“That’s it,” he said simply. Which only made me more suspicious. What I’d told Evelyn was true, no one knew Jacob like I did. And he was obviously holding back. But if he wasn’t going to tell me under the cover of the squeaky wheel, I couldn’t force it out of him.
“Once the Boswell case is done,” I said, “let’s take a vacation. Pick somewhere and I promise I won’t complain.”
“I don’t need a vacation,” Jacob said.
Maybe not, but I sure did. “Until Evelyn goes back to National.”
The cart squalled to a sudden halt. “Why do you say that?”
Because then he could stop fixating on the SPECs and get his head back in the game, I thought. But I couldn’t come right out and say it. There are times to argue with Jacob by disagreeing with him head-on and giving him a few compelling reasons. This, I sensed, was not one of those times.
“She’s just distracting, is all,” I said.
What I meant was that she was distracting Jacob—keeping him from having his eyes on the prize and doing his job. But Jacob is patently unused to being criticized, and he took it to mean that I was the one suffering from distraction. “Agreed. It’s hard enough trying to pin down a shifty repeater without an audience from National.”
“Well....” I said in my own defense.
“After all, it’s not like you’re just some kind of a machine. A piece of equipment to point at something and see if it’s haunted. You’re a human being.”
Obviously. But I didn’t see how suddenly the hangups I was avoiding talking about belonged to me.
“You’re right,” Jacob said. About what? No clue. “A reset would be a good idea for everyone. Get back to your usual way of doing things. Just you and your talent. Rested and fresh.”
“I’m plenty rested,” I said.
“You don’t need to be brave with me,” Jacob reassured me.
“Hold on, who was being—?” I rattled the cart. “All I meant was that—” I very nearly blurted out that I missed Carl. Because Carl wouldn’t be circling around the scientist hoping for a chance to play with the cool toys. I grabbed a few random cans and threw them in the cart with a clatter. “I was just usedto things the way they were. With a partner who knows my standard operating procedure, an app that does what I expect it to, and ghosts I can see until they’re exorcised.”
“Just because something is familiar doesn’t mean it’s necessary.” Jacob pulled a can of sauerkraut out of the cart and put it back on the shelf. “You don’t need that app.”
“It was helpful,” I insisted.
“When we first met, you were so inundated with ghosts, you needed Auracel to turn them off. And now you can’t see a repeater without an app?”
“Since when are you an expert on what I should and shouldn’t be able to see, when you can’t see anything at all?”
Hurt flashed in Jacob’s eyes. I hadn’t meant to snap at him—I just wasn’t any good at handling criticism. Not over an ability that normally came to me as easily as breathing. We abandoned our cart of random canned goods mid-aisle and stomped to the car in silence. And not because we suspected our vehicle was bugged.
By the time we got home, neither of us was great company. We ate leftovers in sullen silence, both feeling wounded and misunderstood. And I headed up to bed early while Jacob was filled with the sudden urge to clean the kitchen. I lay in bed, glaring at Blip, wishing I had the psychic power to turn back time and stop the app from updating. Meanwhile, Jacob expressed his displeasure by walking around extra hard and slamming cabinet doors.
Blip did a stupid cartwheel.Wanna coast into dreamland?
What I wanted was to punch that damn goldfish in the nose.
Did goldfish even have noses?
I sighed.
I felt like a heel. The only thing Jacob had ever wanted was to be a psych. And the fact that he’d been one all along was less satisfying than finding out that Dorothy’d been in Kansas the whole time and Oz was just a metaphor. Because in Jacob’s mind, psychic powers were something you could see and hear and put to good use. Not vague impressions that left you second-guessing everything.
So, if anyone should get why I found the Boswell apartment phenomenally frustrating, it was him.
Blam—a drawer shut. The silverware drawer, judging by the faint rattle. Then the trash can closed with a firm plastic clap. Amazing how specific sounds could be. Even filtered through the floorboards.
As I considered this, a snippet from our interview with Kostic bobbed up to the surface of my consciousness. He’d been visiting the downstairs neighbor, and the TV was too loud on the floor above them.
I hopped out of bed and hurried downstairs, finding Jacob scrubbing at the kitchen counter like he wanted to make it screamuncle. “We haven’t talked to all the neighbors,” I said.
