Summary

Thanksgiving can't end too soon for Victor Bayne, who's finding Jacob's family hard to swallow. Luckily, he's called back to work to track down a high-profile missing person.

Meanwhile, Jacob tries to find a home they can move into that's not infested--with either cockroaches, or ghosts. As if the house-hunting isn't stressful enough, Vic's new partner Bob Zigler doesn't seem to think he can do anything right. A deceased junkie with a bone to pick leads Vic and Zig on a wild chase that ends in a basement full of horrors.

 

Excerpt

“Uncle Jacob? Did you get to shoot anybody since last summer?”

Jacob’s nephew, Clayton, asked this with the eagerness and joy of a kid who’d just learned that school was cancelled. Clayton was in fifth grade. I have no idea how old that would make him.

“You shot someone last summer?” I muttered, smoothing my napkin on my lap to the point where I probably looked like I was playing with myself. Not exactly the impression I’d wanted to make on Jacob’s family on our first Thanksgiving together.

The muttering? Not usually my style, but I was feeling uncharacteristically mouthy. It seemed like the moment I had a thought, it made its way through my vocal cords and out my mouth before I had a chance to pat it down and make sure it wasn’t going to jab anyone. I’d been this way since I’d stopped taking Auracel and Seconal over a month ago. Here I thought I’d been mellowing all these years, when really, it had just been the drugs.

“No,” Jacob answered patiently. “I try to avoid shooting people.” And then he looked at me. “Carolyn and I walked in on an armed robbery in progress at the convenience store on California and Irving. It was a clean shot to the leg.”

Departmental policy allows us cops to decide whether to go for a lethal or a non-lethal shot when a criminal’s got an unarmed civilian at gunpoint. If Jacob had shot someone’s leg, I had no doubt it was exactly where he’d been aiming. Jacob is a Stiff, the non-psychic half of a PsyCop team, and not only are Stiffs impossible to influence by sixth-sensory means and impervious to possession, but they’re usually crack shots. The Stiffs who I know, anyway.

I’m the other half of a PsyCop team, the Psych half. Not Jacob’s team; Carolyn Brinkman was Jacob’s better half, on the job at least. I didn’t currently have a Stiff of my very own. Maurice, my first partner, retired—although I still lean on him way too much. Lisa, my second partner, was kicked off the force when they discovered that she was as psychic as Jean Dixon. She’s off being trained for the psy end of the whole PsyCop business now, out in California. Technically she’s just a phone call away, and yet sometimes it feels like she’s on an entirely different planet. Even when she gets back, I won’t get to partner with her, since they only pair up Psychs with Stiffs.

And then there was my third partner, Roger. The bastard kidnapped me for some under-the-table drug testing, and I’d been so gullible I’d practically given him a key to my apartment. Roger was rotting in a jail cell, last I’d heard. The whole affair was pretty hush-hush. Maybe I could’ve gleaned a few more details, if I was the type to obsess about the little things, like where one’s arch-enemy is incarcerated, and whether or not he’s shown up for roll call recently. But, frankly, I’ve never found details very comforting. I think about them, and I just get overwhelmed. Roger went bye-bye, and I came out of our encounter intact. That’s all I really need to know.

Six weeks later and I was still on medical leave. I felt fine, probably due to the amount of actual blood cells coursing through my system in lieu of the drug cocktail I was accustomed to.

“Did you ever shoot anyone?” Clayton asked me, eyes sparkling.

“Sure.”

“Wow. Did you kill ‘em?”

Clayton had Jacob’s phenomenal dark eyes. Or Jacob’s younger sister Barbara’s eyes. Which were Jacob’s father’s eyes, as well as the eyes of the wizened old lady at the head of the table who was about a hundred and five. She’d been giving me a look that could probably kill an elephant ever since we’d gotten there and Jacob had introduced me as his boyfriend.

I think he’d primed his family over the phone. But still. He had to go and say it out loud and rub it in. Because that’s the way Jacob is. Not that he’d be bringing a man home for Thanksgiving for any other reason. But that’s beside the point.

“Clayton Joseph,” snapped Barbara. She might have had Jacob’s eyes, but she certainly couldn’t hold a candle to his cool composure. “That is not an appropriate question for the dinner table.”

Grandma Marks glowered at me from the head of the table, her dark eyes, half-hidden in folds of wrinkled skin, threatening to pierce me right through. I’d figured she hated me because I was doing the nasty with her grandson. Maybe she had a thing against psychics. Hell, maybe both. I’m usually just lucky that way.

 

PsyCop Ebooks

#1: Among the Living
What good is being a psychic detective if your murder victims aren't talking?

#1.1: Thaw
A heartwarming glimpse at a cold winter's day

#2: Criss Cross
Mysterious messages from Lisa lead Vic on a wild ride.

#2.1 Striking Sparks
Andrew's got cold feet about his upcoming wedding. He figures a palm reading is just the ticket.

#2.2 Many Happy Returns
It's the holiday season at SaverPlus, and customers have become incredibly demanding.

#3: Body & Soul
Three missing people. No bodies. No ghosts. At least the case gets Vic out of an awkward family dinner.

#3.1: Stroke of Midnight
For a PsyCop, missing out on festivities to process a crime scene is all in a day's (or night's) work.

#4: Secrets
Is someone watching Vic's every move, or is he imagining things? Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.

#5: Camp Hell
Vic delves into his repressed memories of Camp Hell and dredges up more than he bargained for.

#6: GhosTV
Lisa's gone missing, and Vic and Jacob head to PsyTrain for some answers.

#7: Spook Squad
Victor has been avoiding the exorcism he owes the FPMP. Now it's time to pay up.

#8: Skin After Skin
A sweeping look at the PsyCop series from Crash's empathic point of view

#9: Agent Bayne
Victor might be through with the Chicago PD, but is he ready for the FPMP?

PsyCop Briefs: Volume 1
Join Vic and Jacob off the clock in 20 PsyCop shorts