Chapter 26

Jesus Christ.

As white light thundered down through my crown chakra, I yanked Jibben’s chair back so hard it whirled around a couple of times in the hallway once I let go of it. A spritz of his blood flew out and painted the walls like spin-art.

“My arm!” he grunted.

Thank God it wasn’t his freaking jugular.

I reached into my clean suit and yanked off my tie, but Jacob had already grabbed the first aid kit tourniquet and was looping it around Jibben’s bicep. I scooped up the emergency lamp and aimed the beam. “Any glass in the wound?”

“No big pieces,” Jacob said.

Jibben nodded grimly. “Then we need to get the bleeding under control and worry about the smaller shards later. Wrap it tight. Use the gauze. And Alisha—stay put!”

Alisha was a good couple of yards away from the shatter zone—but since she was half-delirious, she didn’t know that. She’d been trying to burrow behind the couch cushions and use them as a shield. I handed off the lantern to Jacob, being careful not to touch him since I was hopped up on light. Jacob and I can flow the energy deliberately, but it takes a lot of concentration, like trying to fill a thimble from a gallon of milk without christening your entire kitchen. Now—hungry, fatigued, and all around stressed out—I might very well blast him to the end of the hallway.

He took the lantern without incident and balanced it on Jibben’s lap, while I hurried over to help Alisha before she pulled out her own IV. “It’s okay, Alisha—you’re okay—”

“We’re gonna die,” she sobbed.

“We’re okay,” I said firmly. “It was just a freak accident. That’s all.”

Obviously, it was no accident—but she didn’t need to know that. In a situation like this, our main concern would be keeping everyone calm enough to survive ’till the power grid came up.

Jacob rummaged the gauze roll out of a first aid kit and turned back to Jibben. Despite the fact that the lab manager had been beaten up by more inanimate objects in the past few hours than most people had in a lifetime, he’d kept a cool head. He’d torn his sleeve away from the wound and was holding one of the flashlights steady.

Jacob fiddled the gauze out of its plastic. “What happened in there?”

Through grit teeth, Jibben said, “I have absolutely no idea.”

And though I didn’t believe in poltergeists—or at least I hadn’t, as of a few hours ago—I was starting to wonder if maybe I simply hadn’t encountered one yet. Because no one’s luck was as bad as Jibben’s…and that was before the broken mirror.

But as much as Alisha would feel vindicated if I told her I was reconsidering my stance, now was not the time. Not when she was sprawled on the floor in the dark with an IV in her arm.

“We haven’t known each other long,” I said as I crouched beside her, “but you’re strong. That much is obvious. You’ll get through this. You’re a survivor.”

I flinched when Alisha grabbed my hand and squeezed it tight, but there were no white light fireworks at all. Just a couple of people muddling through an incredibly fucked up situation the best we could. I settled her back onto the cushions and said, “Look at me.”

She met my eyes, chest heaving.

“I won’t let anything happen to you. Got it?”

She nodded once, and the tension went out of her—probably due to sheer exhaustion more than anything else. I double-checked her IV was running and her pulse was still strong. I was about to go help Jacob finish wrapping up Jibben when she whispered, “What if it’s Darnell?”

A shiver crawled down my spine. “It’s not.”

“Hear me out, though. What if that lightning didn’t kill him right away? We could’ve helped him, but we just left him there to die. What if his spirit’s trapped and he’s pissed we didn’t try to save him. He’s making all this stuff happen to get back at us—”

“Alisha—ghosts aren’t physical. They can’t knock over beakers or break mirrors.”

“What if he was telekinetic?”

Thanks a lot for planting that idea in her head, Luther Hinman. “Darnell wasn’t telekinetic,” I reassured her. “Everyone who works here gets tested out the wazoo for every flavor of psychic ability there is. But his badge read NP—non-psychic. If he had telekinetic ability, someone would’ve picked up on it—” even as the words left my mouth, I caught sight of Jacob’s profile in the light of the emergency lantern. He’d skated past with no one the wiser. Why not Darnell?

Huh.

Did psychic abilities stick with us after we died? I presumed I’d be pretty much the same after I croaked, maybe with a bit more clarity. But the empaths, the telepaths, the precogs—would they retain their powers?

I couldn’t see why not.

And if that were the case, why not TKs?

Still, Darnell hadn’t left a vengeful spirit behind—I would have noticed. But there was a repeater.

Could repeaters have telekinetic power?

Weirder things had happened.

So, what were we looking at: a mindless loop of etheric energy with the ability to make lights flicker and glass break in the physical plane? If so, then what we were dealing with was more like a force of nature than a haunting. In Darnell’s last moment, he’d been throwing himself at the door with a tire iron in a time of extreme stress. An undocumented TK would probably be swinging more than just a crowbar. Especially if a TK’s automatic response to a tense situation was to power up his most useful chakra.

“Whether or not Darnell was telekinetic,” I finally said, “a little send-off ritual wouldn’t hurt.”

And while it was clear from the look on her face that Alisha thought I was about the last guy capable of laying someone to rest…I was all she had. So I’d have to suffice.

If Alisha hadn’t been flat on her back, she would have insisted on coming. But I told her Darnell would hear her prayers just fine from where she was—and since she didn’t fight me on it, it was clear she was still way too weak to drum up any pushback.

With Jibben all wrapped up and parked out of the range of any potentially hazardous objects, Jacob and I headed toward the lobby to deal with Darnell’s repeater. Normally, I would have gone myself and left Jacob to make sure no one did anything dumb while we were gone. But the more I thought about it…. If there was a telekinetic repeater spewing out random waves, did I really want to face it without Jacob?

When I told him my theory, he said, “You think Darnell has been attacking Jibben?”

“Not intentionally, no. Even if Jibben was a real prick to work with, Darnell didn’t strike me as the type of guy who’d take it personally.” Revenge was absolutely a powerful motivator, don’t get me wrong. But you’d be talking the type of self-righteous rage you feel when someone destroys your life’s work—not just noses into your parking spot.

I cut a glance to cold storage as that particular thought crossed my mind…but kept my mouth shut about that. “I think that energy’s energy. And if there is some kind of TK shockwave rolling through the lab, we need to try and neutralize it before anyone else gets hurt.”

Flashlights were steady as I grabbed my kit, but I couldn’t presume the tempest had played itself out just yet. Ghosts are persistent, and their expiration dates are measured in decades, not hours.

The lobby and elevator bay were just as we’d left it. Darnell’s body was starting to look puffy. On the other side of the doorframe, his repeater flickered.

Jacob followed my gaze. “Will the safety glass be a problem?”

I rolled my shoulders. “I guess we’re gonna find out.”

Normally, I can make do with a spritz of Florida Water and a handful of salt. But given the seriousness of the situation, I couldn’t afford to cut any corners. Chicago is a big grid, and the hallways of the FPMP run along predictable axes. Still, repeaters were a lot tougher to send packing than actual ghosts, because you couldn’t reason with them. Bad enough I couldn’t set the candles around the repeater, thanks to the wall of glass between us. I wanted to make sure I at least knew which way was north.

But when I pulled my compass out of my pocket, I came up with Hinman’s goofy Telekometer instead.

Well, the compass pointer was calibrated the same as mine, and it found north exactly where I’d expected it to be. I set the votives on the floor and lit them in sequence, then readied my Florida Water.

On the other side of the glass, the repeater flickered. His cycle was a couple of minutes in between resets. I paused with one eye on the spot where Darnell died and the other on the Telekometer. I counted to a hundred and ninety-one when the flicker came again. I thought the additional pointer on the device might jump.

It did nothing.

I should probably consider myself lucky that the compass needle still worked.

I’m not generally afraid of repeaters, since they’re nothing but trapped energy, but death moments do tend to be disconcerting. Add to that the fact that I’d witnessed this particular death—with me feeling a bit guilty that I was someone Darnell had thought he was rescuing—and it was no fun to watch.

I centered myself and opened up to the white light, focusing hard on my crown chakra. It’s easier to load up reflexively in a moment of panic, but the one-eyed hangover was a lot less punishing when I did it deliberately. There’s never any guarantee that I’m at full charge. Just a gut feeling I’ve developed over the years. Sometimes I feel a bit loopy, and sometimes my vision gets a bit weird. But I was working by the light of a flashlight and a few votive candles and I’d eaten nothing in the past twelve hours but a granola bar and a couple of pickles, so I just made my best guess as to when I was actually topped off.

The scent of Florida Water greeted me—alcohol and cloves—and I relaxed into its familiar smell. And when I spoke the normal words I used to send spirits where they’re supposed to go, it was more for me than for Darnell, since I figured his repeater didn’t much care.

“You’re dead—you died trying to save us. You might not have known it was a sacrifice, but you died trying to help others. And in the end, maybe that’s the best any of us can hope for.”

I tipped a handful of salt into my palm and imagined my white light flowing into all those little grains.

“The physical plane isn’t a good fit anymore. You shouldn’t be here. Most of you is probably off beyond the veil doing whatever it is spirits do, and this part of you needs to move along, too.”

I scattered the salt, visualizing a refraction of light coming from each crystal and bathing the repeater in light.

“Feels good, right? It can be all this, all the time. Just cross over so you can be where you…belong.”

My white light fluttered like an incandescent lightbulb in a brownout, and I turned to see Jacob looking directly at the spot where Darnell’s repeater should be. And as I faced him, the Telekometer in my pocket clicked.