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“Tell me,” he said flatly.

So I did.I stood there in the desert, probably looking like a madwoman talking to myself and gesturing like crazy, like that poor bastard in the alley, and sometimes crying and sometimes laughing, and through it all, just drinking him in because I still didn’t believe it.This was a trick; someone was...was doing this to me, one of those fey back in town working with the other side to drive me over the edge they had to know I was teetering on.

And if anything could do it, this would be it.To bring Billy back and then have him just vanish.I kept reaching for him, touching him lightly on his sleeve or hand, even though it was visibly creeping him out, but I couldn’t seem to stop.

But he stayed there.Pausing to roll a cigarette after a while, because my story was not short.And weirdly, it was that simple gesture, from striking the match on his boot heel to the lumpy, I-rolled-this-when-half-drunk shape of the thing, and the way the smoke wove in and out of his semi-transparent form that finally convinced my disbelieving brain.

I’d seen him do that a thousand times.I even remembered the scent of the tobacco, which he’d purchased from some Native Americans because he liked the herbs and bark they mixed in with it.It had a completely different scent from modern tobacco and had memories hitting me so hard they were almost painful.

I told myself that was why I kept tearing up, or that it was the smoke in my eyes that wasn’t smoke because that tobacco mix was still at the bottom of the Mississippi along with Billy’s bones.

Get a grip!I thought as my voice wavered for the fiftieth time, and Billy pretended he didn’t notice.And the only other eyes out here were a coyote’s, gleaming for a second in the moonlight, wondering who this crazy woman was for an instant before he found somewhere else to be.

And then I was finished somehow, with the whole sorry tale.And Billy and I were sitting on the ground, or in his case, hovering slightly over the top of it, staring up at the stars that had started to peek out of the blue-black haze overhead.

For a moment after I finished, there was only silence and the soft sounds of the desert at night.The wind whispered over the sands, an owl called to its mate, some distant insect chirped its availability to the ladies, and the sparse desert vegetation rustled with the things evading the owls.And I found myself relaxing for the first time in days.

The madrush, rush, rush, the relentless pace of life lately, the feeling that I even had to slurp my soup in a hurry because the next crisis was headed this way any second now, gave way to something else.Not peace exactly, because there was no true peace in this world.But this far out, there were no reminders of all we’d lost, either.

No ruined cities burning themselves onto my eyeballs, no desperate people trying to eke out an existence in the wastelands, no gigantic predators prowling the land searching for all the little scurrying things in the desert, just waiting for us to make a move.No anything but chill night air that didn’t feel so uncomfortable anymore; maybe I was getting used to it.Or maybe with Billy back, I felt complete again for the first time in ages, instead of like I was missing my right arm.

Whatever it was, I could finallybreathe.

Of course, I knew it couldn’t last.Knew that, in my time, he wasn’t there and wasn’t going to be.But he was here now, and I was so, so glad to have him!

I found and squeezed the insubstantial hand lying on the sand alongside mine, and it felt so good!And it squeezed back before Billy turned to look at me through a haze of smoke.And finally found his words, only they weren’t the right ones.

“What the ever-lovingfuck?”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

What?”I looked at Billy Joe blankly.

He stared back.“I mean, I knew something wasn’t right.The whole metaphysical atmosphere around here was churned up after that battle at the warehouse.Do you have any idea how much power you guys were putting out?”

“Um—”

“It looked like a goddamned supernova, and nobody knew what was causing it!None of my sort could even get close enough to take a peek without risking getting ripped apart, although there were guesses.All of which pale by freaking comparison to the truth!”He stared at me some more, the hazel eyes accusing.“What the actualfuck?”

“Billy!”

“And you wonder why I came back!”

“You shouldn’t have—”

“Oh, hell yes, I should!You know, this fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants shit might have worked for your mom, but she was freaking Artemis.You aren’t—”

“You think I don’t know that?”

“I think you don’t know that!And those bozos you pal around with are no better!Pritkin and his stupid demon half, with a beef that’s been going on for more than a century and is now threatening the goddamned world!Mircea and his let-me-manipulate-you-into-something-crazy-yet-again bullshit.Jonas and his arrogance—”

“He isn’t arrogant—”

“You’re right—he’s worse.Here, Cas, just drain this half of a god I hunted down for you like a good girl—the absolute psycho!”

I almost smiled at that because Billy always had a way of cutting through the BS.“Okay, maybe he is a little psycho—”

“And you’re no better!”