Bitter Pill Read online

Some things just had a tendency to leave a mark.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  When I climbed into bed with my Mood Blaster app, it was tempting to take a little cruise on Calming Comet. But while part of me was eager to remedy my perpetual sleep deficit, another part—the one that liked to bask in its own self-perpetuating anxiety—was convinced I’d need to snap to in the middle of the night and deal with a scary-assed ghost.

  I settled for the Down to Earth mode which, according to the info, oscillated at a low-alpha high-theta frequency designed for calm relaxation. It wasn’t exactly like valium…but I didn’t hate it. And, again, though I was suspicious any effects these binaural beats might’ve been having on my state of mind were mere placebos, I did find myself thinking about our current case in a more constructive way than I might have otherwise.

  As I directed soothing, slow-motion meteor showers toward the surface of the planet, I thought about Darla and how it might feel for her to reach out for a ghost who’s long since left the physical world. As far as I could tell, all she had to do was try. Like searching for an elusive memory…though that analogy was no big help, since I was lousy at remembering things, too.

  If only I could initiate a long-distance connection myself, just once, and see how it felt. But it seemed like I’d need a boost of some kind to help me get over that hump.

  Yoga? I hadn’t been able hit on the right sequence of moves without the yoga lady from Jacob’s gym—the gym I was banned from.

  Binaural beats? I had a sneaking feeling that all they did was tweak my level of alertness.

  A psyactive? Herbs and powders were hit-or-miss, and the prescription goods were off the market.

  But there was one particular tool I had at my disposal that I knew, without a doubt, actually did something. A tool people had killed and died for.

  The GhosTV.

  Jacob wasn’t sleeping any more than I was when I said, “I’m gonna need your help with something.”

  He rolled over to face me and nodded.

  “But I’m not willing to do it here. We need to install the GhosTV at The Clinic…and we need to do it on the down-low.”

  In her bid to challenge the finality of death itself, Jennifer Chance had cobbled together five GhosTVs that we knew of. The units that belonged to Con Dreyfuss and Dr. K had been confiscated by FPMP National. It wouldn’t surprise me if the suits had grabbed the set from the evidence locker in Iowa, too. There was one TV at large. And another in my basement.

  That particular set? I tried my best not to think about it. Because, frankly, it gave me the creeps. Even boxed up as it was in its locked protective crate.

  Jacob was sorely in need of a win, and he latched onto the idea of successfully adding the GhosTV to our arsenal. “I’d call Jack to help us move it. Good thing it fits in his SUV.” Good thing we’d purchased a heavy-duty dolly when we spotted one on sale, too. “If anyone asks, claim it’s paperwork, a bunch of files, something boring no one would care about. Too bad they moved us out of the conference room and into an exam room. It’ll be a tight squeeze.”

  “Will it? If Zigler and Carolyn find out about the damn thing, that puts them under FPMP National’s microscope.” Not that they weren’t already. But things can always get worse. “Plus, Carolyn can’t lie. If anyone asks her a random question—”

  “Then it ends up on their permanent record, too. You’re right. We need to keep this between the people who already know. I can deal with Carolyn. Tell her to steer clear since we need to do something she’s better off not knowing about.”

  “She won’t pry?”

  “She knows better.”

  While he called and gave her a heads-up, I decided it wouldn’t have occurred to me to be so direct. Maybe that was for the best. In my experience, that wasn’t how the world worked. Directness just pissed everybody off, and then they did what they were going to do in the first place, regardless.

  Monday morning, Jack Bly showed up bright and early with a big cup of coffee for each of us. Not because he wanted to slip experimental psyactives into mine, but because he lived with me undercover for the better part of a month, and he didn’t want to run the risk of having to drink anything I’d made myself. As much as I knew what Agent Bly of the FPMP looked like, the sight of him in a well-tailored black suit caused me to do a mental double-take. I was used to seeing him in baggy gym shorts and old T-shirts now.

  “Hell of a thing about Oscar,” he said by way of greeting. I’d forgotten they knew each other as PsyCops. “Not that I expect any of us to live long enough to die peacefully in our sleep. But still, it was a lousy way to go.”

  We led him down to the basement to take stock of the situation. He sized up the crate as if he’d forgotten precisely how daunting it was. Can’t say I blamed him. That was my typical reaction to the thing, too.

  Jacob said, “Even if we claim it’s something as tedious as files, people are still going to wonder.”

  “What if we kept it inside the case?” I suggested. “Thread the power cord through and keep it facing the wall. It’s not like I need to see the screen for it to work its magic.”

  Bly said, “It might work, but only for short bursts. The old tube generates heat, and the padding inside the case will act as an insulator. If you kept it turned on in there for any extended amount of time, you’ll risk burning it out.”

  Part of me wondered if that was actually such a bad idea. If I killed my GhosTV, I’d no longer need to worry about Big Brother coming to snatch it from my sweaty grasp.

  Frustrated, Jacob said, “It’s been sitting here for ages gathering dust. We should’ve had some sort of camouflage made for it. A vented casing that makes it look like something unremarkable. A bank of locked filing cabinets.”

  Oh sure. Now the useful ideas present themselves.

  Bly shrugged. “Our stagers can make that happen—they’ll do it without asking too many questions, too, if I give them the dimensions. But HQ is stretched thin with everything that’s going on. Even if they dropped everything and started right now, it would take a few days. Have we got that long?”

  I thought back to all the creeptastic ghosts we were dealing with. And my proximity to them. And the fact that I really needed to have the sharpest view possible if our illegal psyactive claimed another victim. If…or when. “We can’t afford to wait,” I said.

  Even with the dolly, it was no treat wrestling the GhosTV into Bly’s humongous Lexus. We followed him to The Clinic and met up in the lobby. Bly flashed an ID and told Troy, “We’ve got some equipment to transfer, so we’ll need access to your delivery bay.”

  Troy was flustered. Apparently last night’s episode of Clairvoyage wasn’t offering him any clue as to how to handle the situation. But Jack Bly had the confidence of someone who didn’t take “no” for an answer. Plus…as a high-level empath, he was able to predispose strangers to do his bidding.

  Without waiting for Bertelli to invent some reason to tell him not to, Troy met us and our massive load of “files” by the service door. When we shoved our work table against the wall, we could wedge the crate into the room with us. Barely.

  We removed the cover and situated the set so it was facing the wall with its protective shell toward the door. Any medical staff would see nothing but a nondescript black case, unless they took it upon themselves to come right up to it and peer around the back. It would’ve been a lot easier if there were casters on the thing so I could swing it away from the wall without Jacob’s help when I needed to tweak the dials. But since its ungainly bulk would shield it from casual curiosity, it was probably for the best that we’d never added wheels.

  Bly said, “If you guys don’t need me anymore, I’m gonna head back to base. The collective anxiety level here is sky high.” He gave the back of his neck a squeeze. “It’s so bad I’m starting to sweat.”

  I could only imagine what it must be like to watch your patients drop like flies. Or, in the case of Bertelli, worry not that people were dying
, but that he’d somehow be found liable for their deaths.

  I had to perform a pretty acrobatic contortion to reach the outlet and plug in the set, but thanks to my long arms, I managed. “If someone croaks, we’ll be ready for ’em. But we’ll need to be careful not to burn out the tube.”

  Jacob said, “I’ll monitor the temperature—I can slip my hand between the console and the case right there, see how hot it’s getting. You call me, we keep an open channel, and let me know when to turn it on. Should we test it now?”

  I nodded and Jacob turned it on. The channel was currently set to whatever it was that let me see people’s talents. A webwork of red veins appeared on him. Or maybe it was more of a protective mesh. Whatever it was, it didn’t spook me quite so much, now that I knew what to expect. “Is it working?” he asked.

  “Yeah. It’s working.”

  I was so distracted by the red lines of power coursing through Jacob, I nearly jumped out of my skin when a quiet voice behind me said, “Vic?”

  I whirled around and found Gina in the doorway, looking alarmed. Or puzzled. Or maybe just baffled. But while she was obviously curious about our big black case, what she said was, “We have a new patient who was referred by LaSalle, and I think you’ll want to talk to her.”

  “No Code Blue?”

  “Let’s hope not. Right now, she’s listed as urgent. Not emergency. But according to a Dr. Gillmore who sent her here, there’s Kick in her system.”

  An odd glow around Gina made me realize she was a precog, albeit a subtle one, and also reassured me that the GhosTV was playing. She led me to the room where a team stood ready. Some thin-skins flickered among the staff. Empaths. Not surprising, when you thought about it. Though I’d imagine the burnout rate was high.

  A moment later, paramedics brought in the patient through the emergency door in the back of the building—on a wheelchair, not a gurney. I registered that it was a thin woman with long, dark hair. And that an oxygen mask was covering her face.

  And that she was swarming with habit demons.

  One of the paramedics gave the nurse beside me the lowdown. “Bethany Roberts, age thirty-eight. Ingested a single dose of Kick approximately ninety minutes ago, then admitted herself to urgent care at LaSalle General fifteen minutes later.”

  I backpedaled until my shoulder blades hit the wall. The woman knocked the mask askew and the paramedic calmly replaced it. I knew her. The yoga lady from Halsted Fitness Club. Not only did I know her, but when she moved her hand quickly, it left a tracer behind.

  I glanced down at my own hand and gave it a quick wave.

  Just like mine.

  “Listen to me!” She knocked her mask off again. “It takes food several hours to pass from the stomach into the small bowel. There’s still time to purge it from my system.”

  There was a commercial for mosquito repellant, back when I was a kid, that showed someone sticking their bare arm into a glass box filled with mosquitoes. Looking at this Bethany woman within range of the GhosTV? That’s what it was like. But substitute translucent, fist-sized blobs where the mosquitoes would normally be. Instead of plunging their built-in drinking straws beneath her physical skin, they were hooking into her with their etheric tethers. And every time she swept her arm for emphasis, most of them flew off, which only added to the boxful-of-mosquitoes effect.

  The doctor helped her onto the exam table and said, “I take it you tried to purge unsuccessfully yourself?”

  The nurses with thin skin both flinched as if the doctor had scolded them, and the habit demons swarmed in hard.

  “I made a mistake,” Bethany said coldly, in the same tone of voice in which she’d tell me not to lock my knees, back when she thought I was cruising her class in hopes of seducing a vulnerable stay-at-home mom. “Don’t make me regret transferring my care here. I’m sure they’d be able to pump my stomach just as well at LaSalle.”

  She chafed her forearms and habit demons took flight. Not for good. They were still hovering around her, hoping for a snack. But it was obvious she wasn’t gonna just sit back and let them feed off her. Whether she knew it or not.

  Suddenly, the habit demons disappeared, and for a moment there, I thought Bethany had done it. Maybe with a mental yoga move in her arsenal that was my equivalent of white light. But then I realized that it was more likely the GhosTV was turned off. Hopefully just that, and not burned out and ruined.

  I backed into the hall, shoring up my own defenses all the while. Causation or correlation—I wasn’t sure if habit demons had a particular hard-on for mediums, or if it was just the mediums who were most bothered by them. Either way, I didn’t want them to decide I was an easier target than Bethany. I turned up the wattage on my white light, then gave Jacob a quick call and asked him, “Did you turn off the TV?”

  “I did. It felt pretty hot. Should I turn it back on?”

  I wanted him to. But I also didn’t want to lose the set over a bunch of…I’d need to start calling them something other than “habit demons” if I wanted anyone to take them seriously. I wasn’t surprised to find them lurking around. They could even be the reason Kick was so addictive. Oh, sure, there was probably some neurochemical reward system in play. But that didn’t mean the etheric body wasn’t involved.

  Gina approached and nodded for me to follow her. We stepped into an empty exam room, where she said, “They’re going to administer activated charcoal to try and neutralize whatever drugs are still in the patient’s stomach, and it can get pretty ugly. Some people vomit. And it looks like something out of The Walking Dead when they do.”

  I’d seen worse, but figured I shouldn’t brag about it. Your average person doesn’t need to know zombies are somewhat real, even if they aren’t coordinated enough to chase you down and eat your brains.

  Gruesome or not, I really needed to keep an eye on Bethany. Ideally with the GhosTV playing. “Say, Gina, would you happen to know if I could get…a fan?”

  “Sure. How big?”

  “There’s more than one size to choose from?”

  “Sometimes the exam rooms get a little stuffy, so we have a desktop model I could rustle up. Jill keeps a bigger one in her cubical she might let you borrow. I doubt you want the fan the janitors use to dry the floor.”

  Actually, I wouldn’t be so sure about that. But in the spirit of not calling too much attention to the GhosTV, I said, “If you can snag me a couple of the desktop fans, that’d be great.”

  While Gina went off to find me some fans, I headed back over to see how Bethany was doing and found her lips were blackish, the doctors were now gone, and a PA was seated in the room doing active observation…or maybe just babysitting. Judging by the look on Bethany’s face, she was none too thrilled about it.

  “Do you mind if I talk to the patient?” I asked the PA. “Alone?”

  “I should check with Dr. Bertelli….”

  I gestured to all the monitors. “I’ll holler if any of these alarms go off. I promise.”

  The PA wasn’t entirely convinced, but since she knew I was a big federal so-and-so—and since I asked nicely—she did relent.

  I left the door slightly ajar, just in case any medical personnel needed to rush in, and said, “Ms. Roberts? Is it okay if I call you Bethany?”

  She’d been glaring angrily at the wall, but her head snapped up when she registered that she’d heard my voice before. “Hold on, I know you. From the gym.”

  “Victor Bayne,” I said, suddenly glad that unless she made me spell it for her, it wouldn’t contradict anything I might’ve told her while I was undercover. I flashed my ID, long enough for it to look official, but not long enough for her to get too curious about the specific agency I worked for. I generally just refer to myself as a federal agent and let folks think what they will. I’ve never had anyone ask me to clarify.

  I could have tried throwing my weight around and acting all important, but I’d seen Bethany in action and knew she preferred to be top dog. Since bossing her arou
nd would only shut her down, I tried appealing to her helpful side. “Listen, my boss wants me to figure out where the Kick is coming from and I’m having a really tough time. Any information you can think of would really help me out.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You’re not in any trouble. I promise. This drug is dangerous, though, and we need to get it off the streets before anyone else gets hurt. Can you tell me where you got it?”

  “I was at a party at a coffee shop, a bunch of us were, from work. Someone offered me an herbal supplement. I didn’t know him.”

  I was eager to ID Bertelli once and for all. I called up his dossier on my phone and showed Bethany his photo. “Is this the guy?”

  She shook her head. “No. I’d remember if he had such good posture.”

  I turned the phone around and wondered how she got “posture” from his cheesy headshot.

  She added, “Plus, his BMI was higher.”

  That was awfully…specific. “About how old would you say he was? The guy with the Kick?”

  “Oh, I’m terrible with ages. Maybe my age? But that’s what I always think.”

  “And his race?”

  “Definitely Northern European. Possibly Swedish, though he might’ve been Norwegian.”

  I blinked, then said, “And the supplement he was peddling—what did he claim it would do?”

  Bethany crossed her arms and drew in on herself. It didn’t make her smaller. It just made her angles protrude. “I don’t see what difference it makes.”

  Carefully, I said, “Was it something…psychic?”

  She gave me a piercing look to see if I was mocking her. My bland cop-face must’ve been reassuring. “Fail a psychic screening and forget it. Everyone acts like you’re delusional if you think the findings are flawed.”

  While she spoke, the air around her blossomed with habit demons as Jacob tinkered with the GhosTV. I jerked away, then turned aside and tried to cover my flinch with a dry cough. Then I said, “Screenings can be pretty subjective. And they measure some talents better than others.”