Bitter Pill Read online

  Red enfolded my hand in his and said, “Now, think back to the asanas. Really picture yourself there, as if it’s happening now. Is there any one in particular where your energy levels shift while you’re holding the pose?”

  “Not really. I was just desperate to talk to someone beyond the veil. I know it’s possible, I’ve seen it done. So I was trying to tap that ability without bursting anything inside my head I might need later.”

  Crash said, “That doesn’t sound like anything you’ve ever been capable of doing.”

  But Red gave a mild shrug and said, “But what if that’s just because you’ve never tried? Put yourself through the poses again now, if it helps.”

  Right. Because just admitting to the chair yoga and picturing it while a telepath held my hand wasn’t nearly mortifying enough. “No, I can remember. First I did all the breathing. Then I focused on my posture. And then I did some twisting….”

  That’s when Jacob had come home….

  And nailed my ass to the yoga mat.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  I clamped down on that mental image—the one of Jacob banging me—faster than a kid shoving a dirty magazine beneath his mattress, but I was already too late. Red’s eyes twinkled, and the corner of his mouth quirked up in a smile. I jerked my hand away.

  “What?” Crash said as he felt the energy shift. “Did you pop a boner during yoga? Big deal. Newsflash—it happens to all of us.”

  My embarrassment was shouting at me to walk out of there and not look back. And maybe change my phone number for good measure, and move out of state, while I was at it.

  “I think we’re on to something,” Red said. “There’s a reason why so many mystical traditions promote abstinence.”

  “Ohhh,” Crash said knowingly. “I get it. You didn’t just pitch a tent—you put down a sleeping bag and busted your nut all over it. Look, I’m not saying old-school magickal belief systems are necessarily right—there’s a reason most of those practices went out the window when the Ganzfeld reports came out—but at least the practitioners were aware that their energetic bodies existed. If it turns out sex dissipates this ‘white light’ you’re always talking about, then you might have to start curtailing certain…activities. Sucks to be you.”

  “Fine. But I haven’t got time to wait for my usual equilibrium to come back. How do I force it back to normal?”

  “There are plenty of ways to raise energy,” Red told me. “Chanting. Drumming. Meditation. Visualization. It’s just a matter of finding the way that suits you best.”

  Oh, please.

  I left the two of them to doing whatever esoteric things they did to fill their days and headed back to The Clinic, but I was clenching the steering wheel so hard, my knuckles were white. I’d been hoping for answers…something that could just raise my white light back to its normal levels. I’d found a method. Several, in fact. Unfortunately, none of them were a magical pill. Which was pretty damn ironic, when the “magical pill” that raised psychic energy was the thing that started this whole carnival of fuckery to begin with.

  Maybe a half-dose of Kick would help fill my tank.

  It was just a passing thought—a thought that didn’t even come with the sort of back-of-the-throat itch I associated with my yen for Seconal. Minor. Insignificant. So stupid that I dismissed it just as soon as it took shape.

  And yet the mere notion left an indelible mark. I could tell myself it was a dumb idea, push it aside and resolve to forget it, but unfortunately, my mind didn’t come with a delete key.

  As I pulled up to The Clinic, I wondered how, exactly, I planned to explain my new theories to Jacob. I wasn’t comfortable with him knowing I was off my psychic game, but I’d have to swallow my pride and tell him. To do anything else would just be shooting myself in the foot. But I really wasn’t looking forward to that conversation. Abstaining from sex on the days in which I had to perform as a medium hardly seemed doable, since dealing with ghosts was literally my job, and I was on call 24-7.

  Like we weren’t already spinning our wheels about the wedding enough as it was. Jacob loves a good challenge as much as the next guy—probably more—but could he deal with some new abstinence protocol?

  For that matter, could I?

  The more I thought about sex being the potential problem, the more that theory began to fall apart. Jacob and I had a pretty active sex life, and it never stopped ghosts from pestering me before. I got laid all the time, but the chair yoga was new. So, obviously, if I was experiencing some kind of energetic shift, it had nothing to do with the sex, and everything to do with the yoga.

  Good thing I got that settled before I said anything to Jacob. He had enough to worry about without needing to second-guess our sex life, too.

  And as yoga went, the chair yoga was awfully mild. Hardly yoga at all, and more like a series of gentle back stretches. So it must’ve been the combination of the two—yoga followed by an orgasm—that did me in. Well, at least avoiding that combo in the future would be no problem.

  I found the rest of my team in The Clinic’s lobby. Zigler was at the receptionist window signing something, while Jacob and Carolyn were speaking to one another in low tones, looking very strategic. It was good to see the two of them together like that. I didn’t want to jinx any tenuous new connection by taking too much note of it, so I joined Zig by the window.

  Apparently our friends from the Fifth Precinct had their warrant. Finally. An office printer was busy spitting out papers. Troy slipped them through the window two or three sheets at a time so Zig could sign them just as fast as they came out of the machine. And Troy was busy spitting out a recap of some inane show he’d seen.

  “…and the noises coming from the second-floor apartment? Everyone wrote it off to the plumbing, or the wind, or the old house settling. But then they got a medium in there—”

  “Do you ever do anything but watch TV?” I snapped, realizing only belatedly that I’d actually said it out loud.

  Troy blinked. “I like TV.”

  In my peripheral vision, I noticed Carolyn’s head jerk up sharply—like she’d just smelled a lie. Jacob, right beside her, noticed too.

  “Doesn’t everyone?” Troy asked.

  Jacob approached the window as if he had a sudden interest in watching people chase cold spots on TV. “What show was this?”

  “Hidden Hauntings.”

  “Y’know, I’m always forgetting to set my DVR. So that’s Tuesday nights?”

  “I think so. Unless it’s Monday. I usually stream it on demand.”

  Troy grabbed another few sheets from the printer. While his back was turned, Jacob glanced at Carolyn. She gave him a small nod. “We should try that,” Jacob said. “But there’s so many remotes to keep track of.”

  Not to mention the fact that the last time we tried to stream that new show with the guy we both like, I found myself snorting awake in the recliner three hours later, while Jacob had wandered off to read the latest work-related missive in his inbox, then fallen down a digital rabbit hole.

  “You get used to it,” Troy said. “You should really give it another shot. Binge the first three seasons—the fourth drops this summer. And then you’ll be all caught up.”

  “The episode with the apartment—the one you were just telling us about—was that an old episode or a new one?”

  “The current season.”

  “So, it was on last night?”

  “I dunno. I must have streamed it.”

  “Because I want to make sure I catch the next episode.”

  Given that Jacob has experienced more ghost action than 99.9% of the population, he obviously had no interest in Hidden Hauntings and was poking around for an inconsistency in Troy’s story. For someone who knows everything, he played the “I can’t figure out how to stream things” role pretty darn convincingly…though why anyone would believe he wasn’t good at absolutely everything was beyond me. Jacob was clearly a shark. I’m not sure what it said about me that I got off o
n the way he looked—predatory and sure—when he scented blood in the water. By the time he was done, Troy’s story changed from having watched TV all night to having actually spent the majority of his time on the computer.

  Probably browsing porn. You’d be surprised at how often this turned out to be the case, once we got a look at someone’s search history.

  But that wasn’t the point. Jacob and Carolyn were working together to corner someone in a lie. What Troy had seen on TV last night might be insignificant. But watching the polygraph mojo flow between them again? It was a thing of beauty. Jacob missed Carolyn. I knew that for a fact. But I hadn’t really stopped to think that beneath all the feelings of hurt and abandonment, she missed him, too.

  Zig finished signing his last few papers while Troy jotted down a list of recommended watching. That’s what Jacob got for acting so interested in the guy’s nightly viewing.

  We headed down to the commandeered meeting room to hash out our plan to divide and conquer. First step, re-canvas the staff before Bertelli managed to get us tossed out of The Clinic for good. Jacob must’ve expected me to head over to the break room where all my buddies were. He raised an eyebrow when I told him, “I’m gonna talk to the pharmacist.”

  “But Carolyn and I—”

  “You think she wouldn’t know exactly what the two of you were doing? She flipped out the last time I questioned her with Carolyn riding shotgun. Let me have another crack at her myself before she shuts down completely.”

  Given that there were a dozen other people to talk to, Jacob didn’t put up much of a fuss—though I didn’t doubt for a second that he’d find some reason to double-check my work. That was fine. He was better than me at grilling subjects.

  I was just hoping for some off-the-record pharmaceutical advice.

  I headed toward the pharmacy and was surprised to find Erin standing there in the middle of the hallway, arms crossed, looking annoyed. “I had a question about psyactives,” I said. “Do you keep any on hand? Any at all?”

  “None. We’d have to special order.”

  “What about herbal psyactives? Mugwort. Pennyroyal.”

  “We don’t stock Western herbs. In fact, we tell our patients to steer clear. People think just because something is ‘natural,’ that means it’s safe. But with herbal remedies, you don’t know how fresh they are, or whether or not they’re full of pesticides. The dosage is wildly inaccurate. Plus, there’s the potential for interaction with whatever else you’re taking. We do carry a few botanicals for our patients who prefer Eastern medicine, but only from a reputable source. And we have every single batch tested for purity and strength.”

  That was a lot more info than I expected, so I was surprised when she didn’t ditch me by heading into the safety of the pharmacy. “So…did you lock yourself out?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Audit.”

  “How does that work?”

  “Around here? It’s like a pop quiz—but for pharmacists.”

  “A random person shows up and counts your pills?”

  “Not just anyone. Bertelli does it himself.”

  “Oh.” Talk about stressful. “Does it happen a lot?”

  “Lately? Seems like every other day…like I haven’t got enough to worry about right now. If it gets around that patients at my workplace are ODing—even if it’s not on our meds—that’s the type of scandal that can end my career. I’ve got to be totally scrupulous. Above reproach. Or I can kiss my reputation goodbye.”

  My first thought was that Bertelli was gonna walk through that door any second now and catch me crossing the tape on the floor. I was excited about the thought of catching him skimming psyactives and kingpinning the biggest psychic drug scandal in the history of psyactives…until I realized it didn’t make any sense. “So there are no psyactives here.”

  “None.”

  “And other than the Chinese medicine, no herbal remedies, either?”

  “Only those few thoroughly vetted and highly regulated supplements.” She gave me a sideways look and said, “You’re gonna march right out that door and do the exact opposite of what I said and take some random herbs. I can tell.”

  I didn’t bother denying it. “I’ve never had a reaction to mugwort before.”

  “Which is closely related to ragweed. Let’s say you have a lurking allergy you’re unaware of. And let’s say the handful of twigs and weeds you manage to get hold of is stronger than normal. Better be ready for a trip to the emergency room, or at least have an epi pen handy.”

  Great.

  Erin pulled a pad of sticky notes out of her pocket, jotted something down, and handed it over. I expected it to be the name of a reputable herbal medicine source, so it took me a second to register what she’d actually written. Not because I couldn’t read it—she had some of the neatest handwriting I’d ever seen—but because I had no idea what it was supposed to mean. “Mood Blaster?”

  “It’s an app that combines binaural pulses and biofeedback.”

  That sounded scientific. “Okay. I’m listening.”

  “Recent studies have shown that light workers often get above-average results from biofeedback.”

  As much as I hated the term light workers, I had to admit...Erin’s use of it made me think her research probably was pretty up-to-date. But before I could drill down with any more questions, the pharmacy door swung open, and Bertelli came out looking especially official, with an imperious look on his face and a tablet in his hands. He tapped in a few things, then said, “Keep up the good work, Erin.” And then he glanced at the floor and said, “Agent Bayne? You signed an agreement stating you’d respect the red line.”

  “I was consulting with him,” Erin said. “Not as an investigator. As a patient.”

  Legitimate reasons notwithstanding, Bertelli gave me a cool look and said, “Then I’ll need to ask you both to step behind the red line. It would waste everyone’s time to have to get our lawyers involved.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  If I were to retreat behind the caution tape on the floor, it wouldn’t be out of respect for Bertelli’s wishes. It was that the rest of my team was in their conference room and I didn’t want to be the odd man out. According to Reginald, he’d scored from “some white guy.” I found my team breaking down their lists of witnesses to figure out anyone who might have happened to see a random white guy selling drugs the night our victims had scored.

  There were already more than enough chefs in the meeting room stirring the pot, so I left Jacob, Carolyn and Zigler to the strategizing, parked myself in the corner, and downloaded the Mood Blaster app…but, invariably, I picked the wrong one and ended up with some silly kids’ game. I went back to the app store three more times to find the right one, in fact. Maybe Erin had spelled it wrong. Maybe I was reading it wrong. But, no. In that hyper-precise handwriting, the words Mood Blaster couldn’t possibly have been anything else.

  Eventually, I scrolled past the colorful cartoon spaceships and planets and read the description.

  From Anger Asteroid to Serene Satellite, join Brainy as he blasts his way through Moodspace in his mind-powered spaceship!

  What the ever-living heck?

  I jabbed around, looking for a refund button—on principle, not because I cared about the $9.99—but I only succeeded in flipping to the last page of the description. The part aimed at parents.

  Mood blaster employs the latest in brain research, including binaural tones and biofeedback, to entrain neuronal oscillations and achieve a desired state of mind. By learning to energize or calm themselves, children experience a greater sense of self-efficacy and control. Use stereo headphones for a full binaural experience. A fitness tracker with pulse monitor is required for the Biofeedback Blaster levels.

  I glanced up at the rest of the team, who were busy divvying up the witnesses, then read through the app more carefully. Nothing about psychic ability—just mood. But I had to admit, regulating my own brain waves did seem to be what I was trying to ach
ieve when I worked with the white light.

  I didn’t own a fitness tracker. It seemed redundant given that I probably had a chip under my skin from all the years I’d spent as a lab rat. But there was a set of earbuds in my coat pocket that always managed to snag me while I was looking for my gum. I pulled out the wad of wires, untangled it, plugged it in and fired up the app.

  A smiling cartoon brain zipped up in a space ship. I might’ve pitched my phone against the wall, if not for the audio. Not the music—it was as hokey as you’d expect—but the sound beneath it. A rhythmic whub-whub-whub. I recognized it from the nighttime white noise app Jack Bly played to lull himself to sleep. And through headphones, the effect was ten times more pronounced.

  The white light drained from me like someone had sucked it right out of my body. I flinched and tore out the earbuds before it emptied me out completely. Zigler glanced up, but he must’ve just chalked it up to my normal twitchiness. After a cursory glance, he went right back to what he was doing.

  My first impulse was to delete the damn thing from my phone and forget it ever happened. But there was no denying that these brainwave sounds were powerful. What if there was a frequency that would help me fill up with white light instead of draining it away?

  I angled myself so no one could see the spaceship-riding cartoon brain bobbing around my screen. I navigated to the menu and immediately glazed over when I tried to read the brainwave descriptions. Delta, Theta, Alpha, Beta…a big fraternity of the mind that I had no idea how to pledge.

  Frustrated, I backtracked to the kiddy menu and looked at all the planets. Angry Asteroid was a snarling red ball. Mellow Moon was serene and blue. Giggling Galaxy. Calming Comet. I wasn’t sure which state of being might fill my tank again, if any—so I turned the volume down low, plugged in the earbuds, and started poking through the screens.

  The last thing I wanted was to feel any logier than I already did, so I started hunting and pecking toward the top of the list. Perky Planet had a big smile on its purple planetary face—okay, more like a manic grin—but it looked pretty alert. I tapped its icon and launched the game.