Part 29 (1/2)

could summon ectoplasm there in the astral.” I explained the whole thing to him-the astral axe, the blood ghost, the slime on the back of Chekotah's blouse, and even the stretched head. I felt a little crazy talking about that last part. But you never know which piece is going to make the whole puzzle come together.

Jacob didn't say anything when I finished. He just sat there cradling my hand, which was long-dry but still a little bit cold, and he stared at me.

”What?” I said finally.

”Do you realize how big this is?”

”I dunno. What, specifically?”

”The ability to travel anywhere, to see a location without being physically present, to hear a private conversation?” He made it sound awfully empowering. What it had felt like to me was that I was flailing around, making up the rules as I went along.

Like usual. In Jacob's a.s.sessment, I was some kind of superspy. And that was exciting for maybe two seconds, until a few more realiza-tions sank in. The CIA had been trying to crack remote viewing since 1972, and I had no desire for the government to be any more interested in me than it already was. Even the remote viewer the FPMP supposedly had was only spoken of in whispers. ”We gotta be careful who we tell,” I said.

Jacob squeezed my fingers. It hurt the tight scabs, but even so, the feel of his hand surrounding mine was a comfort. He sat that way for a moment, and then when he spoke, it was quiet, and very measured.

”You know how, when we figured out that I actually had something other than a big psychic void inside me, right away we told Carolyn and Crash so we could get their take on it?”

”Yeah.”

254.

”Let's just keep this to ourselves.”

Being on the same page with Jacob, especially right after we'd been snarling at each other over him pulling me out of the projection, should have been a relief. Instead, the fact that he'd agreed with me sent an icy finger of dread sneaking down my spine. Not only would federal recruitment efforts step up if I made this new facet of my talent known. If the wrong people found out I could sneak around at will and return to my body with a full understanding of what I'd just heard and seen, I might as well paint a big ol' target on my forehead and kiss my a.s.s goodbye.

255.

Chapter 29.

Thanks to my enviable new method of gathering evidence, Jacob and I could agree that we had more direction in figuring out what was going on with all the disappearing girls. Agreeing on which direction that might be was another story.

”Faun Windsong actually said they deserved it,” I repeated for the umpteenth time. ”If that's not a big red flag, I don't know what is.”

”True, but you can't ignore the b.l.o.o.d.y ghost. She was gruesome, right? And she was trying to touch Bert.”

I wasn't sure exactly what she'd been trying to do to him-slime him, possess him or lobotomize him-but whatever it was, it didn't look too savory.

”I think we need to find out who she is.” He pulled out his notebook and poised his pen over it. ”Give me a description.”

”Other than the gaping black wound in her chest that was throwing off sparks?” I sighed. ”Caucasian. Twenty-five to thirty. Five foot five, average weight, dark hair, pale skin.” I thought back to her features in search of anything that might help me pick her out, though unfortunately she hadn't had any astral tattoos or name tags. ”Maybe a little long in the chin.”

”And if you saw her here, she died here. Right?”

”Either that, or she blames Chekotah for her death and she's following him around. Not that I see him as a murderer-he doesn't 256.

strike me as the type-but maybe someone who convinced her to do a hippy-dippy herbal cure that stopped her heart and landed her in the hospital with her sternum cracked open.” Figuring out who'd died on the property in the last ten, twenty years shouldn't be hard if the local PD was willing to pull some records. Figuring out who Chekotah knew that had died a sudden or violent death, one in which he was somehow culpable, without letting him know we were sniffing around him? Nearly f.u.c.king impossible. ”Look, never mind the ghost.

I need to get back there and see what Faun was saying.”

”Never mind the ghost? Listen to yourself. You're carrying such a grudge against Katrina that you're writing off the most important witness.”

”There's no grudge.”

”Are you sure? Because she seemed to come through Camp h.e.l.l pretty much unscathed-in fact, she doesn't even call it that. It's Heliotrope Station when she's referring to it.”

I yanked my hand out of his lap and balled my fist a few times to bring the feeling back into my frigid fingers. ”You keep on talking to me like this, I'll be too ramped up to fly back over there anytime today.”

He kept gnawing at that same old bone as if I'd consented to be part of the conversation. ”She might not be as strong as you, but she's still a decent medium, isn't she? It's more than just cold spots for her, right?”

”So?”

”So...it would stand to reason that she would have been just as in-demand as you. Or at least nearly as much.”

”If you try to tell me I brought whatever happened at Camp h.e.l.l on myself...you'd better get used to sleeping in the decoy bed.”

257.

He grabbed me and pulled me against his chest before I had a chance to flinch away. ”You're putting words in my mouth. What I am saying is that you might be p.i.s.sed off at her for not deflecting some of the attention off you. That's all.”

Seeing as how Jacob typically makes so much sense, even though my brain was trying to spin into a heated panic, I had to admit that being p.i.s.sed off about something like that did sound an awful lot like me.

Why hadn't she taken some of the heat? Maybe she had...and she'd just processed it differently than me. Taken those sleep-deprived exercises in futility and re-framed them as exciting, multi-day cram sessions in search of a brave new world of Psych.

Or maybe the powers-that-be had played catch and release, and allowed her to swim back to her non-traumatic Heliotrope Station experience since she was just a minnow, while they had a great, big catch they could be feasting on instead.

Maybe it was only the big fish who'd been trawled in the nightmare net. Movie Mike. Stefan. Me.

”I'm not saying we don't look at Katrina.” Jacob's voice was gentle and low, and he spoke into my hair. ”I'm just saying that a b.l.o.o.d.y spirit in a building that's supposedly clean-that's important, too.”

”Even if the locals were on board, which I'm thinking they're not, it'll take us forever. Back home, we've got people we know who can dig through records for us, people willing to cut us a little slack. Here, I don't even know how to figure out who we're supposed to call.”

”Then let Dreyfuss do it.” Although I gave pulling away a pretty good try, Jacob had me in a bear hug, and he just crushed me to his chest harder. ”He's got the contacts. He's got the resources. Let him dig up the records, and in the meanwhile, you see if you can get back to Chekotah's room.”

I suppose it could've been worse. At least Jacob was on board for the astral eavesdropping portion of the program. He could have told me 258.

to physically go and question Chekotah and Faun, after all. He was too accustomed to getting a psychic edge on his statements, I guess, to go back to needing to dissect a witness' actual statement to pick out the truth.

It was a good enough plan, one we could both live with. And while I was tempted to tell myself that giving Dreyfuss some paperwork to pull would keep him out of our hair, I did have to admit-we really hadn't seen much of him. Only those couple of times he was in our room giving us electronics.

I went through the bathroom and gave the door to Dreyfuss' room an ungentle bang. Shuffling, footsteps. He opened the door. ”Any news?” Although my goal had been to get him working on the photo lineup and get back to what I'd been doing, my curiosity spiked. What, exactly, did he do all day? He didn't interview anyone. And, other than his walk through Debbie's bedroom, he hadn't been combing for physical evidence. I glanced over his shoulder. He had a laptop on his desk, but it was off. That didn't mean anything, though. Maybe he had it set up to power down the second he shut the cover. ”Another ghost,” I said as I tried to get a better idea of what he'd been up to.

”In the hall outside Chekotah's room.”

”Sloppy cleanup work. They should ask for their money back.”

”She wasn't talking. I thought you could dig up some info and help me figure out who she was.”