Bitter Pill Read online

  My hand reached toward my weapon, brushed the shape of the holster, then delved into the pocket where I kept my sacred salt. No time to fiddle open the baggie. I bit into it, tore the plastic with my teeth. Salt sprayed everywhere. I spat. It was edible, right? Probably. And it wouldn’t much matter if I found myself possessed.

  Whatever salt hadn’t spilled down the front of me, I dumped into my palm and diverted a stream of white light toward it. “Reginald—c’mon, man, don’t let what happened to you be for nothing. Tell me—where’d you get the Kick?”

  But Reginald wasn’t home. He just kept lumbering toward me with an expression that kept flickering between wide-eyed pain and a thousand-yard stare.

  I backed into the fire door at the foot of the stairwell and said, “Reginald Green—you’re dead. Got it? You’re dead. So you might as well tell me—Jesus Christ.” I flung the salt. No doubt, the security camera in the corner would just show a tall, skinny, out-of-breath guy throwing a handful of salt at nothing. But to my inner eye, at least, the salt picked up the white light I was grappling with like a giant cloud of heavy metal pouring from a smoke machine at a Füker concert. And then it parted to reveal Reginald’s ghost. His face was twisted in a rictus of agony and he twitched like he was struggling against an invisible net. The sight of it only added fuel to my fire—the certainty that he was coming for me, and if he forced himself under my skin I was utterly screwed—which must’ve activated my emergency switch.

  Something shifted inside me and the white light thundered down. The whole stairwell lit up to my second sight as I channeled the white light down from the heavens, in through my third eye, and out in a defensive wall of don’t-you-dare-even-try-it. The white light rolled through the stairwell like a shockwave. Reginald lit up like he was surrounded by etheric clouds. He wasn’t shoved toward the veil, like the other ghosts I’ve exorcised. It was more like he came apart. It was fast—split-second fast—but hunks of him flew upward, leaving a smoky shell of a ghost body that collapsed in on itself, and was gone.

  I stood there for several rapid heartbeats while my pulse thundered in my ears, watching the whiteness sparkle and fade. Was I alone? I thought so. I hoped so. Gradually, while the sound of my own heartbeat was replaced by a digital ringing sound, I was vaguely aware that the “Code Blue” had stopped. I turned around, sat on the stairs, and dropped my head between my knees. It gave off a sick throb, the type of startling, intense headache I only experience when I flex my psychic muscles way too hard.

  Was my telltale knife of pain in the same region of the cortex that psyactives were designed to tickle?

  My phone was ringing. Had been for a while now. I focused on deep, steadying breaths as I tried not to freak over the thought of rupturing something important in my brain.

  How crazy would it be if, after everything I’d done over the course of my life—all the murderers I’d inconvenienced, all the dubious pills I’d swallowed, all the ghosts I’d underestimated—the thing that ultimately killed me was the act of trying too hard?

  Up on the main floor, a door opened. Jacob called, “Vic?”

  “Down here,” I answered to my knees.

  The metal stairs vibrated as he hurried down to where I sat. He paused, took me in, and said, “You already know what just happened, don’t you?”

  “How’d you guess?”

  “You’re covered in salt.”

  I raised my head gingerly. Jacob was scoping out the area—not that he’d actually see any ghosts, even if one happened to linger behind. He’s all about due diligence, though, so it doesn’t stop him from checking. “Are you okay?”

  “Peachy.” I gave the back of my neck a good squeeze to try and alleviate the throbbing in my skull. It didn’t help.

  “Vic…look at me.”

  I glanced up. “Maybe I should go home and grab a quick nap.”

  Jacob looked the way he looks when he’s really concerned about something but trying to come off as casual. “Maybe you should see someone.”

  “I just overdid it, that’s all. Once I’ve had some sleep—”

  “There’s a burst blood vessel in your left eye.”

  Oh hell. I didn’t like the sound of that.

  Luckily, we just so happened to be inside a highly specialized medical facility created specifically for Psychs. Against Jacob’s wishes, I headed up to the top of the stairs on my own volition—yeah, I felt like shit, but I could still walk. The team was all clustered in the emergency bay with Reginald’s body, but when Jacob grabbed a doctor and pointed me out, someone announced, “Code yellow!” and I found my ass in a wheelchair cruising down the hall, stat. I wasn’t necessarily keen on all my new “friends” knowing I’d just seen a ghost, particularly the ghost of one of their favorite patients, but given that they knew my whole medical and psychic history, there was really no way to hedge.

  Most people need to go to big hospitals or specialized imaging centers to get MRIs, but The Clinic had their very own claustrophobia tubes. I was no stranger to the procedure. In Camp Hell, we used to joke that they scanned our brains every time we took a dump. I’m not actually afraid of enclosed spaces, and it’s never bothered me to lie there and listen to some music while the magnets did their thing, just as long as I got to pick the album.

  I knew the rigmarole. If I’d had a piercing—or a wedding band—I would’ve needed to remove it. I knew better than to remark on that to Jacob just now. I went behind the curtain, changed into the scrubs they gave me, shoved my feet into the paper slippers, and let the orderlies help me over to the tube.

  The doctor in charge of my “code yellow” was an older woman, kind of stern and not really one for break room gossip, but her air of competence was encouraging. As they IV’d contrast dye into my arm, she explained it was critical to do the functional MRI as soon after my “psychic event” as possible, so as to map the effect of increased psychic stressors on my brain.

  I’m familiar with the tube—and I’m familiar with all the braces and harnesses that’re meant to “help” you hold still. I gave them a hard pass. What if another Psych bit the dust while I was strapped into a machine?

  I was pretty emphatic about my refusal. Let’s just say if that particular doctor were to bring in some banana bread tomorrow, it’s unlikely I’d be offered a slice.

  There wouldn’t be much of a view with me lying flat on my back in a magnetic tube, but I didn’t take the eye mask they offered me. Not with the potential of another “psychic event” happening while I was in the machine. I’d accepted the headphones, though, but only so the folks in the control room could talk to me. I followed all the instructions as the machine powered up, and soon enough, they were feeding me into the singing, pinging tube. What I didn’t expect was Jacob’s voice to follow.

  “Everything’s going to be okay,” he told me reasonably. “Are you comfortable?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “If you’re feeling sweaty, they can up the AC.”

  For a change, no, I wasn’t sweating. “Jacob, I’m fine.”

  “I’m right here. And everyone on the team is a top expert in their field. You’re in good hands.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Agent Marks?” said the doctor in the background. “We can’t start the scan until Agent Bayne stops talking. His head needs to be completely still.”

  “I can stay here. Talk you through it.”

  Jacob may have been acting calm, but I knew it was just a front. “It’s okay,” I told him as reassuringly as I could. “Seriously. This isn’t my first magnetic rodeo—and if you really want to help me, you’ll go to the break room and commandeer the salt shaker.”

  “Got it.” I think Jacob was relieved to have something to do. “And, Vic….”

  “I’ll see you in a few,” I said, before he embarrassed himself by getting all choked up. “Just…whatever you do, don’t forget the salt.”

  I’d elicited promises that they’d inform me immediately if any “Code
Blues” came in while I was tubing. Even so, as the scanning commenced, I narrowed my eyes to the smallest slits, as close as they could be to “closed” while still letting me keep an eye out for a potential ghostly hijacker. I performed admirably well, I thought. Though it did occur to me that most people who couldn’t handle the restraints would’ve at least been offered a sedative. Not that I wanted one. I just thought I should’ve had the option to refuse.

  Scratch that. I did want one. But I wanted it curled up in my bed in my favorite sweatpants and an old T-shirt, not laying on a plastic slab in too-short scrubs and a pair of paper slippers.

  By the time the scan was finally done, the urge to move around was excruciating, particularly my hands and feet, and my neck itched like crazy. I shuddered as they pulled me from the tube. Was this what it felt like when susceptible folks watched those whispery paper-folding videos? Unlikely. I could hardly see anyone going out of their way to experience the wiggle-willies. Not on purpose.

  I’m told regular people need to wait for their test results. I had the top psychic brain expert in the Midwest watching as the images unfolded. By the time I was dressed, the medical team was ready to give me their verdict.

  The brain guy was about my age—way too young to be a doctor, if you ask me—and his people-skills were negligible. But The Clinic didn’t keep him around to be anyone’s buddy.

  “Bayne, Victor,” he announced as I took a seat in the consultation room. “What a rare opportunity to record the vascular changes in a level-5 mediumship subject so soon after an extrasensory event. So. Let’s have a look.” He called up a slide. Yep. Looked like a brain to me. “There was significant activation involving the right parahippocampal gyrus, as you’d expect.”

  Sure. Totally.

  “Under the influence of all known pharmacological psyactives, the left inferior frontal gyrus would also be affected. But in this case, activation of that region was within normal range.”

  “I’m not on psyactives.”

  The brain doctor clicked forward a few frames and began pointing out another indecipherable blob on the screen. “Now, if you take a look at the hippocampus—”

  “Hold on. Did you think I was on psyactives?”

  “I don’t postulate until I see the empirical evidence,” he said with some annoyance.

  He totally thought I was on psyactives. Specifically, on Kick.

  The world’s brainiest slideshow played as he droned on about this or that structure with a bunch of terminology that meant absolutely nothing to me. Meanwhile, I fumed over the notion that he’d seriously thought I was under the influence of the very drug I was trying to stop from killing anyone else.

  As much as I get annoyed with airy-fairy New Age types with their utterly groundless magical thinking, I find they’re right just as often as the scientists and doctors with their bone-dry terminology and data. The fact that I was utterly lost didn’t register. He was scowling at the pictures of my headmeats when I prompted him with the question, “What about my eye? Is it okay?”

  It took the brain guy a few startled blinks to switch gears. “The subconjunctival hemorrhage was due to a small, temporary spike in blood pressure.”

  “That sounds bad.”

  “Nothing to worry about. The bleeds can be caused by something as unremarkable as straining to move your bowels.”

  Great. Yet another distracting mental image to subdue the next time I faced off with a ghost.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I was perfectly fine to press on, but the team at The Clinic insisted I call it quits for the night. In fact, they strongly suggested I take the next day off too while I was at it. But, let’s get real. Unless I was suffering from something more than a funky eyeball, that wasn’t gonna happen.

  Before they let me go, Erin met me in the consult room with a white paper bag containing several amber plastic pill bottles. She seemed sheepish, and vaguely, I remembered her telling me off before the whole code rainbow fiasco went down. She went through a whole raft of meds with me. Lubricating drops for my big red eye. Mild beta blockers to keep my blood pressure normal. Even pain meds for my head, though the headache had long ago subsided to a dull throb. I was tempted to ask for something to help me sleep—that’s what my doctors were there for, weren’t they? To help me—but if I had to endure another lecture on quitting caffeine entirely, it would cause another blood pressure spike for sure.

  “Do you have any questions?” she asked, like she’d rather be talking to anyone but me.

  “Don’t worry,” I told her. “I didn’t end up in the MRI tube because you were yelling at me. Believe it or not, I’m used to that kind of thing.”

  She cringed. “I was out of line. I know someone’s gotta keep an eye out for all our patients. But the FPMP can just be so….” She trailed off and shrugged, but she really didn’t need to explain herself. I knew what she meant. And I had no great fondness for spies myself.

  Jacob knocked off early too—with Laura Kim’s blessing, since she was highly invested in making sure nothing put her star medium out of commission for good.

  When Jacob drove us home, there was no disguising the fact that he was incredibly freaking worried. He held onto the steering wheel with the grip of death, and asked me at least a half dozen variations of, “Are you okay? Do you need anything?” before we even hit the first traffic light.

  “I just need to lie down,” I said. “I’ll be fine.” As long as I didn’t push myself, anyhow. I half suspected the comment about straining on the can was a subconscious attempt on the brain doctor’s part to make a dig. I’d been challenging him, and rock stars in their respective fields don’t like being challenged. And yet, there was a ring of truth to what he was saying. When I popped my eyeball’s blood vessel, I really had been straining. But not in any effort to void my bowels.

  If trying too hard meant stroking out, worst case scenario, then I’d need to dial it back. But what else was I supposed to do when a fresh ghost came shambling directly toward me?

  A text landed in as we pulled up in front of the cannery. Crash. What time do you want your smudging?

  I showed it to Jacob. He said, “It’s that time already?”

  “Must be getting use to the smell, if the lack thereof isn’t noticeable anymore.”

  “We should take a rain check. You really need to take it easy tonight.”

  Can’t say I actually did much of anything while Crash and Red re-stinkified my house. “No, it’s fine.” I gave my white paper bag a wave. “If my headache gets any worse, they gave me pills for that.”

  Since we were home early, our friends opted to head right over. It still seemed weird to see Crash during business hours, but apparently the day-to-day workings of their store could now happen without them being physically present.

  It was also weird how fast they could get here when they didn’t have to rely on the Damen Avenue bus. Before I’d even settled my new amber bottles among all the other ones in our medicine cabinet, they were knocking on the door. I wasn’t entirely sure I was fit for company, but at least they knew enough not to ring the doorbell. That thing could wake the dead.

  Crash was looking unabashedly outrageous in a long army duster no one had any business wearing outside a World War II action film, but Red was twice as striking in a black vinyl biker jacket painted top to bottom in rainbow colored mandalas. Red hung his coat on a peg. Crash threw his duster on the floor. “So,” Crash said. “I’ll bite. Why are you two home so early?”

  “I got sent home from the nurse’s office.” I pointed out my eye and Crash gave a low whistle, then proceeded to grill me until I told them all about the blood pressure and the MRI. I summed up the whole thing with, “No straining allowed. So don’t provoke me.”

  “Me? I’m the picture of innocence. But is the smoke gonna bother you?”

  Maybe. But a herky-jerky ghost sneaking into my house while I slept would bother me a hell of a lot more. “I can handle a little smoke. Besides, that’s
what fans are for.”

  They carried their exorcism gear in a bedazzled knapsack that looked like it should be holding glow sticks, a fifth of vodka, and a few hits of whatever the cool kids were snorting, smoking or swallowing these days. “Say, have you guys heard anything more about Kick?”

  “Just some rumblings about whether or not some anti-Psych hate group developed it to cull the city’s population of empaths and telepaths.” Crash was about to shove aside the papers on the dining room table to dump his gear in its usual place, but when he realized it was more than just the typical barrage of junk mail, he swung the bag onto a chair instead. “Hey, now. Is this extra-super top-secret spy stuff I shouldn’t be looking at?” Most people, at that point, might back away. He bent over the table and peered more closely.

  I didn’t stop him—I was still digesting that hate group thing he’d said in passing—but Crash said a lot of things in passing, and he didn’t really mean the majority of them. Red, however, adhered way more strictly to the Right Speech tenet of the Eightfold Path, and he didn’t utter a word unless he damn well meant it. I turned to him instead. “Do you really think this is some kind of targeted attack on Psychs?”

  “I suppose it’s a possibility—but would it make sense to target the drug population in general if what you’re really after is the few with abilities?”

  Maybe not. Unless the drug population in general contained a higher proportion of Psychs trying to erase a bunch of baffling extrasensory junk that only caused them distress.

  Jacob made his go-to Crash and Red dinner—pasta with veggie sauce, grated cheese on the side. Mere vegetarianism wasn’t strict enough for Red, and apparently vegans can’t eat much of anything, but we could all get behind a big mass of rotini. It’s always been weird to imagine Jacob dating Crash, but now that Red was in the picture, maybe I could see it. We all have our types, and maybe Crash thrived best against a backdrop of self-righteousness.

  While Jacob worked in the kitchen, our guests systematically blessed every square inch of the cannery. I usually stayed out of their hair by shifting to different parts of the house while they chanted and smudged, but tonight it seemed like more effort than I was willing to put out. Instead, I planted myself in the big recliner, fully intending to catch up with all the reading HQ kept dumping into my inbox. But the guys were pretty distracting.