Chapter 24

Who knows what was in that snack—prawn crackers, shrimp paste, a whole host of things that could’ve set her off, and that’s not even taking into account cross-contamination. I only knew I needed to help her, fast. The spare flashlight was on the floor where she’d dropped it. I pressed it into her hand and said, “Stay here—stay calm—I’ll be right back.”

Then I tore down that dark hallway for all I was worth, visualizing the first aid kit we’d scavenged, fervently hoping it was more than just alcohol wipes and Band-Aids. At the very last second, I remembered the footprint, vaulting the general area so as not to disturb whatever hadn’t yet evaporated. I didn’t know if it was evidence, per se, but old habits die hard.

As I cleared the print, a chill raged down my spine. The HVAC system chugging briefly to life as crews restored power—or a cold spot?

No time to think about that now.

“EpiPen,” I gasped as I shoved my way into containment. “Alisha’s airway—”

Jacob and Jibben had been talking fervently over a pile of naugahyde and veneer, but they immediately snapped into action. Jibben grabbed the first aid kit—hallelujah, there was an injector—and handed the pen off to Jacob. I barely scrambled out of the way before Jacob barreled past me and took off toward the bathroom.

Jacob is fast, and even if he’s not wearing gym shoes, he can run circles around me. By the time I caught up with him, he was already on his knees, jabbing Alisha in the thigh right through the clean room suit.

“You’re going to be just fine, Alisha. Slow, deep breaths. This will only sting for a second—there you go, squeeze my hand, squeeze as hard as you need. I’ve got you, just stay with me. Focus on my voice.”

As if anyone could hear that low, calm, velvety voice of his and think about anything else. That’s my husband, I thought, and my heart swelled with pride—though, obviously, I’d never say as much aloud. We’re trained to handle crises. Helping people is what we do.

And yet, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get all drippy inside watching him step into the role of the strong, solid protector like he was born to play it.

Even in cargo shorts.

Once Jibben finally caught up with the rest of us in his chair, he told us in no uncertain terms that crowding around him while he tried to stabilize her was only making things worse. A more tactful person would have suggested we go grab the couch cushions—and take our time. But if Jibben is tactful, then I’m the King of Extroverts. “This would be a lot easier without the two of you breathing down our necks!” he said. So, Jacob and I exchanged a glance, then headed off to containment to give him some space.

As we approached the room, I saw the wet footprint in the hall was now a smear on the floor, mostly dry. And when I felt for the cold spot again, I got nothing.

“Come look at this,” Jacob whispered—not losing any sleep over the fact that we’d been given the brush-off. “I found it in the shipment while you and Alisha were gone.”

I swung my flashlight beam in the direction he was pointing and saw another archaic device had joined the others on the worktable. This one looked more like a desk toy of some sort—like those clacking metal ball pendulums you’d always see on douchebags’ desks back in the day—except it involved a wooden track marked with measurements and a ping pong ball.

“It’s another TK test,” Jacob said. “And I made it move.”

Jacob was already a hero. He didn’t need to keep trying to prove himself…but something in his nature just wouldn’t give it a rest. I didn’t groan, or sigh, or roll my eyes—but make no mistake, on the inside, I was doing all of that and more. “Great,” I said. “We can set something up just like it at home—where it’s safe—and test it for ourselves—”

“But you won’t have access to a Telekometer at home.”

“We don’t even know how to read the thing.”

“It did something, though, back when you were comparing it to your compass. I could tell by the look in your eyes.”

Then my resting scowl face needed some serious work. “Jacob, Alisha’s out there—”

“With Doctor Jibben, who made it pretty clear we weren’t helping anything by hovering around. Two minutes. That’s all I ask.”

“Fine.” It was easier to get it over with than to argue, though I sensed that in either case, Jacob would end up disappointed. “What do you want me to do?”

“I’ll focus on the ping pong ball, you see if you can pick up any readings.”

Naturally, I considered lying and telling him, Yes, wow, you were totally right, your talent is off the charts…now let’s shelve this discussion until it’s safe to talk. But no matter what I said—yea or nay—Jacob would only want to dig deeper.

I parked my flashlight on the table and took up the compass and Telekometer. The compass needles both stayed at magnetic north. The second needle on the Telekometer wobbled as I moved. But once I trained it on Jacob it settled into place, doing nothing at all.

“Anything?” he asked tightly.

“For crying out loud, we don’t know if it even works. This Hinman guy was working with tech he cobbled together from paperclips and rubber bands. What makes you so sure this thing is good for anything but finding your way out of a paper bag?”

I grabbed my flashlight, trooped over to the door and looked for the smeared footprint. The beam was steady, but the footprint was gone, dried in the stifling heat of the stuffy basement.

“What are you doing?” Jacob asked, genuinely curious.

“Seeing if what I felt out here was a cold spot or just wishful thinking.”

“You felt a cold spot?” He hurried over to get a look for himself.

“It could’ve been a vent.”

“Without power?”

“Just because we don’t have power down here doesn’t mean there’s no power somewhere else in the building—wherever it is they keep the air conditioning. And you remember how it was back at the cannery the last time a water main blew. While the crews on the street patched it up, there was no water, then sputtering water, then brown water, then a bunch of crazy gurgling sounds—”

“All right. It could have been a vent.” Jacob was just humoring me, obviously. But if he was willing to stop trying to prove his telekinesis for the time being, fine. “Keep in mind, though, Agent Thompson just died.”

“Nothing but a repeater.”

Jacob cut his eyes to cold storage. “And the cadavers.”

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t concerned about the thawing bodies myself…particularly my ex-fake-doctor’s. Since I was running on adrenaline right now instead of white light, I slipped my hand into Jacob’s and threaded them together, getting a little jolly from the feel of his wedding band warm and hard between my fingers. I pulled him close and said, “Remember, mister—you’re a Superstiff. You’ll be fine.”

His eyebrows twisted. “But…we can’t say the same for you.”

I tugged Jacob closer, dropping the flashlight beam to my side, and settled my lips against his. It was a shallow kiss. Chaste. Barely even there. And I felt it from the soles of my feet to the top of my crown chakra.

Jacob thinks he’s a man of steel, and he’s always the first to leap into the path of danger—whether that’s relocating a shower spider or rappelling up an electrified elevator shaft. He may not appreciate his own talent, but I sure did. At least I didn’t have to worry about him when he insisted on stepping in front of an oncoming ghost. I took some small comfort in that.

But comforting as it might be, we couldn’t stay in that moment forever. I stepped back and released Jacob’s hand, our fingers slipping apart with a reluctant brush of skin on skin. I instantly missed the connection, and busied myself with gathering up couch cushions so I could occupy my mind with something useful—something other than the fact that I almost couldn’t recall what it felt like to do something normal like sit on the couch and walk my fingers through his hair.

Thankfully, the flashlight was on its best behavior. Though when we headed back to Jibben and Alisha, we saw theirs was twinkling like a string of Christmas lights. Jibben had his fingers on Alisha’s wrist, looking surprisingly competent for a guy riding around on an office chair. Alisha was dozing. “She’s improving,” he said. “But we’ll need some supplies from the medical bay. It’s likely her blood pressure is low. She’ll need fluids. Possibly a corticosteroid.”

The last thing I wanted to do was kill Alisha and have yet another potential ghost wandering around with us. Jibben led me down a dark corridor to a room with a physical lock—not just a keycard—to which, thankfully, he had a key. As much as his heebie-jeebies made me a bit twitchy myself, it was a comfort to have someone with us who at least knew the lay of the land.

The room was small, more of a glorified closet, dark and very still, and cool as though it had been under temperature control, at least until we broke the seal and let all the good air out. “The blood pressure cuff should be in that cabinet. Check the shelf for another first aid kit. Alisha might very well have a secondary reaction.”

IV saline, antihistamines, and some steroids. As I piled it into a bin to bring it all back to Alisha, Jibben said, “This is why you don’t drag civilians into a potentially hazardous situation. If anything happens to Alisha, it’s on our heads.”

Frankly, I thought Darnell could take at least some of the blame, since we would have been long gone if he’d only handed us back our guns. But I did my best not to think ill of the dead. As far as I knew, Darnell was no telepath, nor did ghosts retain their psychic abilities…but why take chances?

I thought Jibben would keep chewing me out over my failure to protect the civilian, so it surprised me when he switched gears and said, “You’ve been a psychic investigator as long as anyone. Tell me, Agent, do you think it’s possible the things from Argus Institute could be cursed?”

My knee-jerk reaction was that curses were what came out of your mouth when you stubbed your toe on the dresser for the fourth night in a row. But shaman charms were legit, if incredibly rare. Why not a curse? “Why do you ask?”

“Ever since that shipment came into the building, everything that could have possibly gone wrong, has.”

“That’s what happens in emergency situations.”

“But accident after accident, it hardly seems random—and you already know how I feel about accidents. The curse could operate on a quantum level. Quantum entanglement allows for a connection between particles, so if a ‘curse’ could somehow alter or manipulate this entanglement, it could theoretically influence events in a cascading sequence.”

And now there might be a scientific basis for curses? This day just kept getting better and better. “Why would anyone want to curse Luther Hinman? That’s like giving the finger to Bozo the Clown.”

“Hinman might seem ludicrous by today’s standards, but he was utterly dedicated to his research. And to this day, several of his theories are still considered viable avenues of research.” He dug out another first aid kit and piled it into my bin. “And then there were the rumors….”

“Is this the part where you tell me he built his institute on an old Indian burial ground?”

“There was a very public fallout with his first assistant, Gordon Tertz—the man Alisha mentioned learning about on YouTube. But since Tertz had come back from Vietnam with numerous issues, no one was surprised when he eventually dropped off the radar.” As he finished his thought, Jibben twitched so hard he jabbed me in the ribs. His elbow was incredibly sharp. “His brother called foul play. But his brother was a morphine addict, so the investigation didn’t exactly receive top priority.”

“And so you think this Tertz guy cursed something in the shipment?”

“I just don’t want to rule anything out. You’re the PsyCop—you tell me. Is this something we should be worried about?”

Quantum entanglement theories aside, in all my years of dealing with things that go bump in the night, I’d seen a whole hell of a lot of ghosts—but to my knowledge, not a single curse. And ghosts tended to stick where they’d died. “I’m not ruling anything out, but Occam would probably tell you we’re under a hell of a lot of stress and we’re making a shit-ton of bad decisions. If anything….” I trailed off, disturbed.

Jibben leaned in. “Tell me.”

I waved my hand in the general direction of cold storage. “I’d just be a lot more comfortable knowing I wasn’t within spitting distance of a bunch of cadavers. The bodies themselves might be sealed in their vaults—but that won’t keep a pissed-off spirit inside.”

Jibben fidgeted for a long moment, then quietly said, “If you didn’t have an extensive history with one of those bodies…would it still worry you?”

I shouldn’t be surprised that Jibben knew about the kidnapping fiasco. Everyone over a certain clearance level probably did.

He added, “According to your report, you achieved the spirit’s transition.”

True. I frowned.

“Have you known any other spirit to return to the physical plane?”

Only the really evolved ones like Miss Mattie, who’d told me she’d seen God. And I had the sense that her return trip wasn’t something you could finagle without the proper clearance. “No,” I grudgingly admitted. “Once they’re beyond the veil, that’s that.”

“If that’s the case, then why are you concerned about the body?”

“It’s like food poisoning. You’ll never have a taste again for the last thing you ate.”

“We’re hardwired that way—to associate negativity with its sources. It’s an evolutionary tactic, the main reason we’ve survived as a species. But if you say it’s unlikely we’re dealing with a curse, then I bow to your experience and will attribute our problems to a run of crises exacerbated by hasty decisions. It just means we’ll need to start being more deliberate and methodical.”

“Fine. No curses. No ghosts.”

But even as I said it, the flashlight started strobing like crazy.

Jibben reflexively shoved his office chair back with his good foot, but the casters locked. He dipped back alarmingly, then snapped upright again—just as the height adjustment lever let go and ratcheted down three cranks. He flailed, rocking back so hard that the momentum nearly launched him out the door on the return swing. And then an empty beaker tipped off the top shelf, missing him by a hair, and shattered on the floor in an explosion of glass.