“Low-hanging fruit.”
True. But it deprived me of the opportunity to thank Barbara for handling that fifty percent herself. In the interest of keeping family relations civil, that was probably for the best. “Any luck in the basement?”
“We’ll see. It’s like a landfill down there. I have no idea what I even grabbed.” Jacob shook his head in frustration and glared at the road. “I was hoping something would go smoothly for a change.”
Like anything ever went smoothly—but, admittedly, I’d been hoping the same.
Normally, I would’ve given his knee a reassuring squeeze. Not only was my clunky plaster cast in the way—but the fingers of my left hand probably wouldn’t squeeze so great anymore. Not without a bunch of grueling physical therapy we all knew I’d try my hardest to avoid. “Don’t be preemptively disappointed before we’ve even had a chance to go through your haul. And even if you’ve only managed to grab some old magazines and a bundle of receipts, you’ll have plenty of excuses to go back for more, what with the wedding on the horizon.”
Jacob sighed heavily.
Everything was a lot harder with family than it was with mere acquaintances. I hated not giving them the whole truth, but Jacob was beyond invested in vindicating his parents. Unfortunately, it would be a lot harder to do that if they got the chance to reinvent the past. Jacob is a shark. So, I had no doubt he would get to the bottom of things and find out exactly how their initials came to be in Dr. Kamal’s notebook.
What I dreaded—and what I sincerely hoped never came to pass—was discovering they’d been privy to the experiment all along.
2
SINCE THAT DAMN notebook came into our lives, Jacob had been running himself ragged trying to prove his parents were as unaware of how they’d ended up in its pages as he was. While I was definitely eager for him to get to the bottom of things, I was also afraid of what he’d find once he got there. If that discovery came through my filter, though, at least I’d have a chance to put a spin on it that would leave the majority of his childhood intact.
In other words, I had to do something.
Kamal was out there, and he owed us some answers. Unfortunately, Kamal was no longer on the same physical plane. And since we drove him to the other side, I had no way of extracting an explanation from him—not in my current state of mediumship, anyhow. But my old crony Dead Darla could talk to ghosts long-distance, so I knew it was possible. I just had to get myself super-pumped on white light, then figure out how to do it.
The problem was powering up, since there was only so far imagining white light could get me. Luckily for me, I could give umpteen reasons why I wanted my employers to help power-charge my mojo…the existence of parasitic “etheric entities” being one that I didn’t even have to lie about.
My office at the Chicago regional FPMP headquarters was a lot nicer than I probably deserved. Big, too. That must’ve been my assistant Carl’s doing. Back when he worked with Richie, he’d needed a space large enough to keep from strangling the guy. I used to think all that elbow room was a little excessive. But now, in the weeks since the big blowout at The Clinic, we’d rearranged things to accommodate our latest attempt to get a handle on mediumship, and I was thankful for the square footage.
The building was an old industrial cube of brick just west of the Loop, overlooking the rail yard. The interior was exposed ductwork and high ceilings. My office had white walls, gray berber carpet, and a radiator that gave off the occasional startling clang. There were three desks—Carl’s, Darla’s and mine—though we could have made do with only two. Not because Darla popped in from Indianapolis only every couple of weeks or so, but because I hardly ever used my computer. I found it a lot less mind-numbing to scroll through all the tedious reports my job entailed on my phone.
The desks were all pushed against the walls, and the center of the room, all the way over to the windows, was empty.
Because that’s where the yoga happened.
Everyone knows natural solutions leave something to be desired. But what choice did I have? It was Russian roulette to swallow pharmaceutical psyactives, and F-Pimp National made off with my TV set.
And I did yoga myself into a pretty badass state of mediumship one time. Only that once, mind you. But it did happen.
Not only had the FPMP brought a dedicated yoga teacher onboard, but they hired the specific one whose poses sent me into a superconscious state, which is what the F-Pimp scientists call it when my ghost-vision spikes. Bethany Roberts had jumped at the chance to quit Jacob’s gym for a gig at the FPMP. Not because she was particularly eager to advance the field of Psych, and not because she wanted to explore her own abilities…but because the FPMP offered pretty solid health insurance.
Bethany Roberts was also a “Light Worker.” And on her, the new-fangled terminology didn’t feel quite so lame. As far as we could tell, she had no more sensitivity to repeaters than your typical non-psychic NP. But she could occasionally achieve and remember some pretty detailed astral projections.
I’d had a glimpse of her by the glow of the GhosTV back when she’d made the unfortunate decision to try Kick, right before the feds at The Clinic hauled the damn thing away. She’d sure as hell looked like a medium to me. And my own limited experience with the astral plane confirmed that projection was something in a medium’s arsenal of tricks. Our practice wasn’t geared toward trying to make me project—though I wouldn’t complain if that happened, since it might give me some kind of edge. But I hadn’t gone astral lately, not even once. And we’d been doing yoga three, four times a week since The Clinic imploded. So far, all I had to show for it was relief from my persistent, nagging sciatica.
Bethany showed up for yoga at eleven o’clock on the dot—she’s the poster child for precision—with her scientist sidekick in tow. I’d found these tag-alongs from the lab intimidating, at first. Just goes to show how a person can become inured to just about anything, given enough exposure.
Bethany was a tall woman around my age, with long, dark hair, a Mediterranean complexion, piercing dark eyes, and intimidating posture. She takes her yoga very seriously. In fact, she doesn’t even gloat that she gets to come to work in stretch pants while the rest of us are in suits.
Since so many different types of certified Psychs worked at the FPMP, there was a big pool of subjects to use in their study of the effects of yoga. The NPs weren’t left out, either, since it wouldn’t be an experiment without a control subject to use for a baseline.
I draped my jacket over the back of my chair, took off my tie, ditched my shoes and socks, and unbuttoned my shirt’s top two buttons. The lab tech handed me a bundle of electrodes and I proceeded to stick them where they needed to be stuck. Not only was I less likely to trigger a panic attack and sweat them off if I put them on myself, but we’d done this routine so many times now, I had a good feel for exactly where each one was supposed to go.
Carl and Bethany got wired up, too, and we unrolled our yoga mats and assumed the position.
Bethany stood quietly for a few moments, eyes closed, centering—then said, “Today, we’ll focus on Manipura, the third chakra. Let’s begin.”
I spread my feet, extended my arms, and settled into warrior one. The lab was having Bethany alter one variable at a time to try and determine what exactly had triggered my power-up back at the gym. Postures. Breathing. Chakra focus. So far, we hadn’t figured much out, even when we reconstructed the specific routine that was so helpful before—or portions of it, anyhow. Thanks to my dumb injury, the postures I could do were limited to things that didn’t require the support of my forearm or hand. But part of me was starting to worry that we weren’t seeing any progress because yoga simply wasn’t the natural psyactive I’d hoped it would be, and that whatever brought on my superconscious state back at the gym was a result of some other combination of triggers…or just dumb luck.