PsyCop: GhosTV Part 18

"But I was hoping Mister Bayne could tell me-"

"Detective Bayne," Jacob corrected.

I did my best not to smirk. It blows my "Don't mind me, I never notice anything," smokescreen when I give in to smirkiness.

"Give us ten minutes to get dressed," Jacob said, and then, to drive home the fact that he was telling and not asking, closed the door before Faun acquiesced.

141.

I resisted an urge to draw an anarchy symbol in the margin of my s.h.i.+ny new green notebook. Barely.

See, when I'd suggested during our crack-of-dawn coffee meeting that in my line of work I might benefit from a few sessions of Astral Projection 101, I hadn't antic.i.p.ated that PsyTrain actually offered that specific cla.s.s. Nor that they would take me seriously and invite us to join in.

"It's the curse of having such a deadpan delivery," Jacob murmured to me. He, by the way, was not beyond smirking.

The cla.s.sroom wasn't like any kind of cla.s.sroom I'd ever seen before.

No chalkboards, no desks. But talk about chairs-any kind of ergo-nomic chair you might want to sit in, they had one. And even still, most of the students were sitting on the floor, on mats and cus.h.i.+ons, in their bare feet.

I didn't want to sit on the floor. You couldn't stand up fast from the floor. Not with a b.i.t.c.hy sciatic nerve. Plus it'd be the surest way to make my holster dig into my ribs.

"Don't you just have a regular chair?" I said.

Faun Blowhard Katrina Windsong Wojtowicz looked around the room and pointed out something that didn't seem terribly comfortable, but at least didn't look like some updated Medieval torture device. "You might be more relaxed if you took off your shoes." I made no move to take off my shoes, and she added, "Euro-Americans carry so much tension at the backs of their knees."

What?

"Take a deep breath, and relax."

I breathed pointedly in and out in hopes of getting her to pick on someone other than me, but she was as persistent as Sando.

"Your problem is, you're breathing in your chest."

142.

Someone needed an anatomy lesson.

Jacob and I sat, then-in chairs-and Faun Windsong said, "Let's all start with some breathing. In twice through the nose, hold two counts, out twice through the nose and mouth." She and the cla.s.s did a sniff-sniff-pause-huff-huff thing, and since Jacob was playing along, so did I. Once we were done breathing, Faun said to me, "When you exhale, it's not a ha sound. It's more of a huh sound." Huh was pretty much summing up my experience.

Sitting down seemed to divert Faun Windsong's attention from me, and she started her lecture. Finally, something I could use, something other than stupid chairs and huh-breathing through my knees.

Faun Windsong turned to a small whiteboard on a tripod and wrote the words physical-astral-ethereal, and Jacob and me-we cracked open our notebooks. Jacob's not a doodler. He's a pen-fiddler. He twirled it, he tapped it against his chin, and he even mouthed the end a few times-like it wasn't hard enough for me to focus. Jacob got into what she was droning on about-something to do with the body/ mind connection, and the silver cord. I got it. But I was busy thinking that now Lisa was four days gone, and it failed to hold my attention.

The rest of the cla.s.s, eight other purported psychics, many of whom I'd spied on while they were asleep in their beds, listened with rapt attention. Really? I mean, what was there to say about the silver cord? It might or might not be visible. It might connect to your solar plexus, or your third eye-or maybe even your big toe, depending on your own particular psychic makeup. It did exist. I knew that much.

I'd seen it in action, back when Jacob fed the rapist Barnhardt an antipsyactive and it reeled him back to his own stroke-riddled physical body like a gigantic fis.h.i.+ng line.

Interesting stuff? I guess. But Faun had been talking about it for over half an hour, no lie, and she hadn't yet said a single thing I didn't already know. In fact, I'd experienced it all myself, and I understood it on a gut level, minus all the blah-blah-blah.

143.

My pen tip clacked against the spiral notebook spine and I looked down, unaware that I'd even been doodling. Loopy-looking squiggles, repet.i.tive, random. No anarchy symbols. I drew one, very small, to see how it felt. It didn't resonate with me. I wasn't a twenty-something tough guy with a mohawk anymore.

I missed it more on principle than in practice, this old me. It felt good to be able to fade into the background now, if I needed to. My badge and my gun were also pretty good consolation prizes. And I suppose we all need to grow up, sooner or later.

"Any questions?" Faun/Katrina asked. She looked around the room, hands on hips, and settled her gaze right on me.

I pressed into the chair and tried to seem not quite so tall.

One of the other psychics, an Asian guy around thirty, said, "In Friedmann's primer, it states that astral matter is bound to its physical counterpart by fine-particle vibrations. If the silver cord is a manifestation of those particles, does that mean if you damage the cord, you'll die?"

"It hasn't been proven. Marie Saint Savon mentions a cordon in one of her later interviews that she sees dissolve at the moment of death, but since that could also translate into 'ties,' she might be speaking metaphorically."

Her overly-French p.r.o.nunciation of cordon made me want to slap her.

"A researcher in Glasgow seeking to disprove the cut-cord theory attempted to sever his own cord, but he only achieved lucid projection four times over the year-long experiment-and in those four successful projections, he tried pulling it, biting it, and even cutting it with an astral knife."

Astral knife. Cool band name.

"Each time, the substance of the cord flowed around the obstacle and 144.

rea.s.sembled itself. Something like mercury." Faun turned toward a whiteboard and wrote with her stinky blue marker: mercuryquick-silversilvercord.

"Quicksilver," she said in a voice so patronizing it made me wince, "was the alchemical name for the element mercury, so theoreticians now believe this was how the silver cord got its name." I was dying to close my eyes and think of anything other than Faun Windsong, but the group was too small, and if I was too obvious about zoning out, everyone would know.

"Most pract.i.tioners agree that the silver cord itself can't be cut. It is, as you say, a manifestation of the connection-but it isn't the connection itself."

I glanced at Jacob. Completely and utterly absorbed. Laser focus.

Cripes, what I wouldn't give to be able to force myself to pay attention on command. At least if he was drinking it all in, I wouldn't have to. And it wasn't as if I wasn't attempting to listen-I was. Really.

"The first stage of an OBE is often the point at which a projection fails. Subjects in this transitional stage often report hearing clanging bells or feeling strong vibrations."

She went on to describe a dozen other things an unsuccessful astral traveler might experience fighting to free themselves, and more importantly their consciousness, from the prison of their flesh. "Many pract.i.tioners, when they do finally achieve projection, find they can't see-ironic, isn't it, since the astral body is known as the body of light. Either they experience their vision as if they're looking through a semi-opaque blindfold, or their eyes won't open at all." Her gaze swept the room and landed on me again. I wondered if some part of her remembered that I'd had trouble opening my astral eyes my first time out.

"Why were you quoting Marie Saint Savon?" I blurted out instead, 145.

before it even occurred to me I had a question, let alone that I was verbalizing it.

Faun scowled. "Why wouldn't I?"

"She was a medium. Since when does that make her an authority on astral projection?" I sounded p.i.s.sy, and I knew it, but I just couldn't hold back. The other students s.h.i.+fted uncomfortably. A few of them might've even held their breath.

"Detective Bayne," she announced to the cla.s.s, "is understandably busy doing his police work, so he's not quite up to speed on the details of academia like we are here at PsyTrain." She turned and wrote something on the board, and then turned back around, blocking it with her body, to gloat.

"In January, the Center for Psychic Studies recommended the medium ability be recla.s.sified to include not only psychics who could sense spirit activity, but shamans, remote viewers, and soul travelers, as well. Our ability has a new t.i.tle." She stepped aside and revealed the words lightworkers.

"You're s.h.i.+tting me."

Her eyes went flinty at my failure to bow to her authority on All Things Psychic. "No doubt even the Midwest will get up to speed...

one of these days."

The cla.s.s began to sn.i.g.g.e.r in response, but the amus.e.m.e.nt died fast when they looked at Jacob and me, cop-faced in our suits, and couldn't figure out which authorities they should be trying to toady up to: the teacher or the law.

"That wraps up the morning session. We'll meet back at one thirty in the floatation tank room for two s.h.i.+fts of focused breathing exercises.

Bring your journals and your colored pen sets for your out-of-the-tank time."

146.

Floatation tank? As in, sensory deprivation? My throat closed, and sweat p.r.i.c.kled my low back where it curved away from the back of the chair.

Faun looked at me, smiling, as if she could hear my adrenal glands pouring fight-or-flight juice into my veins. "You're welcome to join us for a float, detectives."

Jacob looked at me and raised his eyebrows as if he was perfectly game to try it. Maybe he really was fearless. "No thanks," I muttered, barely restraining myself from telling her to shove her sensory deprivation tanks up her a.s.s sideways. "We've got work to do."

147.

Chapter 17.

"I ain't no f.u.c.king light worker," I muttered in Jacob's ear as we headed back to our room to regroup. I'm not sure what I was so p.i.s.sed off about. The suggestion that I was stupid because I didn't know about the crazy recla.s.sification? Or the implication that I was a coward for not wanting to be locked in a coffin full of tepid water? Or both. "And 'soul traveler' is a ridiculous name for someone who projects."

"So as not to confuse them with the guys who run the films at the theater," Jacob said. I think he was smiling. Just judging by the back of his head.

"Y'know, maybe I have better things to do than to read all the journals and c.r.a.p. All the junk mail, and the spam...who can keep up with it?"

"I hadn't read about it, either. I would have mentioned something."

"Right." Of course. Why follow anything myself when I could count on Jacob to follow it for me? "I know."

He opened the door, and a piece of furniture or two threatened to topple out of the room. We closed the door behind us and climbed over the spare bed. Jacob put his notebook on the nightstand and loosened his tie. I almost slammed my notebook onto the GhosTV, but caught myself at the last second and ended up pitching it underhand toward the bed. Its pages flew open like a dove flapping its way free from a magician's top hat.

148.

"Don't get discouraged," he said.

"I'm not discouraged."

"You let her tone of voice get under your skin. Relax. Separate the information from the delivery; there's a lot you could learn from her."

"About what? The existence of a silver cord? Duh." I squeezed into the bathroom and unwrapped my hand. It had scabbed over valiantly.

Now all I had to do was stop myself from opening the wound by making a fist. And punching Faun Windsong with it. Or Constantine Dreyfuss-either one would do.

"You get distracted pretty easily. You seem to have trouble focusing."

"Tell me something I don't know."

"I wonder if you have ADD."

Cripes. I needed more acronyms a.s.sociated with my mental condi-tion like I needed to lose another ten pounds and then book a vaca-tion at a nude beach. "I do not have attention deficit disorder. That's just something the pharmaceutical companies made up to sell more Ritalin."

"And 'in your day' hyperactive kids were smacked into submission with the back of teachers' hands."

"Well...yeah. They were." I ran cool water over my scabbed knuckles.

The cold stung for a moment, and then it felt good. Itchy, but good.

"You too, right?" He was only six years older than me, but I couldn't resist. "Or did they make them stay after school to clean the clay tablets and sharpen the styluses?"

I turned off the water and blotted my hand on the towel. No new bleeding. That was good. No zinger forthcoming from Jacob, either.

That was...unusual. He always gave back as good as he got, and then some.

149.

I peeked around the doorjamb. Jacob was seated on our bed with my notebook in his hands, flipping pages, scowling.

"That anarchy symbol...it's a long story. It's nothing."

"Vic...."

"It's stupid. Just ignore it." Great. Had I written a single note? A sentence or two at the beginning of the lecture, but after that, nothing.

More proof that I was mentally deficient. My stomach sank. Just when I thought I couldn't possibly disappoint myself any more, I found a new low to sink toward. Maybe the Ritalin would be tasty, I told myself. But even that failed to cheer me up.

"You wrote this?"

"They offered me a pre-doodled notebook, but I turned it down since I'm a hands-on kinda guy."

He jerked his head toward the bed. "C'mere a minute. Sit down." I dropped down beside him, probably harder than I needed to. The bedframe creaked.

Jacob spread the notebook half on his thigh and half on mine, with the spiral spine between us. Two solid pages full of loop-de-loops.

"You wrote this today?"

"I thought we already established that she didn't exactly inspire my rapt attention."

"Don't you see it?"