PsyCop: GhosTV Part 28

I floated there with my astral hands on my astral hips and glared down at the cla.s.sroom as if it could help me figure out what to do. I couldn't read the books, since sticking my head between the closed pages would no doubt be confusing. I couldn't pick up the whiteboard stand and drive it through the ceiling...could I? I floated down and tried to grab it, but my hand pa.s.sed right through. Besides, I'd hardly sneak up on Chekotah if I came cras.h.i.+ng up through the floor.

The physical floor.

I looked up at the ceiling again and tried to help the thought that was attempting to form in my head. I didn't need to get through a physical barrier. I needed to get through a psychic barrier. And if I needed to get through a psychic barrier, I'd need a psychic tool, like...what was that band name? Astral knife.

I grabbed toward my pocket, the one that had filled itself with fairy dust when I'd been trying to summon salt, even though I had no pocket there since I was wearing an astral T-s.h.i.+rt and jeans rather 243.

than a suit. Even so, my hand brushed against something, though whatever it was, once I overthought it, it slipped out of my grasp.

Remember the fairy dust, I told myself, and I imagined a big, heavy blade, something substantial enough to cut through the protection keeping me out of Chekotah's room. I made a grab for it, then, doing my very best to ignore the niggling of doubt that insisted this was all some kind of stupid dream and I was making it all up. No. It wasn't just a dream. It was real, all real. And d.a.m.n it, I was good at it.

My hand closed around something hard. Big, and hard, and weighty. I gathered my courage and looked down. I'd summoned an astral axe.

You'd think I would be pleased, but mostly I was disconcerted. I hadn't been picturing an axe. In fact, if I were to be honest, I think I'd been picturing the cleaver from the last Ginsu Knife infomercial I saw. But I'd summoned an axe.

Did that mean my subconscious was forming it when I'd been busy focusing conscious thoughts on something else, or that the axe had an astral existence totally separate from my imagination? I didn't know. I wasn't sure anyone even knew. If projecting was anything like dreaming, Debbie might have a theory. But Debbie couldn't exactly explain it to me in nice, simple words if she'd been kidnapped by Five Faith, driven out of town by Faun Windsong, or spirited away by an Internet demon.

Or killed and dumped in the ocean.

No. I gripped my astral axe tighter and gave it a swing. Because Debbie wasn't dead. She couldn't be dead, because if she'd been murdered, she would have stuck around long enough to tell me.

Because if Debbie was dead, chances were, so was Lisa.

The axe bit into the ceiling, shuddered, stuck there for a moment, then came free when I gave it a yank. I swung again, grunting with the effort, and felt something split. I pulled the axe free and stared 244.

up at the ceiling, panting. My breathlessness was more from panic than exertion, I think, given that I wasn't currently physical and didn't actually need to breathe. Also, I realized I'd probably just given myself away big-time with all my chopping and grunting. So much for sneaking up on Bert Chekotah.

The ceiling looked exactly the same, but I knew what I'd felt. I reached my hand up into the split I'd made with my astral axe.

It pushed through.

I s.n.a.t.c.hed it back, just in case Chekotah was waiting up there for me with an astral axe of his own, and I sucked some white light to gather my courage. He'd be on to me by now. But I needed to face him, to see what the h.e.l.l was going on. What had happened to all those women. I sucked harder, and my vision went sparkly. Now or never. I tensed all over, and I shot myself up through the rift.

I erupted from the ball pit and into Chekotah's room in a cascade of astral sparks. I had the axe raised over my head and I was ready to swing it around to show I meant business. I took in the room with one sweep. Only one thing was moving, barely-a figure in the corner, sitting cross-legged on the floor with its back to me. It trembled.

Nothing glowed. Nothing s.h.i.+mmered. Nothing sparkled, once the backlash of my appearance died down and fizzled out.

Nothing else was astral. Nothing besides me.

Focusing on the figure in the corner made me shoot up closer to it before I could second-guess myself. I craned my neck to get a look at its profile and ended up flickering into existence perpendicular to it-Chekotah. No problem, though. He didn't seem to see me.

A shrine area was set up in the corner, with wall hangings and feathers and carvings defining the perimeter of the s.p.a.ce. No dream-catchers.

The walls were painted in earth tones and the floor was tiled in pale orange terra cotta.

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I must've been expecting to find Chekotah wearing a Village People getup, so I was surprised to see him in a red hat that was a cross between a pillbox and a turban, and a blouse of patchwork squares that looked like it was sponsored by the local quilt shop. He sat on a woven mat with a drum cradled in the crook of his crossed legs and a smudge stick billowing smoke at his elbow. An MP3 player docked in a speaker system on his other side played the sounds of Native American drumming and chant. Chekotah's hand fluttered as if maybe he'd begin to drum along, but then it collapsed, defeated, and left him there to sit and squint against the smoke.

Maybe Faun Windsong had been wrong about that whole peyote thing-'cos I could tell he wasn't astral. He'd be glowing blue, or at least sort of transparent, if he was. He could have been high, staring into the smoke like that. Unless "spirit walking" wasn't a form of astral projection at all, and it was more of a trance, an inner journey, and Chekotah was actually more of a clairvoyant than a medium.

Although, if that were the case, if he wasn't a medium, how had he managed to exorcise the Criss Cross Killer? Maybe "spirit walking" was just his name for meditation. After all, I was a high-level medium, and before I'd started watching the projection channel, I'd never experienced a lucid astral journey of my own.

I tossed the axe aside in disgust, and it made a couple of wobbly loops in the air before it disappeared into the wall beside Chekotah's bed. "You were supposed to be astral," I snapped at him. He stared straight ahead, while the Indians on the tape continued their atonal chanting and drumming.

"You know something more than you're telling us," I said. "I know you do. d.a.m.n it. There you are, with your stupid sage stick, and your stupid drum-and what the f.u.c.k is happening to these women?

Women who trusted you. You ought to be ashamed." The chant droned on.

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I glared at him for a few minutes, which he didn't notice, and I considered whether or not it might be possible for me to make Chekotah's astral body come out and play. His astral body existed-it was just lined up with his physical body at the moment. He was already in some kind of trance. Maybe if I focused, I could pull it out of there and make it give me a straight answer.

Where I should grab him, though? That was the question. I don't really like touching other people. Not people I don't intend to sleep with, anyway-and he might be some new age, ethnic prettyboy, but given what I'd learned about his reputation, I'd sooner head over to Lyle's room for a "quickie" than do the nasty with him.

His arm seemed impersonal enough. I made a grab for it, and my hand pa.s.sed right through. d.a.m.n. I squatted next to him, and I glared some more. "I went through all this trouble to talk to you," I said, "you'd d.a.m.n well better come out here and say something." I sucked white light again and grabbed for his arm.

I might as well have tried to grab the sage smoke. In fact, that would've probably been more effective. At least in the physical, when you pa.s.s your hand through smoke, it moves. Grabbing Chekotah's arm? Nothing.

So he couldn't hear me, wasn't going to talk to me, didn't feel it when I grabbed him, and didn't look like he was going to do anything but sit there and look miserable. Talk about a bust.

The floor where I stood felt too solid to sink through, as if Chekotah's protections still held. I turned around to head back the way I came, and froze to the spot.

There was a door next to Chekotah's bed that hadn't been there before, and framed in that doorway, a blood-covered woman stood, holding the astral axe.

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Chapter 28.

"Are you okay? Ma'am? Ma'am?" Thank G.o.d for cop-mode or I swear I'd just shut down like an unplugged blender. I'd never injured a civilian in the line of duty, and frankly, given that I almost never need to draw my weapon, I thought I'd retire free from that particular privilege. Leave it to me to nail someone with a careless toss of an astral axe.

If she even was astral.

She had the bluish, whitish, transparent and glowy look that Faun Windsong had when I'd first discovered Faun in the astral. The blood...

well, that was different. It looked like the axe had cracked her sternum right in half. The blood looked black. It spread over the front of her flowing white dress in a rapidly-spreading stain, with sparks playing over the edges of it as she moved. It was hard to take my eyes off that bleeding, sparking wreck of a wound, but for just a second, I did. Long enough to determine she had no silver cord.

She flickered like a ghost from a B-movie and appeared beside Chekotah. The axe stayed there beside the ghost door, dropping first on the top of the blade, like it had actual weight and heft, and then dissolving into the floor as it tipped over sideways, gone by the time the handle would have hit the floor. Flicker-her, staring down at him with a grief-stricken look on her face. Flicker-her hand reaching toward his hair to stroke it.

"Ma'am?"

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No reaction. If she was a ghost and I was astral, she probably couldn't hear me. Different planes, right? Er...maybe. Then she wound her hand in Chekotah's hair and tugged-and his hair moved.

She could touch him.

Her face contorted, and at first I thought it was just the facial acrobat-ics people do when they're gonna start bawling, but then I realized that she wasn't exactly sad. It was more like she was...triumphant.

She pulled harder, and Chekotah's hair starting glowing where it was wrapped around her hand.

"Step away," I barked, because her body language told me she'd be happy to tear the astral hair right out of his head.

She ignored me and yanked.

Chekotah's head blurred. Or maybe it stretched. His physical body was just sitting there, like it didn't feel anything at all-but the top of his head was stretching like a piece of Silly Putty.

"Police, step back." Useless, I know, since it carried zero weight in the astral-and besides, she couldn't even hear me. But that's the thing about training. You repeat it enough times, and when push comes to shove, your body goes through the motions for you while your mind is busy looping on the words holys.h.i.+t.

Since I now knew how to do a wristlock from every conceivable angle, I grabbed for her wrist. I must not have thought I'd actually make contact, because it shocked the h.e.l.l out of me when I grabbed, pulled and twisted, and ended up with a b.l.o.o.d.y ghost in restraint.

Chekotah's head snapped back to normal. Maybe he felt it-I think he sagged forward a little. Or maybe he was just getting tired of sitting there staring into his smoke.

The ghost cried out, or maybe she roared. It wasn't a human sound from a human throat. It was like feedback and static channeled through a disembodied voicebox. Vinyl tie. I reached in my pocket to 249.

grab it, but right as my hand closed around the spot where it would be, I realized that I was in civilian clothes, so of course I wouldn't have the vinyl tie with me.

At that moment, the moment I doubted myself, I lost my grip on the b.l.o.o.d.y ghost. She flickered and disappeared.

I'd touched her? Maybe she'd been able to hear me after all, and she'd just been ignoring me-at least until I subjected her to the ol'

snap-and-pop. A chill ran through my astral body. I hadn't realized it was possible to be astrally cold. I scanned the room. The door? Gone.

The axe? Gone. Chekotah? Useless excuse for a man. Some big-time shaman he was, if he didn't realize blood ghost and me were having a wrestling match right behind his head.

Unless she'd done something to him. Messed him up, emotionally, mentally. As the thought occurred to me that I needed to get a better look at Chekotah and make sure he was all right, the room changed, and I was right up against him. "Can you hear me?" I hollered in his ear. Either he was paralyzed, or he couldn't. I took a look at his hair.

It seemed to still be there. Not even messed up. Whatever had just happened, it must have left his physical intact and instead affected his subtle bodies. It had sure as h.e.l.l looked like his physical body was stretching, but physical molecules and cells and atoms couldn't actually do that.

At least I hoped not.

I circled around him to try to get a good look at his eyes. Thanks to my time in the nuthouse, I knew crazy eyes when I saw 'em, and it looked to me like there was someone home upstairs in Bert Chekotah's head...someone who wasn't doing anything particularly useful at the moment, but at least the attic apartment was occupied.

I was itching to get back, but I figured I should do a final check for injuries-astral injuries-if there even was such a thing. I checked him out the best I could. Face, hands, body, all normal. As I was getting 250.

ready to fly back to the relatively safe confines of my own skin, I noticed the light catch on something that had been camouflaged by the checkerboard pattern on the yoke of Chekotah's traditional native smock.

I squared myself up to it and looked harder. It was glistening.

He'd been slimed.

By the blood ghost? Or by me? The goo glistened just below the spot where I'd grabbed her in a wristlock. Since Chekotah was in the same position, I attempted a reenactment to see if I could tell where the ectoplasm had originated. It had all happened so fast it was hard to tell, even if I hovered my hand around the back of Chekotah's head and tried to imagine that eerie stretching effect. Which I had totally seen...hadn't I?

I checked out my hand. It was dry. So it couldn't be my hand-juice on Chekotah's s.h.i.+rt-evaporating, growing smaller even as I tried to figure out where it had come from. In fact, I didn't even think I was capable of producing ectoplasm while I was astral, because it was a physical manifestation of my power. That's what Dreyfuss had said.

And he wasn't being a smarta.s.s at the time, either.

Could I, though? If I tried? Both times I'd slimed myself, I'd been wound up tight with anxiety and siphoning white light for all I was worth. I currently had anxiety in spades-so I opened up the flood-gates, and I pulled.

My astral body glowed, and a wave of disorientation washed over me. But my hand stayed dry.

While I was busy sucking light, someone managed to approach the room in the physical just as I was too dazzled by white light to notice.

I flinched at the sound of a door opening, and Faun Windsong slipped into the room. "Bert?" she loud-whispered, in a voice that conveyed IknowI'minterruptingyousoI'lldoafunnyvoicetomakeupfor it. "Did you want me to chant with you? Maybe it'd help you focus."

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Seriously-they talked like that in the privacy of their own room? Do youwantmetochantwithyou? Although I guess I shouldn't throw stones, given the fact that Jacob was probably telling me to focus on my forehead or my collarbone or my elbow at that very moment.

Chekotah's shoulders sagged. "It's not going to help. The problem is me. The ancestors won't talk to me because...my heart is closed to them."

Maybe so...but the top of his head seemed pretty accessible.

Faun approached and knelt beside him just beyond the fringe of his mat. "How can you say that, after everything you do for us-all of us-here?" She took his hand and wove their fingers together. "Taking over for Dr. Park when he was too much of a coward to deal with Five Faith. That took courage. Your heart isn't closed. It's stress that's bothering you, pure and simple. That's all it is." She moved behind him and began to rub his shoulders, and I backpedaled until I was flat against the wall from my sheer horror at the thought that I might be about to witness Faun Windsong's seduction technique.

"Did you ever think that maybe the missing women brought it on themselves?" she said. "They never fit in here. None of them. The students were always complaining about Debbie...." Brought it on themselves? I'd had myself convinced that Faun Windsong was an innocent bystander in this whole mess...but hearing her talk when she thought no one was listening but Chekotah made me wonder. I was straining forward to make sure I caught every bit of their "private" conversation when a sudden lurch knocked me on my astral a.s.s. Blood ghost, back for more? I tried to rally, to whip around and face her, but before I knew it I was flying through the ball pit so fast I thought I'd end up with skidmarks on my forehead.

My flight ended with a bodyslam into the physical that left me gasping for air. Blood ghost hadn't dragged me down; my own silver cord had.

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"Vic?" Jacob shook me by the shoulder. "Are you with me?" My head spun. Not like Auracel-spins, and not even like sucking-too-much-white-light spins. It was the feeling, I suppose, of having my astral and my physical lined up so suddenly, and so violently, that my subtle bodies were reverberating like a big Tibetan gong.

"Lyle called. He said Katrina was heading for their room."

"No kidding-and she was saying some pretty f.u.c.king incriminating s.h.i.+t." I pushed myself up into a sitting position and my hand landed in something wet. Actually, no. My hand was wet. Ectoplasm.

"Sonofa-why'd you pull me back now, right when they were getting to the good stuff?"

"What was I supposed to do? Leave you standing there so Katrina could see you questioning Bert in the astral?"

"See me? She couldn't see me in the astral if I poked her in the eye."

"I figured you'd rather play it cautious."

Right...like I always do. "Chekotah wasn't astral. And Faun couldn't see me."

Jacob took my hand by the wrist-gently, for all that we were currently none too thrilled with each other-and turned it palm up so he could see the psychic jelly cupped in my hand. I sighed hard and gestured for him to go ahead and touch it. He dragged his finger over my palm, and I s.h.i.+vered.

"Why did this happen again?" he asked. "Is this how I'll know that you're really astral and not just asleep?"

I almost said, "How should I know?" in a fit of snippiness, but I had to admit, it was a legitimate question-and if I didn't know, who else would? "I don't think there's any way for you to tell if I'm projecting or not. I didn't slime myself on either of my other trips...so this must've happened here in the physical while I was trying to see if I 253.