Chapter 18

White light.

I opened up my crown chakra and it flooded on down, thundering through the veins of my subtle body like a shot of pure adrenaline. Maybe I’d never seen a ghost move something in the physical plane—but I didn’t give a flying fuck if I was being logical or not. I was trapped in the basement of a clandestine psychic facility in the dark with no way out, and I needed my white light locked and loaded.

Outwardly, I sucked in a breath. Jacob went very still. Alisha made a small whimper, but it was Jibben who spoke. “Obviously, there must be a draft.”

Silence.

“That’s good,” he said. “Don’t you see? It means there’s ventilation.”

I cut my eyes to Jacob. There’d been no draft. We would have felt it. There’d been nothing else to do while we were sitting in the dark but feel a wayward draft that didn’t exist.

“Occam’s razor,” Jibben said. “It’s the most obvious explanation.”

Jacob stood, giving me a look. He wasn’t buying the air current either. But before he could demand to speak to me alone, Alisha said, “Y’all think this is funny?”

“No one’s laughing,” I said.

“Sit me in the dark, moving shit around—”

I said, “We were all sitting in the dark.”

“Just ’cause I watch Psychic Mysteries—yeah, I know how bad it is—y’all think I’m some kinda dumbass?”

“Ma’am—” Jacob began in his “calm down” voice.

“Don’t you ma’am me! I might not be Dr. So-and-So or Agent Cargo Shorts, but that doesn’t mean I’ll fall for this bullshit.”

Jibben gave off a violent twitch. “I would never—”

But Jacob stepped in, doubling down on the calm. “No one is implying anyone is gullible, and no one is pranking anyone. We can all agree that airflow is a good thing. So let’s not use it up arguing with each other.”

I wanted a breath of fresh air as much as anyone…but now that I was pumped with white light, the hairs on the nape of my neck bristled and my lower back went clammy. Unfortunately, that didn’t prove much of anything, other than the fact that I was stressed out and jumpy. I might be the most accurate piece of ghost-sensing equipment in the FPMP’s arsenal, but I was still plenty glitchy.

And if Darnell was haunting us, I would have seen him.

Unless his ghost needed time to reassemble itself after the lightning strike, and was now lurking around containment.

Even as the thought occurred to me, I knew I was just getting caught up in the stress of the situation. Yes, ghosts most definitely did exist.

But they didn’t move things.

So, who’d scattered those papers?

I hadn’t done it myself, and I hadn’t felt any air coming out of the overhead vents, either. If Jacob had a strategic reason, he’d have no qualms about mixing things up and then lying like a rug to cover his tracks. We’d been holding hands the entire time, though, so Jacob was out.

I didn’t know Jibben very well, but he didn’t strike me as a very good liar. Too many twitchy tells. Besides, it wasn’t as if he could fake the swollen leg keeping him in that office chair.

Which left…Alisha.

And covering up the fact that she’d done it with a plausible display of anger was exactly the type of thing a pro would do.

Damn. I’d wanted so badly to like her—probably because she acknowledged my husband was “fine.” But it was more than that. Alisha had struck me as a straight-talking, no-nonsense, take-no-shit person—and nowadays, people like that are few and far between.

It was disappointing to think that what I’d been jibing with wasn’t her true personality—just the persona she’d been assigned to adopt.

“Until we find out different,” Jacob was saying, “we chalk it up to the ventilation system and go forward with the plan we’ve all agreed on. Stay calm. Stay rational. And hang tight until the power comes up and we’re able to get out of here.”

Jibben and Alisha each gave a nod of agreement, though neither of them looked particularly pleased about it. Once that was settled, Jacob said to me, “A word?”

“Well, don’t expect me to sit here in the dark while you two go out there and talk about us,” Alisha said, and turned on her phone.

“That’s not—” I said, and my flashlight flickered. I toed the gel pad out of the way and opened the door. “We’ll make it quick.”

The hallway looked twice as dark, twice as empty, and twice as ominous as it had before…but at least the floor was still dry. Urgently, Jacob whispered, “Did you see anything?” Meaning, did I see a ghost.

“No, nothing.”

Normally, he’d be frustrated, even disappointed. But instead he seemed…pleased? “The papers—it was me.”

“How’d you manage that?” It had been him holding my hand the whole time—right? I shuddered. “Have you mastered the art of silent blowing, or what?”

“I did it…with my mind.”

The sigh that threatened to escape me was gusty enough to rearrange all those papers from the other side of the wall. “Jacob, since when d’you think you can all of a sudden—?”

“Hear me out. Base chakra energy. Underground. Stressful situation. It’s the perfect storm—exactly the sort of thing that might spike latent ability into the next level. I’ve been focusing all my thoughts on grounding ever since we saw the electrical wires hanging down in the stairwell. The tension, the focus—it’s the breakthrough I’ve been working toward all this time.”

Here’s the thing. I’ve seen Jacob in action. I’ve watched him bulge with red, veiny energy by the light of a GhosTV, and I’ve seen him rip a habit demon in half like he was getting ready to butter a dinner roll. But he couldn’t see it himself. And though I tell him up and down ’till I’m blue in the face that his TK ability is plenty real, it’s etheric, not physical—when it’s all said and done, he still doesn’t quite believe me.

“Okay, look,” I said, “maybe you moved those papers, maybe you didn’t—we haven’t figured out the limits of your ability, so who’s to say? Just don’t go tooting your own horn in front of anyone but me. You know how the scientists border on fanatical around here. And Alisha….” I felt like a jerk for even thinking it, but if there was even a chance she was more than just a courier, I couldn’t let Jacob flounder around in the dark. “She could very well be a plant from National—”

Now it was Jacob’s turn to quell a sigh. “National doesn’t have eyes everywhere. They can’t. Think about the amount of resources it would take.”

I had thought about it. I’d even considered the fact that I was being overly suspicious. But I’d seen how deep our own undercover team went—I’d done a stint undercover myself—and, frankly, I’d rather be paranoid than complacent. “Just do me a favor and watch what you say.” I balled his polo shirt in my fist and tugged him up against me, pressing my forehead into his. “That’s all I ask.”

He nodded, which felt more like a gentle shove, and said, “You’re right.”

I could count the times Jacob’s told me those two little words on one hand and still have enough fingers left over to poke someone in both eyes. So, I felt somewhat better by the time we rejoined the others.

But the two of them clearly felt no better at all. They seemed twice as exasperated, with Jibben lecturing, Alisha being lectured, and neither willing to concede their position. “True infrared would require a specialized sensor,” Jibben was saying.

“It says night mode right on it!”

“The setting on your phone’s camera is nothing more than a color correction with a catchy name.”

“Hold on,” I said, “back up. You’re thinking we can video what’s going on?”

Alisha said, “We could…only this guy here is awful quick to tell me it won’t work, without even trying.”

Exasperated, Jibben said, “I just think it’s not wise to waste resources on a plan that has no chance to succeed.”

But Jacob’s wheels were already turning. “A regular phone wouldn’t have infrared capability…but what about ours?”

The FPMP-issued smartphones were state-of-the-art everything. I’d always figured their main purpose was to spy on us by tracking our locations and dumping all our data on the agency servers. I hadn’t explored the camera’s features, other than to make sure I wasn’t shooting up my own nose when I was attempting to document a scene.

I switched on my phone and called up the camera. Apparently, I had night mode, too—plus portrait, sports, telephoto, pano, macro, and….

Infra.

I considered saying we were shit outta luck and powering down the phone before anyone could see I was a big fat liar. On the off-chance that Jacob truly was capable of moving papers, would evidence of his ability show up on the infrared—and point directly at him?

I didn’t think so. The “naked machine” out in the lobby scanned the same heat spectrum—yes, I did absorb something besides donuts from my tedious police in-service trainings—and Jacob had never raised any alarms walking through.

Then again, as far as I knew, Jacob hadn’t been focused on moving things with his mind while he was being scanned.

“Well?” Alisha demanded. “Can your phone do it or not?”

“We’ll give it a shot,” I said, then caught Jacob’s eye and added, “but keep in mind, if something nonphysical is at play, we don’t know exactly how it’ll show up.”

He gave me a nod.

And, mollified, so did Alisha. “Now we’re talking. At least someone around here takes me seriously.”

Resisting the urge to like her was tough, but what choice did I have?

Since Jacob was the Stiff, he re-stacked the papers while Jibben showed me how to set my camera. We framed our shot, turned off the flashlight and lantern, and settled in to wait.

It was so quiet I could hear us all breathing. But judging by the lack of chair squeaks or clothing rustles, everyone was holding themselves very, very still.

Even Jibben wasn’t twitching.

A few long minutes went by, and Alisha said, “How long has it been?”

Approximately forever.

She elbowed me. “Check and see if they moved.”

I flicked on my flashlight. Everything was right where we’d left it. I flicked it back off.

Another uncomfortable stretch of silence, which Alisha broke again. “The poltergeist probably won’t do it now that it knows we’re watching. That’s how it always is.”

Jibben said, “Again, no scientific evidence of so-called poltergeists exists. Believe me, I’ve looked. It’s much more likely that the HVAC system is working in fits and starts as repair crews work on getting the power back up.”

There’s only so long you can hold yourself still, and soon the small sounds of existence resumed. Jacob rubbed the back of his neck. Jibben twitched. Alisha shifted her weight in her seat, and I leaned into my backrest, unsuccessfully pretending I was anywhere but there.

After several tedious minutes of staring into the void, Alisha whispered, “Nothing’s happening. We should just turn the light back on.”

Jibben huffed. “The infrared spectrum is beyond the range of the human eye. Leaving the light off is necessary for any potential visualization.”

“Then how much longer we gotta just sit here?”

I flicked on my flashlight and swept the beam over the papers. Still right where we’d left them.

“Well, we gave it a fair shot,” I said…though we probably hadn’t. Because if Jacob had been efforting the last time, but sitting on his hands now, all the infrared would have picked up on was a fine middle-aged man in cargo shorts.

“Well, that was stimulating,” Jibben said dryly, squaring off the paper into an even more precise stack. “But in the end, what did it prove?”

My knees cracked as I stood up and stretched one way, then the other. “Look, it was worth a try but—”

A faint dripping sound cut me off. I went still, listening. It wasn’t in this room. Out in the hall?

Jacob glanced toward the room where they kept the cadavers, then met my eyes, alarmed.

I held up a hand, signaling everyone to be quiet. The rhythmic drips echoed through the walls. Coming right from the spot we least wanted to hear them.

A chill ran down my spine that had nothing to do with HVAC. If cold storage was warming up…we were in serious trouble.