Other Half (PsyCop book 12)

by Jordan Castillo Price

  So when he gave my left hand a long-suffering look and said, “Oh, Vic…” I realized I’d really screwed up. “What did you do?”

  I glanced down at the hand in question…and immediately regretted the self-tanner.

  Crash, of course, felt compelled to weigh in. “Fuckin-A, his knuckles are even darker than yours. Is that sunless tanner or a skin disease?” Due to my arm marinating in a plaster cast all those weeks…a little bit of both. “Did neither of you notice your hand was turning fifty shades of brown?”

  To be fair, we were both phenomenally distracted. “Now what am I supposed to do? Everyone will be looking at it tomorrow.”

  Crash shook his head. “Get a load of those blotches—it’s like a Rorschach test. Did you exfoliate before you put it on?”

  I’d never exfoliated in my life. “Can you help me or not?”

  Red said, “Don’t worry, Vic. We got you.”

  Crash scrutinized my sorry hand. “A tanning remover would be your best bet—but I can’t even recall the last big drugstore I saw.” He cast a critical eye over the barbecue. “But maybe your dead skin cells can work to your advantage. We just so happen to have something in our bag of tricks that combines citric acid with a sugar scrub.”

  Realization dawned on Red. “The lemonade mix. There should be plenty left.”

  “Come on, goofus,” Crash said to me. “Let’s go fix your hand.”

  Crash snagged a plastic tub of drink mix from the picnic table and herded me off toward the toilets. It was the perfect setup for a lewd comment. Glory holes, wide stance—the possibilities were endless. But as he hauled me over to the sink and shoved my hand under the tap, he was uncharacteristically non-antagonistic….

  Until he met my eyes in the mirror, cracked a naughty grin, and said, “This is gonna sting.”

  He dumped the lemonade crystals on my hand and the powder immediately brought to attention my every last ragged cuticle. I steeled myself and said, “It’s fine.” Though my eyes might’ve been watering.

  Crash pulled a travel toothbrush from his pocket, angled my hand toward the light, and began to scrub. I winced, but only on the inside. He said, “Let’s face it. The greatest rewards in life always involve a little pain.”

  His tone implied he was referring to the bedroom, but that was just a defense mechanism. Crash and I didn’t do mushy. “You probably think this whole church wedding is ridiculous.”

  He scoffed and scrubbed even harder. “I swear, sometimes it’s like you don’t even know me at all. Of course I don’t think it’s ridiculous—I think it’s brave.”

  “Really? In what way?”

  “Well, let’s face it. The second you and Jacob bought a place together—especially one as pricy and unsaleable as the cannery—it was obvious the two of you were in it for the long haul. The deal was sealed. And yet, you’re voluntarily taking another oath. Not only in front of your whole social circle, but church and state. I wouldn’t do it—but that’s just my inner anarchist.”

  Time was, I would’ve also figured myself for an anarchist. But that was at least a lifetime ago. “Last February, during my big undercover gig…wearing a wedding band for a month without being able to come home to Jacob? It really did a number on my head.”

  “Yeah, I figured there was some sort of catalyst. Makes sense. I wouldn’t have necessarily pegged you for the marrying type—but Jacob? You’d think he’d be in his glory. Not stressed out and fuming.”

  I cringed as the lemonade lit up a tiny scrape on my knuckle. “Maybe he is in his so-called glory and you just can’t feel it. And that’s not some nasty dig about your abilities either, since we both know he’s a True Stiff.”

  “Even so—I’m well-versed in his facial expressions and body language. And I can tell when his emotions are locked up tighter than a folder of porn on the family computer.”

  Knowing full well he could read my emotions like a big, anxious billboard, I simply said, “Things have been a lot more stressful than we’d bargained for.”

  “Other than saving you from the world’s most ridiculous tanning fail…anything I can do to help?”

  I trusted Crash one hundred percent—but we were swimming in the deep end of the psychic pool now, and as valuable as his feedback might be, it was just too dangerous to keep pulling him in. “You’ve already done plenty.”

  I wouldn’t go so far as to say my hand looked good when Crash was done with it, though it did look about ninety percent better. He assured me a once-over with a concealer stick would get the rest of the job done, though I’d need to refrain from buffing my knuckles on my wedding suit or I’d have more problems than a self-tan gone wrong.

  We emerged from the toilets to a party in full swing. The first hot dogs were coming off the grill—they smelled incredible—and a cluster had formed around the taco bar. The evening was blessedly stripper-free…though the “cornhole” beanbag toss went cutthroat, fast. It was clear that practice made perfect, as all three generations of the Marks family blew everyone else out of the water. As for me, I was content to stuff myself with watermelon, catch up with Maurice, and watch the fireflies come out.

  We were among the last to leave. Although we had a big day lined up tomorrow, I would have happily stayed up well past my bedtime. Even Jacob was more content than I’d seen him since that damn notebook came into our lives. Probably endorphins. I think he may have even allowed himself a brownie.

  I drifted off on the way home, and snuffled awake in his parents’ driveway when Jacob gave my lemonade-scented hand a gentle squeeze. “It was a good night,” he said simply.

  And I had to agree.

  It didn’t really register that it was way too late for all the downstairs lights to be on until we walked through the front door.

  Jerry was on the land line looking grim while Shirley hovered at his side. When we came in, they both looked up as Jerry finished up the conversation with a vague, “Okay. Uh-huh. Thank you.” He hung up the phone and stood there with his hand on the receiver, gathering his thoughts. A moment later, he took a deep breath, then turned to us and said, “That was the nursing home, Jacob. Your grandmother just passed away.”

  34

  EVERYONE PROCESSES GRIEF in their own way. Granted, not everyone would announce, “I’m going for a drive,” at midnight like Jacob did…but since his folks were grappling with their own feelings, they didn’t seem too surprised.

  “Are you okay?” Shirley asked. “Do you want me to come with you?”

  “Stay here with dad,” Jacob said, and swept out the door before she could suggest they both come along.

  In the car, he said, “Where would her spirit be? The nursing home?”

  “Maybe,” I said, but the part I didn’t say was, if it’s still in this plane at all. Etheric bodies are the stuff of ghosts, and everyone’s got one. But while it might seem like everywhere I go I’m tripping over a wayward etheric form, the vast majority of folks find the veil within moments of their passing.

  Hopefully, the notorious Marks family stubbornness would work to our advantage.

  The streets were empty, and Jacob blew through all the stop signs and both traffic lights. We squealed up to the nursing home in ten minutes flat, and I power-loaded white light all the way there. But my salt was gone, scattered in a doorway back at Sacred Heart, and I wasn’t eager to find out that Jacob’s grandmother wanted to get under my skin.

  There were automatic glass double-doors at the front of the building that normally whisked open at our approach, but tonight they didn’t budge. Jacob pounded with the flat of his palm until a rumpled security guard came out to see what all the fuss was about.

  “Can I help you?” he called through the glass.

  “I need to see my grandmother.”

  “Visiting hours start at eight—come back in the morning.”

  “I need to see her now.”

  A night nurse in cheerful flowered scrubs came and peeked around the corner, then hurried over to joi
n the guard. “Are you here about Mrs. Marks?”

  “I’m her grandson. Has the funeral director come yet?”

  “He’ll be here in the morning.” The nurse made a sympathetic face. “I’m real sorry for your loss.”

  “I’ve got to see her one last time. I live out of town and I won’t make it to the funeral. Please. I…just need to say goodbye.”

  In Chicago, this little ploy would never work. Night watchmen are too hardened by their exposure to the type of dirtbag who’d weasel his way in with a sob story, whip out a knife, and make off with all the narcotics. But here, in this little hamlet of small-town decency?

  The employees exchanged a look. The guard clicked open the lock, and the nurse told Jacob, “I’m not supposed to…but we can give you a few minutes.”

  The nursing home felt different at midnight—just as deserted as the streets. Maybe that was a good thing. The fact that it had the potential to be swarming with non-physical entities hadn’t really registered until I was halfway to the body.

  People don’t die neatly. The fact that Jacob’s grandmother was lying on her back with her hands folded atop the blanket attested to the fact that someone had already done a cleanup job—that, and the fact that the room smelled of antiseptic air freshener and not bodily fluids.

  “Is she here?” Jacob whispered.

  I doubled down on my white light and triple-checked all the shadows. “I don’t think so.”

  Jacob shook his head in disgust. “I didn’t think I felt the pull of the veil, but I was hoping my perceptions were skewed by my own emotions. They literally just called my parents—”

  “Maybe so. But judging by the level of housekeeping that took place here, it looks like they weren’t in a big rush to deliver the news.”

  “Do you think they were covering something up?”

  His grandmother’s eyeglasses were neatly folded on the pillow beside her so the funeral director didn’t forget them. That didn’t smack of a cover-up. Just a bunch of hospice workers who saw so much death, they no longer shared the level of dread and anxiety harbored by the rest of the population. “Looks to me like they were just doing their job.”

  “So she’s gone. And that’s that.”

  “I…don’t see her.”

  Desperately, he grit out, “Try harder.”

  It’s one thing to fail at something you don’t know how to do—no one expects you to play the piano by sheer force of will if you’ve never once touched a keyboard. But I’d had years of practice with this particular instrument, so it galled me that the second we needed it most, all my efforts were met with a resounding silence. With his grandmother crossed over, I was as powerless to talk to her as everybody else.

  But was that really true? I’d bet Darla would be able to make contact. So why couldn’t I?

  Maybe, in the end, Darla was just the higher-level medium. On paper, she was officially considered a strong level four, almost as high as me. This was a major upgrade for her too, since she’d struggled her whole life to be taken seriously, while I’d come by my five seriously downplaying my ability.

  But maybe her level was as underestimated as mine, given how useless my talent currently felt. Not only were we in the location of his grandmother’s death, but we were in proximity of the body. I pulled down white light until my head hurt…fat lot of good it did me. “Jacob, if there were anything to pick up on here—I would. But there’s nothing. She’s gone.”

  “Why am I not surprised she’d take her secrets to the grave?”

  “Don’t…bury…me….”

  A chill danced over the back of my neck as the words registered, faint and far away, and suddenly all the white light I’d been pounding had a bead on where to focus. I swung around to face the room’s entrance, and spotted motion down toward the floor. With focus came recognition, and a jumble of abstract flickers resolved themselves into the semblance of Jacob’s grandmother, bisected by the bathroom door.

  “Vic?” Jacob asked cautiously.

  “She’s still here.”

  The ghost on the floor crawled forward, maybe an inch, struggling in death as much as it might in life. Half pathetic old woman, half Japanese horror flick…as if she wasn’t scary enough before she died. And then we locked eyes.

  I’d been full of white light to start with, but now another volley poured in. A spike of pain lanced through my head and I swayed on my feet. It wasn’t an entirely rational fear—obviously, she was in no state to possess me. But unlike the hospice workers, I’d never developed a comfortable relationship with death.

  Probably because I could see what happened when the exit strategy got botched.

  “Please,” Jacob’s grandmother forced out as she struggled on the floor. “I’m begging you. I need to be cremated.”

  “You’re white as a sheet,” Jacob said.

  I opened my mouth…closed it again.

  “She’s talking to you, isn’t she?” Jacob scanned the room, searching as if he was listening with his whole body. He could see where I was looking, which guided his awareness just as surely as my directions in the blindfolded obstacle course. “Is she lucid?

  “Promise me,” she begged. “They’ll desecrate my body.”

  “Who will?”

  “The doctors. The government. They can’t be trusted—none of them can!” How bad is it when something that should sound like a paranoid delusion rings absolutely true? “When my husband died, the vultures came for his body—tried to talk me into donating it to science. I had him cremated after the viewing so they’d never get their hands on him. And now they’ll come for me.”

  “Ask her why she chose Uncle Fred over my father,” Jacob demanded.

  “I didn’t! God forgive me, I loved Jerry best.”

  “Hold your horses,” I told Jacob, then asked his grandmother, “Didn’t you send Fred off to college to put distance between him and Kamal?”

  “Where do you think we got the money for his tuition? My husband was a good man. A hard worker. But he was gullible, and he bought into all of Dr. Kamal’s promises.”

  “Like what?”

  “That he was doing the patriotic thing.”

  “In what way?”

  “To help the war effort. A bunch of us tested—why not, they paid us each five dollars, too—but not everyone got in. My brother joined. I joined. My steady boyfriend joined. We thought we were doing what was right. It was nothing but a bunch of silly tests…until they started dictating how we should marry off our children. Do you know who else did that? The Nazis, that’s who.” She clawed her way forward another few inches. “I wanted to be done with it, but my husband insisted one of the boys stay. I gave them Fred so I could save Jerry…who went and married that Shirley Larson anyway! After all I did to keep him out of the experiments, he sealed his own fate by marrying her!”

  “If you wanted out so bad, why the carnival? Why Sacred Heart?”

  “All I could do was stick to my grandchildren and protect them as best I could. There was no way those people would let the third generation alone, not with both parents in the program.”

  “What is she saying?” Jacob snapped.

  “Hold on,” I insisted, then asked his grandmother, “Third generation what?”

  “Psychics!”

  Jacob’s patience was wearing thin. “Vic—what is she saying?”

  Damn it. “Psychic what?”

  “Please,” she begged, “don’t let them take my body.”

  Half a conversation was so much worse than none at all. Jacob stopped just short of grabbing me—but he was so worked up, I wouldn’t have put it past him. I huffed out a frustrated sigh and waved him off. “I don’t think she knows. And…she’s really suffering.”

  Jacob flinched. “Can she hear me?” he asked. I nodded. His focus went wide, like he was seeing something off in the distance—and his voice was soft when he said, “Grandma? You didn’t make it easy for any of us to love you…but I do anyway.”

  So
mething inside me unclenched. Not the part holding the white light, but the part that wasn’t a hundred percent certain Jacob was above torturing his own grandmother to get what he wanted.

  His grandmother’s anguished face relaxed into a smile, albeit one that was mostly regret. And as it did, a faint shimmer appeared on the opposite wall just a few feet from where she lay.

  “The veil,” I murmured…but Jacob already had eyes on it. Whether it was his love—his forgiveness—that gave his grandmother the strength to rally, or whether he was actually doing something non-physical with that elusive talent of his, I couldn’t say. But one moment the veil was just a vague disturbance bending the light, and the next it was a blinding glow that flared white hot, and was gone…along with the ghost of his grandmother.

  35

  IF I HAD any ideas of how my wedding day might go, they all flew out the window when Jacob’s grandmother died. The family was subdued, Barbara’s eyes were red from crying, and Jerry had a really hard time wrapping his head around the whole cremation thing. We’d decided to fudge the truth and say Grandma had confided in us while she was alive. The family might be keen on my abilities, but even the most ardent psychic groupie cools their jets when my talent hits too close to home. Psychic groupies or not, Jacob’s folks would be unsettled by any postmortem announcements. I’d worked hard to be comfortable among them. I didn’t want to screw it all up by being honest.

  We were due at the Lutheran church for our wedding before the funeral arrangements were finalized. And while part of me thought that if the old woman was so afraid of landing on the dissection table, she should have made the proper arrangements herself, I had nothing in place either…and maybe I should. So who was I to cast stones?

  The church had a couple of separate rooms set aside for the bride and groom to ready themselves for their big walk down the aisle. Judging by the pint-sized seating, mine doubled as a cry room for kids too rambunctious for service, but it gave Crash somewhere to make up for the manicure reschedule that I missed and mash my hair into place. I always suspect he pulls it harder than he technically needs to…but I can’t argue with the results.