Chapter 25

“What was that?” Jacob demanded from down the hall.

“Nothing,” I said, not wanting to start shouting back and forth about all the fucked up things that might be going on “Nothing…important.” Lowering my voice, I told Jibben, “First, we take care of Alisha. Then figure out our next step.”

Jibben was right about one thing. The accidents were starting to feel anything but accidental. As we headed back toward Jacob and Alisha, I passed the spot where the wet footprint had been taunting me, and wondered if maybe a lurker had been responsible for all the craptastic turns of event we’d endured.

And I’d spent so much time being suspicious of poor Alisha that I’d let him get away.

“Are there any disgruntled employees in the lab?” I asked Jibben. “Maybe someone who got passed over for a promotion—or, hell, even for that dumb trip to Nantucket?”

Jibben jerked his head side to side. “We’re a solid team. Everyone’s contribution is valued, everyone’s ideas are heard. Plus, the random polygraphs do weed out the bad apples before they have a chance to fester.”

I suppressed a twitch of my own over the thought of being hooked up to a machine. “Fine, the lab’s all one big happy family. But what about the maintenance crew?”

“I would imagine they’re under just as much scrutiny as any other employee, if not more.”

I pondered this as we rejoined the others. Alisha was laid out on the couch cushions with Jacob kneeling beside her. I set up the IV pole while Jacob helped Jibben down from his chair. Alisha was only somewhat aware of her surroundings.

And for that, I envied her. The halls were dark. The flashlights were both flickering. And the sound of water bubbling up from the break room sink was inordinately loud in the stifling silence.

Once Jibben took Alisha’s blood pressure, he swabbed her arm and tied on a tourniquet. But before he stuck her with the needle, I said, “Wait! Triple-check that it’s saline.” With the way our day had been going, it was probably full of lobster juice.

Not only did Jibben re-read the bag, but he squeezed out a drop and tasted it. “Saline. Nothing more.”

Voice low, Jacob asked, “What were you expecting?”

I didn’t know. Just that the less we took for granted, the more likely we’d come out of this whole thing alive.

I personally wouldn’t have wanted a guy known as Heebie Jeebie to set my IV, but he slipped the needle in on the first jab. Alisha didn’t even flinch. Then Jibben got busy monitoring her pulse, brow furrowed in concentration. “The fluids should help her BP. Heartbeat’s steady.”

It wasn’t quite as stifling out in the hall as it was back in containment, but it was still uncomfortably warm, and Alisha’s brow was sheened with sweat. I found a cold pack in the first aid kit and squished it to release the chemicals. While it cooled down, I grabbed a handful of paper towels from the restroom to make a half-assed cold compress and balanced it on her forehead.

Her lips curved into a faint smile. “My heroes.”

Jibben crawled back into his chair to keep an eye on the IV bag. I settled on the floor beside Jacob, who kept a steadying hand on Alisha’s shoulder as her eyelids fluttered shut.

Jacob murmured, “The situation’s under control…for now. But something’s not right here.”

“Agreed.” My mind went immediately to the footprint. “It’s probably sabotage.”

But instead of wholeheartedly agreeing with me and coming up with a plan to make sure no one could sneak up on us, Jacob said, “What you mean, sabotage?”

“Well…things don’t just fall by themselves.”

“There’s torrential rain outside. Water seeping in. Funnel clouds. The building is shifting—”

“We feel bigger vibrations in the cannery when the neighbor’s kid cranks up his car stereo—and you don’t see our cabinets falling off the walls. Besides, what about the footprint?”

“It must’ve belonged to one of us.”

“It didn’t match—”

“It was water, Vic, not concrete. It’s not a stable medium. Maybe there were treads, and maybe they filled in. Maybe it evaporated, or maybe it spread. All I’m saying is, if there were anyone down here besides us, we would have heard them by now.”

Given all the arguing he was doing, probably not. “Fine. You don’t think we’ve got a stowaway? Then what’s your idea?”

Jacob squared his shoulders like he does when we’re about to accuse each other of forgetting to take out the trash, and said, “Residual telekinetic energy.”

Was that an actual thing…or had he just made it up? I cut my eyes to Jibben, hoping he’d call bullshit if Jacob was just railroading us all.

Jacob said, “If trapped etheric energy can exist as repeaters, then why not other types of psychic energy? It could account for things like deja vu—”

Jibben cut him off. “Interesting premise. But deja vu has already been proven to have a thoroughly mundane neurological cause.”

Nostrils flaring in indignation, Jacob countered, “Then how do you account for the scattered papers?” and turned and stalked down the hall toward containment.

“Stay with Alisha,” I told Jibben, and hurried along after my infuriating husband.

I caught up with him near the site of the footprint, just outside containment. “What gives, Jacob? Now suddenly you’re an expert in psychic theory?”

Jacob held a finger to his lips, then dropped his voice low. “I just wanted an excuse to talk alone.” And I’d bought every minute of it. He was a scary good liar now that Carolyn wasn’t around to keep him in check. “I’ve been focusing so hard on grounding myself and getting something to move, I really think I might have—Vic, don’t make that face.”

“What face? This is how I always look.”

“Stop trying to make me wrong for half a second—”

“Hey, that’s so not fair—”

“—and consider what would happen if I did manifest a surge of TK energy—and one of Hinman’s devices recorded that surge while Dr. Jibben was looking. Introducing the ‘residual telekinetic energy’ idea takes the focus off me and puts it on something that will probably never be proven.”

I planted my free hand on my hip. “Fine. That makes sense. But you know what also makes sense? You not trying to move things with your mind if you don’t wanna get caught. And why is it so crazy to think that there might be someone else down here with us? It’s not like we conducted a room-to-room search.”

“But isn’t that exactly what you were doing before I got here? Checking every part of the lab?”

“For ghosts.”

“And how many people did you come across inside the security check?”

“Just one,” I admitted. “Jibben. But when the lights went out and everything was in chaos, someone could’ve easily slipped inside.”

Jacob stroked his beard. “I’m sure the research here is worth a fortune. But if anyone had this facility under surveillance—one of our experts would have noticed.”

“What if our infiltrator wasn’t scoping out the FPMP building?” I suggested. “What if they were following that shipment?” I warmed to my own idea. “What if the motives weren’t financial—but personal? There was a lab assistant named Tertz who dropped off the radar, and the whole thing was covered up. Maybe it was him.”

“If he was in his twenties then, he’d be in his eighties now.”

True. Vietnam vets were hardly spring chickens. Tertz could’ve had a kid who was trying to pin his disappearance on Hinman, I supposed. Or maybe his addict brother did. But the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like I was grasping at straws. “Okay, look. Let’s just grab anything that might be useful and get back to the others. They’re sitting ducks without us.”

The votive candle in containment was still lit, so I blew it out so as not to burn the whole place down, then tucked the weather radio under my arm. We took the long way back, but there were no more telltale footprints. The doors were all locked. And there was no one clinging freakishly to the ceiling in the dark.

Though that was now a thought I couldn’t unthink.

Alisha was still resting in the hall, the bathroom door was open, and light was strobing inside the can. We found Jibben leaning over the sink from his office chair, lantern flickering away on the counter while he dug at his hand with a pair of tweezers and the water running. “Bring your flashlight over, would you? There’s a shard of glass under my skin that would be hard enough to see even in good conditions.”

There must’ve been enough water left in the hot water tank for it to still come out hot, likely because there’d been no one around to use it up, and the bottom of the mirror above the sink was hazing over. I aimed my flashlight so Jibben could see where he was digging without casting a shadow on himself, and my previously steady beam gave a flicker.

Hard not to notice that my flashlight was only acting up intermittently. I’d figured there was something in containment making it wonky—some kind of mad scientist magnetic field. But it had been fine back there just a minute ago.

So, what if the common denominator in the wonkiness was Jibben?

Maybe all that jerking and twitching wasn’t just some unfortunate bodily affliction. He could be responding to something outside the physical plane. Jacob sometimes felt a little twinge from the etheric. Why not Jibben?

And if that were the case, adolescent Jibben might’ve very well had a run-in with a poltergeist all those years ago. Only the poltergeist was no ghost—it was his own undocumented telekinetic talent.

I glanced up at the mirror to see if Jacob, out there in the hallway, happened to be chafing the back of his neck, but he was outside my line of sight. There was movement in the mirror, though—but even as I sucked down white light, I realized it was nothing but the steam fogging up the mirror distorted by the flickering beams of the flashlights. Most people have a fight or flight response—but mine’s more like fight, flight or white light. Apparently, it’s hell on my adrenal system. But I’d rather overreact to a false alarm than get caught with my pants—

Something moved.

In the mirror.

I was focused so hard on finding an apparition there beside me—Dr. Chance appearing in the glass like Bloody Mary because we’d said her name one too many times—that I didn’t comprehend what was actually happening…until I heard the creak.

Years of responding to half-seen threats meant I reacted first, questioned myself later. I’d already grabbed Jibben’s chair and started backpedaling when I registered what the motion was: a hairline crack that had appeared at the top of the mirror.

And then it zigzagged its way down, widening as it went…and the entire thing shattered in a rain of razor shards.