Kat Richardson - Possession

“All right, then.”

“Hey,” I added, peeling open my eyes again and looking at him. “Can I get a promise from you, too?”

His slightly stiff expression broke and he smiled. “Sure. I’d promise you anything.”

“I only want small things. Don’t let him snatch you and if you have to run, let me know you’re not dead. Oh, and that, too.”

“What too?”

“Don’t get dead. I’m the only one in this family who’s allowed to play that game.”

He leaned over and pulled me into his arms. As he spoke, his voice trembled just a little. “That’s a lousy game. Let’s not play it at all.” He squeezed me and I squeezed back, breathless. “And . . . uh . . . what do you mean ‘family’?” he asked. “Is there something I don’t know?”

I puzzled that one for a moment and gasped once I got it. “Oh. No. No imminent pitter-patter of little geek-feet. Just you, me, and about three million ghosts.”

He laughed and I thought he sounded relieved. “Damn, this town’s got more dead people than live ones.”

“Most do.”

“Then we shouldn’t add to the population.”

“I wasn’t planning to.”

He kissed me. “You never do.”

“Hey, the last guy I shot was already dead.”

“Come to think of it, the last guy I shot was, too. Although he was a zombie, so does that really count?”

“I vote no. Doesn’t count.”

“I vote for dinner.”

I wriggled a bit in his arms, but didn’t have the energy to push away and look at him—I couldn’t even get my eyes to open properly. “Dinner? How romantic after zombies.”

“I was thinking more of the fact that you sound like you’re about to fall asleep and food might be a good idea.”

I gave up resisting and put my head on his chest. “OK. It is a good idea. Whiskey was probably not. But I still appreciated it. You’re my knight in silicon armor.”

“I think I’d rather be the frisky rogue in stealth motley.”

“How can motley be stealthy?”

“How is a hipster like a cheap hot pad?”

“What?” I asked, not sure I’d heard that correctly. I felt very sleepy. . . .

“I asked you how a hipster is like a hot pad.”

“Umm . . . they both look ridiculous with a mustache?”

“No. They both only think they’re cool.”

“I’m not sure that explains how motley can be stealthy.”

“It doesn’t, but I need to get up and find some food for you. If you’re laughing, it’s easier to change the subject.”

“Oh. I hear there’s some food hiding in the fridge.”

“Was it Chinese food? Because if so, its hiding place was discovered and ravaged by terrorists.”

“Terrorist forks, I presume.”

“Chopsticks. I would never send a lone fork against Chinese leftovers. Totally against all conventions of food warfare.”

I started giggling and could barely say, “So you’re the food terrorist.”

“I admit it. And I’d do it again—for Queen and Country. Or at least for lunch.”

I kept giggling and Quinton let me slump back into my corner of the couch with my eyes still closed while he picked up my whiskey glass and returned to the kitchen. I could follow his movement through the Grey fog version of the room and was content with that, not even sure I was going to be awake whenever food was ready to eat, and pretty sure I wasn’t going to care.

The smell of food perked me up a bit. Quinton persuaded me to move to the kitchen table instead of trying to eat while sitting on the couch on the supposition that I was less likely to suffocate in my dish if I was upright. The ferret was not invited to join us for dinner and she snubbed us by sleeping in her cage the whole time instead.

Quinton brought the case up again once I’d gotten a few bites down. “Do you think your case is a legitimate haunting?”

“Not a haunting, a possession. Although they do fall into the general category of hauntings, in this particular situation the possession doesn’t appear to be related to the location or to an object—which is usually the case with classical hauntings. I’m not that familiar with haunted houses, since I’ve only seen a few personally, but this doesn’t have the same feel at all.”

“Is that why you want to talk to the other patients you heard about? After all, they aren’t your clients.”

“That’s exactly why. If the cases are significantly similar, then I’ll have more information to give my client. It’s really weird that there are so many to begin with and that these are all demonstrating aberrant behavior. Skelly said even one normal PVS case in an area the size of Seattle is rare. So this is freakishly beyond statistical probability. I’m not sure how I’ll find the other patients, though. Skelly had no idea and warned me off of asking anyone to violate patient confidentiality. Which is fine, but it does leave me unsure how to get the info I need.”

“Can you ask the ghosts?”

“Which ghosts? I’m not sure who or what is controlling my client’s sister and I wasn’t able to make any contact in the time I had in the room. They seem very concentrated on the patient. That may be the same problem Stymak—the medium—is having. He may not be able to break into their communication with the patient long enough to get any useful information and has to try to pick through the bits that he can capture on the recordings.”

“Yeah, but he’s at least getting that much. You could try working with him to get the ghosts’ attention and find out who the other patients are. As you pointed out, it’s unlikely that the cases are unrelated, so there should be information about the other patients in the collective knowledge of the ghosts hanging out around your client’s sister.”

“Interesting idea. Can’t hurt.”

I finished up my dinner and felt much better, if still a bit blind. While I was doing dishes, Quinton checked something on the tiny palmtop computer he’d started carrying around and began packing up his things.

“Hey,” I said, “you going somewhere?”

“Yeah. I have to get out and rattle some cages, create some uncertainty, undermine some progress. . . . I may need your help later, but for now I’d better get to it.”

“Will you be back later tonight?” I hoped I didn’t sound too wistful.

“Not tonight. If you get any odd phone calls, act normal and pretend you’ve never heard of me.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Okaayy . . . I can do that, stranger.”

He put on his jacket and slung his backpack onto his shoulders. “Thanks, beautiful.” Then he kissed me and hurried off to wreak some havoc, I supposed. I hoped it wouldn’t come home with him, whatever it was.

It was still light outside, so once I was done with the dishes and had let the ferret out again, I went ahead and called Richard Stymak, who seemed less surprised to hear from me than I might have liked. He offered to meet me at the Goss house the next morning, saying Julianne tended to be less dramatically active in the mornings than she had been today. I decided I’d keep a much closer eye on her nonetheless. Ghosts are unpredictable and I didn’t want to end up with something worse than paint flung at me.

As he’d expected, Quinton had not come home and I slept alone and got up in a strange mood, as if I’d been emotionally disconnected from the world and was floating along waiting for some feeling to rush into the void. Outside, Seattle was experiencing the usual “June gloom” of weird overcast that would give way late in the day to cool sunshine until the clouds slid back in for the night, the pattern seeming unbreakable even on the last day of the month. It made my city seem a little detached from the rest of the country, as if it just couldn’t make up its mind about summer.