What Haunts Me (18 page)

The thug had tossed one of the homeless men to the ground, where he sat in a daze. He then half dragged, half walked the other man over to us. The poor man's eyes were glazed over as if he was drugged, which he probably was. One of the demons moved next to the man. I sighed and walked in their direction, all the while Edgar was holding tight to my upper arm.

“You're gonna need to let go for this part Edgar; can't be sure what would happen if you didn't,” I said contemptuously. Since I'd never done this convergence thing and had no clue how it was supposed to go, I decided to wing it. I reached toward the homeless man and took his hand, then I reached over to the demon and took his “essence,” I suppose you would call it, with my other hand. Billy was right, it was like holding ice-water. I could feel the demon's strength starting to move through me and it actually hurt a little, like tiny sharp needles stabbing me everywhere.

Suddenly there was a loud clang and the back door opened. Although I wasn't facing that direction, I knew I was hearing more than one set of footsteps, and what sounded like a struggle. Just then the demon started to really surge, like it was climbing through me to get to the man on my other side. I'd been holding my trusty yellow friend inside the sleeve of my jacket, and I let go of the homeless man and stabbed at the demon with all my strength. It didn't stop…it kept trying to move through me, so I pushed with my mind and my body, and for a split second I felt it let me go, I stabbed again and it let out a silent scream and began to swirl away.

I whirled around immediately and flew at the other demon. Not only had it not been expecting me, but I was moving lightning fast. My favorite number two burst into flames a second after the demon burst into a fine grey mist. I only had a moment to mourn it—I'd certainly miss that wonderful pencil.

Suddenly Vokkel shouted, “Stop!” I looked around. Edgar had Billy by the neck and he was holding a large knife to her midsection.

“You are certainly impressive, Mr. Sinclair, but I doubt you're fast enough to save your dear Billy from not just Edgar, but from her too.” He looked past me and I turned to find Anne standing behind me. My jaw dropped and I looked to Billy. The hurt and anger in her eyes glowed as fiercely as the eyes of the demons I'd just killed.

Anne walked over to where Edgar had Billy in a headlock and said, “I'm sorry George, but blood is thicker than water.” I could see it then; their features were similar. Her skin was lighter and her thick head of hair offset Edgar's baldness, but it was the eyes that spoke volumes. They were the same shape and size. However, Anne now displayed the same look of a deranged madman as her brother.

“She's your granddaughter. You'd let them kill her?” I said to Vokkel.

He laughed hoarsely and shook his head. “Blood matters to my dear protégés.” He waved a hand toward Edgar and Anne. “But this insolent child has been nothing but a thorn in my side since her early years. I have no reason to keep her around.”

My scuffle with the demons had moved our little group closer to the glassed-in office space in the corner. I could feel more than see the other thug behind me, but I couldn't see the other two men that he'd brought in with him, I hoped they'd managed to scurry off into a corner.

Suddenly the air began to change, to shimmer and fill with electricity. Vokkel smiled and so did Edgar; after all, he was holding onto Billy, so he saw what we saw. Ghosts of all kinds began to fill the room. I couldn't say how many, but one thing I did know…GG was with them and they weren't all bad. A loud report came from somewhere and I heard something hit the concrete with a thud. I realized someone had fired a gun and the target was probably dead center of the thug standing behind me.

From that point things happened very fast. The only thing I remembered clearly was a dark, almost guttural sound coming from Billy. When I glanced over at her I knew I'd see those green eyes had taken on an equal darkness, and they had—it was a deep sea green that promised tsunami size violence and destruction. I smiled. I knew then and there that we'd win this.

The arrival of the ghosts
and
Pete
and
Phil threw Edgar and Anne off balance, and Billy pulled away from them at the same time she pulled the gun from her waistband and fired multiple times. Edgar went down and Anne screamed; the last I saw of her she was dragging Edgar toward the back door. I heard more shots but didn't have time to figure out who they were directed at or who fired them. The ghosts that had arrived were swarming, fighting with each other and diving at us. I wasn't sure who was good and who was bad, so I pulled my back-up number two from my pocket and started stabbing at anything that moved. Billy and Pete were doing the same. I had no idea where Phil or Vokkel were. Soon the room was filling with that all too familiar mist and it was getting difficult to see.

Billy screamed, “Oh, no you don't,” and I heard a final gun shot. Then everything went silent. In a little over a minute, the air began to clear. GG and the remaining ghosts were gone, and I hoped to God that one of us hadn't accidently vanquished her. Phil was moving toward the two drugged out men, who had managed to pull themselves away from the main fray. The man that had been outside when I first arrived came plowing through the front door. Billy was standing a few feet from Vokkel, the gun hanging from her hand. A spreading bloom of blood was quickly staining his shirt and bubbling out of his mouth. She dropped the gun and said, “I hope you rot in hell.”

Pete followed a long smear of blood to the back door and went into the alley, and came back a few minutes later dragging Anne's dead body with him. He looked at me and said, “I didn't think it was a good idea to leave her out there. The other guy is gone, but there's a trail of blood going down the alleyway. I think he's bleeding pretty heavily.” He pulled out his cell phone and began asking for assistance in the cleanup.

I walked over to Billy and put my arms around her. She held fast and tight, then I felt a hitch in her chest and she pulled away, wiping a few stray tears with her sleeve.

Two hours later, our ragtag group, which included Aris, Billy, Phil, my dad, Carol, Justine, and me, were assembled in Justine's living room. With no Anne in attendance, Phil and my dad kindly filled her position and made coffee, brought wine and other spirits, and a plate of crackers and cheese that no one touched.

Apparently, Anne was Edgar's half-sister, and prior to drugging Justine, she'd confessed her sins. She and Edgar suffered horribly under the care of their mother, and then of course were changed by a demon and ghost killer, turning them into the rare
longaevus
, which eventually led to their presence at Vokkel's school. Vokkel took them under his wing, and when Grandma Billy arrived he realized that he'd need someone to get close to her. Anne was the obvious choice since she wasn't quite as crazy as Edgar, so she could pull it off. After Grandma Billy's death, Vokkel realized that he'd need someone close to Justine if he was going to keep tabs on the Wilkinson household. Anne arrived, fed her story of friendship with Grandma Billy to Justine, and then pledged her loyalty. It was a brilliant and well executed plan that allowed Vokkel an intimate look into Billy's life and any information that Justine might have that would further Vokkel's agenda. Anne had told Justine that only one demon and ghost killer were involved in the confluence that changed them both. Aris speculated that because the siblings had shared the confluence process simultaneously, perhaps something had gone amiss that could explain Edgar's additional abilities.

Although my arrival as Justine's neighbor was completely coincidental, unless of course you followed Phil's Newtonian theory, it turned out to be a goldmine for Vokkel's agenda, and Anne had a front row seat and reported my every move back to him. I could tell that both Billy and Justine felt horribly betrayed, but also a little saddened too. After Billy had called Anne earlier in the day, Anne prepared a special tea for Justine, one that included a sedative. Before Justine passed out, Anne made it clear that she never would have hurt either of them. In fact, she'd grown quite fond of them both. But alas, her brother needed her, and after all, tonight's events were what they'd worked so hard to accomplish, and she had to be there for him.

When Carol and Dad arrived and didn't get an answer from Justine's apartment, they rang Kevin, the building manager, and convinced him that something was wrong. Kevin let them in and up to her apartment, where they found the door unlocked. The three entered the apartment where they found a groggy Justine slumped on the couch. She was just conscious enough to persuade Kevin that she didn't need medical attention and he could go home. Dad had tried to call me, but of course I was otherwise occupied.

Anne wasn't going to miss the show, and when the location for our meeting was reported and Justine safely knocked out, she went to the garage with the intention of coming in the back. She saw Billy lurking in the alley and ambushed her; she had the element of surprise, and of course she was a damn strong woman…just not strong enough to repel bullets. She'd taken two…one to the leg, and one to the back, through to her heart. We hadn't found Edgar yet, but we knew that he was hurt.

Phil shot the thug and aimed several shots at Anne and Edgar, but so did Billy, so we were not sure whose bullets hit home. Phil said when the ghost killing started, he couldn't see the ghosts themselves, but the air wasn't right, it was…thicker and fuzzy. I assumed since Vokkel couldn't see the ghosts, he must have realized what the change to the atmosphere meant, and that's why he was smiling when they began to arrive. Phil said Billy and I were like Tasmanian devils and moved incredibly fast, to the point that we were mostly just a blur. He said Pete held his own too.

When Aris and the other ghost killers arrived at AT&T Park, the festivities were well under way and Aris ended up bribing a security guard with a lot of cash to gain entrance into the park. Most of the ghosts were lingering around the field where the tents were set up and all the attendees were congregated, but they hadn't started doing anything yet. Aris said they looked like hungry beasts at a smorgasbord trying to decide what to eat first. At some point GG showed up and she had more ghosts with her. Initially the GKs panicked, but then they realized she had good souls with her and they were trying to lure the bad ghosts away. He said most followed and the GKs cleaned up the rest in no time. We all finally decided that she had to take them somewhere and couldn't think of anywhere else but to Billy and me. After much debate on this, one conclusion was unanimous; none of us had ever seen anything like that, the good ghosts against the bad ghosts and such. GG was still missing-in-action and I was beginning to believe that one of us had inadvertently stabbed her in the melee in the garage. No one had any idea what Vokkel's ghost looked like, but we all figured with Vokkel dead, it was off to find another victim.

Dad insisted on staying a few days and that was fine with me. We hadn't seen each other, physically, in quite a while, and it was good to have him nearby. I was also still smarting from my neglecting to have him protected by the Watchers, and it was causing some serious separation anxiety. Dad told us Vokkel's men showed up just a few short hours after he and I had last talked, which meant Vokkel had to have been planning things for a while.

Billy was sullen and generally in a bad mood for the first few days following the fight. I couldn't blame her, but it was starting to annoy me. After all, Justine and my dad bounced back happily, she needed to do the same. I decided I should tell her just that, and convinced her to take a walk with me. We headed up to Lafayette Park and sat on a bench in the sun.

“Billy, you need to snap out of this. It's over. Vokkel's gone, the whole Anne thing sucks, but we made it through.” I tried to take her hand but she slapped me away.

“Aris came by this morning.” Her voice was flat and monotone.

“Yeah, what'd he have to say for himself?”

“He has this friend, a woman…she's a GK, but she's over it and wants to settle down. He says he'd trust her with his life and wants to know if Justine would be interested in hiring her to take Anne's place. She can cook, clean, and she's a ghost killer, so that's added protection.”

“That's great. What did Justine say about it?” I asked enthusiastically. I knew Billy wasn't going to hang around forever and take care of Justine, so the issue of in-home help had been eating at the back of my mind for the last few days.

“She's willing to meet with the lady; we'll see what happens,” Billy replied. This attitude of hers was like fingernails on a chalkboard, grating and irritating as all hell.

“Billy, what's going on with you? It's more than just the last few days, so spill it!” I said angrily.

She looked over at me. “He wants us to work more closely with the Watchers. He said there have been possessions and full house hauntings and all kinds of other, powerful ghost sightings. He said we need to get in front of it before it becomes more than just Hollywood dribble and insane ramblings from insane people….”

“I assume you mean Aris?” I didn't wait for her to answer. “As much fun as all this has been, that really isn't an option for me. I need to get back to the real world and pay my mortgage. But what's your problem with it?” I thought I knew the answer. She simply didn't play well with others and being directly on call for the Watchers held no interest for her.

“You don't need to worry about your job or your mortgage. Justine set up a trust fund for you last year. Like I said a while back, you're like a grandson to her.”

I was shocked. There was no way I could accept Justine's generosity, and that's exactly what I told Billy.

“Yeah, well, I knew you'd say that, so that takes you out of the equation and leaves me to either fend for myself, which I'm happy to continue doing. Or I pair up with someone that Aris assigns to me, and that isn't going to happen.”

So that was her problem…she didn't want to work with anyone but me. I was flattered and a little surprised. But when I thought about it, I knew that I was fooling myself if I thought I could go back to my old self and my old job. Even though the Watchers provided financial support to the other ghost killers, Justine's generosity would go a long way, and Billy and I could really do some damage as a team, both independently and on assignments for the Watchers.

The other big white elephant in the room that no one had brought up yet was Edgar. Where was he and how mad was he? We'd killed his sister and his mentor. If I were him I'd be pretty pissed off. And if I were him, I'd want revenge on both Billy and me.

I thought back to Phil's Newtonian theory and I knew deep down inside he was right. Billy and I had been brought together by some unseen and unknown force to fight these demons. If I backed out and tried to go back to my old life, I'd be letting a lot of people get hurt, including Billy, who, despite her personality issues, I'd grown quite fond of. Not only that, but I needed to find Edgar; he was the only person alive, at least that I knew of, who could tell me if we'd vanquished the demon or demons that had killed our family members, and I knew I couldn't do that without Billy.

I placed my hand on top of hers and said nonchalantly, “Well then, I guess we're partners.”