Christy, for her part, let out a quiet sob but didn’t ask about Tom. I had a feeling she didn’t need to.
“What are we waiting for?”
I looked up to find Liz staring at us. My fangs descended and I clenched my fists.
However, before I could put them to use, Christy tightened her grip on me and simply said, “Don’t.”
“They betrayed me, too,” Liz said, the attitude all but extinguished from her voice. “That ... bitch killed Ernest.”
I was tempted to tell her I was glad the asshole was dead, but the fire inside of me was dying down as well. Enough harm had been done here. We’d all lost today. And though we might not exactly be allies, we were united in our misery.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said, pulling away from Christy.
Tears were streaming freely down her face, but she managed to nod.
Um, guys,” Glen bubbled, having slithered up alongside us. “Not to interrupt, but ... can I come, too?”
I looked down at him. “I thought you wanted to go home.”
“Oh, I do, Freewill. There’s just one small problem...” He trailed off, sounding almost embarrassed. “I have no idea how.”
Christy wiped her eyes and smiled at him. “Then I guess we’ll have to help you find the way.”
He blinked, err, gratefully I guess, at her. “Thank you!”
“Bill’s right. It’s time to go. There’s nothing left for us here.”
Christy carved a shallow circle in the dirt around us with Liz’s help. When they were finished, they linked hands while I called Kelly over. “All aboard for the last train back home.”
She stood from where she’d been crouched over Sally’s body. “Hold up, guys. We can’t leave her.”
I’d already given that some thought, though. “It’s okay. This place has a lot of history. There’s plenty of old...” I’d meant to say ghosts, but the word got caught on my tongue. “...memories here. It could use some good ones. I think she’d be okay with this being her mausoleum. It’s almost large enough to suit her personality.”
Christy let out a sad chuckle and nodded.
“That’s not what I meant,” Kelly said. “I’m serious. We can’t leave her.”
“Listen, I knew her, maybe better than anyone. She...”
“No. You know her.” At seeing my confused glance, she continued. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I think she’s still alive.”
HOME IS WHERE THE HORROR IS
With no safe houses or coven lairs left, and the fact that Christy’s building was likely swarming with cops, we rematerialized in the only place that made sense: my apartment. More precisely, my living room, eliciting a shriek of panic as we appeared.
The light from the spell cleared and I found Dave standing there staring wide-eyed at us. “Fuck me!” he cried. “You almost gave me a heart attack.”
“Not now, Dave...”
“Pleasure to meet you,” Glen bubbled.
“What in the fuck is that?!”
“His name is...”
Dave turned to where Sally had materialized on the floor. “And is that a dead body?”
“It’s ... Sally.”
“Oh. She’s ... seen better days.”
It was all I could do to keep from decking him. Instead I chose the high road, picking Sheila up and lying her on the couch as Kelly continued to examine Sally.
Liz stepped over, but Christy moved in front of her. “You need to go.”
“I’m just trying to help.”
“You’ve helped enough,” Kelly snapped, standing up and poking her with a finger. “Consider our temporary truce at an end.”
“You need to get out of my face, catalyst witch.”
“Or what?”
“What’s a catalyst witch?” Dave asked, looking about as confused as I felt.
“None of your business.” Christy grabbed Liz by the arm and steered her to the door. “Like I said, you need to go. And you need to stay gone. Don’t let me see you again.”
She opened the front door and Liz stepped through. Before she walked away, though, she said, “Just so you know, you’re not the only one who lost someone today. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”
I thought Christy’s response might be in the form of explosive death magic, but she merely shut the door before sinking down against it and burying her face in her hands.
“So what was that all about?” Dave asked, stepping over Glen. “You know what? It doesn’t matter. Not after the day I’ve had.”
“The day you’ve had?” I asked, half tempted to send him following in Liz’s footsteps.
“Yeah, you wouldn’t believe it. Everything was going great, then all of a sudden the emails started coming in.”
“I really don’t...”
“Fuckers cancelling their orders left and right and using the stupidest fucking excuses. ‘My grandma just died.’ ‘My aunt is in the hospital. She’s not expected to make it.’ Yeah, right.”
“Here’s a thought. Shut up before I shut you up.” I nodded toward Glen. “If he says anything else, melt his face off.”
“How?” he asked, blinking several eyeballs in unison.
“I don’t know. Figure it out.” I turned away, preparing to pepper Kelly with questions. There’d been no time to talk following her bombshell. We’d simply dragged Sally into the circle and gotten out of Dodge. Now, though...
But before I could start, Glen started quivering excitedly. “Freewill! The Icon is waking up. Oh, how exciting.”
“How the fuck does this thing even talk?”
Kelly stood up, wisely ignoring Dave, and hurried over to the couch.
“Hey, what about...”
“It’s fine,” she told me. “Sally’s not going anywhere, at least not yet.”
“What do you mean...”
But Kelly was already busy hovering over Sheila. “Come on, Sheils, you can do it. Come back to us.”
I should have been glad for this one small victory, but it was hard to be. What a fucking nightmare. It was as if everything we’d fought for five years ago had been for nothing. I dared a quick look back at where Sally lay but couldn’t hold my gaze, not seeing her like that. I really hoped Kelly wasn’t just blowing smoke up my ass, but there didn’t seem to be much I could do about it right at the moment. All I could do was hold onto a thin sliver of hope.
I glanced over at Christy, but she hadn’t moved. At least I had hope. For her, there wasn’t any. I was tempted to go and offer what comfort I could, but I had a feeling she needed some time to be alone with her thoughts.
“Uhhhh.”
“Come on, girl,” Kelly said as Sheila finally opened her eyes. “There you are.”
“What ... the ... fuck?” she asked weakly.
“Gan stabbed you with the blood of Baal,” I explained.
“I got stabbed with the what of what?” Sheila focused her eyes on me and shook her head. “Holy shit. I had the weirdest dream, Bill.”
“It wasn’t a dream.”
“I dreamt I had...” She looked down at herself. “Goddamn, I do!”
“Do what?”
“I have tits!” She ran a hand over her chest. “And I can feel them!”
What the?
She grabbed her crotch next, something I hadn’t known her to do in front of company. “Where the hell did my dick go?”
Christy looked up from where she sat. “What’s ... going on?”
Sheila pushed herself to a sitting position and smiled at her. “Oh, hey, babe.”
Babe?! Oh, shit. No. It couldn’t be.
“Um, Sheila, are you okay?” She didn’t answer, prompting Kelly to lean in and put a hand on her shoulder. “Hey, I’m talking to you.”
“What? Do I look deaf or something?”
“So are you?”
“Am I what?”
“She asked if you were okay,” I said.
“No. She asked Sheila if she was okay, dumbass. By the
way, where is she?”
Uh oh. “You’re her.”
She fixed me with a gaze that said her opinion of my intelligence was dropping rapidly. “Dude, has celibacy made you stupid or what?”
Glen slithered over. “What’s going on, Freewill?”
“I have no fucking idea.”
Christy, however, was able to give voice to what I was unwilling to acknowledge. “Tom?”
Sheila smiled. “Yeah. Who else would I be? Oh, hey! Check it out. I can touch shit again.”
“Well, if this isn’t all sorts of fucked up,” Dave said, “I don’t know what is.”
I turned to the others. “Does anyone have a mirror?” It was a stupid question. We’d just come back from the center of the Earth, not exactly a place where anyone needed to retouch their makeup.
“Hold on,” Dave replied. “Use my phone.”
He handed it to me. I turned on the front facing camera and held it up to Sheila.
Her eyes became as big as saucers as she saw the face staring back at her. “No fucking way.” She reached up, touched her cheek, then stuck out her tongue, as if expecting her reflection to do something different. “Well, damn. This is kinda messed up.”
“No shit,” Dave replied.
“But, I have to say, I do wear it well.”
“Um, guys,” Kelly said. “How is ... this even possible?”
“The Source,” Christy replied, her voice shaking.
“Gan won after all,” I muttered, just barely able to process this. “She killed her.”
“What?” Kelly cried.
“But how...”
“Sheila,” I said. “It has to be.” I turned to Christy. “Before it all blew up, she told me she’d make it, all of this, right again.”
Sheila, Tom, or whoever they were, nodded. “Weird as that sounds, man, I think you might be on to something there. I remember her stabbing me, or my action figure anyway. Then there was nothing but blinding light. Suddenly I was having one of those weird ass, out-of-body experiences they talk about.”
“You do realize the last five years has been an out of body experience for you, right?”
“Whatever the fuck.” The voice was Sheila’s, but the mannerisms and inflection were one-hundred percent Tom. “Anyway, I felt myself floating away, when all of a sudden it was like a hand closed around mine and yanked me back down. The next thing I knew, witches were trying to kill me and then I woke up here.”
“Do you think she knew?” Kelly asked, her eyes glassy.
I shook my head. “I don’t think anyone could have. Gan played us all from the start – both sides, here and below. I get the impression everything that happened was meticulously planned out.” Before Kelly could reply, though, I continued. “Except for this part. Gan counted on Sheila’s despair, her guilt. But in the end, she remembered what she’d once stood for and that gave her the strength to make one last choice nobody, not even Gan, could have foreseen.”
“She gave her life for his.”
I nodded. “It was her way of atoning and, in doing so, making sure the world still had an Icon.” I watched as Tom felt himself up. “Or some semblance of one, anyway.”
♦ ♦ ♦
A swirl of emotions clouded my thoughts as Tom stood up and took a few steps, looking uncertain in his new skin.
I walked over to Christy, her expression blank as if she’d reached her limit and was incapable of processing anything else. That was something I could understand. “Are you okay?”
“Okay?” she asked incredulously. “I don’t even know what that is anymore.”
“I get it, babe,” Tom replied. “This is pretty fucked up for me, too. But the important thing is I’m still me on the inside.” I was about to comment with something affirmative, but he wasn’t finished yet. “As for the rest ... we could always try scissoring.”
I sighed. “You really are a fucktard, you know that?”
“Takes one to know one, bro.” He smiled, his expression upon the face of the woman I’d once loved. To say it was strange wasn’t even close to the truth.
“Listen ... um, Tom,” Kelly said. “You might want to take this more seriously. You’re ... the Icon now and that means...”
“Hold that thought. This whole name thing is going to get confusing quick, but I think I have a solution.”
“A solution?”
“Yeah. I’m me in Sheila’s body.”
“And...?”
“Tom, Sheila ... you can call me...” He paused dramatically as if expecting a drum roll. “Teela!” Stunned silence descended upon the room for several seconds. “C’mon, guys, think of how awesome that is. Me with Cheetara by my side. We will fucking own Comic Con.”
I looked him in the eye. “There is no fucking way that I am ever calling you Teela.”
“I actually think it’s kind of cool.”
“Shut up, Dave.”
♦ ♦ ♦
Tom excused himself to borrow some of my clothes, despite me doubting anything I had would fit him anymore. He claimed Sheila’s armor chafed in all the wrong places. Thankfully, he didn’t elaborate.
That left the rest of us pretty much stunned into inaction. I couldn’t begin to make sense of how I felt, not yet. Kelly, in particular, seemed to be hit hard by this.
But I gave her credit – rather than break down at the loss of her friend, she instead refocused on examining Sally. After a few minutes, Christy joined her.
They worked in silence for several minutes, casting a variety of spells that I guessed were meant to poke and prod the charred statue on my living room floor.
I watched as they worked. “How ... um ... is she?”
“I don’t know. I ...” Christy’s voice cracked. “I should probably focus on what I’m doing.”
I put a hand on her shoulder. “We did it, you know.”
“Did what?”
“The impossible. We brought him back. That has to count for something.”
Christy looked up at me and smiled. “It does. I’m just not sure what it means for...”
She was interrupted by the sound of my phone ringing, causing both of us to jump.
“It’s probably that Vincent guy again,” Dave said dismissively, stepping to the fridge.
“Hold on”, Kelly replied. “What do you mean again?”
“He’s been calling on and off for the last hour. Left a bunch of messages for you guys to call him back.”
I stepped up and got in his face. “And you didn’t tell us this why?”
“One, I’m not your fucking answering service. And two...” He gestured toward Sally and Glen. “I’ve been a bit distracted.”
Christy and Kelly both bolted for the phone, not that I could blame them. In all the craziness we’d forgotten that the most precious of our new fellowship was still out there somewhere.
They reached for it simultaneously, but then Kelly pulled back. “You answer it.”
Christy looked like she wanted nothing better than to do that, but she replied, “No, he’s your husband. He’s probably just checking in.”
“Are you sure?”
Christy nodded and Kelly picked it up.
“Hey, honey! You have no idea how glad I am to hear your voice. Yeah, we just got back. I know, things are a bit ... whoa, slow down. I’m not getting all of that.”
Christy’s eyes opened wide, but Kelly held up a hand, no doubt to keep her from jumping to conclusions. “Is Tina... Okay. Thank goodness.” She gave Christy a thumbs up.
“Tell her mommy misses her.”
“Daddy, too,” Tom shouted from my bedroom.
“Yeah. I know,” Kelly continued. “I’ll explain later. For now... What’s that? He did? But how? Do you know where? Okay, okay. Just head over. We’re all at Bill’s place. We’ll figure it out. No, they’re not going to be a problem anymore. Trust me on that. Okay. Love you, too.” She hung up the phone, her face a shade paler than when she’d answered it.
“What is
it?” Christy asked.
“Tina’s fine,” Kelly replied. “Vince, too. He’s just a bit frazzled.” She ran a hand through her hair. “They’re only a couple of blocks from the subway. They should be here in an hour or two, depending on the connections.”
“Why don’t they just drive?” I asked.
“It’s Ed.”
“What? Did he double park and get that land yacht towed already?”
“It’s not that,” she replied, turning to face us all. “He’s gone.”
“Wait, what do you mean gone?”
“Tina had to use the bathroom,” She explained. “They stopped at a gas station on the west side. Vincent took her in then they went to buy some snacks. But when they came out, Ed and the limo were both gone.”
“Did he try...”
“Of course he tried calling,” she said. “That’s the first thing he did. But then he heard a phone ringing. It was Ed’s cell. Someone had tossed it in the trash.”
“Well that’s fucking stupid,” Tom called out to us. “Dude needs to be more careful with his...”
“He didn’t drop it,” I snapped, putting two and two together. “Gan took him. It’s the only answer that makes sense.”
“You don’t know...”
“I’m pretty sure he didn’t spontaneously decide to throw his phone away so he could take a joy ride.”
“Damnit!” Christy said, a crackle of red energy flashing in her eyes. “Why didn’t we see this sooner? The car. It was hers.”
I nodded, starting to feel quite stupid at how easily we’d been played. “What did she care if she handed the keys over? She probably had GPS installed to track it.”
“And those sigils,” Christy added, “so we couldn’t.”
Kelly shook her head. “But why him? And ... don’t get mad at me for saying this ... not...”
“Tina?” I offered. “Gan doesn’t have any interest in her. Never did. That was Komak’s thing. Gan already knew everything she needed to. But Ed...”
“She need a new fuck boy or something?” Tom asked, stepping out of my room. He was wearing a t-shirt and an old pair of my jeans, the latter cinched up tight with a belt.
“Vampires,” I corrected with a sigh. “Aside from her, Ed and I are the only two left.”
Strange Days (Bill of the Dead Book 1) Page 32
