Other Half (PsyCop book 12)

by Jordan Castillo Price

  2

  SINCE THAT DAMN notebook came into our lives, Jacob had been running himself ragged trying to prove his parents were as unaware of how they’d ended up in its pages as he was. While I was definitely eager for him to get to the bottom of things, I was also afraid of what he’d find once he got there. If that discovery came through my filter, though, at least I’d have a chance to put a spin on it that would leave the majority of his childhood intact.

  In other words, I had to do something.

  Kamal was out there, and he owed us some answers. Unfortunately, Kamal was no longer on the same physical plane. And since we drove him to the other side, I had no way of extracting an explanation from him—not in my current state of mediumship, anyhow. But my old crony Dead Darla could talk to ghosts long-distance, so I knew it was possible. I just had to get myself super-pumped on white light, then figure out how to do it.

  The problem was powering up, since there was only so far imagining white light could get me. Luckily for me, I could give umpteen reasons why I wanted my employers to help power-charge my mojo…the existence of parasitic “etheric entities” being one that I didn’t even have to lie about.

  My office at the Chicago regional FPMP headquarters was a lot nicer than I probably deserved. Big, too. That must’ve been my assistant Carl’s doing. Back when he worked with Richie, he’d needed a space large enough to keep from strangling the guy. I used to think all that elbow room was a little excessive. But now, in the weeks since the big blowout at The Clinic, we’d rearranged things to accommodate our latest attempt to get a handle on mediumship, and I was thankful for the square footage.

  The building was an old industrial cube of brick just west of the Loop, overlooking the rail yard. The interior was exposed ductwork and high ceilings. My office had white walls, gray berber carpet, and a radiator that gave off the occasional startling clang. There were three desks—Carl’s, Darla’s and mine—though we could have made do with only two. Not because Darla popped in from Indianapolis only every couple of weeks or so, but because I hardly ever used my computer. I found it a lot less mind-numbing to scroll through all the tedious reports my job entailed on my phone.

  The desks were all pushed against the walls, and the center of the room, all the way over to the windows, was empty.

  Because that’s where the yoga happened.

  Everyone knows natural solutions leave something to be desired. But what choice did I have? It was Russian roulette to swallow pharmaceutical psyactives, and F-Pimp National made off with my TV set.

  And I did yoga myself into a pretty badass state of mediumship one time. Only that once, mind you. But it did happen.

  Not only had the FPMP brought a dedicated yoga teacher onboard, but they hired the specific one whose poses sent me into a superconscious state, which is what the F-Pimp scientists call it when my ghost-vision spikes. Bethany Roberts had jumped at the chance to quit Jacob’s gym for a gig at the FPMP. Not because she was particularly eager to advance the field of Psych, and not because she wanted to explore her own abilities…but because the FPMP offered pretty solid health insurance.

  Bethany Roberts was also a “Light Worker.” And on her, the new-fangled terminology didn’t feel quite so lame. As far as we could tell, she had no more sensitivity to repeaters than your typical non-psychic NP. But she could occasionally achieve and remember some pretty detailed astral projections.

  I’d had a glimpse of her by the glow of the GhosTV back when she’d made the unfortunate decision to try Kick, right before the feds at The Clinic hauled the damn thing away. She’d sure as hell looked like a medium to me. And my own limited experience with the astral plane confirmed that projection was something in a medium’s arsenal of tricks. Our practice wasn’t geared toward trying to make me project—though I wouldn’t complain if that happened, since it might give me some kind of edge. But I hadn’t gone astral lately, not even once. And we’d been doing yoga three, four times a week since The Clinic imploded. So far, all I had to show for it was relief from my persistent, nagging sciatica.

  Bethany showed up for yoga at eleven o’clock on the dot—she’s the poster child for precision—with her scientist sidekick in tow. I’d found these tag-alongs from the lab intimidating, at first. Just goes to show how a person can become inured to just about anything, given enough exposure.

  Bethany was a tall woman around my age, with long, dark hair, a Mediterranean complexion, piercing dark eyes, and intimidating posture. She takes her yoga very seriously. In fact, she doesn’t even gloat that she gets to come to work in stretch pants while the rest of us are in suits.

  Since so many different types of certified Psychs worked at the FPMP, there was a big pool of subjects to use in their study of the effects of yoga. The NPs weren’t left out, either, since it wouldn’t be an experiment without a control subject to use for a baseline.

  I draped my jacket over the back of my chair, took off my tie, ditched my shoes and socks, and unbuttoned my shirt’s top two buttons. The lab tech handed me a bundle of electrodes and I proceeded to stick them where they needed to be stuck. Not only was I less likely to trigger a panic attack and sweat them off if I put them on myself, but we’d done this routine so many times now, I had a good feel for exactly where each one was supposed to go.

  Carl and Bethany got wired up, too, and we unrolled our yoga mats and assumed the position.

  Bethany stood quietly for a few moments, eyes closed, centering—then said, “Today, we’ll focus on Manipura, the third chakra. Let’s begin.”

  I spread my feet, extended my arms, and settled into warrior one. The lab was having Bethany alter one variable at a time to try and determine what exactly had triggered my power-up back at the gym. Postures. Breathing. Chakra focus. So far, we hadn’t figured much out, even when we reconstructed the specific routine that was so helpful before—or portions of it, anyhow. Thanks to my dumb injury, the postures I could do were limited to things that didn’t require the support of my forearm or hand. But part of me was starting to worry that we weren’t seeing any progress because yoga simply wasn’t the natural psyactive I’d hoped it would be, and that whatever brought on my superconscious state back at the gym was a result of some other combination of triggers…or just dumb luck.

  Bethany scrutinized my position, then nudged me into a more accurate semblance of the pose. She seldom did this with Carl. Not because he was NP—after all, we could very well hit the yoga jackpot and discover he was secretly a telekinetic all this time, and the reason he hated people pawing through his belongings was that he could feel the residue of their touch. But I strongly doubted it. I’ve only been on a first-name basis with one TK in the course of my life. And between Camp Hell, the PsyCop program and F-Pimp, I’ve met a lot of Psychs.

  No, Carl was just way better at yoga.

  Bethany went back to her mat, stretched into a perfect warrior one, then flowed into warrior two. As Carl and I mirrored her, she said, “Focus on your spine, above the navel, below the ribcage. Imagine a field of energy there, tucked behind the solar plexus against the front of the spine. Vic? It’s just potential energy. Nothing is spinning. Not in any direction.”

  This was the thing about personalized yoga lessons. A hyper-observant teacher like Bethany gets to know your which-way-is-clockwise face.

  “Imagine the energy as a beautiful sphere. A warm, rich yellow. And visualize the image of a lotus within.”

  Did most guys know what a lotus looked like, or was it one of those things women were great at and men just nodded along and hoped to change the subject before they revealed that they had absolutely zero clue? The cannery had decorative brick along the roofline that was supposed to be a lotus pattern—Egyptian Revival, and a weird attempt at it, to boot—but they were incredibly stylized. Still, I’m visual to a fault. When Bethany said the words lotus and sphere, the image of a big, round marble—the size of my fist, with a fake lotus in the center—popped into my head. Belatedly, I mentally painte
d the thing yellow.

  “Vic? Did you have a question?”

  It always felt funny to speak up during F-pimp yoga. But Bethany was big on “dialog.” And our boss was really keen on her helping me figure my shit out. “Isn’t this the digestive chakra?”

  “That’s right—Manipura is associated with metabolism and digestion.”

  “Great. But we didn’t really touch on it that one time—”

  “You’re leaning forward,” she said calmly. I straightened myself. “As you well know, chakras are merely a way to understand an abstract concept. Yes, digestion is one of the third-chakra functions, but Manipura is also the seat of dynamism. It represents your personal power. Isn’t that exactly what you’re hoping to activate?”

  Well…when she put it that way.

  “Can you picture the yellow sphere?”

  “I guess.”

  “Breathe in.”

  Bethany was big into breathing, and she acted as if the majority of people were doing it wrong. But if I could forego the dangerous horse-pills and shove my psychic ability into another bracket by breathing in a certain way? I was all for it. I dutifully forced air in and out of my lungs according to her direction as we flowed through a few more poses. And when Bethany murmured, “Good,” I felt a ridiculous sense of accomplishment. Because she wasn’t effusive with her praise…and I really dug the thought of being good at something other than seeing ghosts.

  Once our session drew to a close and the woman in the lab coat peeled the electrodes from my temples, Bethany said, “Have you spoken to Jack lately?”

  I always had to do some mental gymnastics to figure out who we were talking about whenever someone called Jack Bly by his first name, even though he’d been my fake husband for a month. “Monday’s staff meeting. Why?”

  “Our focus on the Manipura reminded me of his digestive issues. I think he’d benefit from a session like this.”

  “Yeah…that thing I told you about him having irritable bowel syndrome was just a part of our undercover identities.”

  “It was?”

  “His bowels are fine.”

  “Oh. Well. Good. That’s good to hear. Very…good. Anyway. Remember to check in with your breath periodically, and I’ll see you Friday.”

  “Will do.”

  Bethany and her scientist left Carl and me to roll up our mats and stow them in the cabinet with our exorcism gear. I shrugged into my jacket and was adjusting my necktie when I realized Carl was giving me a look—and quiet guys like him can say a heck of a lot without uttering a word.

  “What?” I said.

  The look intensified.

  “Spit it out, Carl. What did I do now?”

  “She’s looking for a reason to talk to Agent Bly. Would it kill you to make that happen?”

  “Wait, what? How did you get that from…?” Scratch that. I knew where he got it. Carl was excellent at reading people. Mostly, he’d trained to figure out who was carrying a hidden firearm or a suicide bomb. But he was also ten steps ahead of me in any given social situation.

  I grabbed my phone, scowled it open, and said, “Tell Bly, The yoga lady’s hot for you.”

  “Sending.”

  Carl shook his head.

  “What? We shared a freaking bed. I don’t need to waste mental energy trying to be diplomatic.”

  “Sending,” the phone repeated as it helpfully appended that last statement to the message.

  The reply, WTF? appeared beneath the inadvertent second half of my message. I sent him a thumbs-up, then navigated away from the messaging app.

  Mission accomplished.

  3

  WHILE MY BACK might have felt fantastic, my mood definitely did not. I’d come home from work prepared for a night of picking through old rolodexes and yearbooks, both hoping I’d find something, worrying I wouldn’t…and dreading that if I did, I’d regret it. But when I walked in the door, Jacob called out from the kitchen, “Zoom meeting with Pastor Jill in fifteen.” Oh, right. The wedding. “Soup’s on the stove if you’re hungry.”

  “Remind me again what your priest wants.”

  “Not a priest—that’s Catholic. Pastor Jill is a Lutheran Minister.”

  “And that’s different how?”

  “She’s a woman, for one. And she’s happy to marry us in church, for another.”

  “You’re just gonna overlook the obvious dig about groping altar boys?”

  Jacob ignored my sorry attempt at humor.

  I said, “Isn’t Christianity all basically the same?”

  “I have no idea—what I know about Catholicism doesn’t amount to much. My father converted when my parents tied the knot, and according to him, he never looked back. When my sister and I had sleepovers at my grandparents’ place, Grandma would drag us to mass…to my mother’s great annoyance. Barbara and I were intrigued by all the statuary and stained glass. It felt mysterious. Taboo.”

  “So you’re sure there was no altar boy type action?”

  Jacob gave me an exasperated look.

  Satisfied I’d finally landed my awful joke, I dropped an ice cube into my soup so I could pound it without cooking my own esophagus, then dragged a dining room chair upstairs so we could video chat with the pastor side by side. I hadn’t exactly been thrilled to find out our church wedding involved actually meeting with the pastor—frankly, I would’ve preferred to write a check and call it good. But apparently, this was how things were done.

  Jacob pulled up the app to make sure the audio was working while I futzed around with my chair and fantasized about pretending I didn’t fit in the video frame. Unfortunately, it was a small office. And I could tell by the little picture-in-picture image up at the corner of the screen that no matter which way I leaned, the pastor would be able to see me just fine.

  “I’m a little nervous,” I admitted.

  “We’re not undercover. Just answer her questions as yourself.”

  I considered this advice. “Yeah. Not any easier.”

  Jacob had been gearing up for go-time—I could tell by the set of his shoulders and the laser focus of his dark eyes. But something in my small admission worked its way through his armor, and he turned to me and touched my cheek just as the computer started bleeping the pastor’s imminent arrival. “You’ll be great,” he said softly. And then his game-face was back.

  I’m not sure exactly what I expected the pastor of Jacob’s church to look like. Chicago is predominately Catholic, and what little experience I do have of church is steeped in ceremony, prayer candles, and elaborate stained glass. But the churches where Jacob grew up were mostly Lutheran. And to an outsider like me, the Lutherans seemed somewhat more approachable.

  A generic person-silhouette popped up. Something circled a few times in the middle of the screen and then resolved into Pastor Jill, a sturdy woman in her mid-fifties with short, no-nonsense salt-and-pepper hair. Caucasian—though that was practically a given, since nine out of ten people in Jacob’s hometown are white. The type of middle-aged Midwestern woman you’d encounter at a hardware store, or maybe a tractor pull.

  “Good to see you again, Jacob.” Her voice was really assertive. She would’ve made a good cop. “And to meet your future husband.”

  “Hi.” I gave a stilted wave. Ugh.

  “I was so glad to hear the two of you chose to have your marriage blessed in the church. Church weddings are falling out of favor these days. Young couples think the venue is old-fashioned and predictable. They want to get married in the park, or at the beach, or hurtling down the hill of a giant roller coaster. But as a same-sex couple, you guys having your ceremony at church sends a positive message to the whole community: that you’re willing to stand up and declare your commitment. And that you have the same right to do so as any other couple.”

  Jacob agreed with her. “Absolutely. It’s important to us to set a good example.”

  Talk about laying it on thick.

  But Jacob is great at faking sincerity, and Pastor Jill
didn’t seem to notice. “I’m sending you a PDF of our pre-wedding guide that’s got a series of exercises for you to complete, and we’ll touch base to discuss any topics that come up. We can start with one of the exercises together to help you get a feel for them.”

  “No one said there was gonna be a quiz,” I said. Jokingly. More or less.

  “There are no right or wrong answers, guys. These exercises give you a chance to communicate about your important issues up front, with support and guidance.”

  Holy hell.

  I checked our picture to see what the heck my face was doing. It looked encouragingly neutral.

  “We’ll start with the pecuniary questions.” Pecuni-what? The pastor looked at us expectantly while I wondered if I should’ve spent my afternoon boning up on Christianity instead of doing yoga. The pause stretched awkwardly, and then she cracked a smile. “That’s another word for financial. It was on my word-of-the-day calendar. I was excited to get a chance to use it.”

  I quelled a sigh, settled into my chair, and resigned myself to another forty-five minutes of sheer awkwardness.

  Pastor Jill said, “Money can be a huge source of conflict in a relationship. It’s important to understand where your spouse is coming from in pecuniary matters.”

  I went for a grin. It looked more like a wince.

  The pastor said, “I’m sure it’s no surprise that money can be such a loaded topic. Money isn’t just about money. For instance, an issue that seems pecuniary on the surface might actually be about status. How much do you agree with the following statement: I compare myself to others financially.”

  “I don’t find income to be particularly relevant,” Jacob said.

  “Right,” I said.

  Pastor Jill waited for me to add something, and when I shrugged, she said, “Can you elaborate on that?”

  I racked my brain for an answer. “Income is something I only notice in a general sense. A person who’s strapped for cash will react differently than a person who’s flush, and my main point of comparison is myself. And a homicide with no financial motive could be a crime of passion, or a cover-up for something else—”