Damn it.
A soft hand covered mine. “Lady, are you sure—”
I forced a smile. “Yes, everything is fine. In fact, I just had an excellent idea.”
Rhea smiled back, the doubt clearing from her eyes. ?
?That’s wonderful! I knew you would think of something.”
I kept my smile from wavering—just. “Pack a bag for a few days,” I told her. “We’re taking a trip.”
Chapter Fifteen
Of course, we didn’t go that night. I was whipped and still had a job left to do. Two of them, in fact. Not to mention that I had court in the morning, because some people had been really unhappy about the sudden cancellation, and a few of them were powerful enough to make a stink.
My new appointment secretary, Françoise, had talked me into a final session, the last before the invasion, to get them off our backs, and it was going to be a madhouse. I had a backlog of petitioners longer than my arm thanks to the war, and to a summer spent running for my life instead of sitting on my ugly throne, pontificating. Sometimes, I missed the running.
Other times not so much, I thought, concentrating.
“What are you doing?”
“Auggghhhh!”
A ghost had just appeared in my face, causing me to grab it by the throat and shake it, because my nerves were just that bad. So much so that I didn’t recognize my long-time companion, Billy Joe, until he screamed back at me. “Are you crazy? Let me go, woman!”
I let him go, prizing my hand out of his insubstantial flesh, and staggered back against the wall. “You scared the hell out of me,” I told him.
“I scared you? And what the hell is this?”
I realized that Billy had gotten tangled in my current project, which wasn’t something that would have bothered a normal person so much, but ghosts are not normal. They are also not used to being detained—by anything. For someone who could float through walls, suddenly finding himself enmeshed in a glimmering golden net was freaking him out.
“Get it off! Get it off!”
“Stop thrashing!” I said, calmer now that I’d had my second heart attack of the day. Or was it third? “Stay still and I’ll help you.”
But Billy was panicking, and either didn’t hear me or didn’t care.
“What the fuck?” he screeched, holding up a ghostly arm, which looked like he’d dipped it in especially rich taffy, the kind that stretched but didn’t break. He looked like a bug caught in a web, which wasn’t far from the truth, and wasn’t going to get better if he kept fighting it!
I finally gave up and just collapsed the whole thing, releasing him and ruining twenty minutes of hard work. But at least he stopped screaming. And stared at the golden mess now sagging limply from my doorframe in confusion. “What is that thing?”
“Time ward. Or it was.”
“What?”
“It’s something I’ve been practicing, but I’m not very good at yet.”
“Don’t they have a certificate or something, that you’re required to get before they let you do this stuff?” he demanded.
“Yeah, it’s called being appointed Pythia,” I said, and started over.
Billy levitated a little way off in a lotus position, like a cowboy Buddha, and watched me. After a while, he lit up a ghostly cigarette, obviously bored. It went well with the red ruffled shirt, the gunslinger hat, and the western jeans he wore, which were all part of the persona that a scared Irish boy had put together once upon a time to try to fit in with his new homeland.
That hadn’t worked out so well, and neither had his chosen profession of card shark, which had resulted in a deep dive into the Mississippi. In a sack. Tied up.
Fortunately, things had gotten better after death, and he’d finally found his place in the world at the Pythian Court. Coming from a big, catholic family. Billy felt right at home with a bunch of kids running around, especially when many of those kids could see him. It had been a revelation for a guy who had spent many decades virtually alone at the bottom of a river. Or with no one to talk to but me, after I stumbled across the necklace he haunted in a pawn shop, years ago.
We’d been the not-so-dynamic duo ever since, because Billy was not what I would call the most energetic ghost in the world. He spent more time perving around showgirl locker rooms or playing cards with me than he did terrorizing anyone. It was why we got along. Most ghosts were crazy; Billy was just . . . kinda lazy.