Spook Squad (11 page)

“Is there anything in particular you need to see?” Dr. K asked. Jacob and Bly had dropped back a bit, and now that Dr. K was alone with me, he seemed more likely to chat. I wondered how I ever got anything done without Jacob to wrangle people for me. “I can’t give you the data…but I can show you around.”

“Well, just walk me through. I’ll, uh, know it if I see it.” I wasn’t sure how likely it would be to find ghosts in the lab, but when I thought about it too hard, Camp Hell memories of the marathon session with a dead woman’s wig made my throat flutter. Because how else do you put a medium through their paces in a laboratory setting, if not by torturing them with relics from the dearly departed?

Or maybe there’d been an accident, like some unfortunate science geek who’d blown themselves up, or gotten too close for comfort with an electrical current. Or maybe a test subject took some psyactives that disagreed with them. Or maybe the science team sacrificed people to create a spot that was likely to be haunted…although if they did, I presumed they labeled it properly.

What I found instead was a bored-looking guy with a couple of electrodes stuck to his temples staring at a houseplant. He was in a room with plexi walls, white plastic table and chairs, fluorescent lighting, and not much else. “Plant communicator?” I asked.

“We’ve never had one of those,” Dr. K said with amusement that seemed fairly genuine, answering my question in a kinda-sorta indirect way. “This isn’t about Phil—we already know his abilities and limits. But, that?” Dr. K gestured, and a good twenty yards away, behind a bank of bland-looking computers, I noted a cabinet of exposed electronics that included a TV tube with horizontal bars of static rolling past. A GhosTV, or at least the guts of one. I shuddered. “I take it you’ve seen something like it before—so I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.”

Although Dr. K knew exactly who I was, and exactly what I knew about GhosTVs, I had no plans of divulging my most valuable secrets to him within ten minutes of making his acquaintance. I answered with a noncommittal shrug.

“We’re determining if the equipment affects Phil’s performance.”

Given that I didn’t know which flavor of Psych this Phil guy was supposed to be, I wouldn’t know if a GhosTV would affect him or not. Besides, who’s to say the damn thing was tuned to the right channel, anyway? I glanced back over my shoulder to see if Jacob had burst out in his telltale red Psy-veins, but he and Bly had hung too far back for me to tell. At first they looked pretty embroiled in whatever conversation they were having, but then I realized it was a kind of macho standoff that neither of them was willing to back away from. If testosterone was amplified by a GhosTV, they would have been surrounded by a big, thick cloud of it.

I gestured toward the controls. “Can I get a closer look?”

“Go ahead—just don’t change the settings.”

I approached the GhosTV, with its wiring and circuitry all on display. Positioning my back so that it shielded the gesture from the scientist, I gave my hand a quick wave. My spread fingers left brief tracers. The TV was working, all right. I glanced back toward Jacob, but he and Bly had edged their conversation out into the hallway. Hopefully Jacob was finding out something worthwhile. I sure wasn’t. With a GhosTV playing the medium channel, any spirits in the vicinity would be lit up like spectral beacons for me. But there was nobody home except me, Dr. K, and Phil the plant guy.

I noted the settings. They looked like the same ones we’d used at PsyTrain to ramp up my talent. Although mediums did get extra juice from the broadcast, I wasn’t the only one affected. A lot of other Psychs who’d been straining to go astral finally crossed the threshold that day. But if plants had subtle bodies in the astral too, and if those subtle bodies could be manipulated, I had no idea.

I walked up to the plexi. It was like a two-way mirror, but without the telltale distortion. The guy inside the box ignored me, but he seemed to be doing it of his own free will. I stared at the plant. No tracers, then again, I only saw the evidence of subtle bodies when things were in motion. Since I didn’t want to taint the results by adding my energy to it, I didn’t linger. At least, I didn’t mean to. When I looked beyond the plant, I realized that Phil had a pulsing ray of light emanating from his solar plexus—and I couldn’t help but give that light beam some extra attention. It was aimed at the plant. Since I hadn’t seen anything like it at PsyTrain, it was possible I was viewing a real, live telekinetic in action. Or inaction, as the case may be, since he did look phenomenally disinterested.

“Let’s leave Phil to his task,” Dr. K said, and steered me away from the plexi with a solicitous hand on my upper arm. I flinched away from his touch. My discomfort over touching makes me easy to steer. We delved deeper into the lab, where there were other test subjects in other plexi rooms. A woman wrote things on slips of paper in one. A man sequenced a series of cards in another. None of the subjects appeared sleep-deprived or drugged. There were no gurneys or hospital gowns, no I.V. drips or restraints. Even so, I felt a panic attack with Camp Hell written all over it waiting to overtake me.

By the time we found ourselves among the big equipment storage, I was ready to leave. More label-maker excess here.
Centrifuge. Geiger counter. EKG. Defibrillator.
All the wires and electrodes were starting to freak me out. Shock treatment—did I know what it felt like, firsthand? Possibly. It seemed like one of those things I would block out. And now I’d wonder about it all night, maybe all week.

I’d seen enough. “I’m done.”

Dr. K paused in front of a door labeled
Cold Storage
and said, “You sure you don’t want to—?”

“I’m done,” I repeated.

Chapter 10

Now I saw how easy it was to get carried away and end up lingering at the FPMP well into the night. By the time I fled the lab, the fifth floor was locked down and Dreyfuss was gone—and with him, my payment. I climbed into my dented Ford Taurus and pulled out of the parking garage with Jacob right behind me. We were separated in traffic when I re-routed myself past the gin mill. I’d been trying to tell myself I was better off with Dreyfuss owing me something for a change, in this case a dose of Seconal for the day’s work, but that logic didn’t ring true. What I needed was my own stockpile, not promises and debts. I idled past, scanning both sides of the street. My dealer’s car was conspicuously absent. Figuring he was still stuck in the system—and doing my best to avoid wondering if it was Dreyfuss keeping him there—I swallowed past the itch in my throat and headed home.
 

I caught up to Jacob on the front stoop unlocking our door. The cannery was dark, and Lisa’s car was gone. We were alone. Sort of. If you didn’t count whatever surveillance was pointed in our direction. So much to talk about, and no privacy to do it in. We stepped into the foyer, and he flipped me around and mashed me against the wall before I could even hang up my overcoat.
 

“I thought we’d never get out of there,” he said against the side of my neck.

Maybe he was trying to convey factual information disguised as sweet talk. Or maybe he was trying to get a rise out of me. If anything could distract me from my lack of decent drugs, it was those whiskers dragging across the second-most sensitive part of my body. I’m such a sucker for the neck, but as much as I wanted to give myself over to the sensation, I was even more curious what he’d discovered about Jack Bly while I was scanning the lab. I slipped my hand inside his overcoat and brushed the bulge of his sidearm. “What were you and Agent Buzzcut talking about?” I asked.

“Not much.”

“C’mon. You two were all over each other.”

“He’s not my type.”

I knew that—it was the only reason I could tease. “I dunno, he’s got those pale eyes you like so much.”

Jacob’s tongue trailed wet heat down the sinew of my neck. Against the wetness, he whispered, “Colored contacts.”

What the heck? I’m pretty well-versed in manly behavior, at least as much as it pertains to the police force. I couldn’t imagine anyone at the Fifth Precinct wearing contacts unless it improved their aim. And
colored
contacts? They’d just as soon slap on a tutu and a tiara. Federal agents weren’t that much fancier than local law enforcement, so what was Bly’s deal? Obviously the guy was some sort of FPMP tool, although Dreyfuss would know I presumed as much, and maybe he wanted that presumption to distract me from Bly’s real…hell, I had no idea. And Jacob’s hot breath playing over my throat was making it less and less likely I’d come up with a plausible theory anytime soon. My natural inclination would be to stop the presses and hash out what Bly might be hiding, but that conversation was too detailed to have right there in our own foyer where the FPMP could potentially hear it. If we cranked up a loud, nasty porno, we could whisper speculations to each other below the cover of all the fake grunting and groaning. I knew just the disc, a plotless wonder of a fuckfest set in some poor schlep’s basement. The actors don’t trade dialog for long, thankfully, since their delivery is painful to watch. Hell, the sex is painful to watch, too. They slam each other hard enough to bruise. I found my pants fitting funny just thinking about it.
 

The back of Jacob’s hand brushed up against my burgeoning hard-on, and we both sucked air. That hiss of breath reminded me of the porno, which made my breathing even more labored. That, in turn, made Jacob’s groping take on a real urgency. It had been a while since we’d had a chance to really go at it. Too long. I made one last attempt to come up with some encoded way of comparing notes on Bly, but I kept getting sidetracked by the gentle rake of Jacob’s teeth below my right ear.

Maybe if we started banging each other, whoever monitored our channel would tune out. Unlikely, given that if I were the one on the receiving end, I’d turn up the volume and call my co-workers into the room, too. But my judgment was compromised by the pressure of Jacob’s hands roving up and down my sides.
 

We shoved at each other’s clothes. I reveled in the feeling of us clawing at the overcoats and suits and holsters in the way—too urgent to bother undressing or even go upstairs. We used to keep a super slippery lube perfect for shower sex in the downstairs bathroom, but that was before we had a roommate. Now it’d be weird. Plus, even an adjournment to the first-floor bathroom could kill the sudden, precarious moment.
 

I worked open Jacob’s belt buckle and butted my groin against his hip. He grunted. A few shoves and he was exposed, that fat slab of stiffening cock hanging out from his open fly, the rest of him disheveled and flushed. I mouthed the word
yeah
. Dirty talk was never my forte, and I was even more tongue-tied with the thought of the FPMP listening in. Fine. We’d communicate via body language. When he took a step back and shoved me to my knees, I dragged at his slacks, twin fistfuls of fabric, to keep my kneecaps from cracking against the tile. I kept my hands where they were, balled in Italian wool, while Jacob grabbed me by the head and plugged my mouth with his cock. Yeah, it was rough. And yeah, it was perfect. I felt my own hard-on straining down my pant leg, cool at the tip where a wet spot would be spreading over the lining of my pocket. I focused on that, my own aching hardness and the strain in my jaw, the invasion of that salty hunk of flesh fucking my face, in and out, in and out, pubes rasping my lips as Jacob’s fists tightened in my hair.

“We should go upstairs,” he huffed.
 

I noted he made no actual attempt to stop pummeling my mouth and head for the staircase. I made a sound like, “Ngh,” and ground my upper lip into the base of his cock. It made no sense to interrupt the proceedings now, not with us riding a sweet wave of momentum. I walked my hands up the front of his slacks, one handful at a time, until I had him by his ass, a firm globe in each hand. I squeezed, hard, and he started really wailing on me.

“Close,” he grunted. I’d figured as much by the way his thighs trembled. “You wanna swallow?”

I gave a shadow of a nod, which he felt through his death-grip on my hair. Without warning, a weird notion popped into my head: if it were Bly kneeling there instead of me, Jacob wouldn’t have any hair to pull.

Immediately, my gut insisted that Agent Bly was definitely not gay. Not even curious. Although I can be oblivious to the fact that someone’s into me (specifically) until their tongue is in my mouth, I’m good enough at guessing someone’s overall inclination. Plenty of men my age shaved their heads these days, not just gay guys. It didn’t mean a thing. Unless you added colored contacts into the equation. And the way I’d felt like Bly was watching me more closely than he needed to. And the loadedness of the question, “How do you like being a PsyCop?” Which could have just meant he was a Psych groupie…though it didn’t explain the colored contacts.

Firmly resolving to put Bly out of my mind, I focused on the prod of Jacob’s cockhead at the back of my throat instead, and gave it that extra bit of suction to hasten the experience toward the big finale. Jacob released a stuttery breath and bit back a moan. Pretty soon he needed to tear a hand from my hair and slam his palm against the wall behind me to keep himself upright. With one hand on the wall and the other cupping the back of my head, he dragged me onto his dick for the final few thrusts. When he let loose, he was so far down I couldn’t quite taste it. But I could feel the thrumming in his shaft as he shot.

He pulled out, then let go of my head to plant his other hand on the wall, mashing his brow into his forearm while he shuddered all over and sucked air like I suck white light. I let go of his ass, sagged back against the wall and gave myself a few quick strokes through my pants. The wet spot was huge, but thanks to my mental image of Agent Bly with his hinky eyes and his tanned scalp, my stiffness had unstiffened.

Jacob dropped a hand to my cheek and cupped my face with the touch of a butterfly wing. “I thought you were into it.”

First the sleeping pill incident, now this. I tried to be less obvious about chafing my dick to attention as vigorously as I was. “I am. It’s good.”