If Laura’d had her druthers, I would have exorcised it and closed the case, since she wasn’t one for leaving ghosts lying around. I never pointed out that certain intersections were thick with repeaters. If she fixated on that, she’d never leave her house.
“What if Sarah needs the subtle body?” Evelyn wondered.
“Needs it…how?”
“To be Sarah again. You said she didn’t seem like the woman in her old pictures. Maybe that’s because, in some sense, she isn’t.”
Because she was missing her bloody repeater? That seemed more like a feature than a bug. “Hold on a sec.” I headed back to the bedroom and parked myself just inside the door. I wasn’t sure about the timing, but if I paid attention long enough, eventually, another chance to see the subtle body would roll around. I didn’t call ‘em repeaters for nothing.
I was starting to wonder if I’d be able to pick up on it without the SPECs—and dreading the thought of putting them back on—when a flash of movement tickled the edge of my awareness. Not as vivid or as visceral as it had been with the SPECs buzzing my brain. But although it was flimsy and washed out, now that I knew what I was looking for, I could see it well enough.
Sarah. Bloody. Slamming into the wall. Screaming.
“Vic—are you okay?”
How many times was Evelyn gonna ask me that? I waved her off. “The queasiness is fading.”
“But I thought you—never mind.”
And then I realized…Evelyn wasn’t worried about my nausea. She thought I was scared.
In other words—she could feel the repeater.
“What if Sarah’s not a psychopath at all?” I said. “What if she’s missing heremotionalpiece?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
AN EMPATHIC BODY.
Implications unfolded in my mind like the tracers following my hand when I was on those nasty, experimental Camp Hell drugs. I’d always suspected the six-talent, seven-level psychic classification system was borked. But maybe there was a reason for the internal consistency of some talents. Maybe it was a matter of the mojo coming from a particular subtle body.
And never mind psychs. What about the psych ward? How many headshrinkers were trying to fill a hole left by a missing subtle body with lithium or thorazine?
“Are you okay?” Evelyn asked. Again.
“I don’t even know where this report’s gonna begin,” I sighed. “But I think Sarah needs her ghost back.”
“I knew it!” boomed out a familiar male voice.
I jumped so hard I nearly put myself through the closet door. Boswell had let himself back into the apartment again while Evelyn and I played Ghostbusters, and now he’d overheard something to warp into confirming his paranoid delusions.
“How do you keep getting in here?”
“Never mind that. I knew the room was haunted. But the fact that life and death are simultaneous…that would explain a heck of a lot.”
“That’s not what’s happening here,” I said, but as usual, Boswell rambled right over me.
“If a dead person is haunting me, so what? They can’t do anything but sit and stare, and maybe wake me up in the middle of the night. But a living person…well, they could spy on me anytime they wanted. They’d have my social security number. My phone number. My pin number. And they’d also have a body that could do something about it!”
He probably shouldn’t suggest as much in front of a researcher from National. Remote viewing had always been one of their pet projects. If it were anyone but Evelyn listening in, I might need to worry.
“There’s no living dead spying on you with their ghost.”
“No?Theysent the FPMP after me. Who’s to say how deep the conspiracy goes?”
“I’m to say. I’m the one in charge here.” And so, I couldn’t blow it. I took a steadying breath. “Listen to me. Mediumship is confusing and weird. And people with that ability are few and far between. If you want guidance with that, my agency can help.”
“Can you fill me in on the latest research?”
