PsyCop: GhosTV Part 3

Crash said, "Just a sec," to me, dug around for his keyring and unlocked his register. Within seconds, the Hispanic woman was at the counter with an armload of prayer candles. Crash wrapped each one in newspaper before he bagged it, gave the customer her total in Spanish, and made quick change for her twenty. She took her bags and left without a word. "One of my regulars," Crash said. "She doesn't have a lot to say. I think she feels guilty for shopping at a gringo store." The grubby guy was still browsing.

"Sit," Crash insisted, and shoved at my shoulder. I hadn't even realized I'd stood up. A cop-thing, most likely. When I thought about it,

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how rote a majority of my responses were, it felt pretty bleak. Or maybe that was the point. Maybe that's what training was really all about.

I sat.

He spritzed my head with Windex water. It didn't smell like ammonia.

Probably just plain water. Then he combed through and parted my hair in a bunch of places. "You want me to go conservative, then?"

"I uh..." I didn't. Not deep inside. But I could hardly ask for a mohawk. "Whatever you think is best."

"I always knew you could sweet-talk me like crazy. Don't worry, baby.

You're in good hands." He tilted my head down and snipped at my hairline in back, tiny nips. "I wish the butcher who got to you before had left me some length to work with."

Points of wet hair sprinkled the floor beside the chair. Very small, a quarter of an inch, even less. Crash kept working my hair, fingers and comb, comb and fingers, measuring and finessing while the tiniest bits of hair rained down.

"You cut hair?"

Crash let go of my head and I looked up. The grubby guy was standing closer to us than I would've liked, especially with me sitting down.

"How much?" he asked.

"You can't afford me. Is that all, or do you need some charcoal?"

"Uh, no. I'm good."

Crash rang up the sale, then came back around to the front of the counter and picked up wherever he'd left off. "Another regular?" I asked.

"I dunno. He's shopped here a few times, but there's something in his vibe that rubs me wrong. He's always buying bouncebacks,

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curse deflection stuff. Which raises the question-look down, there you go-is he really surrounded by people who continually fling hexes and whammies his way, and if so, what did he do to deserve it? Or is he just paranoid? Either way, I'm not exactly itching to add him on Facebook."

Crash grabbed my chin and tilted my face up. I held my breath while he leaned over me and put his face right in mine to check the sides of my hair for length. He gave his gum an annoyed crack and took another quarter inch off one side.

Had he felt my aura spike when Miss Mattie showed up, or had the creepy guy's vibes thrown enough interference from out on the landing to cover it? Hard to say-but my guess was, Crash would've had a comment or two if he'd known I was just chatting with his long-lost neighbor. Why had she bothered to talk to me just to tell me it wasn't wussy to ask for help? I was well aware of how much help my hair needed-and I'd already resigned myself to the Crash treatment.

Overprotective, I guess.

Crash traded the scissors and comb for the little jar of hair stuff and rubbed some paste between his palms. "I know you can't be bothered to style it-"

"Not necessarily."

"-but humor me just for today."

He worked the paste through my hair and tweaked it. I used to put my 'hawk up with Elmer's glue and egg whites. I could manage a dab of paste.

"Yeah, not bad. I wanna give you a trim in a couple of weeks when the front has a chance to recover from the chop shop."

"Uh, how much do I owe you?"

Crash waved it off. "Never mind. It's enough to know you won't be

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scaring my customers away. So what else was on your agenda today?

Did you need any actual supplies?"

Bob Zigler had downsized my stealth exorcism kit to a repurposed pocket-sized breath spray and an emptied out Chap Stick tube. I was at the point where I could zap a repeater with a quarter teaspoon of Florida Water and a pinch of herbs, and I had enough sandalwood powder to last me through Christmas. Still, if Crash wasn't going to accept money for the haircut, I figured I should probably buy something. "I dunno. I'll look around."

What would he stand to make the most off if I bought it? The stat-uettes, probably. They were the biggest ticket items in the whole store. If I bought one, though, he'd probably look for it the next time he came to visit-and if there's one thing I can't stand, it's clutter.

Throws too many shadows.

Also, he'd probably ask me why I wanted to buy Ganesh in the first place, given that I'm agnostic. It'd be a lot easier to simply drop a few twenties on his floor when he wasn't looking, but in all likelihood they'd end up in the pocket of the bearded guy, or someone just like him.

I turned and scratched my head, wondered when the last time was I'd washed my hair. Then I remembered the paste, and then I laid my eyes on a row of books. Books had a decent markup, right? And I might actually find some use for them. "What do you have that's recent?"

"Lucky you've got a hot little a.s.s in those jeans or I'd have to smack you for asking such useless questions. Recent what? Ephemerides?

Meditation guides? Hymnals?"

I felt my cheeks warm up, so I cranked my internal faucet and pulled down a white balloon between the two of us before he could get off empathically on my embarra.s.sment. "Psych stuff, I guess. General facts. Post-eighties."

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"Ah. Now, that's a challenge." He brushed shoulders with me as he came to stand beside me at the bookshelf. "That's when the books got bland. Before that, psychic research was actually interesting-but the second they found something real, poof. The writing tanked."

"How come?"

He lowered his voice. "Who was the one who set up a cloak-and-dagger meeting with me in a public toilet to find out more about F-Pimp?

You know better than anyone that Big Brother is real." The Federal Psychic Monitoring Program-could I go one single day without being reminded that the FPMP was keeping tabs on me?

Was that too much to ask? I sidled away from him. He managed to brush up on me some more without even seeming to move. "Maybe Jacob would like...this one." I scanned the shelf frantically for a t.i.tle that didn't look asinine while I pumped white light into the s.h.i.+eld between us like I was putting out a flaming house with the energy.

PsychicSelf-Defense. How appropriate. I pulled the book and showed him the cover. "Any good?"

"Adequate. I wouldn't stock it if it wasn't at least moderately informative, not unless it had a tacky cover that fairly screamed For EntertainmentPurposesOnly."

"Okay. I'll get it for him."

The second mention of my lover-Crash's ex-finally got him to back out of my personal s.p.a.ce. "So how is Mister Tall, Dark and Infuriating these days?"

"The same, I guess."

"Doubtful. We're all evolving."

I grabbed a couple more t.i.tles- ElementalMagick, and YouTooCan beClairvoyant. The Clairvoyance one was thirty-five bucks. Good. I wouldn't feel so bad about the free haircut if I bought it.

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Crash rang up my books and swiped my Visa, then did a double take at my hair. "Come here a second." He motioned me forward and I leaned over the counter, figuring that I had something out of place.

I felt his fingers against my scalp and a tingle shot down my spine.

I turned up my internal faucet another few rotations. "You've got a wicked sunburn right up your part." Crash snapped a triangular chunk off an aloe plant that was hidden behind a big incense burner and a Seven African Powers prayer candle, then pushed my head down and squeezed the cool juice onto it. I figured that the aloe might add character to the paste-or at least it wouldn't be terribly noticeable.

I looked up, and Crash's fingertips hovered at my eyebrow like he might stroke my cheek. I stepped back and strengthened the white balloon yet again. It had to be as thick as a steel-belted radial by now.

He was a lot easier to resist when he was acting like an a.s.shole. Time to get out while I still could. I gave him a stilted wave, and I could hardly move my arm through the thick membrane of protection I'd been pouring light into for the past quarter of an hour. He smirked and gave me an ironic finger-wave in return. "Ciao, baby." I stumbled out onto the street and let my balloon drop. Crash was great, don't get me wrong, but keeping him from feeding off my emotions felt like drinking three refills of c.o.ke at a restaurant, finding the bathroom out of order, and having to hold it all the way home down a road full of potholes.

On my way back to the car I glanced at the fortune teller's window- not that you can ever see anything, between the neon and the thick black drape-and got a load of myself reflected back in the gla.s.s. Holy c.r.a.p. My hair looked friggin' awesome.

Crash had given me rock star hair. Subtle rock star hair, like a pseudo-intellectual kid on an indie label might have, hair that looked like he didn't give a s.h.i.+t about it, that he just happened to tousle it the right way and it fell, by chance, in the most flattering way it might have

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landed. Hair that might not have been washed lately, but it didn't matter because it only added to the just-rolled-out-of-bed charm.

It was the hair I'd been born to have-if I were a pseudo-intellectual in an indie rock band, and not a cop.

Would I have to get an even shorter nerd cut to cover it up? I didn't want to. Besides, it probably wouldn't look quite as good without the hair paste. It might even look cop-like, if I didn't tousle it.

Though I didn't know how I'd resist. It was the best hair I'd ever had.

My phone rang while I was waiting for the light on Damen and Lincoln that I've never once made. Crash. "h.e.l.lo?"

"So what do you think?"

"The hair? It's uh...yeah. It's good."

"Oh, go on. Really. Go on."

"It's really...good...hair."

"That's it? Good? Just good? You look about five years younger and smokin' hot."

"What about...athletic?"

There was crackling on the line. I realized it was Crash torturing his gum for a good second or two. "What're you talking about?"

"You know, more uh...athletic."

"I think I have the wrong number. I could swear Victor Bayne just asked me if I thought he looked athletic."

"Never mind, I gotta g-"

"My grandma is more athletic than you."

"Thanks a lot."