Technically speaking, Tom died about a week before he sacrificed himself to save the world, his neck snapped by a vampire warlord. That would have been the end for most, but his spirit somehow ended up merging with the doll, allowing him to stick around long enough to help us stop Armageddon. The explosion that ended it all finally freed him, allowing his spirit to soar to whatever reward awaited us in the great beyond.
Even with Christy’s vast knowledge of the supernatural, none of us were certain what that might be, but I held out hope for the best. Tom had been a hero in the end. He deserved nothing less.
“Make yourself at home,” I told Ed, pulling myself back to the present. “I’d say to put something on, but Christy’s TV is all frigged up.”
“Oh?” he asked absentmindedly as Tina ran past us to go play in her room. I couldn’t help but notice he’d turned toward Max Adventure as well.
“Yeah, the remote’s all screwy. Keeps changing channels on its own.” I stepped over and clapped him on the shoulder. “How are you holding up?”
He turned away from the doll and laughed. “So far so good. No more cravings for blood clots.”
“Well, if you need me to, I can run to the corner deli and get some rare chop meat. Probably best I can do on short notice. Wouldn’t want you looking at me and getting all hangry.”
“I’m pretty sure you count as junk food. Besides, Kara’s been super strict about that. Think she wants me to go vegan. Ugh.”
“Vegan? But she was a vamp, too.”
“The irony is not lost upon me.”
I made a whipping motion with my hand. “How are you going to break this to her?”
“That I like hamburgers?”
“That you might like them still screaming.”
He shook his head and sat on the couch. “I’m not even sure there’s any news to break. I mean, I feel fine, as in human fine. Maybe it was just ... a onetime fluke?”
“I might agree if a pair of assholes hadn’t kicked down my door. When someone does the whole...” I lowered my voice an octave. “You will come with us or you will die spiel, I tend to take it out of the coincidence column.”
“I picked a hell of a time to visit New York again, didn’t I?”
“Your timing is quite impeccable, I’d say.”
“I knew I should have gone to Vegas instead.”
“Hells no,” I replied with a grin. “You remember what happened there, right?”
“Oh, yeah. How about Palm Beach?”
“That should be fine, although there’s a first time for everything...”
I trailed off at the sound of a key in the lock, tensing up before I remembered supernatural monsters usually didn’t bother with things like picking locks.
The door opened and in stepped Christy. Her dark hair was a bit windswept and she seemed somewhat harried, not too surprising all things considered, but otherwise she looked as good as she normally did, which was to say pretty darn fine.
She locked eyes with me. “Tina?”
“In her room playing.”
In the space of an instant the worry vanished and her face brightened into a smile. She turned toward Ed. “Hey, stranger. Long time.”
“Ditto.” He walked over and gave her a big hug.
Once they disengaged, she sauntered up to me and put her arms around my neck. “As for you. Thanks for keeping my little girl safe.”
“Anytime.”
“And here you thought you were done playing the hero.”
“Well, I never quite said I was the...”
My words were cut off as she pressed her lips to mine.
Oh, did I fail to mention this part?
It was still kind of new for both of us. Just sort of happened a few months back. But it felt pretty good nevertheless. I still wasn’t sure where it was going, but...
“Whoa,” Ed proclaimed. “When the hell did this happen?”
I pulled away and turned to him, both of us smiling sheepishly.
Before we could answer, though, a voice from behind us spoke first.
“More importantly, when the fuck is it going to end?”
I spun toward its source, but that strange weariness from earlier hit me again mid-turn and it was suddenly all I could do to keep from falling to my knees.
However, the sight before me was more than enough to overcome any desire for a nap.
“Tom?”
THE SPIRIT IS WILLING
“No fucking way.” The words came out as a whisper. It was equal parts shock as well as not being capable of more. It really was an effort to stay upright.
Mind you, that seemed a minor inconvenience compared to who, or what, was standing there in front of us.
It was Tom, but not in the flesh. He was colorless and semi-transparent, looking kind of like a Star Wars hologram before Hollywood figured out CGI. But there was no mistaking his look or voice.
“Wait just a second,” he said, his eyes opening wide. “You guys can actually see me?”
I nodded numbly.
“Fuck yeah! It’s about goddamned time!” Then, just as quickly, the smile dropped off his face and he glared at me while raising his middle finger. “Can you see this?”
I nodded again.
“Good. What the fuck, dude? It’s bad enough you can’t keep a woman of your own. You gotta try stealing mine? Emphasis on try.”
“Tom?” Christy asked, her voice cracking.
“Holy shit,” Ed muttered. “I ... oh, fuck.”
My brain just barely registered the panic in Ed’s voice, still dumbfounded by what I was seeing. I glanced back at him only to find golden eyes staring at me over a pair of plus-sized canines. Oh, fuck was right.
So much for this being a coinciden... “Ow!”
Something burned my arm and I stepped back, the lethargy momentarily dispelled. When I turned to look, there was a yellowish glow emanating from Christy’s body. I’d like to say I was surprised, but by then I was pretty sure those circuits had all been blown.
“Watch it with that,” I said, rubbing my arm.
She turned her head toward me, tears in her eyes, as if seeing me for the first time. “S-sorry. I-I didn’t mean...”
“Hit him again, babe,” Tom said, a grin on his spectral face. “Teach him to keep his micro-dick where it belongs.”
In the space of an instant, the situation had ratcheted up from weird to batshit, but the crazy wasn’t done yet. Tina came skipping out of her bedroom. Prismatic energy crackled all around her, making her look like the world’s cutest nuclear warhead. “Mommy, you have to see...” She stopped when she saw her father, or whatever he was. “Oh, hi, Daddy.”
“Hey, Cheetara,” Tom replied conversationally, as if this were a normal thing.
She looked between us for a second or two, then said, “I heard you yelling. Are you mad at Uncle Bill?”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m just giving him shit.”
“Hey!” I protested. “How come he doesn’t get the swear jar?” It was, perhaps, the least-important question I could have asked in that moment.
Tina, for her part, shrugged. Magical power continued to crackle around her, but her face was the picture of childlike innocence. “I don’t think Daddy has any money.” I half expected her to add “duh,” but instead she turned toward Christy. “Mommy! Look at what I can ... oh pooh!”
And just like that, it was over. That dizziness evaporated as quickly as it had hit me, like injecting caffeine straight into my veins. In that same instant, Tina ceased being a pint-sized power capacitor and became just a little girl again.
Tom had just enough time to let out half a sigh and then he winked out of existence, as if he’d never been there at all.
♦ ♦ ♦
I stood there for several long seconds, my mind on complete overload. When I finally got enough sense of myself to face the others, I saw that Ed and Christy were both back to normal as well.
I’d been starting to get an idea of
what to expect from these magical surges, but what had just happened now was completely off the map. Tom was dead. Hell, we’d had a funeral for him. There was a big headstone down in New Jersey with his name on it.
But this...
Christy’s face was a jumble of emotions. Tears streamed freely down her cheeks, but I couldn’t tell if they were tears of joy, misery, or fright. Maybe all the above. I sure as shit was having trouble processing what I’d just seen.
I mean, how many people throughout history have wished they’d been given one more chance to tell a loved one how they felt?
We’d just been handed a miracle beyond all miracles, and what had we done with it? I’d bitched about a fucking swear jar.
Goddamn, I was a moron.
“Why?” Christy asked. “How...”
“On that note,” Ed interrupted, getting his shit together before the rest of us, “how about I fix everyone a nice stiff drink? I don’t know about you guys, but I have a feeling this is going to make a lot more sense with some vodka.”
♦ ♦ ♦
Christy only had gin and a few hard ciders on hand. But it was enough to get us started.
For several minutes we sat and drank in silence. I think we were all waiting to see if another surge was going to happen and whether Tom would reappear. Problem was, seeing wasn’t necessarily believing when it came to things of a supernatural nature.
“Please stop that, honey,” Christy said idly. “Conjuration isn’t a game.”
Tina stopped staring at her outstretched hands, as if willing the magic to come back. “Uncle Bill thought it was neat.”
I laughed. “Yeah, well, Uncle Bill is going to have to pay about three thousand dollars to get his apartment fixed now.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” I replied to her. “Without you there, I’m not sure what would have happened. You’re a natural with this stuff.”
“But she shouldn’t be.” Christy sat back and took a long sip of cider. “You do realize how big of a problem this is, right?”
“No, not really.” I guess this tangent was easier to talk about than the six hundred pound gorilla in the room.
“She’s way too young to manifest powers, much less at that level.” Christy lowered her voice. “Seriously, did either of you feel the energy she was radiating?”
I fixed her with a blank stare. “Sorry, guess my PK meter is on the fritz. Next time I run into Egon I’ll have to...” I trailed off as a thought hit me, something we all should have noticed had we not been busy freaking the fuck out. “Hey, Cat. Why did you say hi to your dad like it was no big deal?”
The wide-eyed expression on Tina’s face reminded me she was five and probably being asked something that was above her mental pay grade.
I was just about to rephrase it, when she said, “Oh, that? I see Daddy a lot.”
“A lot?”
“Yeah. Sometimes he plays with my toys at night. Or he sits on the couch watching TV.” She giggled. “He likes to watch shows with butts and stuff.”
Butts and stuff. Yeah, that sounded like Tom.
Christy leaned forward, looking visibly disturbed. “Can you see him now, sweetheart?”
She shook her head. “No. Maybe he’s in the bathroom. I can go check...”
“That’s okay.” I saw the bottom of Christy’s lip begin to tremble. Truth be told, mine was probably going to start, too.
“How come you never said anything, Cat?” I asked, my own voice on the verge of cracking.
“She did,” Christy replied, fresh tears running down her face. “Oh my God, she did.”
“What do you mean?”
“Little things,” she said, barely holding it together now. “Things like Tom came to tuck her in, or said her new dress was pretty. But I...”
I put a hand on her shoulder. She didn’t need to say more. Such a thing would’ve been easy to dismiss as a child’s imagination, even for those of us in the know about the supernatural. Hell, even now, it was hard to believe this could possibly be real.
Christy looked like she had more questions, a lot more. Couldn’t blame her on that one, but I doubted there was much point in grilling Tina. There was only so much detail we were going to wring out of a five year old.
Fortunately, we didn’t have to.
Just as I was mentally debating the merits of interrogating a child about her dead father, something from across the room caught my eye. At first, I thought it was a trick of the light, but I quickly saw that wasn’t the case. Max Adventure, still locked in the curio, was glowing. Light was spilling out from within it through the chipped and broken plastic of its body.
I stood up to point this out and just as quickly fell back down again, my breath caught in my throat and my heart skipping a beat.
But nobody seemed to notice.
Tom was back, which meant the magic was as well.
♦ ♦ ♦
Not only was he back, but he was standing right in front of me, thrusting his crotch toward my face.
“Daddy’s being funny!” Tina cried.
“Yeah, gobble my foot-long, bitch,” Tom said, before backing up a step. He looked down at us, apparently realizing we could see him again. “Um, no homo.”
“You do realize nobody says that anymore, right?” Ed replied dryly.
“Mommy, what’s a...”
“That’s enough, Christina,” Christy snapped. “We don’t use that kind of language here.”
“But...”
“Do we?” She narrowed her eyes at Tom. They were still damp, but fresh determination now shown in them, the same kind I’d seen during much darker days.
“Um, nope,” Tom said after a beat, smiling sheepishly. “Bill, put a quarter in the swear jar for me, will ya?”
“What?!”
“I said that’s enough,” Christy repeated, ending our banter. “Everyone, please be quiet for a moment. I need to concentrate ... and see if I remember this right.”
Before I could ask what she was trying to remember, she grabbed a bottle cap from the coffee table in front of us and used it to slice a shallow gash in each of her palms.
Okay ... not quite the reaction I was expecting.
She stood, raised her arms above her head, and began to chant, the words coming out in some unintelligible language. Ed and I shared a quick glance as a swirl of blue and purple energy surrounded her.
I didn’t know magic from dick, but it sure as hell seemed like her memory was just fine.
The only question was, for what?
Before I could focus enough to remember if I’d seen this particular color combo in the past, a bubble of sorts coalesced around us. The wall of shimmering magical energy expanded until it stretched almost to the edges of the living room.
More importantly, all at once I could breathe again, which was definitely convenient. That bizarre tiredness was still weighing me down, but it wasn’t nearly so bad. More like minor fatigue than anything else. I could deal with it.
Unfortunately, whatever weight was lifted off my shoulders seemingly fell onto Christy’s as she collapsed onto the couch next to me.
“Are you okay?” Tom’s ghost and I asked simultaneously.
Christy held up a hand and nodded. “Just liked riding ... a bike.” She smiled. “I’ll be fine. Haven’t ... exercised those muscles in years. My stamina isn’t what it used to be.”
“Fascinating, I’m sure,” Ed replied, his eyes once again that freaky golden hue. “Care to clue us in?”
“Time bubble,” Christy explained with a tired grin. “Advanced blood magic. Kind of forbidden actually.”
“You don’t say,” I commented, pretty much dumbfounded.
“Yeah, but who’s left to judge me?” She took a deep breath and I could see that purplish energy still swirling in her eyes. “Anyway, I’ve temporarily slowed down time for us. We are living in the space between heartbeats, if you will. Every second is like an hour.”
“Cool!” Tom
replied. “It’s like the...”
“Hyperbolic time chamber on Dragonball Z?” I finished for him.
“Exactly! Fucking awesome.” Then he frowned at me. “Wait. I’m supposed to be mad at you. It isn’t cool to plow another man’s field, you know.”
Whatever this thing was, it sure as shit sounded like Tom.
“You’re funny,” Tina proclaimed.
“Honey, I need you to go to your room,” Christy said, interrupting our banter.
“But I want to see more magic.”
“Now. The adults have to talk. Mind me, young lady.”
Tina gave her mother her best sulking glare, then turned and stomped off. Personally, I had to question the wisdom of ticking off someone with the power of Dr. Strange and the restraint of a young child, but I kept that opinion to myself.
Just as Tina reached her bedroom, she stepped through the spell’s wall and there came a brief flash of light as she became frozen in place. Hold on. I saw her leg move ever so slightly. She wasn’t entirely frozen, just moving at a pace even a snail would consider tedious.
“She’s in normal time now,” Christy said as way of confirmation. “It’ll give us some room to talk.”
I raised an eyebrow at her. “You just happened to have an advanced spell like this sitting around waiting to use?”
“Light reading.”
“Excuse me?”
“I still have all of my old tomes,” she explained, sounding stronger than she had a few moments earlier. “Every so often I pull them out and go through them again.”
“Interesting nostalgia you have there,” Ed said.
“Some people collect trading cards. I have my own hobbies.”
“Gotcha,” Tom’s ghost said. “So why don’t we get rid of these two fuckheads so we can spend a few moments of quality time together...”
“That will be quite enough.” Though she still looked upset, her voice was steel itself. Being that she once again possessed the power to ass-fuck the laws of nature, arguing with her didn’t sound like a smart move.
“Good,” she said after a few seconds of silence. Then she turned to Tom and pointed a hand at him, one that was now glowing an angry red. Guess her stamina was better than she let on. “As for you, you’re going to tell me what you are and what the hell is going on. And you’d better pray to whatever god you serve that I like the answer.”
Strange Days (Bill of the Dead Book 1) Page 6