Chapter 33

Someone had to do something.

And that someone was clearly me.

“Answer me this,” I yelled to Jibben as I flicked on the lighter from my kit. He was on the floor, shielding his face with hands covered in bloody nicks. “Have you ever forced a test subject to do something dangerous?”

Even cowering on the floor talking through his fingers, he managed to sound affronted. “Never!”

“You’re sure? You never shot ’em up with psyactives, maybe deprived them of sleep? You never motivated ’em with a little zap?”

“What on earth are you talking about?” Jibben peeked out from between his hands. “That’s barbaric!”

“Oh, come on. You never wanted to make a big splash—some big discovery that’d blow the lid off everything?”

“Why would I? Psych is proven. Beyond that shadow of a doubt. My only job is to help us understand. You know this yourself. We’d never put a subject in harm’s way. Not just because it’s unethical. But because they’re our colleagues. Our friends.”

And all of Jibben’s good pals called him Heebie Jeebie behind his back.

He definitely needed some better friends.

Clunking in the air ducts announced the rescue worker was nearly back, and I addressed the room at large. “Jibben—Howard—is going. He’s served enough penance...for the damage he never did.”

You don’t realize just how much glass is all around you until you’re waiting for it to randomly explode. Jacob had possessed the self-control not to leap in and grab my white light, but he was clearly relieved to now have a task to perform. He helped the rescue worker strap Jibben in, and the battered, bleeding scientist disappeared through the air ducts.

I stood beneath the opening and watched the two pairs of dangling feet winch away, listening intently for the sound of anything else falling on, breaking over, or exploding near poor Jibben. But as far as I could tell, the ascent was going off without a hitch.

“What happened?” Jacob whispered. “Did the spirit follow Dr. Jibben?”

Hard to say, what with there being no lightbulbs left for it to blow up. “If the interval between pulling out Alisha and Jibben is anything to go by, we only have a couple of minutes before the rescue guy is back.”

I looked up into the shaft. One by one, starting all the way back with Big Boy Leonard, everyone in our group had been taken out, one way or another—just like in a cheesy horror flick—and now it was just Jacob and me.

And both of us had damn well better make it to the end.

“You’re going next,” Jacob informed me.

“The hell I am.”

“Don’t fight me on this. We both know I’m the one with all the defenses.”

It’s a bitch trying to argue with someone you know damn well is right. Plus, there’s also only so long you can hold onto a flaming lighter—and with a belated curse, I had to let it go out. In the dark, the distant sound of the rescue workers, noises carrying through the air duct, seemed louder. So did my labored breathing—and the sound of my pulse thudding in my ears.

“So,” Jacob said cautiously. “Are you okay?”

The atmosphere was edgy and tense, and the whole room felt like a pregnant pause. “I’ll manage. What about you?”

He let out a shuddering sigh. “Exhausted. Relieved. Worried. I know if anyone should be able to handle this, it’s us…but we still haven’t figured out what this even is. What should we do while we’re waiting for the fireman to come back?”

Awful big of him to take my opinion into account for a change. But I wasn’t sure what the best course of action would be—just get the hell out and live to exorcize another day, or take care of the situation before it got away from us. Not that I’d ever had even the semblance of control, not since I marched blithely down here yesterday and handed over my gun. “We don’t even know for sure that it’s Tertz we’re dealing with,” I was so beat, it sounded like I’d been gargling with sand, “and I haven’t had a visual on him. If only we could see what we were—”

With the clunk, whir and buzz of a bunch of machinery starting up…the lights came on. Even as I was filled with a giddy sort of relief, after so long in the dark, it felt like staring into the sun. But we could finally see again, really see, not just scattered glimpses by the strobe of a blinking flashlight. I’ve always maintained that you’re better off seeing what you’re up against than not-seeing. And I planned on scrutinizing every inch of the room, determined to uncover whatever secrets might’ve been lurking in the dark.

Once I blinked away the afterimages, it looked more like the tornado we’d been hearing about had touched down right here inside containment. Every crate was open, and the contents were tossed from one end of the room to the other. Each work table held an experiment, incriminating ledgers were everywhere—and, of course, broken glass and dried saline had the once-pristine cement floor sparkling.

I stripped out of my clean suit, eager to rid myself of the vestiges of containment. But as I was hopping out of the pant leg, I nearly keeled over when a phone on the wall started to ring. First thought? Haunted phone. But then, of course, I realized that with the power back on, if anyone needed to talk to us, it was the most logical way.

I picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

“Oh, thank God.” Laura Kim was beyond relieved. “Vic, are you okay?”

I’d been better. “I’m fine. We’re fine. So, were you planning on telling me about Jennifer Chance’s body anytime soon?”

“What about the body? Is her spirit—?”

“No. But did you really want to risk it?”

Laura let out a sharp sigh of relief. “I wanted to tell you in person—and I’d been planning on doing it just as soon as I got back.” Even though I’d avoided telling Jacob about it for as long as possible myself, I was hardly mollified. “Right now, I’m on my way to headquarters, but I’m still at least an hour out.” A car horn bleated. “Maybe more—so we’ll debrief tomorrow. I’m told it won’t be long until the magnetic door locks are back online, but they can’t give me an exact timeline. Do you want to be extracted through the vents or wait for the doors to open?”

Given how long we’d been stewing in that basement, it would seem like a no-brainer to go ahead with the extraction. But while rescue workers might go winching themselves around every day, I was none too keen to take a trip through the ventilation system. They might be wide enough to fit through, but they weren’t spacious by any means. Add to that the potential of a poltergeist screwing with me while I was trapped inside the duct…and I knew what I had to do.

And, as a bonus, we could stop arguing about who would go first.

“We’ll wait for the doors. And, Laura—I’ll be holding you to that conversation.”

“Of course you will.”

We hung up, and I turned to Jacob and said, “I bought us one more shot at handling this thing for good. But my insides feel more battered than Jibben’s outsides. Totally fried. I’ve got one more power-up left, and that’s it. So whatever you do—”

“Don’t let it jump to me. I know the drill.” He held up his hands and backed away, crunching over broken glass. “Whatever happens, I’ll stay clear.”

My one-eyed headache was gone now…and a whole-head extravaganza had taken its place. No doubt I could use a granola bar, but I’d thrown my last one at Alisha. I took a steadying breath and tried to fill my tank, but it was like trying to cram twelve ounces of coffee into a ten-ounce travel mug. I trotted out every last trick I knew, from standing like a yoga warrior to visualizing my chakras to imagining the whub-whub-whub sound of my Mood Blaster app.

My mojo felt ragged and harsh. But eventually, I corralled it into something I could tap. I gathered my sorry self to banish our poltergeist for good. “Okay, Tertz,” I announced to the room at large. “Let’s do this.”

The overhead lighting flickered briefly.

Jacob locked eyes with me from the other side of the room, across whatever remained of the Argus Institute, braced like he was ready for a tackle.

I opened up my crown chakra and urged it to take just a little bit more….

The room went white. Power surge—that was my first thought. Then I realized that the only circuits getting blown were mine. Etheric energy rushed out of me through my threadbare chakras. But it hadn’t hopped into Jacob this time.

It was in the poltergeist.

My biggest fear about an angry ghost catching me with my energetic pants down is getting booted out of my own body. But Tertz wasn’t interested in wearing my skin suit.

He was too busy pummeling it.

All the crap scattered around the place—all the paperwork, the office supplies, the vintage scientific detritus—everything rose up in the room as if gravity had suddenly failed. And it all started pelting us like we were stuck inside a giant blender.

“What the hell happened?” Jacob called.

“He grabbed it—he grabbed my light.” Now I wished I hadn’t been so damn insistent on Jacob keeping his distance. If that power had jumped into him, at least one of us would be full.

“Focus,” Jacob said. “We’ll do this together. I’ll just….” he fended off a flying calculator with his forearm. “I can’t find the veil.”

Neither could I. The veil showing up when we needed it was something I just took for granted. Kind of like doing dishes. Turn the tap, and water appears.

Until it doesn’t.

And even if we could get a plumber to call us back—which, in this day and age, they never do—I doubted he’d be much help.

I zeroed in on my crown chakra and pulled at the white light, and damn near blacked out. Fine. I couldn’t use my light? I’d use my gear instead. Locating my exorcism kit was no mean feat, what with everything whirling around in a maelstrom, but eventually I spotted my Florida Water spritzer wedged at the back of a work table, and then my flip-top jar of salt rolling around on its side. I’d trained on the firing range until aiming my gun and squeezing the trigger was muscle memory. So, why not exorcism?

I’d certainly had enough experience.

“Gordon Tertz, go to the light,” I said, pumping Florida water into the whirlwind of crap. “Fuck!” I blinked away a vicious, perfumey stinging sensation as it blew back in my eyes. I envisioned my salt activating—Christ, my head—and flung it with my eyes squeezed shut tight. I can normally feel the crystals scatter. But with everything flying all around me, the salt was just one more handful of whirling grit.

“I can’t find the veil,” Jacob repeated urgently.

Apparently, it wasn’t fucking there.

“We’ve gotta get out of here,” I called through the vortex. We had to regroup. I couldn’t make Tertz go anywhere until I recharged.

Jacob turned to the door and pulled. And pulled again. “It’s locked!”

Sonofabitch.