“Just the mugwort yesterday,” I told the doctor. “No other psyactives.”
Once the doctor was through with me, she moved on to Evelyn, the next-most-important psychic in the room. Evelyn had fallen hard on one hip and strained a good few muscles, but nothing appeared to be broken. She promised she’d follow up with her clinic in DC nonetheless.
I noted she didn’t mention the SPECs, either.
Boswell had taken the worst beating, but once medics staunched his bloody nose, they put his face back together with superglue and slathered it with antibiotic ointment. He’d probably scar. And he’d probably look even tougher now. Poor doofus.
I caught up with him in the bedroom, gazing at the spot where Sarah’s fragment no longer lived. Possession leaves a scar that all the superglue in the world won’t fix, and the sense of violation is something you never forget. “Now you see why I can’t exorcise you,” I told him. “It would only leave room for something else to fill the vacuum. Something that has no business being there.”
“So I’m stuck with someone always watching me.”
Yeah, welcome to the club. “We’ll work on it,” I promised. “I’ll teach you everything I know.” And who knows, maybe once he got a better handle on his subtle bodies, he’d get better at separating the actual threats from the imaginary ones. Though I wasn’t gonna hold my breath.
Once Boswell was patched up, Evelyn was dispatched to the airport, and Sledge was hauled off to the FPMP for “observation,” the ride home was…interesting. Not because I was at the steering wheel for a change, since I hadn’t been stun-gunned. And not because I was trying to figure out who was more right about Evelyn: Jacob, or me.
But because Sarah simply wouldn’t shut up.
“—and then my manicurist expected a tip, even though she’d literally just raised her rates by ten bucks. Can you believe it? But you can’t go just anywhere, ’cos you end up with nail fugus—ew—and thatnevergoes away—”
I squinted at the crosswalk. Only one repeater, or maybe it was a ghost. Either way, pretty scant. Not anyone I’d mistake for a walking, talking, living person. Regardless, I did swerve a little to keep the car out of it. My white ballon felt deflated. And after the bloody bike helmet guy, I wasn’t taking any chances.
Sarah’s chatter washed over me as I mentally backtracked through the past few days in light of the fact that Jacob had been staking out Evelyn the whole time. He’d been way too good at acting more or less like himself. Even so, there were a few pregnant pauses that I was too quick to dismiss. Maybe it should have been a tip-off that he let my psychic supply kit run dry. But I could totally see him leaving all the tedious paperwork for me.
“So how long would I be at the police station if I pressed charges against Zach?”
Jacob said, “Actually, it would be the district attorney who—”
Sarah plowed right over him. “Because I’ve gotta do something about this hair, too. If I can even get an appointment.”
Jacob encouraged her to give a statement. He downplayed how traumatizing it would probably be, but we’d make sure F-Pimp set her up with a good victim’s advocate. Now that she was integrated, though, Sarah seemed pretty resilient. Either that, or she wasn’t a very deep thinker.
“What evenhappenedto Zach back there?”
I wasn’t sure how technical she wanted to get, so I countered her question with a question. “What did it seem like to you?”
I glanced at her in the rearview as she screwed up her mouth to one side and gave it some serious thought. “Honestly? Everything was all wonky when I was outside myself. But after Zach punched you, it kinda looked like karma gave him a cosmic bitch-slap. Like when you drop the channel switcher and one of the batteries rolls under the couch.”
Eh, close enough.
“So, is it permanent?” Sarah asked. “Or will whatever fell out of him grow back?”
I hadn’t even considered that. “Hard to say.” But given what I’d glimpsed of the dark rift, how it seemed to stretch into oblivion, I’d wager the emotional self that Zachary Sledge had spent his whole life perfecting was gone for good. “Seems like poetic justice.”
“That’s dumb, what does it even rhyme with? I was just asking cos he seems a little spacy now.”
“There’s no quick fix for that,” I said.
“Too bad. When he goes to jail…I was really hoping he’d suffer.”
CHAPTER FORTY
FRANKLY, I PREFERRED Sarah’s solo body to her integrated self. At least the body only talked if it had something to say. But Posy Simon disagreed. The cat was so excited to see her old owner all in one piece, she nearly knocked herself out bonking her head against Sarah’s shin.
FPMP Midwest was putting them both up in a fancy hotel until Sarah could get on her feet again. I didn’t think places like that took cats. I guess when the government asks firmly enough, rules can be broken.
Once the cannery was free of cats (and Sarahs), Jacob and I found ourselves suddenly alone, with an air mattress cluttering up the dining room and stale popcorn scattered across the floor. My inner neurotic Spartan immediately wanted to set things back to normal. Not because I actually needed to see a psychic threat—I was still getting the occasional whiff of burnt sage from the most recent cleansing—but because in my mind, a predictable space had become a safe space.
Which one of my subtle bodies was responsible for that fine idea?
