Badlands

by Morgan Brice

  Ross dropped the subject as they drove back to the precinct, and they parted for the evening with a little less tension between them than before. Still, Ross’s lack of faith in Simon nagged at Vic, and he didn’t need to ask to know where their captain would come down on the matter.

  Vic picked up his motorcycle and made his way through traffic until he got to the boardwalk. He found a parking spot and walked the rest of the way to Grand Strand Ghost Tours. He knocked on the window, and Simon looked up from behind the counter and went to unlock the door since the shop was closed.

  Vic pulled him in for a kiss, inhaling his scent of incense and aftershave, liking the way Simon pressed against him, responding to the brush of his lips with gentle hunger. Simon reached behind them and locked the door.

  “Hey,” he said, looking a little uncertain.

  “Hey, yourself,” Vic countered. “You all right?”

  Simon didn’t look all right, but he nodded anyway. “Thanks for meeting me here. I had another vision—not sure what it means, but I wanted to tell you about it. And I thought you might want me to reach out to the ghosts again.”

  “You’d rather do that here than at your house?” Vic asked.

  Simon sighed. “I’ve tried talking to the ghosts at home and remembered why I stopped doing that. Once I open the door, so to speak, they don’t want to leave me alone. Ghosts aren’t good at boundaries, especially when they find someone who can hear them.” He gave a wry grin. “Lucky me. So I had to do a major cleansing just so I could get a full night’s sleep without being interrupted. I’d rather not undo that and have to go through it all again if there’s a choice.”

  “All that from the Slitter’s ghosts?” Vic looked at Simon incredulously.

  “What? No. A lot of people die in Myrtle Beach with unfinished business.” Simon gave a shaky laugh. “Sometimes I get the feeling everyone here is outrunning something in their past. And it’s not just people who die violently. Natural causes catch people who think they’ve got time to put things right and find out too late that they don’t.”

  “And what do they want from you?” Vic asked, never having thought about this part of Simon’s talent. “I mean, it’s not like you’re a priest. You can’t give them absolution or Last Rites.”

  Simon shook his head. “Some of them aren’t sure they’re dead. Those are the easy ones. Once I convince them that they really are, they find their way.”

  “To the light?” Vic asked, his tone lightly sarcastic, although he found himself truly interested.

  Simon shrugged. “Onward, wherever that leads. Most of them go pretty quietly. Then there are the people who are angry about old grudges, or upset about something they left undone. If I can get them to let go of the anger and the guilt, they move on. Otherwise, I have to throw them out, and they get pissy. And then there are the ones who want me to pass along a message. Sometimes I can; sometimes I can’t. Usually, I try to show them how to make themselves seen to the person they want to talk to so they can do it themselves.”

  “Geez, you sound like Dr. Phil for ghosts.”

  Simon chuckled. “Feels like it sometimes. That’s why the boundaries are so important. I knew that, but I just wanted to find something that could help.” He headed toward the back room, and Vic followed.

  “The coffee’s gone, but I’ve got water and soda in the fridge,” Simon offered. Vic chose water, and Simon put down two bottles in front of them.

  “So…” Simon said. “I had a vision earlier. Practically knocked me on my ass right in the middle of ringing up a customer. It was Cindy. She’s pissed, to say the least.”

  “I’d imagine so,” Vic replied, doing his best to set his skepticism aside.

  “It felt like she used all her energy to shove an image at me because new ghosts aren’t very strong. But the problem is, it doesn’t make sense.”

  “Try me.”

  Simon sighed. “Billy Bass.”

  Vic laughed. “You’re kidding. The talking mechanical fish?”

  Simon’s cheeks flushed, and he nodded. “See, that’s what I mean. If you’ve only got a little juice to send an important message, why would you send that?”

  Vic leaned back in his chair and took a sip of the water, considering possibilities. “There are plenty of bars that have one of those things on the wall for kicks,” he said. “Maybe Cindy met the Slitter at one of those bars.”

  “That’s a pretty big ‘maybe,’” Simon said. “The image got shoved at me with so much force I know I didn’t mistake what I saw. But I’m at a loss. I thought maybe it would mean something to you.”

  Vic shook his head. “No. At least, not yet. Have you heard from any of the other victims?”

  “Not since when Quinn showed up,” Simon said. “But after Cindy sent me the vision, I thought I’d try again, and I figured you might want to be here for it.”

  “I’m game,” Vic replied. “How do you want to do this?” If he had his way, they’d go back to Simon’s house and have a quiet dinner, then a rowdy night of sex. But Simon seemed preoccupied, and Vic figured it was best for both of them not to push.

  “Like the last time. Concentrate on what you want to know, who you want to hear from. You don’t have to say anything, just think hard,” he said with a self-conscious smile. “I’ll open the gate, and we’ll see who shows up.”

  “Isn’t that dangerous?” Vic asked, thinking about how vulnerable Simon would be opening himself up to other energies. “What’s to stop something bad from sneaking in?”

  Simon smiled. “Another benefit of doing the readings here. I’ve had the shop blessed, cleansed, and warded multiple times. It’s not a guarantee, but it tends to keep out the riff-raff.”

  Vic didn’t like things he couldn’t prove or didn’t fully understand, but at least Simon was including him, and he’d be here if anything went wrong. “Okay. Let’s do it.”

  Simon closed his eyes and reached out both hands across the table. Vic took hold, twining their fingers together. He kept his eyes open, watching Simon as the medium took several deep breaths and then relaxed. His face went slack as if he was sleeping, but the twitch of his eyes beneath the lids suggested something far more active.

  “He didn’t just cut their throats,” Simon said in a dazed tone. “Stabbed through the heart. Needed heart blood. For his power. Blood for power.” He went quiet for a moment, canting his head as if listening to someone speaking off to one side.

  “Didn’t want the money. Didn’t take anything except blood. Getting stronger. Needed to drug the first ones. Held the new ones by himself. Stronger from the blood. Not done yet. There’ll be more.”

  Simon grew more agitated, but nothing about his actions suggested a performance. He looked genuinely distressed, and his grip on Vic’s hands tightened. “No…” he murmured. “No.”

  “Simon!” Vic called, worried that this had gone too far. “Simon, wake up!”

  Simon came back to himself with eyes open wide and a gasp as if he had been too long underwater. He was shaking and had visibly paled. Vic came around to kneel in front of him, pressing a bottle of water into his hands.

  “Drink,” Vic instructed. He helped hold the bottle since Simon’s hands shook. Then he set the bottle aside and pulled Simon down with him onto the floor, holding him against his chest and stroking his long chestnut hair. “You’re all right. You’re safe. I’m here. You’re okay. Just breathe.”

  Simon buried his face against Vic’s chest and wrapped his arms tightly around him, and Vic held him close. After a while, Simon’s breathing slowed and he shifted so that his head was tucked up under Vic’s chin.

  “Did you hear all that?” Simon asked.

  “I heard plenty,” Vic replied. Many of the details Simon reported from the spirits were already known to the police—that the victims hadn’t been robbed or otherwise assaulted, that the cuts were on the throat and to the heart, that the first kills had traces of chemical sedative in their blood, but not the later on
es. None of that had been released to the public. Those details were known only to the police and the killer—and the victims’ ghosts.

  “He’s picking victims with psychic power and using it somehow to make himself stronger,” Simon said, and while his voice was now steady, he still sounded pretty freaked out.

  “Is that possible?”

  “There are legends…folktales where witches can steal someone’s power. But, hell, I never heard of someone actually doing it,” Simon replied. “That day, at Tasha’s, when he threw me out of the way—that wasn’t physical strength. He never touched me, and I went flying. So maybe if he can throw someone, he can hold them still. Maybe that’s why he didn’t need to drug the latest victims.”

  “Whose ghosts did you see?” Vic asked, still holding Simon close against him, stroking his hair.

  “A couple of women I didn’t recognize. One had long, straight black hair. The other was a redhead with a ponytail.”

  Vic startled because the descriptions matched two of the first women killed by the Slitter. “No one else?”

  “Katya,” Simon said sadly. “She’s the one who said he didn’t drug her.”

  “And at the end, you kept saying ‘no.’ What did you see?” Vic kept his voice quiet and reassuring, the way he did with spooked witnesses, which he guessed described Simon more literally than most.

  Simon leaned into him, burying his face against Vic’s shirt once more. “He’s not done yet. There’ll be more deaths before he’s ready for the ‘big show.’”

  “What is the big show?” Vic pressed.

  Simon shook his head. “They didn’t know, but he must have bragged about it, that he was going to do something really big, prove something, get back at someone. But they didn’t know who or what.”

  “Did they know who he’s going after next?”

  Simon hesitated. “No. Just that there’ll be more.”

  They sat in silence for several minutes, Simon clinging to Vic like he was drowning, and Vic doing his damnedest to think his way out of the problem. “You can’t talk about what you’ve seen—to anyone,” Vic warned. “They won’t understand.”

  “You mean, they’ll arrest me.”

  Vic pulled him tighter. “Maybe. Let’s not find out.”

  “I’m causing a lot of trouble for you,” Simon said quietly. “I don’t want you to lose your job.”

  Vic bent to kiss the top of his head. “Let me worry about that. We get plenty of tips from people on the wrong side of the law every day—mobsters, dealers, guys who run chop shops and fence stolen goods. And we overlook that because they have intel we need. I don’t see why an honest psychic shouldn’t get the same treatment.”

  “Thanks,” Simon said. “I wasn’t sure I’d hear you say ‘honest psychic’ in this lifetime.”

  “Hey,” Vic replied. “I’m learning. My nonna used to get dreams that turned out to be right a surprising amount of the time. Not to mention giving the evil eye. And my aunt reads tea leaves.” He shrugged. “No one thought twice about it, back in my neighborhood in Pittsburgh.”

  “But the cops there did,” Simon said quietly. “I don’t want to make you have to choose between me and your job.”

  Vic didn’t want to have to choose either, because losing Simon or his badge would tear him apart. Surely he could manage to keep both. “I’ll figure it out,” Vic assured him. “We’ll find a way.” He straightened out his leg, which had begun to cramp.

  “But right now, I think we need to get off the floor, and I need to get you home. Did you drive?”

  Simon nodded, giving him a final squeeze before letting go. Vic got to his feet first and pulled Simon up, folding him close again to steady him. “All right then, I’ll follow you back to your house, make sure you get in okay. And then I’m going to go run some Billy Bass possibilities through the computer and see where it leads.”

  “Thank you,” Simon said, brushing a kiss across Vic’s cheek. “I’d ask you to stay, but I think I’m going to collapse as soon as I get inside.”

  “You look beat,” Vic said, smoothing the hair back from Simon’s eyes. “I’ll call you tomorrow. Just take it easy.”

  Vic followed Simon all the way to the blue bungalow and watched until he was safely inside with the lights on.

  Did you lock the door?

  Yes.

  Back door?

  Yep. Windows, too. Thank you.

  Get some rest. And please, be careful. I care.

  I care about you, too.

  Vic stared at his phone, surprised how hard that last text from Simon made his heart beat. How the hell did he fall in love with a ghost whisperer? And why was he afraid that the odds were fifty-fifty whether Simon would get arrested or killed before Vic could figure out how to stop the Slitter from striking again?

  15

  Simon

  Simon leaned against the door and heard Vic’s motorcycle roar away. He slid down and sat on the floor, too shaken to stand. He hadn’t told Vic the whole truth about the vision, because he feared that either Vic wouldn’t believe him, or would take it so seriously he’d put Simon in custody for his own safety.

  Simon had seen himself die.

  He had been in a room that appeared to be under construction, like the gutted floor of a high rise, and another man was there, wearing a surgical mask so his face couldn’t be seen except for his eyes. In the vision, Simon had been restrained, or perhaps too injured to fight back, because there had been so much blood. The man—the Slitter—had raised a dagger, eyes glinting in triumph, and brought it down with all his strength, driving the blade into Simon’s heart.

  Just thinking about what he had seen made Simon’s heart pound and his mouth go dry. He tried to tell himself that premonitions showed what could be, not necessarily what would be. The future was always in flux, changed by every choice, every action. He told himself that while some of his visions showed what had already happened, he obviously wasn’t dead yet, and so there was still time to change the future.

  Or maybe, to shift the manner of his death. If he foresaw something fated to happen, then Simon vowed to go down swinging, not as the Slitter’s hapless captive, but as the agent of the serial killer’s downfall. If he ended up in that room with the murderer, Simon swore that should one of them survive, it would be him; otherwise, neither he nor the Slitter was going to leave alive.

  Something about the room he’d glimpsed in the vision niggled at the back of his brain, a memory he couldn’t place, familiar and yet not. The harder he tried to identify the location, the more the connection eluded him. With a sigh, he pushed off the floor and stumbled to the kitchen. Simon poured himself a few fingers’ worth of whiskey and dropped into one of the kitchen chairs, head in his hands, carding his fingers through his hair as he thought.

  Vic had been so good with him back at the shop. He’d been trying to believe and had managed to keep his skepticism at bay. From Vic’s reaction to some of what Simon relayed, he felt sure that the information had been on point, details the police had not released.

  That might prove Simon’s gift. Or, more likely, it pointed suspicion right at him. Vic had begged him not to tell anyone about the messages, and Simon knew that while his lover was worried for Simon’s safety, he was also afraid for his badge.

  Could they make this attraction between them work? Would Simon always be a liability to Vic’s career, a cause for ridicule among his peers even if Vic did come to believe whole-heartedly? Sometimes, Vic’s hesitation reminded Simon too much of Jacen. Attraction alone couldn’t overcome a lack of faith.

  As much as Simon wanted to find a way for them to be together long term, he didn’t know how much Vic was willing to risk. Simon already knew he loved Vic, and what he wanted wasn’t a whirlwind secret affair. If they did this, Simon wanted a shot at forever. And although he knew Vic cared about him, Simon still wasn’t convinced that Vic felt as deeply for him, certainly not to the point of risking his job.

  Simon could see
how much being a cop mattered to Vic, how much pride he felt in his work, the satisfaction of carrying out a family tradition. There were plenty of guys Vic could date who wouldn’t cost him his badge, who wouldn’t threaten his credibility or make him a laughingstock to his colleagues. Vic deserved someone he could be proud of, not someone he had to make excuses for and constantly defend to his friends. And while it warmed Simon’s heart that Vic would stand up for him, he knew that would get old fast and be a constant strain that would eventually tear them apart.

  Then again, if Simon died confronting the Slitter, he really didn’t have a future to worry about.

  Simon sipped the whiskey, restraining himself from knocking it back to ease the pain and fear that shuddered through him. He refused to accept the vision as a death omen, telling himself it was merely a warning, foreshadowing one of many possibilities. Regardless of what the future held, he had work to do.

  His phone buzzed, and Simon glanced down, hoping it was Vic. Instead, the caller was Marcus. He’d given his number to Marcus months ago when he had first learned that the young man had some talent, but Marcus had never called him. This couldn’t be good. “Hello?”

  “Simon? Man, I’m freaked out. I need to know what to do.”

  “Talk to me. What happened?” Simon asked, sitting up and alert.

  “This guy started coming into the gym. Gave me really bad vibes, you know? Never did anything or said anything out of line, but he made my skin crawl. I’ve been around a lot of people, but nothin’ like him, and I’ve known some real scum.”

  “White guy, baseball cap, aviator sunglasses, maybe about five-ten or so, fit but not muscle-bound?” Simon asked.

  “Yeah. You know him?”

  “Listen to me carefully, Marcus. That’s the Slitter. You need to get out of town right now. Are you home?”

  “Yeah, I came straight here when my shift ended. I couldn’t shake the feeling I was being watched.”

  Simon cringed. “Do you have any religions medallions—St. Jude, St. Christopher, crosses, crucifix, Star of David—anything?”