The Lily Harper 8 Book Boxed Set

by HP Mallory

  She smiled and then inhaled deeply. “I’ve seen this reflection of myself before—where I’m different than I am now and different than I was in life but somehow I know whoever this person is, it’s still me. The real me.”

  “’Tis a spirit?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I call it my Self.”

  “Ah moost admit, Ah quite like this Self o’ yours,” I said as I took her nipple into me mouth and sucked upon it as though I were a babe.

  “It seems somehow attached to my sword,” she continued. “That’s why I asked if you’d magicked my sword somehow to make this Self of mine appear.”

  “Nae, Ah didnae,” I said as I shook my head and separated myself from her breast. “Truth be told, the way ye changed yer shape an’ glowed back there reminded me o’ what Jeanne did tae stave off the Spites.”

  Besom’s face grew serious. “She’s a lot more than what she claims to be, Tallis. That whole unspoken plan of attack on the grove? That was all done by her; she was pointing me and the Flamels at the targets we needed to hit.”

  Another thought occurred to me and I sighed.

  “What?” Besom asked as she placed her fingers beneath me chin and propped me head up.

  “Malecoda’s been loostin’ after Donnchadh fer more centuries than Ah can count. An’ now that he knows ye have Donnchadh within ye, he’ll nae stop tryin’ tae take the spirit from ye.”

  She closed her eyes and arched her back. “Great… more problems we don’t need.”

  “Aye an’ then there’s the master wizard, Gwydion fab Don. Ye didnae see the Welshman afore he took off. Boot those trees belonged tae him. ‘Twas on account of Gwydion that the trees knocked down the demons holdin’ Jeanne an’ the angel captive.”

  “So is Gwydion on our side?”

  I didnae think so and I shook me head. “If so, it wouldnae explain why the shifty Welshman decided tae invite the likes o’ Jedidiah an’ Malecoda tae the party he were throwin’. Ah’m thinkin’ he’s playin’ a deeper game.”

  “And what exactly is the goal of this deeper game?”

  That question triggered a headache that always arose whenever talk turned to the wizard. “Ach, Ah gave oop on figurin’ out the ways o’ Gwydion when Ah placed him down here fer the last time. He does what he does an’ the rhyme an’ reason make sense tae naught boot him.”

  She gave me a light kiss on the lips and I began to move away from her when she grabbed me shoulders. “And where do you think you’re going?”

  “Jist a little tae the right so Ah dinnae lie so heavily oopon ye.”

  She reached up and hugged me closer. “Just lie right here, okay? Don’t get up… not just yet.”

  I shushed her and gently kissed her ear. “Aye, Besom, as long as ye like.”

  Just then, a frantic set of knocks sounded upon the door.

  “Nips! Tido! We gots trouble, yo!”

  “Ever to that truth, which but the semblance of a falsehood wears…”

  -Dante’s Inferno

  TWENTY-FOUR

  BILL

  When I went downstairs, I kept a close ear out for Lils and Conan. Earlier I’d been trying not to listen but the thunderin’ that was coming from their room made that lil request impossibles. All them sex sounds did nothin’ but remind me how all I seemed to be was acquaintance-zoned which is like the uglier cousin of friend-zoned.

  The scene on the ground floor was a little different from when I left it. All the kids from Custer’s Camp were sacked out on the beds, fast and furiously asleep. Never woulda pegged Kay as the loudest snorer. Jeannie and the Fabulous Flames were yakking away in French. My hearin’ is good but even it has its limits. Probalistically, I’d say they were comparing notes on what lay outside the Great Warland.

  Greybeard Flame spotted me outta the corner of his eye and they all shut up in a hurry. That’s always a tattle-tale sign… Whatever’s under discussion, it’s for their ears exclusivarily. Him making a big show of wavin’ me over just clenched that diag-notion.

  “Ah, there you are, Monsieur William! We were just discussing what kind of treatment your injuries might require.”

  I’m pretty sure Jeannie gave him the skinny—or in my case, the used-to-be-fat—on what I required. And he looked smart enough to know that the insultjuries those damn wolves did on me weren’t nothing serious. I just needed a slick line to get outta this. “Look, no offenstration, Big Grey, but anything that happened to me is inconsequational. I’m a self-healer, ya know. It’s one o’ the few percolators I git fer bein’ an angel.”

  Lady Flame arched an eyebrow at me like she had X-rated vision and saw through my bullshit. “And how, pray tell, did you ever become so malnourished during your involuntary stay at the castle of Alaire, hmm? Was that also something you could heal from naturally?”

  I felt gawkyward. How do other people talk their way outta jams like this? “Hey, that was a whole ‘nother ball game, Lady Frenchie. I had ta lose a few pounds anyway… Maybe not that many pounds but still…”

  Jeannie sighed with a smile that, under any other circumcisionstances, would’ve given me a semi. “Oh, do come over and let us evaluate you, William. As far as any of us know, the Fenrir may have transmitted a special poison that could prove quite harmful to you.”

  And here I thought she couldn’t do decepticon. Anyone starts talking like that, they wanna pump ya for what ya know. Well, I wasn’t born yesterday—as a matter of fact, I was born at the beginning of time—so no way was I gonna go along with it. I had to do one last, little thing first.

  I grabbed what I came for, the plastic-fantastic case with the sat phone in it. It was sitting next to the stairs and I shook my head at them. “No, folks, really, I’m feelin’ fine. If that changes, I’ll let ya know, yo. But there’s something else I really need ta do right now.”

  Jeannie’s expressionation reminded me of Lils. “I shall hold you to your promise, William. And I shall be quite upset if you break that promise.”

  I spread my arms as wide as the wings I wished I had. “Hey, I’m an angel, yo. We angels hafta keep our word, right?” No point admitting that I’d been partying on the job for the last hundred years or so.

  None of them Frenchies looked convinced but at least they didn’t stop me from going back upstairs. When I reached the top, I let out my breath. Not the most graceful exit...

  It didn’t take me long to Manhattan Transfer the number from my cell into the sat phone. The line was ringing. On the third ring, a cheery voice answered. “Vice President of Afterlife Enterprises Requisitions Department, Thalia speaking.”

  I sighed with relief and let the wall hold me up for a second. “Goddamn if it ain’t great ta hear yer voice, Sally.”

  Her reply practically blew out my eardrum. “Billy! We’ve been wondering what happened to you. Well, at least I have and we both know that Polly—”

  I glanced at the door and stairs to see if anyone heard Sally’s verbal equivo-quation of fireworks when I heard a click on the line with Polly’s stern voice right after it. “Where in the name of Hades have you been? We’ve been trying to ring you since they found that missing car outside the Asylum.”

  The door was still closed and nobody was coming up the stairs, so I guessed that nobody but me heard Sally. “Yeah, um, I was kinda beyond cell tower range fer a while.”

  Sally gasped in horror. “You mean you’re still down in the Ninth Circle? With all those demons?”

  I made my lips fart… softly. “Hell, Sally, you’da found my chub ass frozen into a snowball if that happinionated. Nah, me an’ Tido blew out o’ there a little while ago.”

  “Who’s Tido?”

  I sometimes forget not everyone knows my nicknames. “Tallis Black… ya know, ex-head honcho o’ the Underground City an’ recently turned antisocialized he-man hermit o’ the Dark Wood?”

  Polly did one of her little hums, the sound she makes when she’s trying to choose between asking for more info or giving me the roots-r
ock-riot act. “You say you’re beyond cell tower range. Then you’re not in Dis?”

  “Uh-uh, nowhere near Dis.”

  “You’re not in one of the upper circles?”

  God, I hated when she did that. “Look, Polly, lemme save ya some time on yer little Socreatic method an’ tell ya where I am, okay? I’m somewhere in the morgue.”

  “If you’re in the Eighth Circle, getting a cell call out should be impossible. I personally requisitioned the fiber optics that—”

  “Well, actuality, this place ain’t in such great shape right now, yo. In actual-factual, ya could call it a literarial war zone.”

  Polly’s tone got sharp enough to cut Tido’s hair. “What do you mean by ‘war zone’, Bill?”

  Yeah, she didn’t want to believe me but I knew she couldn’t be that dense. “Geez, Polly, what d’ya think?! I’ve been in enough o’ those bone-grinders ta recognitize a war front when I see one. If I didn’t know no better, I’d swear I was back in Ypres fer the fourth time.”

  Sally’s moan was even more unnerving than Polly’s sternness. “Oh, no… I remember Ypres. A hundred years ago, it was a horrible place to die… full of rifles, machine guns, mustard gas—”

  Polly cut her off like a driver who used GTA to learn the rules of the road. “Yes, yes, I was there too, Thalia.” She paused and started in on me again. “And now that you’ve upset my sister, you slovenly angel, tell me what this is really about.”

  That right there tore it for me. I understood why Polly didn’t like me too much. But being a hardass ain’t the same as being a dumbass. “Yo, ya remember all those shipments you misplaculated? I’m pretty sure we just found ‘em down here.”

  A long moment of dead air told me I finally got through the reinforcefield around Polly’s brain. “What were they actually?”

  “Weapons, Polly… big guns, little guns, planes, comm equipment, maybe a few nasty things we ain’t worked out yet. Leavin’ asideways the comm equipment, all the rest of it is stuff I ain’t seen since the war that Ypres was part of. An’ the Malebranche seem ta have truckloads of it.”

  Sally’s next comment was what separated her from a bimbot. “But that’s kind of stupid. I mean, the Malebranche rule that Circle with an iron fist. If they were having trouble, you’d think they’d get better weapons than the antiques you’re talking about.”

  I scolded myself for not thinking of that first. “Yeah, well, let’s just say there’s some serious rust in that iron yer talkin’ about, kiddo.”

  That’s when I took the timeout to explanate the little uncivil war that was going on ‘round here, including what we knew about the big players. When I got to the part about the Spites, Polly stopped me again with a shout that nearly outdid Sally’s.

  “What do you mean the Spites are on the loose?!”

  She made the proposition sound like an even worse idea than it already was. “I’ve seen it with my own eyes, Polly. They’re out an’ about, on some regular migraine flight plan, one that prick Cauchon knew all about. Everybody but him is scared shitless of ‘em.”

  Polly’s voice went from am-bitchous to out-courageous in a blink. “As they should be… No one benefits from those foul spirits roaming free.”

  “So why did someone set them free, then?” Sally asked.

  I couldn’t believe what I just heard. “Say what?”

  Neither could Polly. “Really, Thalia, of all the random nonsense you could bandy about—”

  But Sally had enough pluck to push back. “Think about it. None of those bastards could have ever broken out of that Urn. It’s made out of Primaria Materia, which we all know never breaks down. So someone had to release them… again.”

  Polly made another irritated grunt. “Look, fact-free speculation aside, the current situation is one that upper management would never tolerate if they knew about it.”

  I had my own raisins for that but I figured Polly wasn’t in the mood to hear them. “So I take it yer gonna tell ‘em?”

  And just like that, Polly got ambitchous all over again. “Without any corroborating evidence to back up the claim of a few mislabeled shipments? Are you trying to test my patience, Bill?”

  God love her but Sally always knew the right thing to say before Polly and I came to a blow-down. “I think what he’s really asking, sis, is what exactly do you need from him that can help make our case?”

  No sense in telling either of them what I really meant to say. “Yeah, what she said. Just a little FYI, Polly: me an’ everybody else are still a loooooong way from safe down here.”

  Polly was pissed because Sally once again proved she wasn’t a ditz. “All right, all right, you’ve both made your points. If you could get some of your people on the phone, I could record at least a little of their testimony and take it to my superiors.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. “Yeah, uh, did you dis-remember that part about how we’re all stuck in the morgue right now? You never know who might be listenin’. I’m usin’ a sat phone I had ta… ya know, borrow.”

  “Oh, do have the dignity to at least call your theft by its proper name, Bill.”

  I pretendulated she didn’t say that. “Plus, we’re bone-tired, an’ some of us are wounded an’ I’m sure a few of us are pretty hangry right now.”

  “And what does hunger have to do with—”

  Sally’s bubbly voice rescued me a second time. “He’s saying it’s a bad time to get all that info, even though he knows you need it. And c’mon, Polly, we’re talking about people who just escaped some pretty vicious captors. You think they’re going to be in any shape to talk after all they’ve experienced?”

  I heard a tapping next to the receiver, probably Polly’s fingernails drumming on the desk. “We still need something in order to start a meaningful investigation. Otherwise, this conversation has just become a waste of everyone’s time.”

  Even though she couldn’t see me, I shrugged. “Okay, how ‘bout names o’ yer future wit-notices? That good enough ta start?”

  The tapping stopped, replaced by something heavy that landed next to the phone. “I suppose it will have to do. Whom do you have with you at the moment?”

  I looked up at the stone ceiling while I pulled up the list of names from my head. “Well, there’s Tido—Tallis Black—”

  “Yes, we got that much,” Polly snarked. “May I assume the charge you so miserably failed, a Miss Lily Harper, is also among your pack of escapees?”

  “You know it, Polly. But she ain’t the only Soul Retriever down here in Residence Evil.”

  “There’s another one?” Damn if Polly didn’t sound as eager for that as a college coed for good sex.

  “Try three o’ them! They’re the kids we yanked outta George Custer’s little summer army camp on the way over here. They were there to run the comms. The rest o’ Custer’s boys couldn’t figure out an old school telephone.”

  Sally suddenly giggled hysterically. “Oh, wow. If Georgie Custer is leading the troops, you know the Malebranche are desperate for good help.”

  Polly hissed at her before talking to me again. “Who are they?”

  “All I got are the first names or maybe they’re nicknames… Harry, Kay, and Addie…”

  A few scratches later, Polly asked, “Anyone else?”

  “Yeah, three more. One o’ them’s a cute peasant girl who’s been stuck down here fer ages. She calls herself Jeanne.”

  The scratching stopped cold. “Did you say Jeanne?”

  Polly was back to business just like that. “Yeah, mean anything ta you?”

  A couple of taps later, she gave me my answer. “Aside from ‘cute’, what does she look like?”

  “I dunno, young… nineteen maybe if I had ta guesstimate. Dark hair, doe eyes, likes ta wear super frumpy, out-of-date clothes, seems pretty tacticool when it comes ta movin’ an army, guided by something she don’t like ta talk about. What’s the punchline here, Polly?”

  Another few seconds of dead airspace pa
ssed. Then Sally chimed in again. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking, sis?”

  There were a few more scratches before Polly replied. “If you’re thinking Jeanne D’Arc aka Joan of Arc, Thalia, then the answer is yes.”

  Okay, when ya put it like that, it was Crystal Cathedral clear. Didn’t stop me from getting floored, walled and ceilinged by what they’d just said though. “You shittin’ me? Joan of the Fuckin’ Noah’s Ark?”

  “We aren’t shitting you, Bill,” Polly said.

  “Holy Fuck me.”

  Polly sounded smug. “Yes, that enlightened conclusion was something upper management finally concurred with in 1456.” Then she sighed and I heard a rubbing sound. “Such a pity it took Jeanne’s conviction being overturned in the world above to make them see the truth.”

  The more I heard of this story, the more pissed I got. “I’m still waitin’ ta know what Jeannie’s doin’ here.”

  Sally picked up the thread. “Oh, it’s just as messed up as the conviction was. The order for her release came down to her holding cell in Dis. We even had a couple of your brothers dispatched to escort her back to Afterlife Enterprises.”

  Polly let a metritoxic ton of disgust come out in her voice. “But by the time the angels arrived, Jeanne was long gone. They’d already released her and sent her out into the streets.”

  Okay, even for AE, that was boner-shrinkingly stupid. “Why the hell would they pull that bullshit?”

  Sally’s usually cheerful voice got a nasty edge to it. “Oh, Billy, you should have heard the excuses we got from Alaire. If you had to boil them all down to one sentence, it would have been ‘none of this is my fault.’”

  Polly harrumphed like a cat clearing a hairball from her throat. “Regardless of fault, the point remains that Jeanne has been under the radar ever since. There’s been the occasional sighting but never any solid information that can be acted upon.”

  I made sure Polly heard the shit-eating grin on my face. “Until now… How bad do yer bosses at AE want Jeannie out o’ here?”