where the airmasks unfurled and I needed to use my seat as a floatation device, I was screwed anyway.

“Did the
si-no
tell you falling for Chekotah was a good idea, too?” Lisa glared at me, said, “Oh, you’ve never done something you wish you didn’t do, even though you knew better,” then turned and faced the underside of her tray table.

Smooth move on my part. I sighed. “Yeah,” I allowed, “he was good-looking enough, but PsyTrain was full of guys. Wouldn’t you have been better off going for one that was single?” And not cheating on his girlfriend with your roommate?

The loudspeakers mentioned something about emergency doors—whatever—while Lisa turned back to me and said, “You wouldn’t get it.” And I must have looked sufficiently sorry for the tone I’d taken with her, because her lips moved as if she decided to ask the
si-no
whether or not I’d understand…and was told that I would. In a small, small voice that I needed to strain to hear over the whoosh of the powered-up engines, she said, “He made me feel pretty.” She looked at the aisle while I found something absolutely fascinating out on the tarmac. I doubted it would help any if I told her she
was
pretty, at least she was to me—especially since I knew she saw herself as a hard, mannish beat cop. And especially since I really could relate, with my wimptastic physique. I patted her on the knee a couple of times, then sighed again and looked up at the modern-day hieroglyphics on the panel above my head.

While they explained what the no-smoking sign meant, I pondered whether or not I’d actually accomplished anything at PsyTrain. It sounded as if Lisa had been working on her equivalent of sucking white light, and that she’d nearly had enough to break free. But then, thanks to me, the GhosTV came along, and it got Karen so pumped up she was not only able to hold onto Lisa, but to make off with Debbie, too.