"When the body gets up in a few and tries to kill you, you'll have your answer."
Tate sighed heavily.
"What are you going to do?" Simone asked before he could withdraw.
Tate shrugged. "I don't know. I can't destroy the body. That's a lawsuit waiting to happen, followed by one major firing and public humiliation."
Xypher scratched his cheek before he spoke. "At the very least, sever the head. You'll thank me for it later."
Tate snorted. "You think 'oops' would cover that?" he asked Simone.
"Tate!" she snapped, horrified at the thought of it. "Our profession has a bad enough reputation. You can't do something like that or else we'll never live it down."
"I'm trying to be reasonable here. You know the ME test didn't exactly cover this. What do you tell your students about the odder elements of our job?"
"I don't. I merely tell them that there are some things that can't be explained."
"Yeah," Tate said with a nervous laugh, "this definitely qualifies as inexplicable." He glanced back to Xypher. "Is there anything other than decapitation or absolute destruction that will keep the body down?"
"Quartering."
Tate rolled his eyes. "You're not helpful,"
"I didn't bite him and create this situation. You asked a question and I answered it. If you want another answer, then ask a different question."
Tate scratched his brow with his middle finger. "I'm having visions of Shaun of the Dead appealing in my lab."
Simone laughed. "You mean Tate of the Dead."
"Exactly. And let us not forget that at the end of Night of the Living Dead, they shot the black man who survived the zombie attacks. Not a good precedent and I'm having a bad flashback here, Sim."
Shaking his head, Tate clapped his hands together and started away from them as if he were heading for his doom. "Okay, wish me luck . . . and much fire power-remember not to let the sheriff shoot me at dawn." He glanced back at the victim. "At least this time I know not to assign the body to someone else."
"Bonne chance, mon ami."
"Yeah, thanks, Simone. I'd personally like to bonne your chance for this."
She stepped back as he left them and approached the body so that he could oversee the moving of it.
Simone looked away as she thought of Gloria and wondered what had happened to her. Rubbing her arms, she whispered a silent prayer for the poor woman.
Jesse cocked his head as he studied her. "What's wrong, Sim?"
"Just thinking of Gloria. I wish I knew what happened to her. I hate that we lost her."
Xypher frowned. "Who was Gloria?"
Simone gave him an irritated look because he didn't know. "She was the other ghost who was there with the Daimons when you came crashing into my world."
"Oh, the blonde." "Yes, the blonde."
Tate groaned as he returned to their group and caught that bit of their conversation. "Yeah . . . Speaking of, her family is due in any minute to claim her body. What am I supposed to tell them when we can't give the body over? Again, I don't think 'oops' will quite cover it."
"Hey!" the cop shouted. "Doc, I don't think this guy's dead. I just saw him move."
Simone paled at those words. Worse, she saw the decedent's foot moving herself. "Xypher, it's starting."
Before she could blink, he threw his hand out. An instant later, the entire body burst into flames.
The police officer shouted for help while several other cops scrambled for fire extinguishers.
She glared at Xypher. "Did you do that?"
He shrugged nonchalantly. "Sometimes my powers work. Sometimes they don't. Looks like this time they did. Yea, us."
Tate wrinkled his nose as he watched the police running around. "I'm not sure I should thank you for this or not . . . you think they'll believe there was some land of gas in the body that made it move, then spontaneously combust?"
Simone let out an elongated breath as she silently wished him luck on that one. "If anyone can make it work, Tate, you can,"
"Yeah, here's seeing you at the unemployment office soon." He left them to aid the officers in putting out the flames.
Simone watched them work as the true honor of it all sank in. "So that man really was eaten by a demon."
"You didn't think I made that up, did you?"
"No." She dragged the word out. "Not exactly, anyway." She frowned as she raked her gaze over that body that was made for sin up to those clear, breathtaking eyes. No one would ever guess Xypher was anything other than human, yet she knew better. "Are you really part demon?"
"Why would I lie?"
"I don't know. Sometimes people do, for no apparent reason."
"But I'm not human."
His being demonspawn at least explained some of his acerbic personality. It also excused it ... almost. Then again with him being a demon, she was lucky he was housebroken and not trying to scare everyone they met on the street.
I am bound to a demon ... It sounded like a bad sci-fi movie.
Baffled, befuddled, and just plain confused, she went to get his bags where they'd left them on the ground. Right now, she just wanted to go home and get her bearings.
She led them away from the scene, toward her condo.
"Buck up, Sim," Jesse said cheerfully. "At least the demon didn't eat you."
"Yet, you mean."
Xypher took the packages from her hands, "Don't worry. I won't let you get hurt."
"Not unless it means you get a shot at your enemy, right? Then I'm fair game for death."
He didn't comment.
"All righty then," she said, trying to lighten the mood and not flunk about the fact that he would most likely sacrifice her to aclueve his goal. "Let's make our way back safely, shall we?"
Xypher nodded as he tried not to think about the fact that he wasn't so Sure he wouldn't protect her even at the expense of his vengeance. While he had demon blood in him, he wasn't completely heartless. Even at his worst, he had a code of ethics and those ethics would not allow Simone to get hurt in the crossfire.
Damn me for it.
Pausing, Jesse gave him a look that told him the ghost didn't think much about him. He was used to it. The Greek gods had given him the same look once they realized a Sumerian demon was genetically attached to their pantheon.
The moment Xypher had learned to infiltrate dreams and shown his god powers, Zeus had sent his minions out to drag him to Olympus in chains.