The Fix Is In (Torus Intercession 4)

“What happened?” I asked her.

“Nothing,” she replied tersely. “I set the test down on the counter, and you know how all the guys in all the videos on TikTok go nuts and start jumping around all happy?”

I’d seen many of those. “Sure.”

“Well… he didn’t.”

“Because he needed a moment,” Benji told her.

She grunted.

“So this Christopher,” I began, seeing the wooden bridge that I was supposed to turn left onto. “Is it Christopher Rossi? The guy who owns your favorite pub, The Well?”

She caught her breath. “How do you know that?”

I ignored the question. “The man’s gainfully employed, owns his own thriving business, but you don’t like him now because he didn’t do the whoop of joy when you gave him the news about the kid?”

“He obviously doesn’t want a child,” she declared coolly.

“Or he was stunned,” I defended a man I didn’t know.

“I don’t want to—why are we talk—it’s none of your business!” she yelled at me. “Make the turn.”

But there was no way I was turning onto the world’s ricketiest bridge. This was the beginning of a disaster movie. “I don’t think so.”

“I promise you it’s fine,” Benji assured me, squeezing my wrist. “It’s perfectly safe.”

“There are wooden planks there, and I can see the water on the other side,” I informed him, because I was looking at actual rapids. The water was high, and I was not about to die in Oregon doing something stupid. My mother would never forgive me. Plus I’d seen all the Final Destination movies, and just like you didn’t cruise behind logging trucks on the freeway, you didn’t drive over scary-ass bridges that traversed roaring rivers.

“Yes, but it is quite safe.”

“Is it, though?”

“It really is,” Benji promised me, his thumb sliding back and forth on the underside of my wrist. “I may be a ghost hunter, but I’m not crazy.”

I made the turn on his promise, and the sound of the wheels on the bridge was terrifying. I was sure there would be cracking and plummeting and water rushing into the car at any moment, but then we made it to the end, where, instead of a right, I made a left and rolled in under a carport beside a red house with a gray roof.

Delly and Sian got out fast, and Benji was about to follow them when I stopped him with a hold on his left bicep.

“Sorry I doubted you about the bridge thing,” I told him, letting go. “You live here. I should have listened immediately and not second-guessed you.”

“That’s okay,” he murmured, staring at me.

“I just don’t want you to think I wouldn’t listen about stuff I know nothing about. I’m not like that. I don’t always think I know best. I’m not that guy.”

He studied my face, and the way he was staring so intently was strange, but I understood that he was taking my measure.

“Benji?”

“Sorry, I… I thought you were going to say something else.”

“Oh? Like?”

He coughed softly. “I couldn’t seem to stop touching you the whole ride home.”

There was no way to say, “Yeah, I thought that was weird too,” without sounding like I was scolding him. The fact of the matter was, it was odd that it didn’t bother me, and even stranger that he wanted to. “Yes, but that was surprising more than anything else.”

“What do you mean?”

“People don’t usually touch me. I’m not what you’d consider… approachable.”

“Whyever not?”

My eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Have you met me?”

“Clearly, yes.” He sounded placating. “Explain yourself.”

“I’m a bit intimidating.”

He was scowling now. “To whom are you intimidating?”

“I dunno, how ’bout everybody.”

His scoff was loud in the small space. “I have no idea who told you that you were scary, but I can assure you, it’s not the case.”

This was news. “No?”

“I feel completely and utterly safe with you.”

I felt it then, the flip of my stomach.

“Which I don’t—look,” he bit out as he turned around in his seat to face me, “I’m not a witch.”

Not what I was expecting. “I didn’t think you were,” I assured him.

“More importantly, I’ve never been the kind of psychiatrist who deals in repressed memory or hypnosis or any of those treatments. I was more a therapist than a psychiatrist, which was what got me into trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“The money kind,” he explained with a deep sigh.

I nodded. “You thought, ‘I shouldn’t be charging my patients to see a psychiatrist. We’re just sitting here chatting after all.’ Am I right?”

Slow nod from him. “In such a short time, Mr. James, you seem to see me so very clearly.”

“And your partners? I’m guessing there were partners,” I prodded him.

“There were, yes.”

“They said, ‘You’re making us look bad, Grace. You better shape up and fly right.’”

He grunted in acknowledgment and then sighed in absolute defeat. “I couldn’t stay there. Between what happened to me, which was like a beacon directing me down another path, and some other—I couldn’t stay. It wasn’t my life anymore.”