Body Swappers 21
A little relief, a lot of shot-down ideas.
Maya and Ruth had tea. While she was waiting for hers to cool down enough to drink, Maya said, “I don’t know what to do. I feel so helpless. At any moment, Min could call and say he’s dead.”
Ruth stirred her tea slowly. “It’s one of the hardest things in life, letting go of things you cannot control. I still struggle with it, at my age.”
“Maybe I can control it. If I find the killer, I could keep them from killing Robert.”
“And how would you propose doing that?”
“Deaconess won’t tell us who has access to their blood samples, right? What if we go there as patients, look for someone with a bloodthirsty aura?”
“I can think of a few issues with that,” Ruth said, and ticked them off on her hand. “One, you have leave to go off investigating during work hours. I need to stay here in case of a transference. Two, auras are not all that easy to read.” Maya opened her mouth to object, but Ruth cut her off. “Three, and this is the big one: they aren’t at work today. Unless they’re doing this at work. They were just possessing someone.”
“Oh,” Maya said, deflating.
The next few hours continued in this manner. Maya proposed avenues of inquiry and Ruth pointed out the flaws with them. At one point Maya had to pause talking to Ruth because she’d gone slack-jawed as her aura fled. No customer’s aura came back in a full swap, and Maya was relieved she wouldn’t have to tend a stranger.
Then Ruth’s shift was over, and it was time for her to leave. Maya still didn’t know what to do. Ruth paused as she was gathering her things.
“Something to take comfort in, the killer may not even know Robert was booked.”
Maya looked up, tilting her head.
“That happened after they fled the guard’s body, right? And they saw you’d already talked to Wood, so they probably didn’t try again. There weren’t any other people awaiting trial linked to this, right?”
Maya’s shoulders fell back as the implication sunk in. “They had no reason to hop into another guard right then. And they work at the hospital, not the jail. They probably don’t know.”
Ruth smiled. “Let’s regroup tomorrow,” she said, and left.
It was about half an hour after that when Donna strode into the back. Jeff and the new guy who’d replaced Maya on her old shift were both in a transference. Donna’s eyes flicked from one to the other of them, then landed on Maya. “There’s a call. Could you handle it? It’s someone saying they think their coworker was possessed.”
Maya practically ran to the phone.
“This is Maya Cote, Crisis Management Agent. May I ask who’s speaking?”
“Lisa. I…I told the other lady, I think my coworker was possessed. The head of security was laughing his head off when someone called earlier, warning us this might happen.”
“Do you work at Airway Heights?”
“Yeah.”
“That was me. I was trying to warn you.”
“Oh! Well the head of security was talking about it, saying you’d recommended jabbing the solar plexus if we found ourselves in a dark place? I don’t know. All I know is, I found Rob collapsed in the hallway, his eyes flicking back and forth, moaning. They took him to medical, and the doctor doesn’t know what’s wrong with him.”
“That does sound like he may have been possessed. Can you visit him?”
Lisa was silent for a moment. “Sorry, yeah. I’m a little…I don’t want them to know I’m talking to you. I can visit him.”
“Good,” Maya said. After she’d been exorcized, Bethany had briefed them all on the things that would help should that happen again. “If you could tap his solar plexus, gently, for as long as you can, that would help.” She made the assumption that burning some of his blood would be frowned upon by the other guards, and didn’t mention that one. “Also, if you have any hematite, you could put it by his feet. That should help ground him.”
“Okay. Thanks. I’ve got to go. Bye!”
Maya frowned at the phone. The killer was still trying to tie up loose ends. If the guard had exorcized himself, the killer was also untethered, their body locked in a sensory deprivation tank while they writhed through space and time. How long would it take an untethered person to find their way back to their body unaided? Could Maya use this knowledge, that the killer was probably going to shirk all their work and social responsibilities for the next few hours at least, to find them?
If she could, she hadn’t figured out how by the time she got off work.
Need drinks, she texted Camille. But Camille didn’t respond.