Psychic Read online

  The world jagged cold, frigid, and she fought to stay under, where there wasn’t any such thing as cold or a body that was uncomfortable, but Sam bobbed to the surface, away from her. Then something physically tore him away.

  She reached out, the sound that came out of her mouth primal and foreign to her own ears, and she found Jason standing with an arm around Sam. Sam had the same moment of awakening.

  “Oh,” she said.

  “Are we good?” Jason asked. Sam muttered something about a shower and Jason tossed him toward the bathroom. “Yeah. I think that’s a good idea.”

  Samantha rolled out of the puddle of ice water on the one side of the bed and pulled the blankets up over her shoulders, taking quick stock.

  Layers, she had told Sam that morning. Lots of layers. Her cami was still on, as were her shorts. Success.

  “You two should have told me what was going on,” Jason said. “I could have gone back to watching television.”

  “We trusted you to figure it out,” Samantha said. In the shower, Sam sent her a question and she agreed. Cold was probably a good idea. The shock of it resonated across the bond, shaking both of them loose of any immediate remaining addiction. “Can you hand me my clothes?”

  Jason took a minute collecting them and tossed them to her.

  “You knew?” Jason asked.

  “We knew enough to know that she was going to go after us,” Samantha said. “And that if we let her know we were onto her, she’d just move on to the next victim. We needed to give you a shot at figuring out enough to stop her. Is that her?” She motioned to a mirror propped against the wall and painted black.

  “Yeah. All this time about you and your purity and how it makes you stronger and it doesn’t count with a demon and all of that, and you’d just throw it away like this?” Jason asked.

  “That’s what I said,” Sam said, coming out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist.

  “Worth it,” Samantha said. “My virginity isn’t worth letting someone else die over.”

  “When did you know?” Jason asked.

  “Had a good guess after Sam’s vision on the way here,” Samantha said.

  “At the first hotel room,” Sam said. “Where the first victims were. She saw us, the ghost did. We…” He looked at Samantha, and she shrugged, getting out of bed to button her pants. “We felt the change. She was pushing us at each other.”

  “What was she?” Samantha asked.

  “She fed on frustrated sexual energy. You two must have been a gold mine,” Jason said.

  “A succubus?” Sam asked. “I’d never heard of a succubus ghost.”

  “Well, you have now.”

  “Huh.”

  “You two are idiots.”

  “It was the right call,” Samantha said. Jason glowered at her.

  “Well, if Sam would get dressed, he can help me destroy this properly. You should probably go report that someone broke down your door, if someone hasn’t already.”

  “I’ll tell them you did it if they ask,” she said. He grimaced.

  “Fine. Sam, can you go report it?”

  “Done,” Sam said.

  She nodded.

  “And then can we go get dinner?”

  “You’re unbelievable,” Jason said. She grinned.

  “What? I missed lunch. Kind of had other things on my mind.”

  He grunted and grabbed the mirror. Sam went back into the bathroom to get dressed, making it clear that he generally agreed with Jason. It hadn’t been easy to convince him to go along with it, but the list of names was too long. She looked at the mirror under Jason’s arm. No more, she thought. You can’t have any more.

  <><><>

  “Kansas City?” Jason asked as they finished packing the Cruiser.

  “Simon hasn’t got anything waiting,” Sam said.

  “Is Carson there?” Samantha asked.

  “I’ll give Doris a call,” Jason said. He went to lean against the front of the Cruiser as Sam and Samantha sat in the quiet interior. Sam looked back at her. She was typing.

  It’s not like I don’t want this, Sam, she had said. She had built a shape on the floor of the second hotel room while they were supposed to be getting lunch.

  It’s not well contained. If you aren’t completely controlled, you’ll fall across by accident, she had said. She had hissed and spat at demons he couldn’t see, but that he had been able to feel. They were surrounded. She said that the ghost couldn’t hear them. And then she had told him that they were just going to go along with it.

  She was listening to him, sitting there with her laptop, letting him tell her the things he had wanted to feel. He had wanted to raise his voice, to argue, but she had kept checking him, telling him he was going to fall across the boundary if he got excited.

  He had wanted to be angry. To tell her that he wouldn’t go along with it. Maybe if it had been her and someone else, he might have been able to say that it was her call. He didn’t agree with it, but it was her call. But he had wanted to be outraged. To throw out an ultimatum. He wouldn’t.

  Instead he had kept his voice steady, listening to reason, agreeing that there was no moral argument to be made. He was going to let a ghost force her to have sex with him. Sure. That was cool.

  Worse, he worried that the fact that he would have had another of the massive migraines if they had altered what happened next was one of her justifications for going along with it. She wasn’t just doing it because it was the right thing to do; she was doing it for him.

  It had disgusted him then and it disgusted him now. She listened, her finger nails tapping and scratching on the keys of her laptop. She wasn’t sorry, but it wasn’t defiant. He was right to feel the way he did. She agreed with it, and she just listened.

  Jason got back in the car.

  “Carson isn’t there, but Tanner is. I told her we’d be there late tonight.” He looked from Sam to Samantha. “We all friends again?”

  “We’re good,” Samantha said.

  “Yeah,” Sam agreed.

  “Uh huh,” Jason said.

  <><><>

  They got to Kansas City a little after midnight. Doris was waiting up for them with tea.

  “Good to see you, Darlin,” she said when she hugged Samantha. She hugged the boys with affection, then led them to the table to sit and drink quietly in the cone of soft light over the kitchen table.

  “I’ve got a pretty full house, right now,” she said when she stood to excuse herself. “Sam your normal room is open, but the rest of them are full.”

  “I’ll sleep on the couch,” Jason said. “No worries.”

  “Um,” Samantha said.

  “I’ll take the couch,” Sam said.

  “Oh?” Doris asked. “Well, whatever suits you. I’m going to bed. We’ll talk in the morning.”

  Jason finished his tea and crooked his jaw to the side.

  “So we’re back to bed-hopping again. Awesome.”

  “Shut up,” Samantha said. He grinned.

  “Let’s just get some sleep. Long day.”

  “Yeah,” Sam said.

  <><><>

  Samantha and Jason were in the back yard doing calisthenics when Sam woke the next morning. He went to sit on the back porch with a cup of coffee.

  “I should make you come work with us,” Samantha called. He raised his cup to her.

  “He’s the one you’re training. I’m just going to sit here and enjoy my morning.”

  She snorted at him, but continued through her set of motions without additional comment. They stretched and warmed up for another fifteen or twenty minutes, then Samantha jogged up onto the porch and picked up the hatchet and machete that were laying on a bench. Jason stood at the foot of the stairs and she tossed him the machete.

  “I’m about as soul-vested in these as I am in my engagement ring,” she said. “These were the weapons Carter gave me to keep with me in the car when I first started driving for him.”

  “No r
eal weapons?” Jason asked, weighing the machete in either hand.

  “That machete will take my arm off if you managed the right stroke,” she said. “And I could split your skull to your shoulders with this. We don’t need any more risk until you’re more confident.”

  Jason blew air through his lips and shrugged.

  “I really don’t need training wheels.”

  “I assure you, you do.”

  They made their way back to a flat open spot in the middle of the back yard where the grass was beginning to flatten and Samantha put the hatchet out in front of her.

  “All right,” she said. “Free-form. Hit me.”

  “You just said I’d take your arm off,” Jason said.

  “Okay. If you think you’re ready for it, you can abort at the last second to keep from hitting me, but I don’t think you’re going to have to think about it.”

  Sam sipped his coffee, wondering if he should have felt concern. Tanner came and sat next to him, mouth over a bowl of cereal.

  “They always spar with real blades?” Tanner asked.

  “Haven’t before,” Sam said.

  “This ought to be interesting.”

  “Yup.”

  Tanner slurped milk as Jason made a slashing motion and Samantha skirted it easily, turning and bringing the hatchet in a full circle, sweeping toward the back of Jason’s head. He hunched forward and brought the machete back around toward her exposed back and she completed her motion, grabbing Jason’s wrist and pulling so that her rotation spun her along his arm and threw him into the space where she had just been. They faced each other.

  “I didn’t know we were getting a show,” Doris said. “I’d’ve dressed for it.”

  She was wearing a fuzzy pink robe and slippers. She winked at Sam as she sat, crossing her legs and blowing across the surface of her coffee mug.

  “So what’s happened with you three since I last saw you?” Doris asked. Sam remembered that last week. Carly had possessed him and brought him back to this house to trap Samantha and Jason, and probably kill Doris and Carson as a bonus. He and Samantha had played both sides against the middle, convincing Carly that Samantha was more interested in sex with a demon-possessed Sam than she was actually saving him, and Sam had just… pushed her out. He still didn’t completely understand how he had done it. Something about pulling the bond tight had left no room for Carly.

  Sam had spent most of the next week recovering. It had been a good week, in truth. He sipped his coffee.

  “Well, uh. I guess the headline is that I died.”

  “You what?” Tanner asked.

  “We went after something that was killing people in Detroit. You remember.” Doris nodded. “It was a demon-possessed psychic. Sam dispossessed her, and when she found out I was psychic, too, she shot me. She put together what could happen when a demon possessed a psychic, and decided it wasn’t worth the risk. She probably would have killed herself if Jason hadn’t gotten to it first.”

  “There’s something still missing from your story,” Tanner said. Doris was watching Samantha and Jason.

  “She brought me back,” Sam said, motioning to Samantha.

  “How?”

  “Hell if I know. Magic. Jason was there, but he can’t tell me much.”

  “And she won’t?” Doris asked.

  “She’ll tell me anything I ask, but we both kind of figure it’s above my pay grade. She had to involve a demon to do it.”

  “Is she leading you astray?” Doris asked.

  “I think she’s doing her best,” Sam said. “If you could, what would you have done?”

  “Arthur would be drinking coffee with us,” Doris said. Tanner nodded.

  “We’d never hear the end of it, though.”

  Doris laughed.

  The fight in the yard was growing in speed, enthusiasm, and volume. Samantha was clearly shorter and lighter than Jason, and her weapon had less reach, but she was faster and simply better than he. Jason took a step back.

  “I feel bad, you blocking with the handle like that. We’re going to tear that hatchet up.”

  “I’ve re-handled it three times. Bought the wood for the next handle months ago,” Samantha said. “Continue.”

  “He’s going to take her fingers off,” Tanner said.

  “I’m not sure you’re right,” Doris said. Sam nodded. They watched through the crack of weapon against weapon and the shuffle of feet through grass for a few minutes.

  “I’ve never seen anyone move like that,” Tanner said.

  “Which one?” Doris asked.

  “Either.”

  “The demon who helped resurrect me said he’s going after Jason, now,” Sam said.

  “Why?” Tanner asked.

  “Get to me.”

  Samantha punched Jason in the stomach and dropped him on the ground.

  “Do not give me windows like that, idiot,” she said. Jason rolled onto his hands and knees and nodded, slowly getting back up.

  “And here I thought my vampire kill was going to be the winner, this round,” Tanner said. Doris laughed into her coffee.

  “How are Krista and Carson?” Sam asked.

  “Krista’s in Washington State hunting some kind of blood-sucker,” Tanner said. “Carson is in Mississippi. Thinks it’s a water woman.”

  “Carson will be sorry to miss you,” Doris said. Tanner tipped his bowl back, drinking the last of the milk, and set it on the table.

  “I’m going to get a cup of coffee. Either of you want a refill?”

  “Just bring the pot out,” Doris said. He nodded and left. He came back with two spare mugs and filled his own, sitting down and crossing his legs.

  “Going to be hot today.”

  “Summer’s here,” Doris said.

  In the yard, Jason was sweating freely and Samantha kept pulling her shirt off her back.

  “This would be a lot easier with both of them,” Jason said.

  “You can use both, once you’ve earned it,” Samantha said.

  “I don’t remember him being that good,” Tanner said. Sam topped-up his cup and sat back in his chair again. Samantha was off in the part of herself where she couldn’t hear or feel anything but the fight. It always surprised him how happy she was there. It made sense, certainly, but mostly when she fought, she was emotionless, clinical. She would cross some boundary, and the motion became less thought-out and more… like dance. She was happy like she was when she was dancing.

  “He’s gotten a lot better since Samantha started training him,” Sam said.

  “How did she talk him into that?” Tanner asked. Doris snorted.

  “Show me a guy who can watch her work and say he doesn’t want to be able to do that,” Sam said.

  “She beat him up a bunch of times, didn’t she?” Tanner asked.

  “It was awesome.”

  “You could make a living selling that show,” Tanner said. Sam glanced at him. Tanner stifled a quick smile and pretended to drink his coffee. Sam grinned.

  There was a strange crack and the head of the hatchet took an angle and started to spin away from the handle. Jason leaned back to get away from the path of the whirling piece of iron, but he wasn’t going to be fast enough. The axehead was going to hit him in the shoulder.

  And then it wasn’t.

  Sam blinked, trying to figure out what he had just seen.

  His mind remembered it, but knew it couldn’t have possibly happened. Samantha had spun, letting go of the rest of the handle where it was splintered on the machete, and reached… Sam had good eyes. He knew he did. And he had been looking right at it. She had touched it, open palm, knocking it up, then snagged it out of the air before it got past Jason’s shoulder.

  She stood on the lawn as if nothing had happened, looking at the splintered wood of the handle.

  “I guess that’s it,” she said. “You want breakfast?”

  Sam realized that all three of them at the table were standing.

  “Did she
just do that?” Tanner asked. Sam lowered himself back into his chair as Samantha’s eyes met his, teasing.

  “Like it was standing still,” Sam said. Tanner sat back down next to him, and Doris poured coffee. Jason sat in the last chair and Samantha went back over to the bench where her backpack was sitting.

  “So you’re turning my brother into an abomination,” Tanner said to her. She looked over.

  “If I can ever find the time.”

  She took the cup of coffee Doris offered her and curled her feet up on the bench underneath her.

  Jason and Tanner swapped business-like gossip about other Rangers for a while; Sam and Samantha held a quiet, imprecise exchange between them as Samantha stared out over the wooded area behind the house. He was impressed, she was demure. He was sad. He missed her. She echoed it. He was jealous. She was dismissive.

  “You guys need any supplies while you’ve got some downtime?” Tanner asked.

  “Wouldn’t hurt anything,” Jason said, looking at Samantha. “You need anything?”

  “Nothing you can buy here,” she said.

  “There’s a new movie out this weekend, too,” Tanner said. Sam never liked how he lost track of week days so completely.

  “How about it?” Jason asked. “Shopping. Movie. Grab dinner out?”

  “I’m cooking,” Doris said. “Your first night in, no way I let you go out.”

  Tanner stood and kissed his mother’s forehead.

  “We’ll be home in time for dinner,” he said. Jason stood and Sam pushed himself out of his chair, grabbing the coffee pot to take it back into the kitchen. Doris touched his hand.

  “Everything okay with you and Sam?”

  “We’re not fighting,” he said.

  “You haven’t said so much as two words to each other since you got here last night,” Doris said. He watched Samantha as she went into the kitchen with Tanner and Jason, intentionally avoiding being too close to him. He looked down at Doris, who had caught him. He wondered what she saw in his face.

  “It’s complicated,” he said. “Nothing bad happened. Just…”

  “Isn’t going to work?” Doris asked.

  “Doesn’t look like it.”

  Doris squeezed his wrist and took the coffee pot and his mug from him.

  “I’m sorry, Dear.”