Chapter 32

Jibben attempted to be the voice of reason. “Keep in mind that electrical currents can be used for muscle stimulation and pain management. The levels in Hinman’s experiment were completely safe.”

As he prodded a figure on the page for emphasis, the plink of a ping pong ball hitting the floor across the room made everyone jump. We all watched in silent dread as it did a hollow plink-plink-plink bounce against the concrete, then came to a stop when it butted up against one of the random crates.

Actually, all of us were watching…except Jacob. He’d started paging forward in the ledger. “The charge is increased with every experiment. And it says here that Tertz was eventually able to make the Rotational Indicator rock in a three-degree arc.”

That meant nothing to me, but it must have been significant. Jibben pulled the ledger towards him and scanned the page. “This voltage would be uncomfortable.”

“Define uncomfortable,” I said.

“Tingling. Burning. Involuntary muscle contractions. And since saline is more conductive than plain water, the effects would’ve been intensified.”

My flashlight flickered. Papers fluttered. The ping pong ball made a hollow rolling sound. The propeller did another turn. The Telekometer in my pocket ticked.

Alisha flipped the page, then turned another, and another. “No more Tertz.” We all cut our eyes to the ledger again.

Gordon Tertz had been on every page—until, one day, he wasn’t. Alisha had said he’d disappeared—at least according to some amateur speculation on YouTube. But people don’t just vanish. And while foul play was always possible, I’d also worked plenty of cases where my “victim” was fed up with their life and just wanted a radical do-over. Usually with someone they’d been having an affair with…but not always. Some just took off because they were sick and tired of being sick and tired.

The stuff Tertz had seen in the service might’ve finally gotten to him. He could have had a falling out with Hinman. Or maybe he just ran away with a braless hippie chick with daisies in her hair.

But my gut was telling me something more sinister had happened. Maybe it was just my own Camp Hell baggage talking—but Occam’s most obvious conclusion, in this case, would be that Tertz had taken one shock too many.

Jibben paged back to the last mention of Tertz. “The current is far beyond the level I’d feel comfortable using—but there’s nothing here that indicates an adverse reaction.”

Alisha did a double-take. “What do you expect someone to write down? Oh, and by the way, I killed him.”

Jacob caught my eye and said, “I think you should do another exorcism.”

“So the seance was a crazy idea,” Alisha said, “but you got no problem with an exorcism.”

I ignored the jab. Frankly, I’d always thought the term exorcism was a bit loaded, though I’d never come up with anything better.

Without a visual on the ghost, it was hard to know where, exactly, I should focus. I considered slapping down some candles around the fish tank, then decided we might as well do the whole shipment, just in case.

I found my kit and started pulling down white light, and something throbbed hard, deep behind my left eye. It was so late it was early, and between the lack of food, lack of sleep, and the two rituals I’d already done, my body was none too thrilled with me. But I knew how far I could push myself.

Though that was probably what Tertz had thought, too.

“At least tell me I get to watch,” Alisha said.

Performance anxiety wasn’t an issue for me—but if I needed an assist from Jacob, I didn’t want him under the scrutiny of either a civilian or a psychic researcher. “A Psych and a Stiff, that’s how I was trained. Everyone else clears the room.”

Jibben wheeled his way toward the door. “If you need anything, we’ll be just outside.”

Once he was gone, my flickering flashlight beam evened out. “I’m not sure Tertz was even the problem at all,” I told Jacob, “or if all the crazy breakage is Jibben’s doing—conscious or not.”

“You’re sure he’s a TK?”

“My light doesn’t jump to just anyone. And I don’t see any ghost.”

“But you’ve encountered things before that you couldn’t see, only hear. If Tertz’s focus was tactile, maybe he is here—and maybe he’s been communicating the only way he knows how.”

My money was still on Jibben, but given what we’d read in the ledgers, I’d rather be safe than sorry.

The fish tank was too heavy to move now that it was full of saline, so I set my candles far enough apart to include the whole room, all the way to the edges. With only Jacob watching, I could do some basic yoga to refill my tank. As I flowed through Warrior I and into Warrior II, I had to ignore the alarming sounds my knees made and just focus on my mojo. I wouldn’t say I was entirely rejuvenated, but I should be good enough to prevent a ghost from puppeteering my physical shell.

“Gordon Tertz—I’m not sure what happened to you, and if you feel like talking about it, I’ll listen. But you’re dead—heck, most of the folks you even knew are dead—and it’s long past time for you to move on. You feel the pull of the other side? Don’t fight it. It’s where you’re supposed to be.”

Given that all the TK shenanigans had quit the moment Jibben left containment, I hadn’t really expected anything to start moving. So I nearly jumped out of my own skin when a massive thud echoed through the room.

The white light I’d been so carefully coaxing hit my crown chakra like a psychic sledgehammer, and for a moment I thought I saw a faint webwork of red energy flicker across Jacob’s forehead.

True fear. It’s as good a psyactive—though nowhere near as long-lasting.

But the energy dump was definitely big enough to prep my handful of salt. Whenever I activate my salt, it takes a lot of visualization and a bit of finesse to align it to my intentions, so I was surprised how fast it lit up to my inner eye…and kept on lighting.

Salting is no exact science—but there’s usually a rhyme or reason as to where I’ve spilled it. Now, my third eye was bombarded by glints and glimmers from all over the place, and I couldn’t figure out where the hell to look.

And then a huge bang sounded through the room.

My mojo spigot opened wider still and the floor flashed white—and I realized that everywhere we’d tracked around the saline, our footprints had dried to sodium. Sidewalk salt is a different beast—magnesium, potassium, whatever—so I’d never activated an entire freaking floor before. And instead of being helpful and adding to my oomph, it totally scattered my focus.

A third bang split the air, and Jacob called out, “Vic, by the ceiling!”

Scattered white light haloes were wreaking such havoc with my vision, I didn’t make immediate sense of what was happening. But then it resolved into a beam of light shining down through an air vent. A few more thumps and the faceplate came crashing down—followed quickly by the boots of a rescue worker dangling from a cable. Jacob and I hurried to clear Hinman’s old lab gear out of the way so the guy didn’t end up waist-deep in questionable equipment. As physical concerns intruded and my focus shifted, my etheric confusion receded until the salt on the floor was nothing more to me than a subtle rasp of grit.

The guy on the rope had a powerful flashlight strapped to his forehead—and thankfully, the beam was solid.

He said, “Lucky thing you got trapped in this part of the building—” Clearly, we had very different definitions of the word lucky. “This is the only spot with vents big enough to navigate.”

He asked if there were any injuries—cripes, where to begin?—and we grabbed Jibben and Alisha from the hall. Of the two of them, Jibben was by far the worst for wear. But Alisha was the civilian, and Jibben refused to evacuate until he knew she was safe.

“Don’t worry,” the rescue guy told her as he strapped her into the harness with him. “I’ve got you.”

As he trussed her up against him in stiff velcro tabs, Alisha looked at Jibben and said, “You’re a class act, Doc.” And then she smirked at Jacob. “You too, Cargo Shorts—thanks for keeping your cool.”

Finally, she settled on me, and gave her head a rueful little shake. “If you ever change your mind about that seance, I’d better get an invite.”

“You’ll be the first one I call.”

As the two of them winched up and disappeared through the vent, a fragment of conversation reached my ears—Alisha asking the guy if he was single—and it sank in that we were actually getting out of there. No doubt the Kennedy was bumper to bumper and we should seriously consider taking surface streets back to the cannery. But getting out of this damn basement would be one giant step closer to getting home.

“I dread to think about the cleanup,” Jibben said. He gestured at the train wreck of scattered crate contents in containment, but I suspected the gesture encompassed all of the lab. “But I take it that at least your ritual was successful?”

Well, no…we’d been interrupted partway through—

I turned to tell Jibben to get back out into the hall and saw the air all around him sparkling as if he was standing in a frozen snow globe, and every glint was candlelight refracting off a shard of broken lantern glass hanging in the air. “Close your eyes,” I barked out, and thankfully he didn’t ask why, just did it as the glass sucked towards him and pummeled him like a sandblaster.

The gadget in my pocket was ticking away like a time bomb and the air around us had gone frigid. My breath streamed out in the candlelight as bits of glass tinkled to the floor. The flashlight in Jibben’s hand popped, while Jacob’s wildly strobed. And as my irises flexed to let in more of the flickering light, the galvanic conductor lit up like a pinball machine, pulsing with a blinding purple light that made my eyes water. It flared once, twice…then shattered with a sound so delicate it was practically melodic. Light narrowed to that of Jacob’s flashlight. Meanwhile, all around us, shards of glass rose, glittering, into the air.

“Tell me what to do,” Jacob said urgently, shaking the last remaining light source in hopes of keeping it alive.

“Don’t touch me—nobody touch me!” I felt fried and frazzled and my mojo was coming in rough. The last thing I needed was for it to hop into anyone else.

The caster of Jibben’s chair was caught on some of Luther Hinman’s crap, and he toppled over sideways trying to shield himself from another bombardment of glass.

“Gordon Tertz,” my voice was getting ragged from the strain of yelling at ghosts, “this isn’t your lab—this isn’t your fight.” I gestured at the twitchy guy on the floor, bleeding from dozens of tiny cuts. “This isn’t Hinman.”

Tiny ticks sounded all around us as more bits of glass rose from where they were scattered among the open crates and old manilla file folders. The fan blade stopped…then started spinning in the opposite direction. The remaining flashlight beam flickered harder—until, finally, its lightbulb popped and plunged us into utter darkness.