The Tome of Bill (Book 7): The Wicked Dead (23 page)

I see the buffoon of a Freewill is present too
.

“Fuck you, dude,” I said from the doorway. All eyes – living ones, anyway – in the living room turned my way. “Don’t listen to this asshole. He’s full of...”

Just then, the front door opened in the hall behind us. I glanced back and saw, sure enough, Sheila stride through the entranceway. Okay, well, point one to Decker.

Before I could say anything further, Decker’s voice again bellowed out.
Destroy her! It is too late for me, but you can still save yourselves
.

The three witches who’d been questioning Christy immediately clambered to their feet. Christy started to rise too, but she needed a nearby chair as leverage. By the time she was standing, the three other witches were gathering energy around them.

Much to my horror, but not even remotely to my surprise, Sheila joined us at the doorway in that moment. “Sorry I’m late. We ran into some...”

Her voice faded at the freaky sight in the living room – three witches arming for battle, with a talking skull egging them on.

Oh yeah, this was right where I wanted to be – smack dab in between them.

Sheila’s aura sprang to life in response, and I closed my eyes to prepare myself for the oh-so-wonderful feeling of being blasted.

A second passed and that didn’t happen. I dared to open my eyes and found my roommates had both awesomely stepped between me and Sheila – her faith aura washing harmlessly over them for a moment until she reined it in.

“Sorry,” she said.

“Enough of this!” Christy snapped. “I told you guys she was coming.”

Listen not to my misguided pupil
, Decker urged.
She has been enthralled by this beast’s lackey and knows not what she says
.

“He talking about me?” Tom asked.

“Yeah, pretty sure,” I replied.

“He is my betrothed,” Christy said to the witches. “I am of sound mind and have not been enthralled.”

“Except by my penis,” Tom proudly added, perhaps a wee bit louder than intended.

She threw a glare his way that would have melted an iceberg and, for a moment, I was certain she was going to let the other witches blow us to hell.

Amazingly enough, though, my roommate’s dumbass remark had defused the situation as two of the witches – Veronica and Kelly – immediately powered down and dissolved into giggles.

For a moment, the third didn’t quite seem to know what to do, but then she covered her mouth and joined them.

Tom turned to me and smirked. “Do I know how to work a crowd or what?”

“You do have a way with words, I’ll give you that,” I replied before stepping forward and raising my voice. “Is it safe to assume nobody’s going to be disintegrated, or should I come back later when you’ve all gotten it out of your system?”

“Technically, that was defensive magic,” the one with the glasses, Kelly, said. “You must be Bill. Christy told us all about you.” She held out a hand.

Beware, for the Freewill corrupts all he touches.

“Bite me, asshole,” I said to the skull as I shook her hand. “Oh, and all your marketing campaigns were fucking stupid too.”

“Marketing?” Kelly asked.

“He was a VP at my old job.”

“Oh.”

Yes, and I made a lot more in that short time than Mr. Ryder could ever hope to earn in his entire mediocre lifetime
.

“Goddamn, how I wish I had taped Gan ganking your ass for YouTube.”

Laugh while you can, filth, for soon you shall meet your end
.

“That another half-assed prophecy?”

No. Just common sense for an idiot such as yourself
.

I opened my mouth to give Decker another piece of my mind when I realized everyone in the room was staring. Glancing over at Kelly, I asked, “I’m having an argument with an inanimate object, aren’t I?”

“Pretty much.”

* * *

Sadly for Decker, his craziness proved Christy’s innocence in the eyes of her coven. All one needed to do was listen to his whacked-out noggin for a few minutes to see he’d gone off the deep end and was still swimming out to sea.

Sheila’s presence was another matter entirely. It was one thing to understand someone’s motives in doing something normally deigned undesirable. It was quite another to shake off dogma that pointed to someone being your own personal Antichrist.

I could see what Christy was doing, though. While Decker’s skull continued to rave about death, destruction, and what a dipshit I was for bringing it all to fruition – prick – Christy introduced Sheila around. In doing so, she humanized the boogeyman. It was easy to fear an abstract concept, but a bit harder when you had a name, face, and enough personal interaction to see that someone wasn’t a giant walking cock with a hard-on for killing your ass.

Regardless, the stigma wouldn’t be erased overnight. After all, I’m sure there were people in history who’d briefly met Hitler and thought he was a swell guy, and look how that turned out. Assuming Christy’s new sisters weren’t idiots, and so far, I didn’t get that vibe, they’d be optimistic but still cautious enough to sleep with one fireball readied.

There was one other bright side to all this. Whatever they had done to summon Decker’s specter seemed to have mellowed out Christy’s anger. I wasn’t sure I was back on the guest list for her wedding, but I decided to take a chance and sidled up to her.

“How are you doing?” I asked casually.

“I got some rest. That helped.”

“Good to hear.”

“I’m still pissed at you.”

“Not surprising. I’m trying to put myself in your shoes right now. I can imagine my reaction walking in to a neighbor’s house and seeing Grandpa’s skull up on the mantel.”

“Yeah, it’s something like that.”

“Albeit I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t be quite so vocal either.”

“I will admit, seeing ... or hearing him like this is putting things into perspective for me. In my head, I only remembered...”

“The good parts?” I led her over to a corner so we could talk a bit without being overhead. “Yeah, I know what you mean. I tend to remember sitting on Pop’s lap while he told me stories from his days in the service. Oddly enough, most of those memories tend to ignore that half the time I was coughing my lungs out because he was chain smoking and blowing it in my face. If he showed up here right now, I know deep down his first thought before giving me a hug would be to ask if I’d run to the store and grab him a carton of Pall Malls.”

“Still better than trying to incite a race war.”

“Oh, he might’ve done that too. He always did have a major mad-on for the Irish.”

She smiled. Although it was half sad in its acknowledgement, it told me enough to know that we were still friends.

“So...”

“Yes?”

“How long is he gonna keep doing that?”

“Normally, a spirit tether is a tentative thing. Mediums, the real ones anyway, use them to get bits and pieces – usually just glimpses. It’s like talking to someone through a TV full of static.”

“Shades of
Poltergeist
.”

“This one is a lot stronger, though. For starters, most people don’t have access to body parts.” She threw a glare at me that I did my best to ignore. “We used blood magic before you arrived. Each of us donated a little piece of our life force to draw him fully back from the veil. It’s not something to be done lightly, as it will keep his spirit from finding rest.”

Somehow, that sounded way more ominous than I’d been hoping for. “I guess that’s understandable. I mean, he was like a father to you and...”

Christy lowered her voice to a level that she knew only I’d hear. “That’s what I told my sisters, but it’s only partially true.”

“Oh?”

“Those pictures, the ones from the Jahabich lair?” I nodded and she continued. “I’ve been studying them, trying to make sense of it all. There’s definitely a spell in that final pictograph.”

“You mean the...” I looked around, saw Kelly and Veronica throw a glance my way, and then lowered my voice to match Christy’s. “You mean the one that showed them being beaten?”

“Exactly. The problem is twofold. There’re some symbols I don’t understand. Enochian is very old. Even with the most dedicated of teachers, there were bound to be changes over the centuries. Losses too. All you need is one person to transcribe a symbol slightly wrong and, over time, it takes on a whole new meaning. I’m hoping Harry can help. You may not know this, but he was considered a respected historian of my people.”

Nope, didn’t know that. Didn’t really care either. “Um, you’re gonna bring him up to speed on all of that?”

“I have to. My sisters too. It’s heresy, but the truth needs to be told. Besides, it might be our only chance.”

“At stopping them?”

“That, and maybe stopping other things from happening...”

Christy trailed off, but her meaning was clear. The doctrines the Magi had followed for thousands of years were based off of the White Mother. The thing was, Christy was now convinced that she was pure in the color of her clothing only. If others could be convinced that their entire way of life was based off a pack of lies, then perhaps they could be swayed from the path that fate had supposedly set them upon.

It was most likely a fool’s errand, one that could get her ostracized just as surely as the crime she’d been accused of. Even so, it gave her hope.

Considering everything she’d been through, I wasn’t about to deny her that.

Christy convened a closed session upstairs with her sisters and Decker’s skull to bring them up to speed on our findings from the Jahabich lair. With the Templar keeping guard outside and the Defilers off ... well, supposedly defiling barnyard animals, it seemed like the perfect time for the mages to do so without interruption and with minimal people overhearing.

Mind you, minimal didn’t mean nobody.

With the magical freakiness over for now, my roommates and I moved the furniture back into the living room so as to relax a bit. The large living space just so happened to be conveniently located right beneath where Christy and her coven were talking, allowing me to pick up everything being said above a whisper while pretending to engage my friends in some idle chitchat regarding who would win in a fight: a platoon of Sith warriors or the X-men.

Sheila joined us soon after, having gone to check in with Sister Bernadette, who’d set up a Templar command center in – where else – the kitchen.

“How’s it going with the holy rollers?” I asked, having just crushed Tom’s argument by pointing out that Jean Grey and the Phoenix Force could fuck up Emperor Palpatine six ways to Sunday.

“Not bad. They’re a bit on edge, but putting them on guard duty is helping to distract them from the distaste most of them are still feeling.”

“Teaming up with me?”

“It’s not just you, but yeah.”

“Maybe we should pass the collection plate around,” Ed suggested. “That always seemed to work when I went to Sunday mass as a kid.”

“I draw the line at confession,” Tom joked.

“Believe me, nobody wants to hear that,” I said idly, focusing on the conversation at hand since all Christy seemed to be doing upstairs at the moment was passing around the photos I’d taken of the Jahabich-be-good spell. “Although I’m sure Sally would have some snide comment. Speaking of which, where is she?”

“Still outside, I think,” Sheila said. “She drove Bernadette and me up. When we got here, she said she wanted to take a walk, scope out our perimeter.”

“I bet that was a fun ride.”

“It was ... uncomfortably quiet.”

“Sally? Quiet?” I asked. “I can see Sister Dumpling not wanting to lower herself to speaking to garbage such as us, but I’m having a hard time picturing Sally not getting in every dig she could.”

“Yeah,” Ed agreed. “She’s never been shy about her opinions.”

We shared a glance, which I broke off quickly. He and I still had one hell of an uncomfortable discussion ahead of us. I couldn’t pretend forever that he hadn’t noticed my feelings for Sally had changed ever so slightly. As one of the few folks in this world I considered a true friend, I’d need to come clean at some point, albeit that could certainly wait until after we discovered whether we’d live or die in Boston. Death was potentially the best plausible deniability excuse of them all.

Thankfully, the awkward moment was shattered just then as
Blasphemy!
psychically reverberated throughout the house.

I refocused my attention back upstairs. Yep, Christy had gotten to the White Mother and what a bitch she really was. Things were finally getting interesting.

“What are they talking about?” Sheila asked.

“Huh?”

“You’re eavesdropping, aren’t you?”

“Um...”

“Every few seconds, your eyes lose focus. Also, you tilt your head so your right ear is facing upward.”

“I do?”

“He does?” Tom echoed.

“Yes. Don’t you guys ever play poker? Bill’s tells are obvious from across the room.”

“Yep,” Ed replied. “Hence why I always win.”

I pointed at him. “You said it was just luck.”

“I lied.”

“Ass.”

“Don’t change the subject,” Sheila chided. “Are you listening or not?” My silence was apparently a confession of guilt because she added, “So spill.”

“Dude, are you listening in on my girlfriend?” Tom asked.

“Fine. Yes, I’m listening.”

“Have you ever done that before?”

“On occasion,” I admitted.

“Like what about when we’re doing it in my room?”

“Oh, fuck no!” I lied. Truth was, it was kinda hard to tune out. Tom liked to pant “oh yeah, baby” over and over again like he was in a bad seventies porno. Try sleeping through that shit.

“And no,” I said, turning to Sheila, “I don’t listen to you guys either when you’re downstairs in the shower.”

She blinked a few times, her expression blank. “I didn’t ask.”

“Yeah ... well ... in case you were wondering.” Oh boy. “Anyway, let’s focus on the important stuff right now.”

“So what are they talking about? Sounded like that ...
thing
... Harry, I guess, wasn’t happy.”