Ghost Heart (The PSS Chronicles #3)

by Ripley Patton

“Well, we aren’t positive you don’t,” I pointed out. I knew he’d gotten this the first time, and he was just humoring me. “The Hold discovered that a lot more of the population has PSS than we ever imagined. PSS isn’t rare. It just goes undetected. For example, you could have the tiniest bit of PSS, even just a single cell of it, but I don’t think you do, because I don’t have the urge to pull anything out of you. When Dr. Fineman made me try to put the matches into you, I didn’t feel any pull or resonance. Even when you were being a douche at the Eidolon, I thought about putting my hand into you because I was ticked off, but there was no real urge. And don’t you dare apologize again.” I held my hand up even as his lips began to move. “I know you’re sorry. The point is when I reached into Fineman, it felt the same way. There was no compulsion. I had to make myself do it. And at first, my hand couldn’t find anything. Pulling the cube out of him was like pulling something out of thin air, and it didn’t have a power because it didn’t come from PSS. It was just a blank, like a place-holder. The cube, by itself, couldn’t do anything, but when combined with Jason’s bullet it blasted us three days and three miles away.”

  “The bullet was like an instrument, and the cube was like its amplifier,” Grant said.

  “Exactly. And the ironic thing is most of the CAMFers probably have PSS, and they don’t even know it. I mean, I’ve pulled stuff from some of them, and I’ve felt the resonance.” An image of Major Tom flashed into my head, and I shooed it away. Had Dr. Fineman known then what I was just figuring out? Did he know many of his CAMFers had hidden, internal PSS?

  “That could mean PSS has been around a lot longer than we’ve realized,” Grant said. “It could have been a mutation that started out on a cellular level and just kept getting bigger and bigger. And it wasn’t until it started manifesting outwardly, that anyone took notice.”

  “You might be right,” I said. Every time we talked about this, we came up with new realizations and discovered new ramification. “It could actually be rarer not to have PSS than it is to have it. If that ever got out, it would seriously screw with both The Hold and the CAMFers. It would change everything.”

  “So, it seems I’m the rare one now,” Grant said, giving me sad puppy dog eyes. “Which sucks because I’ve kinda always wanted to have PSS.”

  “No, you don’t. Trust me.” I brushed my fingers across his face, trying to erase that look.

  “Well, at least I get to have you reach into me,” he said, biting playfully at my fingers.

  “Don’t.” I yanked them away, frowning. “This isn’t a joke.”

  “I know,” he said, growing serious. “Maybe I’m scared too, okay? But we need you to do this. If you find a cube or a blank or whatever in me, it would give us something powerful to use in case they don’t trade us. In case something goes wrong.”

  “I know,” I exhaled. “I’m not going to pull it out.

  I’m just going to feel for it. Better to keep it inside of you, in case they search us. But if we know it’s there, and we get into trouble…”

  “See, that makes perfect sense,” Grant said, smiling. “You’re not going to hurt me. You’re just going to feel me up a little. I want you to do this, Liv. I really do.”

  “But I haven’t reached into anyone since my hand came back, and when I pulled the cube out of Fineman, it put him in a coma.”

  “Yes, but you said you tried to hurt him, that you did something else with your hand. That’s probably what caused the coma, not taking the cube.”

  “I don’t know. I might kill you or something right before we get rescued. That would totally suck. It’s too much of a risk.”

  “No, it’s not,” he said, grasping my stump and raising it gently to his chest.

  This was crazy. I shouldn’t reach into Grant unless I absolutely had to. Except that was the way I’d always thought about my hand, and look where it had gotten me? Other people had used me and my hand. Hadn’t I sworn to myself if they ever let me out of that cell, I would show them exactly what my hand could do?

  “Okay.” I took a deep breath and looked down at Grant’s face. How could I have doubted him? It was obvious he trusted me enough to put his life in my hands.

  On, I thought to my ghost hand, and it flashed into existence.

  I reached out and slipped it into Grant’s chest.

  It wasn’t harsh or scary or painful. The inside of Grant’s psyche was smooth and soft, like down inside a silk pillow.

  He tipped back his head and closed his eyes and his lips parted, letting out a gentle sigh.

  It was so fucking hot I almost lost myself. I almost forgot about my theories and my hand and jumped onto his lap, wrapping my legs around him.

  But then my hand was touching something, all corners and edges, and I was grasping it, mapping it in my mind with my fingers. I had felt it before. A cube. There wasn’t any question.

  I pulled my hand back, slowly out of him, trying to ignore how aroused I was, and I wasn’t the only one.

  He was panting a little, and there was other evidence.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, my voice all wobbly.

  “Yeah.” He exhaled and opened those baby blues, staring up at me. “That was—what did you feel?”

  “A cube,” I told him, avoiding the real question.

  And the real answer.

  23

  MARCUS

  The four-hour flight to Oregon on my uncle’s private jet gave me a lot of time to think. Of course, they seated me next to Reiny, my eternal medicinal watch dog. In fact, it was obvious all the seating arrangements had been carefully orchestrated too keep us younger passengers in line. Pete sat next to Passion. My aunt was sitting with Olivia’s mom. My uncle and Samantha had a seat together, while Jason was in the back with my uncle’s small security team: Bo, Butch, and Bruce.

  The plane had once been a small commercial plane that my uncle had bought and converted, adding larger seats but keeping them in the usual two-to-a-row seating arrangement.

  When we took off, I could hear Pete joking with Passion across the aisle from me. He was trying to distract her, but it didn’t seem to be working. She was pale and clutching the arms of her seat. Then I saw her reach into her carry-on and pull out a magic eight ball. She rolled it around in her hands, and her face grew calmer as she and Pete bent their heads over it like a couple of kids, asking it inane questions.

  I turned to Reiny to comment about it and found her fast asleep, curled up in a little ball against the window shade, her head against a pillow and a blanket pulled over her. She certainly deserved a rest. She’d been taking care of me almost non-stop since I’d arrived at the farmhouse, and it had been a pretty thankless job. I mean, I certainly hadn’t thanked her. I’d been more of a royal pain-in-the-ass.

  And she hadn’t just been my nurse. She’d treated everyone at the farmhouse at one time or another. For example, right before we’d left for the airstrip, she’d given Samantha and Jason a shot. It was some kind of vaccine booster, she’d said, against a childhood disease cropping back up in Oregon thanks to the anti-vaccine movement. Then she’d explained that Passion and I didn’t need it. Our blood work had shown we already had the antibodies.

  I hoped my uncle was paying her well. I mean, even with his loss of The Hold, he still had jets to fly off in and plenty of money to burn.

  Seeing Reiny next to me, asleep and small and not poking me with anything, made me wonder what her story was. Why was she working for my uncle? What was her connection to The Hold and PSS? She was clearly too old to have it, but maybe a family member did. A younger sibling, perhaps? Or maybe it was simply medical curiosity. She was Native American though, and we were headed to Warm Springs. Coincidence? I doubted it. In all her days of caring for me, she hadn’t let anything slip about her tribe or her background. Had she been excited about this trip? Definitely yes, but I’d figured we were all excited about getting out of that damn farmhouse. Maybe Reiny had been excited about going home. Maybe she was my uncl
e’s tribal connection. If she was from Warm Springs, she must know something about the Ghost Heart painting.

  I turned to wake her, thinking I could pump her for information while she was groggy and more susceptible to questioning. I reached out my hand, ready to shake her shoulder, but I kept hearing Passion’s voice in my head. “Try being one of us for a day,” she’d said out there in the cornfield. “We’ve lost things too.”

  I dropped my hand and let Reiny sleep, but I couldn’t shake that scene with Passion. Man, she’d been pissed and given me a piece of her mind. I’d been thinking about what she’d said, too, about what the last eight months must have been like for everyone else. It was time to consider it. It was time to get out of my own damn head.

  For me, those eight months had been like falling asleep and waking up again, like no time had passed. There’d been a few surreal dreams, more like hallucinations than anything else, but I knew I’d dreamed of Olivia. I remembered it—a girl with a ghost hand who wasn’t my sister. It was somewhat of a relief too, because some of those dreams had been—well, let’s just say they hadn’t been “brotherly.”

  So, I’d had a girlfriend, or a fling or something. Passion claimed I’d been in love, but that was hard to believe. I mean, don’t get me wrong; I liked girls. I’d been with plenty of girls. But I didn’t really believe in love. Maybe my parents had been in love. It was hard to remember, and if they had been, ultimately, it had killed them. Besides, how could you love someone you didn’t trust? And I’d learned not to trust anyone, not fully. It was more important to protect yourself. Self-preservation and love were mutually exclusive. I had a strong instinct to survive, even my PSS echoed that inclination. So, yeah, I couldn’t believe the whole love thing.

  Which raised the question of why Passion was so convinced otherwise.

  The answer seemed obvious; I’d been faking it. I’d told Olivia I’d loved her, and she’d told Passion, and they’d both believed it. The only reason I could think of for doing that was if I’d thought it would somehow help Danielle. In the long run, maybe it had. I was currently flying toward my sister because of the connection between Passion and Olivia, so apparently, my plan had worked. Not too bad for someone with no memories of what the fuck he’d been doing.

  I wanted that to make me feel better.

  But it didn’t.

  The rest of it, though, the stuff Passion had said about me being their leader, about them trusting and following me, about my campaign to take out the CAMFers, that was almost harder to believe than the love thing.

  Was that really me? Was that who I’d become?

  I wasn’t a leader. I just wanted to find my sister. I just wanted everyone to leave us alone and let us live our lives in peace.

  So, what had changed?

  What had happened to that David to turn him into Marcus?

  Something had. Something big everyone kept veering around and avoiding in their slow unveiling of my life and actions from the last eight months. Passion had been hinting at it in the cornfield when she’d suddenly gone soft, touched my arm, and told me about her sister’s death.

  I wasn’t an idiot. Some part of me knew what it was—the thing no one would tell me. I just didn’t want to face it. I’d happily veer away from it with them as long as they’d let me. Because if I wasn’t flying toward Danielle, if I wasn’t saving my sister, I didn’t know what I was doing or how to do it.

  I looked around the plane. What had the last eight months been like for each of these people I was traveling with? Sam’s life had been unraveling, her parent’s marriage and The Hold dissolving in front of her. What about Passion? What had she been through to inspire all those scars on her arms she tried so hard to keep hidden?

  And this Jason guy? Apparently, his dad was a CAMFer who’d wanted to kill his own son. If that wasn’t bad enough, my uncle was using the kid so hard he’d convinced him to shoot Sam. That was fucked up.

  Then there was Olivia’s mom. I hadn’t gotten to talk to her much, but her daughter had run away. They’d lost their home. Now Olivia was a hostage of the CAMFers, and even if we got her back, there was no way she was going to be in good shape. I knew what they did to people.

  My uncle’s voice rose, and I glanced to the front of the plane where he and Samantha were sitting. They were arguing, but all I could really hear was the murmur of angry voices. I didn’t envy Sam. She loved him. He was her father. That had to suck.

  My uncle’s version of the accident had shaken me more than I’d like to admit. I’d gone over and over my memories of that night, but they were only glimpses and broken flickers, like a badly preserved home movie. I had been a child, scared shitless, hunkered down in the back seat of our car, trying to comfort Danielle and be the brave big brother. My parents had been scared too, and that had scared me even more. My mother, in the passenger seat, kept glancing behind us. She said we were being chased. She said something about my uncle. Then there had been a bright flash of light, and the wailing, mammoth, cry of a train whistle barreling down on us. And then nothing.

  Was it possible my uncle hadn’t been the villain that night? Had I manufactured him into one, slowly, over minutes and days and years of bitterness and grief and abandonment?

  Fuck. Did it even matter?

  He’d abandoned us. He should have never made that promise to my mom. She was wrong to ask him. He could have protected us, loved us, been there for us. What had she been thinking?

  She’d been trying to protect us, even if she hadn’t understood how it would all pan out.

  Even if she’d been horribly wrong, she’d loved us.

  My uncle did not love me.

  I was his tool, nothing more.

  “Would you like a drink?” a voice asked softly.

  I looked up to see a pretty flight attendant holding a tray of drinks. My uncle knew how to travel in style.

  “Sure,” I said. “Got anything alcoholic?”

  “How old are you?” she asked flirtatiously, her eyes roaming over me. “You don’t look old enough.”

  “I’m definitely old enough,” I said, surprising myself by flirting back.

  “Okay,” she looked over her shoulder to make sure my uncle wasn’t watching before she handed me a glass of beer. “My name is Layla,” she said, her fingers brushing mine as I took it. She must have been in her early twenties, and she was hot as fuck, all legs and boobs and ass. “If you’re old enough for a drink,” she said in a hushed voice, leaning over so I could see the beautiful bounty of her cleavage, “maybe you’re old enough to join the mile high club.”

  She had to be joking. I mean, she was just flirting with me. She didn’t actually mean—

  “Excuse me,” Reiny voice interrupted, shocked and angry. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? This is Mr. James’s nephew.”

  And that was the end of that.

  Layla disappeared as fast as I’d ever seen anyone disappear. In fact, I worried for a little while that she’d thrown herself out of an airlock, but when we got off the plane, I glimpsed her face peering out from the pilot’s cabin like she was afraid she was going to get fired if anyone noticed her.

  Probably the only reason she didn’t get fired was that Reiny had taken my beer and guzzled it down in pure fury. And shortly afterward, she’d fallen asleep again, but not before she’d played big sister a little more.

  “You, Mister,” she said. “If I hadn’t interrupted her, you wouldn’t have gone for that, would you?”

  “No way,” I said. “I’m already a member of the club anyway.”

  “You are not!” She pinched my arm playfully.

  And when we landed in Portland, I still wasn’t, thanks to Reiny.

  * * *

  The resort at Warm Springs known as Kah-Nee-Tah rose out of the burnt-red dirt of the high desert tablelands of central Oregon. The building was designed in the shape of an arrowhead. The two long sides were open-air corridors with the rooms stacked in three stories along them. Each r
oom had a small balcony looking outward and over the sparsely vegetated hills and valleys, lined with small trails for tourists to enjoy. The inside courtyard featured a huge swimming pool, fed by the local hot springs, which actually had to be cooled to eighty-nine degrees so visiting families could enjoy it year-round without scalding themselves. Thus, the name Warm Springs.

  That was what the brochure the front desk clerk handed me said, anyway.

  What I saw were my people. My people answering phones and checking in patrons. My people cleaning rooms and bussing tables at the two restaurants. My people cooking, and carrying luggage, and managing the casino. People who looked at my face with a question in their eyes. Do we know him? Is he one of us? Why does he look familiar?

  I felt a camaraderie of genetics and appearance and ancestry I hadn’t felt for a very long time, if ever. At the same time I felt like an imposter, like someone was going to stop me and call me out at any moment for pretending to be something I wasn’t.

  If my uncle and Samantha felt the same, they didn’t show it.

  Reiny, on the other hand, was swept up in a chorus of greetings and hugs and welcome as soon as she stepped through the doors. I guess that answered my question about her connection to the tribes. As a group gathered around her, I could see them casting curious glances in my direction, curious, yet cautious. Respectful, yet guarded. It was awkward, but it helped remind me I was a stranger here. These weren’t my people. We might share DNA, but they didn’t know me, and I didn’t know them.

  Reiny came over and introduced us to her brother, Lonan, one of the managers of the resort. He was probably the one who’d sent my uncle the picture of the mural and arranged for our accommodations.

  In between room assignments, instructions, and the handing out of key cards, I stepped away, descending down into the main lobby, the huge mural, Ghost Heart, rising to the ceiling on one wall. There was no placard with it explaining who had painted it or why, no artist’s signature anywhere on it.

  I was still staring at it when a little girl skipped up to me and said, “Hey, that looks like you.”