Jacob had to let go. Hell, neither of us should be touching that, juiced up or not.
I scrambled for something to throw, and my eyes fell on a neat row of glass apothecary jars—jars that had just been refilled with fresh roots and petals and stems after Erin’s trip to Chinatown.
You have flowers.
When I redirected some white light toward the botanicals, a jar of tiny brownish petals blazed bright. I grabbed the jar and dove into the storeroom. As I vaulted over a fallen IV stand with the jar tucked tight against my body, a few potential outcomes flashed through my head. One, the habit demons scatter and Kamal is jarred loose. That was probably the best-case scenario—despite the fact that those etheric tapeworms would all burrow right into me.
But judging by the sharp, stabbing pain in my head, the other (more likely) result would be that I accompanied Kamal across the veil personally…right as I stroked out.
I wasn’t ready to go. Not by a long shot—not with a wedding on the horizon and my permanent record mostly untapped.
No, I wasn’t eager to play escort…but better me than Jacob. “Let go on three,” I called out. “One…two….”
I yanked the top off the apothecary jar and heaved the contents in their direction. A cloud of tiny dried flower petals billowed out. When it touched Erin’s body, a kaleidoscope of habit demons erupted. A lot of them got sucked into the veil—unfortunately, not all. But the habit demons, scary as they might be, weren’t my biggest concern. They couldn’t reason. They couldn’t think. We could clean up the psychic jellyfish later.
Once we got rid of Dr. Kamal.
I charged forward and gave Erin a shove to the sternum, fully expecting my etheric body to ram straight through. But my dominant hand felt awkward and strange when I was focused on my subtle bodies, and all I managed to do was push her into the table. She smiled—just a fraction of a second after the old-man face shimmering on top of hers did—and whipped out another antique syringe from her pocket.
I backpedaled, a knee-jerk reaction to playing the lab rat, and tripped over the IV stand on the floor. My arms windmilled to stop me from wiping out completely, and I teetered there helplessly, right within his reach.
I lost the battle with gravity and toppled—or maybe it was Jacob shoving me out of the way. Our auras struck together like an etheric thunderclap, but he didn’t steal my energy this time. He was way more hopped up than me, and for once, he was the source and I was the vacuum. His energy hit me like a punch to the gut, so stunning I hardly felt myself hit the ground, and all I could think was, Holy hell, if I just stole his shield, I will never, ever forgive myself.
I tried to shove myself up from the ground but only floundered on my crushed hand. Though even if I hadn’t, no way would I have managed to stop Jacob. He was already in motion. Palm forward, he smacked Erin in the forehead like a faith healer. As he struck, the dim lights flickered. It wasn’t his physical body that collided with hers, I realized, as Erin’s physical shell did little more than rock on its feet.
But her subtle bodies?
An explosion of them blew right out the back of her. Most of them were hers—shadowy, half-seen forms that looked more or less like slight variations of her physical form. But one of them was a wrinkled old man.
The subtle bodies that belonged inside Erin sprang back into place.
Kamal’s didn’t.
“He’s there, behind her,” I called out. But Jacob already felt it. With both hands out, he gave a massive etheric shove. The lights flickered again like we were in a brownout.
Kamal’s ghost made a grab for Erin, but he was no more successful in latching back onto her than I was in getting to my feet. A pharmacy timer bleated, then fell silent. The electronic locks clicked like castanets. A bright worklamp flared to life beside me, dazzling my physical eyes. The bulb popped. I was locked onto Kamal too solidly to be deterred, though, and I gathered up my white light and willed him toward the veil for all I was worth.
My talent might have distracted him. But it was Jacob’s final push that drove him through the veil once and for all.
His expression was somewhere between horror and dismay as habit demons swarmed him…just as his wrinkled face was pulled across the veil.
In the room behind us, a random pop song burst through the bluetooth speaker for a few seconds, then crackled to a stop. Something left a buzzing noise behind, and the faint stink of charred electronics tickled my nose. Jacob staggered back, dazed.
Erin looked around frantically. “What’s going on?” Her face crumpled as tears forced their way out. “Ohmigod…it happened again.”
Now there’s something you never want to hear from a formerly possessed medium.
I grabbed a handful of dried flowers from the floor and tried to pitch them at the roiling habit demons—who were whirling around the room like a frog in a blender—but I couldn’t gain any meaningful velocity. “Jacob—can you feel them? The etheric…things?”
He shuddered. “They’re like nails on a chalkboard!”
Or guys folding paper and whispering about it on YouTube. “Quick, before the veil disappears—the more we can shove through, the better.” I commando-crawled to the door on my elbows and knees to try and stop them from getting away. The fact that they could go through walls, floors and ceilings wasn’t lost on me. I was a physical guy in a physical body, but I had to at least try.
Erin offered me a hand up and I took it—white light didn’t jump between mediums—and I focused until my headache throbbed in time with my swelling hand. The damage was physical, I reassured myself. I’d deal with it later. Right now, the etheric was all that mattered. And as I understood the distinction, something cold spread across the palm of my left hand.
Normally, ectoplasm freaked me out. But at the moment, it was actually kind of soothing.
My hand filled with fairy dust—and since it was nonphysical, that stuff went exactly where I tossed it. It was like corralling a bunch of panicked birds. Somehow, though—together—Jacob and I managed to coordinate our energies, to sweep the room and herd the majority of the little bastards through by the time the veil faded. Part of me felt chagrined that I’d been nowhere near as slick as I’d thought when I palmed the contact lens case. But the rest of me realized I might’ve just dodged a major bullet. The flock of habit demons was half merged with what was left of Kamal. I’d hate for a psyactive to loosen me up so they could get their hooks into me.
Erin was a smart lady, and she’d done exactly the right thing: backed away from the chaos and presented the smallest possible target. Sure, she was shaking like a leaf and riding the brink of hyperventilation…but she hadn’t fumbled into my path or disrupted our half-assed exorcism, so I counted that as a win.
“It’s okay,” I told her. “He’s gone.”
“Who’s he?” she asked. But any real explanation I could dredge up would make things worse.
“You’re safe. We’re all safe.”
She stared at me, the hollow-eyed stare of someone who’s seen too much—an unwitting casualty of Psych, like Zigler and his PTSD, like Jack Bly and his insomnia. She’d need help. From Darla. From me. Heck, maybe even from Faun Windsong, who’d at the very least make all the unseen shit around us seem a lot less horrifying than I would.
“Erin?” I asked, as gently as I could. “It’s over. Do you understand?” She didn’t speak. Didn’t even nod. “Are you with us? Say something.”
She raised a trembling hand, pointed at me, and said, “What’s that thing on your neck?”
I slapped at my throat and managed to slime myself. And then my hand throbbed hard. “What? Where?”
Erin gestured wildly. “A giant transparent flatworm wrapped around you like a scarf!”
Sonofabitch.
I scrabbled at it harder, which made a cascade of half-buried desires roar to life. The urge to swallow a painkiller. A Valium. An Auracel. But most of all…a Seconal. If I so much as suspected my old dealer was holding, I’d dr
op what I was doing, commandeer the squad car and drive there right this second. Hell, I might even do it just to prove to myself he wasn’t.
But before I could so much as turn toward the door, Jacob was on me—and when he went for my neck, it wasn’t to mark me up with love bites. Whatever had been tapping into me, it felt him coming a split second sooner than I did. And for that brief, shining moment, I realized that while I might be obstinate, in the end, time meant nothing to the parasite that was feeding off my addiction, and eventually it would outlast my stubbornness. As it recoiled from Jacob, its pull was so strong that I groped in my pocket for the nasty vitamin. Or some lint. Or even the contact lens case itself. Anything to quell the urge to stuff something in my gob and swallow it.
And then Jacob’s hands closed around something. Not my neck…but the thing around it.
I felt the tether tear free as a catch in my throat. My eyes teared up and I spluttered, coughed, and swallowed. If not for the GhosTV, maybe I wouldn’t have actually seen the entity. After all, Con Dreyfuss had been trailing around fingernail demons for ages and I’d been none the wiser. But we were still in range of the signal—lucky me—and when Jacob tore the squirming creature from around my neck, I saw it. The tether was long and wormy, topped by a fat, bloated head. Its tail whipped back and forth, searching for something to sink into and anchor it in the physical.
The crimson channels of power that threaded through Jacob’s being swelled as he did his True Stiff equivalent of sucking white light. Except, his energy didn’t beam down from the heavens—it drew up from the ground. I may be the poster boy for visual understanding, but I felt the power just as much as I saw it, rumbling up into him like a seismic tremor.
The psychic remora twisted and thrashed. Jacob gave a guttural roar…and tore the thing in two.
The etheric body collapsed in on itself and oozed through Jacob’s fingers as it fell to shreds. I searched for the glisten of ectoplasm on his hands, but there was none. Maybe, though, I caught the smallest glint of fairy dust as the red veins gently faded away.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Habit demons don’t come with histories attached, so it was anyone’s guess how long that goddamn parasite had been tickling the back of my throat. I didn’t think it was a long-term stowaway. Maybe it had been hovering around my dealer in that dive bar waiting to hitch a ride. Or maybe I picked it up when I saw Angelica in the treatment center. Either way, it was gone now. I probably should’ve felt relieved. But really, I was just phenomenally tired.
The demon might be gone, but I was still an addict. I’d always be an addict. One who wasn’t currently using, thank God. And one who could turn down a tasty pill, albeit with a pang of wistful longing.
I’d have to settle for that.
Zigler and Carolyn had been monitoring the live feed on the security cams, and they’d grabbed another squad car and hauled ass to The Clinic just as soon as things went south. They showed up as we were picking our way across the broken glass.
After I reassured everyone that we had things under control, I said, “How’d you manage to sweet talk your way past the goons upstairs?”
Zigler shook his head. “I didn’t. By the time we got here…they were gone.”
Which makes you wonder what exactly FPMP National was doing there to begin with. “What happened to your hand?” Carolyn demanded.
“Long story,” I said, but I changed my mind when I realized who I was talking to. “Actually, no, it’s not. It’s just fallout from a phenomenally shitty judgment call.”
If I was in rough shape, Jacob was even worse. His muscles were cramping up and he kept chafing sweat off his forehead. But neither of us was willing to be seen at The Clinic. Sure, there was a chance that a confused ghost would be wandering the halls of LaSalle General, but I’d prefer that to whatever habit demons were still lurking inside The Clinic’s acoustic drop ceiling.
Dr. Gillmore might come off as a hard-ass, but when she saw Jacob and me limping through the lobby together, she managed to slot us into adjoining emergency bays. “Good thing the two of you chose midday to beat yourselves up,” she said. “After sundown, you’d still be in the waiting room.”
Since I was waiting for a hand consult, it left me free to hover anxiously over Jacob while they hooked him up to an IV and tried to get his electrolytes straightened out. When Gillmore heard what he’d done, she made no effort to get me to go back to my own bed. “I’ve heard of couples who go for matching sweatshirts,” she said, “but the matching subconjunctival hemorrhage takes the cake.”
I couldn’t say for sure when Jacob popped his eyeball capillaries. At the time, I’d been seeing him as a big webwork of red veins. I’m guessing his struggle with the habit demon had something to do with it.
Gillmore squared herself up with Jacob and nailed him with her most piercing stare. “I’m well aware how easy it is for law enforcement to get their hands on whatever contraband they set their mind to—and, hell, Kick isn’t even technically illegal yet. But believe me when I tell you, the next time you take it could very well be your last.”
“I understand,” he said, though his tone was tinged with you’re not the boss of me.
At the other end of the ER, a controlled commotion burst through the door. As the paramedics rattled off the patient’s stats, I picked out “multiple GSW.” Maybe the city would chill out now that its requisite daily gunshot victim was out of the way.
“Don’t either of you go anywhere,” Gillmore said icily, and hurried off to check on someone way more critical than a couple of ex-PsyCops who’d just taken an etheric beating.
It had been tempting to harangue Jacob about switching out that pill while I was asleep, but Gillmore’s warning brought everything into a new and terrifying focus. “Jacob…that wasn’t your first rodeo. Maybe Kick’s got a grace period where people bounce back from the first time they take it. But, Jesus. You’ve taken other psyactives. What if it technically wasn’t your first time?”
He gave a bitter laugh. “Me? My psyactive consumption is nothing compared to yours.”
“I know my limits.”
“That’s bullshit.” He shoved himself up off the bed, snagged me by the lapel, and dragged me over him so we were face to face. “Think, Vic. Not only the drugs we got from Dreyfuss, but the ones Roger Burke laced your coffee with. That had to be Palazamine—just like in Kick. Not to mention Camp Hell—who knows what they pumped into you at Camp Hell? For all we know, whatever damage those things do, whatever physical pathways they alter, there’s no expiration date. Do you seriously think I’d stand by and watch while you took one for the team?”
“But, Jacob…if it’s ever a choice between me and you…it’s gotta be me.”
He knew exactly what I meant. If someone’s gotta go…. “Why would you say something like that?”
“You have a family.”
He balled my jacket in his fist. “Damn it, Vic, so do you. I am your family.”
We sized each other up with our bloody eyeballs, Jacob and me. Each of us aching to throttle the other. Both of us breathing raggedly, waterlogged with emotion. When our mouths crashed together, it was more in desperation than love. A realization that neither one of us was invincible.
And neither was expendable.
___
According to the hand guy, I was lucky I didn’t need surgery. Given that I’d have months of physical therapy in my future, lucky wasn’t exactly the word I’d use to describe myself. Plus, no modern removable brace for me. I’d be stuck in a hard plaster cast for the next three to six weeks, depending on how well I healed. The nurse cautioned me to duct tape a plastic bag around it when I showered. Fine. I could do that. But I wasn’t sure how it would hold up to ectoplasm christening it from the inside.
Jacob got a clean bill of health, though he wasn’t really sure what the social worker who came to talk to him made of the whole situation. He held onto the stack of drug addiction pamphlets only as far as the trash can b
eside the exit. The remark Gillmore made about us having access to things like Kick was true enough, but I wasn’t concerned that Jacob would be compelled to seek out his next dose. The way those habit demons bounced right off him, they’d never stood a chance.
We spent a while hunting for the Crown Vic before we realized it was still back at the Fifth. We found the squad car we’d ridden in on right where Zigler left it, though. And a woman huddled in her winter coat was leaning against the driver side door.
Erin Welch.
It was a relief to see she wasn’t behind bars. Lincolnwood PD had pulled up just as we made our grand exit, and it would only be a matter of time before they approached her with an arrest warrant. I’d need to have a serious chat with my boss to keep Erin out of the clink…and hope she didn’t end up in an undocumented cage at the FPMP instead. Hopefully Laura would be glad to have a newly discovered medium to train…once she got over her visceral fear and loathing of possession, anyhow.
Erin’s nose was red from the cold, or maybe she’d been crying. Her glasses sat a little funny. One of the arms, I saw, was held on with medical tape. She looked up at the two of us miserably and said, “They took your TV set.”
Ah. And now we knew the real reason FPMP National got involved.
“Gina thinks it’s her fault. She plugged it in. Those new guys checked that room half a dozen times and didn’t notice it—Gina had a bunch of fans sitting on top, so I guess it just looked like a table. But maybe ten, fifteen minutes after she plugged it in, while we were all in the pharmacy, they hauled it out the door and took off. She’s really sorry. She has no idea why she even did it.”
I’d wager a guess. And it would go something like, It’s supposed to be plugged in. I don’t know why.
Was I dismayed the goons from Washington made off with the GhosTV that Con Dreyfuss had left in my care? Probably, though the full ramifications would take a while to sink in. Mostly, I was insanely freaking relieved that, thanks to Gina, it had been broadcasting the etheric channel when it was, and the Feds hadn’t found it until we’d dealt with my stowaway. Otherwise, there’d still be a psychic parasite around my neck, and we’d all be none the wiser.
Bitter Pill Page 23
