“Hey, Tab? Want to get some lunch before we go get Isaac?” I asked.
Tabby rolled her eyes at me. “Isaac needs away from Mom. Besides, I’m sure he’d want a hamburger too.”
“Oh, yes, anything for the cat.”
Lucy giggled.
###
Tabby’s mother’s house was an old ranch style thing with fake brick on the outside and a big window near the front door. It was once red brick, but had faded to a more orange color. The windowsills needed painted, and the front walk had weeds growing up through the cracks in the pavement. The weeds were trimmed though, I had to give her mother that.
“Will you look at this?” Tabby’s mother said as soon as she opened the door. She was holding her arm at an odd angle.
Instead of inviting us inside, she stuck her hand in Tabby’s face. I could faintly see a red mark. There was so much I wanted to say, but I bit my tongue to keep from saying something that would likely piss them both off.
“Yes, Mom. I see. That’s why we’re here.” Tabby sighed.
She let us into her home. It was normal. Actually, it was cleaner than my house usually was. The front door opened into the living room. Blue couch. Matching recliner. TV. There was one picture on the wall. It must have been taken when Tabby was in high school. She was pretty even then.
Still, I found myself thinking of Poe—the whole tap, tap, tapping at my chamber door bit. Tabby’s mother’s voice was like that. It crept in like a woodpecker hammering at a piece of wood while you are trying to catch the last zzz’s of the morning.
“Jimmy?” Tabby asked.
I looked up. I really needed to start paying better attention to what was going on and not get lost in my thoughts so much.
“You remember my mom, Kathy,” she said.
“Of course.” I reached out my hand, and all I got for my trouble was a glare that made me feel like I was the dog shit on the bottom of her shoe. Nice lady.
I chose to be silent about it for Tabby’s sake. “So, where’s Isaac?”
Just hearing me speak his name, Isaac barreled out from where he’d been hiding under the sofa and jumped into Tabby’s arms. He was this huge darker colored Siamese. His eyes were bluish, and he did not look happy.
“Alrighty, then,” I said. Poor thing. I wouldn’t want to stay with that woman either. It was hard to tell what she’d done to him to make him bite her.
Tabby snorted. “Okay, Mom. I know you want him out of here, so we’ll be going.” She turned toward the door.
Her mom grunted. I glared back at her. She didn’t want to get me pissed off enough that I let it all out, did she?
I held the door open for Tabby, and we left. I made myself calm down before I reached the car. Her mother and the way she acted wasn’t a good reason to get into an accident.
In the car, Isaac stared wide-eyed at Lucy for a minute, then settled down into the seat beside her.
His initial uneasiness didn’t do a lot to quell my fears. I really hoped Lucy was benign. But, beyond God coming out and saying all the badness had left with the demon, all I could do was watch. I really hoped her obsession with horror films was just one of those things and not an instruction manual.
###
“So, hamburgers?” Tabby asked when we were a bit down the road.
“Where do you want to stop?” I looked along the highway. There wasn’t anything yet.
“Oh, anywhere. Drive through would be best.”
“Yeah, I can’t see a restaurant enjoying having ‘his royal highness’ come visit.”
Lucy giggled from the backseat. I glanced up in the rear view mirror. Isaac was fine. Thank God.
I was just being paranoid. I had enough on my plate without giving myself more stress. And I needed to stop thinking about those horror films. Plenty of people watched horror films, even as kids, and came out completely normal.
“So, Lucy, what do you think of Isaac?” I asked her.
“I don’t think he likes Tabby’s mommy very much.”
Her insightfulness was something else. And, as far as I knew, she’d stayed in the car when we collected Isaac. Or maybe she had more power than I thought.
“Why particularly?” Tabby asked.
Lucy paused. “He doesn’t like how she treats you.”
Tabby and I looked at each other. There was no way that Lucy could have known anything about Tabby’s past. And Isaac…well he was a cat. I really didn’t want to think I was getting any crazier than I already was. Too bad it was possible.
“Does he talk to you?” I asked her.
“Kind of. It’s like I look at him and these pictures appear. Like a movie or something.”
I calmed down then. She was a soul. It made sense that she could see other souls. Kind of interesting that Isaac had one though. The Church taught me that animals didn’t have them and thus couldn’t be granted into Heaven. One more thing the Church was wrong about. I should start keeping a list.
###
When we got back to the house, Lucy went into the living room and sat down in front of the TV. I turned it on for her.
Isaac was barreling through the house. I guess that was his way of making the place “home,” but it was really funny having a cat run like a maniac around the place. It felt nice to have the house not be so quiet.
“So, what are we going to do now?” Tabby asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I somehow don’t see Isaac participating in an exorcism.”
I laughed. “Hey, you never know. Besides, he’s your familiar, right?” Of course, I knew he wasn’t doing spells for her and things like that, but any animal that belonged to a witch could be considered a familiar. At least, that’s what I thought. Of course, I was more open-minded. The Church tended to view familiars as watchdogs for the Devil or some such nonsense.
“Well, sort of.”
“Then he goes. We can get him a seat on the plane.” Or maybe a Superman cape. Now that would be funny.
Tabby shook her head. “I’m not remotely going to pretend that this isn’t a dumb idea.”
I shrugged. “Animals can sometimes sense stuff before we can. He might be able to help.” I could just see a demon screaming at Isaac’s noxious fumes. They were that bad.
“It’s your funeral,” she said.
I ignored her and booted up the laptop. No sense in waiting any longer. Familiar or no familiar, we needed to get to Arizona.
###
I wasn’t dumb enough to get first-class tickets. Even I couldn’t have been able to justify that in my head. Isaac or not, coach it was going to be. If my legs had to stick up my butt, so be it. I wasn’t going to let this company credit card thing get out of hand.
We were supposed to get into Tucson, Arizona about eight p.m. I’d found a hotel that accepted animals, but I really wasn’t sure how much time we’d be in that room. I was starting to feel like the Scooby Doo gang. I had a mystery to solve, but I didn’t know what it was. I had too many pieces to put together. The weird phone call, the flask. Logic told me that the flask was sent by the same person that made the phone call, but why? And if Tabby was right and the initials belonged to my ancestor, that was another level to the madness.
The number hadn’t even shown up on my call list on my cell phone, which was weird enough, but the call itself was the strange part. There was no way the guy could have known about O’Malley just by getting in a database for my phone number, so that left me to believe he was telling the truth—at least about that part.
Whether he needed an exorcism or not, that was the problem. Kind of. The possessee isn’t usually the one asking for help from the Church. The family does that. So, that must mean he was lying about who needed an exorcism.
Again, why? It made no sense to me.
One thing, I didn’t like being lied to. It didn’t matter if the possessed person was a real bastard or something, I’d still help. It wasn’t like Lucy was nice in her possessed form. So, how would this be
any different? Still though, the person calling shouldn’t be lying about anything. I’d even given Will a riot act about that.
Sometimes I found myself wanting to dive back into doctrine and look for things, but honestly, I knew it wouldn’t help. I’d had better luck with the exorcism when using the words that Tabby and I had made up. Maybe there was something to that. Could it be as simple as being defrocked meant that the Church’s ritual wasn’t available to me, or was it all in my head?
And if doing an exorcism like a witch’s ritual worked, who was I to argue?
CHAPTER FOUR
PIECE OF MY HEART
“What time does the flight leave?” Tabby asked. It was Thursday. We were flying out tomorrow. I wasn’t really looking forward to it, but it was better than staying around here and wondering what might have been.
“Seven forty-five.” It meant getting up at the butt-crack of dawn, but it was better than getting there at like two a.m.
“Uggh.” Tabby popped her neck and sat down at one of the dining room table chairs.
I shrugged. “At least it puts us in Arizona at a decent time.”
She raised her eyebrow at me. “Decent for who?”
I didn’t want to be mean to her, but if I could have somehow pulled some perfect flight out of my butt, I would have. It was either really early going or getting in really late. “What? We’ll get there at eight.”
“Uh. Huh. Did you get us a rental car?”
I stared at her. Shit. Of course she’d zero in on the thing I forgot. “I’ll be right back.”
She snorted. I took off back to the computer and added a rental car to our reservation. It wasn’t like I was trying to be stupid, it just came out that way. Or some great power in the world liked to see me fail. Yeah, that sounded good.
I had to believe that it would all work out, otherwise I’d just screwed up the first assignment I had since getting marked. Great way to start a new job, messing up your first assignment. Good going, Jimmy.
###
I sat down on the sofa and watched Tabby rush around the house. She’d gotten some stuff unpacked, but it wasn’t anywhere near done. If we didn’t have to leave this soon, it would have been a lot easier for her. I probably could have helped with some of it, but I was comfortable on my couch.
Lucy sat on the other end of the couch alternating between sort of petting Isaac and watching Tabby. Her hand sort of hovered over the cat.
“What’s it going to be like?” Lucy asked.
I looked over at her. “What’s what going to be like?”
“Arizona.”
I thought for a bit. I had to find a way for this kid to have fun on the trip. It wouldn’t be fair otherwise. “Hot, mostly. Do you feel temperature?”
She shrugged. “I don’t get cold anymore.”
I guess that made sense. She didn’t have a body. Not really. But a kid should be able to do stuff like play in water when it’s warm. Lucy being in this state wasn’t doing her any good. I just didn’t know what I could do about it.
“Is Isaac going?” she asked.
I laughed. “Yes, Isaac is going.”
She smiled.
Okay, cat made her happy. Check.
###
I’d shuffled my crap together as best I could. I did get out and get a case for the iPad. Traveling with the thing exposed would be stupid, and I didn’t know if I should leave it at home. It was probably better if I had it with me in case they needed to contact me or something. It was getting way too complicated.
I guessed it was connected to some cell phone or something. Yeah, they broke into my basic lock on my house without a security system. I had trouble believing they would hack my network. I didn’t know enough about the iPad to check to see what it was connected to. Still, it seemed like a hell of a lot of work for something I could have done myself. I just wondered if they meant for me to travel with this thing.
“What are you doing?” Tabby asked.
“Trying to figure out what it’s linked up to.” I looked around the house and out the window, but I didn’t see anything weird.
She shrugged. “I’ve never had one, so I don’t know how to check the settings. You could look it up.”
Yeah, technically she was right, but I wasn’t feeling like messing with the net. Going on a jaunt was more fun anyway.
“I’ll just go outside,” I said.
Tabby raised an eyebrow. “Why?”
“If I walk down the street, out of range, the net connection will quit.” If it was connected to my house, that is.
She shook her head and walked away.
I went outside and headed down the street. My neighborhood was one of those old housing subdivisions from the fifties. Tons of neat little houses in rows, almost as far as you could see. At one time, I’d been told, there had been a little supermarket settled within the grid of all the little houses that had its own butcher. Way before my time.
I continued along the sidewalk. At the corner, I stopped and loaded up the tablet. It came to life just like it had in the house. I checked on the Internet app, and it brought up the Apple homepage.
Yeah. Okay. I was covered. Maybe. Hell, I don’t know. It would be kind of cool if the Order had its own huge server or something. More like, the server was connected to a cell tower format, so I could just surf the net wherever there was cell service.
I probably should have just looked up how to check the settings like Tabby said, but since the thing didn’t belong to me, what business did I have messing with it?
I headed back to the house.
I needed to know more than I did—as usual. But even I had to admit I was probably better off not knowing instead of knowing too much. I had a bad feeling that some of the stuff I was better off knowing was going to be the stuff I needed to know. That was my luck.
###
Needless to say, getting on an airplane with a disembodied spirit and a cat was interesting. The Isaac part wasn’t too bad. I just hoped there was no one on board who was allergic to cats. I wouldn’t want to give someone an asthma attack or anything.
Lucy, however, stressed me out. Because she didn’t have a seat, she wandered around the plane. Sometimes she got really close to people. Too close. I kept expecting for someone to sense her, but I was lucky. No one did.
I wanted to set her down and tell her to chill out, but I couldn’t exactly be seen as a total nutcase on a plane. Isaac even looked at me like I was nuts several times. That would look real good if I got myself on a no-fly list.
Finally, when we landed, my heart stopped hammering in my chest. If I couldn’t calm down, I was going to need anxiety medication or something. I almost welcomed the annoying assembly line that was getting off an airplane.
“Are you better now?” Tabby asked as we headed toward baggage claim.
“Yeah, kinda.” Maybe being enclosed with a lot of people in a tin can had my hackles up. Getting into the airport was a lot calmer for me.
“I haven’t seen you that uncomfortable in a long time.”
“Did you see what Lucy was doing?” My brain bounced back to Lucy staring at people, Lucy dodging the drink cart, Lucy dancing in front of the bathroom door. Yeah. The flight was not a fun time for me.
“Yeah?” She seemed so unconcerned. I don’t know how she managed it.
“What if someone noticed?” I asked.
Tabby started laughing. “I think Lucy has control over who can see her. Even I didn’t see her at first.”
“True.” I said it but I didn’t necessarily believe it. There was always going to be someone stronger, faster, more amazing. And, well, it was just a matter of time before we ran into someone like that.
###
We got the rental car without a hiccup, and with GPS, we were able to find our hotel without too many issues. After we got into our hotel room, allowed Isaac to take a dump in his travel litter box, and got my shoes off, Lucy reappeared. Why she’d run around invisible in the airport was beyo
nd me. I wasn’t the one she had to worry about seeing her.
“Did you have fun?” I asked her.
She sat down on the bed beside me. “You were funny.”
The bed had one of those weird undulating wave patterns on the bedspread. At least it was blue. In pink, it would look like vomit. I turned my attention back to Lucy. “You about gave me a heart attack.”
“It wasn’t that bad,” Tabby said when she came in from the bathroom.
It amazed me. All she had to do was brush out her hair and wash her face, and she’d be back to normal. Me, I’d look like shit until I got a good night’s sleep. “So you say,” I replied.
Lucy looked at me. “Why were you scared?”
“What if there was someone who could see you?” I might as well put it out there. She needed to think a little more. I knew she was little, but she had different needs than a normal kid.
She stopped for a minute, then bowed her head. “I didn’t think about that.”
I would have liked to put my hand on her shoulder, but her not being corporeal really made that impossible. “It’s okay. Just try to keep calm when we’re around a lot of people.”
She nodded.
“Can we let this go and get something to eat?” Tabby asked. There was a hint of annoyance in her voice.
“Wanna see if there’s a pizza place that will still deliver? I’m tired.” All I wanted to do was get a shower and some sleep. I was leaning away from food. Though, I’d probably wake up in the middle of the night starving to death.
Tabby went for the phone on the stand between the two beds. “Sometimes you do have good ideas.” She hit the button for the front desk.
“Only sometimes?” I asked.
“Don’t make me hurt you.”
###
It was past midnight by the time Tabby fell asleep. Isaac was at the foot of the bed, snoozing at her feet. I had the volume on the TV turned down low. Lucy didn’t complain. She sat on the other bed in the room and alternated between watching me and watching me flip channels.
In the dark, Lucy seemed sad. I had no way of knowing if she could tell anything about what was happening to her body or not. Who knew what God’s plan for her was? Part of me wondered if it would be more humane for her to go on to Heaven instead of having to live with the pain and disfigurement her own body had. It was probably a good thing that it wasn’t my call.