Spook Squad (40 page)

“Oh no you don’t.” Each word was a puff of frost as I lunged for her with my free hand. It went through her arm, splattering jelly, once, twice, and then I realize I’d been grabbing for the wrong spot. The ghostly shape of Jennifer Chance was just as much a shell as that mottled hunk of sutured meat stewing in the warming tank. I needed to grab her by the essence—by the soul, for lack of a better word. I pictured the place where the silver strand had connected her to her physical body’s solar plexus, targeted the same spot on her ghost…and I grabbed.

It was like plunging my hand into a snowbank. An electrified snowbank. An electrified snowbank that was on fire, and was also full of razor blades and acid. I let out a huff in surprise and pain, and my breath was a great crystalline cloud. My fingers had closed on something, though, something solid, something throbbing and squirming and struggling to break free. It hurt like all getout, but no way in hell would I let go so she could take a crack at Bly. Now that I had a grip, though, what the heck did I do with her?

The veil, I was supposed to lead her to the veil. But I could hardly locate the damn veil while I was struggling to keep hold of her spirit. If only Jacob could hang on to her for a sec while I…my eyes fell to the corpse, and before I could second guess myself, I slammed my fist into its gut. My physical fist bounced off, but my other fists—astral, ethereal, whatever they were—those subtle fists kept on going. “Grab her,” I gasped to Jacob, “grab the body—anywhere, both hands—just grab it!”

The spirit tried to slither out when it realized what we were doing, but Jacob dove at the body like a defensive lineman. The plastic tank buckled, spraying chemical fluid. The corpse was torn from my grasp, and now Jacob had it by one hip and one shoulder, with everything in between firmly pinned.

“That’s it,” I shouted, “that’s perfect.” I gathered my white light for a final push. “Hold her there while—”

“Jesus Christ,” he blurbled into the chemical solution, “It’s moving.”

Bly made a strangled noise, then staggered out through the door, splattering vomit.

“Don’t let go,” I pleaded with Jacob.

“Then hurry!”

There was only so long I could expect him to wrestle an animated corpse without losing his marbles. After all, Zigler was never the same since the zombie basement, and all he’d done was look at the damn things. I got to work picturing the veil, death, the great hereafter. I tried to visualize all those locales, and I experienced a jab of panic. Would I even be able to find the afterlife, me, a card-carrying agnostic? What if I couldn’t? What if, in the end, I failed us all, and Chance slid free, and Jacob ended up spending three nights a week on a psychiatrist’s couch for the rest of his life…?

The workroom door flew open, and from it, a puke-covered Bly called out, “What are ya, scared? You…you…
homo
!”

Rage flooded me, sharp, sudden, and exhilarating. If he’d been any closer I would have clocked him one good, but along with the anger, I felt a frosty clarity descend. I’d be damned if I let Chance get away to wreak havoc with decent people for the sake of her fucking invention. I’d be damned.

Images flashed through my mind, of all the newly dead I’d seen turning toward the light, a light that looked a lot like the white light I’d been pulling down, only infinitely brighter. And as I pictured it, I realized it was there. Not that I’d summoned it, since a lowly mortal like me could never hope to change its course. But nonetheless, it was there, tugging at my awareness. Like a portal. Or a wormhole. Or a sun.

“On the count of three,” I told Jacob, “let go of her. Got it?” He was face down on the twitching cadaver, so I went with the assumption that he was onboard. “One…two…three!”

Jacob flew backward, hands in the air, and I lunged. I saw the spirit try to roll out to one side, sneaky, like maybe she’d get away. But I also saw the core of her, the soul body, and I made a grab for that. It wasn’t only my talent at play. Jennifer Chance wasn’t supposed to be there. She’d been expected elsewhere ever since she made the decision to cover her face in plastic wrap and lay down to die. Between me pushing and the gleaming white portal pulling, her grip on physical reality began to erode.

She was a fighter, though, and ectoplasm flew as she battered me with her ghostly fists. We teetered at the brink of the veil, me pushing, her pushing back. I was all set for the final push when a wad of ghost goo came between the plastic-covered floor and the sole of my shoe. I slid, flailing, but I was determined to keep hold of her. But with which hand? My subtle bodies fanned apart, and suddenly the gentle tug of the veil was a strong, irresistible pull. A piece of me slid out—and yet in the face of this separation, I felt surprisingly calm. I decided that if it was my time to go, at least I’d take Dr. Chance with me, and I clamped onto her with everything I had.

And then there was light.

It was perfect. I was perfect. Everything was perfect—me, the world, and the universe. It was profoundly simple, this feeling of perfection. It was sublime. I was still me, maybe, but I was everything. Whatever Jennifer Chance was didn’t cease to exist, yet it somehow ceased to matter, because she too was one with everything.

“Vic?”

I fell. Or maybe I’d been falling ever since I slid on the ectoplasm. Or maybe I wasn’t falling, maybe I’d mistakenly swallowed one Seconal too many, and maybe I was in bed with an intense case of the spins. No, that wasn’t it. There’d been a hard slam when I hit. The room was covered in plastic and the floor I was sprawled on was coated in chemicals and slime. And Jacob’s face was hovering over mine as he shook me by the shoulders. “Vic!”

I blinked and said, “Yes.” My recently-stretched consciousness thought this single word should encompass volumes of meaning, but my worldly sensibility was slowly coming back to me as well, and I realized that most physical people can’t really communicate in sighs and glances and micro-expressions, as much as they might want to. So I added, “We did it. She’s gone.”

Chapter 34

My phone rested on the dining room table amid the half-puzzled male dancers while I attempted to choose between my red tie and my other red tie. After an address and a time, the text from Dreyfuss had simply read,
Wear something nice.
That meant Jacob broke out the cufflinks, while I dug around until I found one of my special tall-guy jackets that actually fit me. It covered all the bumps and bruises I’d picked up flailing around the lab that morning, too.

“Celebratory dinner?” I suggested.
 

Jacob peered critically in the bathroom mirror, smoothed his eyebrows, stroked his goatee, then patted down the sides of his already-perfect hair. “It’s never that simple with him.”

Probably not, but it wasn’t in me to feel sardonic about it. About ninety nine point nine percent of the kumbaya had fled me once I’d fallen out of the white light. But for now, I still remembered how it was to be inside the glow…and the mere memory of that sensation was enough to make me feel magnanimous toward everyone. Even Con Dreyfuss.

We were both eager to see Lisa again and ask her what really happened. Reassurances that Richie and Laura were okay would be in order too. I also wanted to hear how Dreyfuss fared against Washington, whose goons had swept in and relieved us of a slime-covered corpse without batting a G-man eyelash. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that they would’ve gladly scooped up the GhosTV too, had Jack Bly not summoned the presence of mind to turn it toward the wall, throw a plastic sheet over the top, and cover it with lab equipment so that it blended in passably with the cabinetry.

We found the restaurant and handed the car keys to the valet, while I wondered idly if there might be a tracking device hidden somewhere in the fob. It was a ritzy joint. Hopefully there’d be something identifiable on the menu.

We ran into Bly at the coat check. I can’t speak for Jacob, but I was glad to see him. He wasn’t as battered as Jacob and me, but given what we’d all seen in the lab morgue, he was probably donning a few fresh scars on the inside. “Listen,” he murmured, once the coat check girl was out of range, “that
homo
thing I said before….”

I got it—he’d been trying to pull me out of an impending funk by pissing me off. It worked, too. “I know.”

“I’m fine with it,” he said. “Really. My favorite aunt is a lesbian.”

The old me would have rankled at the idea that my personal life was anything for him to be “fine” with. But in my white light afterglow, I could tell he was attempting to stammer out an apology. And I appreciated it.

“And I’ve never yakked at a scene before,” he told Jacob. “Never. But I could feel it, really feel it, inside the…body.” He looked a bit green just scanning through the memory. While my deathly experience had been a moment in the light, Bly had absorbed the emotions of Jennifer Chance trapped inside her own corpse. On psyactives, no less. Poor sap.

“I’ve been meaning to tell you,” I said, “the shaved head, the tan, the workout, it all looks great on you. But the colored contacts are a little over the top.”

Jacob stopped walking and stared. The hardcore critique must’ve seemed like it came out of left field to him, but the empath got it. Bly let out a breath and gave his head a rueful shake. “How long have you known? Not long—I can feel it, not long.”

“Known what?” Jacob said easily, picking up on the new camaraderie between Bly and me in that mundanely empathic way of his.

“Remember John Wembly?” I asked, while Bly made a small “shoosh” motion. I lowered my voice. “You know, the PsyCop, with the hair?” Recognition dawned on Jacob’s face. “The one who went missing,” I added.

Jacob checked Bly out unapologetically, scrutinizing him from head to toe, then said, “Your trainer’s doing a great job.”

Bly turned toward the dining room, smirking. “She’s a tyrant,” he threw back over his shoulder. “Made me give up soda. Cheese, too.” Sheesh, that
was
pretty extreme. Good thing he actually liked chard.

Jacob watched the doorway where Bly had disappeared for a moment, then said, “Cheekbone implants. If it weren’t for those, I would’ve spotted him.”

“Yeah, yeah. Says you.” I bumped him affably with my elbow. “Go find our seats—I’m hitting the can.” You never knew how long these dull multi-course affairs might last, and I didn’t want to navigate a dangerously upscale dinner with a full bladder. The lighting was elegantly subdued, meaning, the warren of hallways and private dining rooms was a confusing blur of linens, woodwork and candles. Right when I suspected I might have gone a full 360 and ended up back with Jacob, I saw Lisa flit past a doorway. She was looking pretty ripped, too. I guess all that yoga was starting to pay off.

“Lisa,” I called after her. “Hey, Lisa, wait up.” But when she turned to face me, it wasn’t Lisa at all, just some other Hispanic girl with bigger hoop earrings and more makeup. “Oh. Sorry.”
 

I backpedaled while the girl said, “No, it’s—”

“Never mind.” I ducked into the nearest room, aghast at the thought I’d nearly grabbed the poor stranger by her shoulder. Nothing ruins a nice dinner like getting maced on your way to the john…which, it appeared, I’d actually managed to stumble into. It was one of those toilets with a lounge, the type that usually had an attendant waiting to awkwardly hand you a towel, or a breath mint, or a comb. The lounge was full of fresh flowers, or maybe incredibly realistic fakes. I was about to double-check that I wasn’t blundering into a public
ladies
room when I heard Crash’s voice, and then my awkwardness fell away, and I charged in to grab him up and squash him against me to celebrate the fact that Ash Man was only his chat handle, and not his physical state of being.

But then another man’s voice joined his, breathy, unfamiliar, and unabashedly gay. “She’s perfect. Shakira and Mariah and Ashanti all rolled into one. Just a lil’ more sparkle.”

Crash again: “Whoa, cowboy. Easy on the fairy dust. This isn’t a rave.”

I rounded the corner into a restroom, but not the sink-and-stalls type I’d been expecting. The single opulent powder room was full of flowers, cushions, lights, and mirrors. Crash was there with his new-old boyfriend Red, each of them dressed to the nines, combs and attitudes poised, flanking a woman in a styling chair. Seated between them like a Hollywood diva, impeccably made up, hair piled high and sparkling with glitter, was Lisa. All three looked up, startled, and met my eyes in the various mirrors. “Uh…hey,” I said. “What’s going on?” Because it looked like Lisa was ready to star in a music video. Maybe with the dancers from the unfinished puzzle.

While Crash had his eyes on me, Red seized the opportunity to spritz Lisa with another layer of shimmery spray. Crash turned a warning look on him, and he replied with infuriating nonchalance, “Now, you listen to me, Curtis. I know what I’m doing. Every girl’s a princess on her wedding day.”

Beneath all the sparkles, I realized, Lisa’s salsa video tango dress was white. Not simply because she favored neutral tones, either.

Wow.

Just…wow.

“Victor…” she attempted to pry herself from the chair, but she might have been glued there with glitter spray. Red gave her a hand up, patting her sparkly brown cascades of curls into place with his long-fingered hands as she turned toward me. “Constantine proposed this afternoon and I didn’t have time to tell you—it was all really sudden.”

“Oh.” I forced a smile, not that I was angry or apprehensive or anything. Just blindsided. And cripplingly aware that this was one of those moments where I really didn’t want to say the wrong thing, because if I tainted her special day, she’d be within her rights to hold it against me for the rest of our lives. It made sense, of course. When Con Dreyfuss had a woman in his sights, he slapped a ring on her before she got away. But even I knew Lisa wouldn’t take kindly to that observation, so I decided to go with, “Well, you look fantastic.” I took her hands in mine and gazed into her eyes. I figured I’d better not make her cry or else a pretty spiffy makeup job would go to waste, so instead I quipped, “If you wanted a bigger tent, you should have said so.”