Chapter 8

I didn’t generally consider myself to have an active inner life…at least until I tried to not-think about something. And then suddenly my mind was Union Station at rush hour. The only good thing about the FPMP being full of telepaths was the fact that they were labeled, though the portly guy on the elevator did catch me eyeballing his security badge.

Empath two.

Weirdly enough, that was a relief. Thanks to Crash, I was totally accustomed to having all the knots inside me on full display. Since I was staring at this guy’s badge, he had no compunctions about checking out mine. “Hey, you’re the new medium!” he said, as I sucked down white light for all I was worth and high-tailed it toward my office. He called after me, “If you need anything….”

He’d better not hold his breath. If I needed anything, I’d go find myself a nice, safe NP.

As I slipped through the office door, I wondered why I’d been thinking about the space as a sanctuary. Yes, it was technically “mine,” and yes, I might be the team leader. But not only were Carl and Darla present at a new group work station in the corner looking at a book together, but a couple of tech guys in navy coveralls on a ladder were busy wiring up a speaker system. And now the only remaining free space was occupied by a gigantic copy machine.

“I thought most places were going toward digital,” I said.

“It’s not just a copier and a printer,” Darla answered loftily, “it’s a high-resolution flatbed scanner. Agent Hinds can scan in these older texts so they’re searchable and tag them with metadata. That is, if it’s okay with you, sir.”

“Fine. And you really don’t need to be so defensive. I’m willing to look at any angle you come up with.”

While Carl was pretending to not notice the tension between us—or perhaps simply not caring—she scowled down at the text for a long moment, then said, “I know what year it is, and I know we’re not kids anymore. You’ve obviously changed. It’s just hard to forget how you used to be.”

I caught a glimpse of her profile, the way the tepid winter daylight from a nearby window glinted off a sparkle in her mascara, and a long-forgotten memory unfurled.

I was a few months shy of twenty-four. Camp Hell still had its original director, Sanchez, at the helm—I knew this because we were on a field trip at the time, and once Sanchez was gone, we never left the building. Miss Maxwell gathered Faun and Richie, Darla and me, at the ponderous office building at the entrance to our most frequent field trip destination: Graceland. It hadn’t quite snowed yet, nothing that stuck around, anyway, and even though the grounds were meticulously maintained, dead leaves had gathered in random drifts, and the wind made a shushing sound as it rasped through the dry foliage.

Maxwell gestured toward the nearest plot and said, “Before you put yourself in a situation where many spirits could be present, it’s important to protect yourself. You all have the St. Anthony medal I gave you last week?”

We all said yes and rolled our eyes, except Richie, who was going through his pockets. Maxwell handed him a new one—one of at least a dozen, by the time they stopped letting us out of our cages.

“Mother Mary will intercede for us and ask St. Anthony for protection. Now, like we practiced, pray with me. Hail Mary, full of grace….”

We all said the words, but not one of us sounded sincere. Faun was into Native American beliefs, Darla and I were both atheists, and Richie couldn’t repeat anything without making it sound like a singsong mashup of random syllables. When we were done, Darla raised her hand and said, “So why do we beg Mary to intercede? Does St. Anthony need an interpreter—and if so, why does Mary speak English, but not him? Or is Mary a control freak who blocks all the messages so they can only go through her?”

Maxwell drew herself up to her full height, and towered over Darla with that flinty don’t fuck with my religion look in her eyes. “You won’t be so blasé when you cross paths with a dangerous spirit. You need to protect yourself. And whether or not you believe in her, Mother Mary still cares about you.”

Faun piped in, “I’ve always liked the way Catholicism acknowledges the female energy,” while Richie listened with his mouth open and no idea whatsoever what we were talking about.

“One more time, folks,” Maxwell said. “With feeling. Hail Mary, full of grace….”

I said the prayer again, slightly louder. Mainly because standing in the entrance was getting old, and I wanted to check out the headstones. Now, looking back, I saw what she was aiming for—to have us pull down the white light and shore up our defenses. But for someone as hardcore Catholic as her, that New-Agey terminology wouldn’t have rung true any more than her prayers rang true for me. I said the words, but they were only that: words. Lucky I didn’t walk out of that cemetery with some pissed off ghost wearing my skin.

Then again, maybe there was precious little spirit activity to worry about. To this day, I’ve simply presumed mediums who hung out in cemeteries were just asking for trouble. But now that I’d seen some dead folks hanging back to help people cross over, I wasn’t so sure graveyards were particularly hazardous. In fact, maybe they were worse for empaths and telepaths, folks who could pick up on the distress of the living. The lingering dead were more likely to haunt the spot where they died and not the plot where they were buried.

Which wasn’t to say the field trip to Graceland was entirely uneventful.

The Palmer monument peeked through the bare winter trees like a Greek temple that had accidentally sprung up on the wrong side of the globe. Faun Windsong was grumbling about conspicuous consumption while Richie wandered off to throw rocks at the ducks in the adjacent lagoon. I ignored both of them and strode around the twin sarcophagi where other, lesser family members had been interred below the marble tiles. At first, I was focused on stepping on the dead rich people’s names, simply because I could. But then I noticed the bolts in the corners of the slabs that looked like they’d been screwed down with giant screwdrivers. I was wondering exactly how difficult it would be to dig up a body, when a pile of dry leaves blown against the foot of the monument stirred, and I realized the movement had nothing to do with the wind.

My vision shifted, and I saw it was a man—not a fancy Chicago mercantile baron, but a homeless guy layered in filthy overcoats. He reached toward me. I flinched and backed away, but thankfully, no one else noticed. They were each absorbed in their own contemplation—even Richie, who’d found a glittery Wham-O Super Ball in the mud and was busy trying to clean it with his shirttail and his spit.

Darla was already edging away from the monument to signal that she was done there, to encourage the rest of us to move on to the next pile of marble. I wandered over to do the same. By then, she and I had forged a delicate truce in which we neither looked at nor spoke to one another, and that was how we both liked it. So she caught me off guard when she swung around and snapped, “Why should I?”

“Why…what?”

“Even if I did have a dollar, I sure as hell wouldn’t give it to you.”

I hadn’t thought anything about it then, just figured she was trying to pick a fight. And now? She was still angry, all these years later. I turned away before she caught me gaping. 

My mediumship was off the charts, and yet I’d never noticed that Darla was damn near as accurate as I was? Maybe our antagonism was to blame. If we’d forged the type of bond that encouraged us to share secrets—the bond she’d actually tried to create, before our relationship went to shit—I would have realized that Darla had real ability. Different from mine, in that she heard things rather than seeing them. But potentially just as strong.

“So, listen,” I said, “the way I acted, back when we were….” Before I could fumble through an apology that might only piss her off more, my cellphone buzzed and I checked the number. Con Dreyfuss? No, just his phone number.

I took the call, and found Patrick on the other end. “Hi, Vic. How’s it going?”

“Fine…?”

“Director Kim wants to see you.”

“On my way. Er…which way is it?”

“One floor down, two rights.”

“Great, thanks.”

I could have finished what I’d been trying to express to Darla. After all, it wasn’t exactly a lengthy sentiment. I’m sorry. How hard would it have been? Because I was. During our very first conversation, I could’ve told her I was into guys, but because she was giving me all the inside scoop on Heliotrope Station, I erred too far on the side of caution and kept my mouth shut.

And look how that worked out for me.

I took the elevator down and made a couple of rights, but belatedly realized I’d skipped a hallway and was probably headed toward the opposite end of the building. But then I spotted that odd turn-off and realized I’d magically ended up right where I’d been headed all along.

As I made my approach, I wondered if maybe I should just lay it all on the line with Laura. I had absolutely no idea how to spot another medium unless they had a ghost tumbling out of their ass, and maybe I wasn’t much better than Richie after all. The FPMP could carry on with Darla at the mediumship helm. And me? With my new wardrobe, I’d find a career in the funeral industry.

That might be for the best. Because my attempts to not-think about Jacob’s investigation had been a no-go, too. The two of us just weren’t meant to work together. So, the more I thought about it, the more the whole undertaker gig was actually starting to look pretty good.

I rapped on Laura’s door and she called for me to come in. The electronic lock clicked, and I entered. When she stood up and planted her hands importantly on her desk, my mind forgot how to make niceties and I shifted into damage control mode. “We’ll need more time to work the kinks out of our medium testing—”

“Agent Davis can handle that,” Laura cut in. “Right now, we have a more pressing problem.”

Someone else knocked, Laura buzzed, and in walked Jacob. He looked as surprised to see me as I was to see him—which is to say, he cocked his head ever so slightly and very nearly broke stride.

“Agent Marks,” Laura said crisply. “I’m assigning Agent Bayne to assist in your investigation.”

Understanding dawned on Jacob’s face a moment before I caught on. He said, “Is it Parsons?”

Laura handed him an address. “It’s a yard waste facility—his body is stuck in the equipment. Agent Bly is on his way to calm everyone down and try and stop it from ending up on YouTube. But the two of you need to get down there immediately,” she looked directly at me, “and see if Andy has anything to say for himself.”