The Book of Bart Read online

  “Do you listen to yourself when you say things like that?”

  “Come on, Josh,” Sam said. “He’s got a point.”

  Josh’s face turned a dark red. “You’re taking that thing’s side?”

  I tsked him with my finger. Sam only did what Sam did best. Calming the situation. “You’re done. Leave. If I see you again, I’ll assume you’re once again trying—and failing—to finish your father’s job.” I looked back at Sam. “I showed him mercy. I won’t do it again. We kosher?”

  She nodded. “I’m sorry it came to this.”

  I shrugged. “Whatever. Three’s a crowd. Besides, we have work to do.”

  am escorted Josh out to make sure neither of us tried to pull any “funny business.” She actually said that, the cornball.

  After sending the turncoat away, Sam and I still needed to figure out how to dispose of Quincy’s body. I ran my idea of tossing him off the roof by her.

  She looked at me, aghast. “No. Absolutely not.”

  “Come on. It’s perfect. Put on your big boy pants and let’s do this.”

  “I’m not throwing a dead body off the roof. That’s disgusting.”

  “Your side can be so touchy.” I sighed. She’d better not ask me to reimburse her for the tarp. “Fine, let’s hear your grand idea. How do you suggest we get rid of the body?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t really have any ideas. This isn’t exactly my area of expertise.”

  “I do have experience in this arena.” I sat on the arm of the sofa. “Listen. Calling the cops is out. Period. I don’t want to deal with the hassle, and I doubt the truth will set me free on this one. Normally I’d call one of my servants to take care of it…” I motioned toward Quincy’s body. “But alas, he was the only one I had left.”

  “What about Remy?” she asked. “Maybe he has something that can help?”

  Not a bad idea. I’d bet Remy did have something that could make the body go poof.

  “He might. Let’s put Quincy in the tub so he won’t keep leaking all over the floor. And here I thought we wouldn’t get to use the tarp.”

  We rolled up Quincy in the tarp. I picked up my end of his body.

  Sam grimaced as she wrapped her hands around the other. “They didn’t tell me I’d be doing this kind of stuff when they offered me the job.”

  “They never do.” I lifted the body, revealing a pool of blood on the carpet. Yet another stain.

  We dumped the body in the tub, then set about cleaning up the bloodstains. Both of us were on our hands and knees, pouring cleaning liquid on the blood and blotting it up with towels. Like everything else I owned, this carpet hadn’t come cheap.

  “Should we be doing this right now?” she asked.

  I gave her a stern glare. “I’m not coming home every night to a bloodstained carpet. I am not a college student, and I refuse to live like one. Got it?”

  “Okay, okay.”

  After finishing with the carpet, I changed into a sleek ensemble that included black pants and a matching long-sleeved shirt. My suits needed a break from being destroyed. At least until I could buy some new ones.

  We went to Remy’s to find out where to go for something more powerful than the Charm of Agrippina. I hoped to give Remy’s crazy-eyed assistant Marvin some grief, but he seemed to have the day off.

  “No more,” I said. I slammed the Charm of Agrippina on the counter. Looking at it reminded me of Miss Evans, and that I hadn’t told Sam about her yet.

  “I’m surprised you lasted this long.” Remy picked up the charm. “I just got a new shipment in the back. Let me see what I got.”

  “Awesome,” I said, giving him a thumbs-up.

  Remy disappeared into the back. He returned a moment later with what looked like a wooden tooth the size of a hot dog. “Here you go. It’s a third party item, so it’s safe to touch. Doesn’t have the power of the charm, but it will help in the meantime.”

  I picked it up and felt its smooth texture. “Anything special I need to do?”

  “Just keep it on you.”

  I stashed the tooth in my pocket. “Easy enough. Now, where do we go for that other item?”

  “Charlotte,” he said. “Everything you need should be there.”

  “Great. It turns out we need something else as well.”

  Remy smirked. “Give ‘em an inch.”

  I held my hands up. “I just wondered if you had something that would, um, expedite the removal of a dead body.”

  Remy’s face dropped. “You killed somebody, didn’t you?” He slapped his hand on the counter. “Every time.”

  “It’s not like that,” Sam cut in. “It was self-defense.”

  Remy looked at me like I was an idiot. “You got an angel lying for you now?”

  I put my hand on my chest. “She’s not lying. Honest to… well… you know.”

  “Dare I ask if there’s a chance it will get up and start trying to eat brains? I’d rather not go through that ordeal again.”

  The question made me grin. “Never say never.”

  “Let me see what I can cook up. But I want your word.” He pointed at Sam and me. “Both of you. One day, I’ll need you two for something. I don’t know what, but something. I want your word that when that day comes, you’ll be there.”

  I shook his hand.

  “Don’t see that we have much choice in the matter.” I glanced back at Sam. “Do you?”

  Sam sighed, like she knew we were asking for a lot of trouble neither of us wanted to deal with later. “Can’t say that I do.”

  She shook Remy’s hand.

  “Good. Now. There’s a guy in Charlotte who’s loaded with stuff. He might be the largest private collector in this time zone. He even has some of your angel ointment, from what I understand.”

  “He willing to sell?”

  “Not exactly.” Remy set an iPod on the counter.

  “What’s that for?” I asked.

  “The person you’re seeing is a televangelist.”

  My chest sank into my bowels. Anything but a televangelist.

  “Don’t you have an easier way? I’m okay with driving out of state if it means avoiding one of those clowns.”

  Remy shook his head. “His name’s Arthur Powell. He’s the only one who has what you need. I’m surprised,” he said, leaning his elbows on the counter. “You actually seem scared of them.”

  “No,” I scoffed. “I just avoid them if at all possible. It’s a personal preference, like preferring blondes over redheads.”

  Seriously. I’m not afraid of them. I just hate them with the fury of a massive hurricane. Being forced to watch one on TV was one thing, but in person? Forget it.

  “What does an iPod have to do with a televangelist?” Sam asked.

  Remy glanced at her. “It’s loaded with your favorite.” He eyeballed my wardrobe. “A little Man in Black for a man in black.”

  Sam’s expression was carefully blank. “You lost me.”

  I sighed. “It’s full of Johnny Cash songs. His catalog is like the universal language of pain and suffering. If you listen to Cash, nothing can hurt you because you’re already in a dark and painful place.”

  “Where’s that?” Sam asked.

  “His soul,” Remy whispered.

  Sam nodded politely, like she didn’t understand but also didn’t want to be rude.

  “The only problem is, you have to listen to it so loud you can’t hear anything else,” Remy said. “The music literally has to drown out everything around you.”

  “Otherwise it won’t work,” I said.

  “Okay. I understand,” she said. “I think.”

  Sam still struggled to grasp what we needed to do as we made the three-hour trek to Charlotte.

  “What is the Ring of the Gods?” Sam asked.

  “It’s from ancient Greece. Forged from the blood of Zeus, Athena, Hades, and Apollo. The ring pretty much protects you from anything supernatural. It’s one of the most powerful th
ird party items out there.”

  “I thought Zeus and the Gods were just mythology.”

  I shot her a sideways glance. “They might say the same thing about angels one day. Even pseudo-angels, like yourself.”

  “But we’re real.”

  “Just because you’ve never met Zeus doesn’t mean he never existed.”

  “I guess so.” Sam didn’t say anything for a moment. Probably tried to wrap her mind around what I’d said. “Wow.”

  “Indeed.”

  Yep. Mind… blown.

  “Are you sure he won’t sell this thing?”

  “Would you?” I huffed.

  “So we’re stealing from a televangelist.”

  “Pretty much. I know that’s against your code of ethics or whatever, but it’s not as if televangelists are the most ethical people on the planet.”

  “Why would a televangelist collect all this stuff, anyway?”

  “Maybe to keep it away from others, maybe because he has some grandiose plan to take over the world, or it could be he likes showing them off at cocktail parties.”

  Sam shot up straight. “You think so?”

  “No clue. That’s not our concern, though.” I loved cruising down the highway in my new Benz. I couldn’t hear anything outside of the car. A storm siren could go off next to us and we wouldn’t notice.

  “You still haven’t explained Quincy to me,” she said.

  “Right. That.” I launched into the entire story of what happened, how he’d helped me get the new car, acted funny, then came at me with the knife.

  “So he was possessed?”

  I nodded. “By Miss Evans, no less.”

  “Miss Evans?”

  I got Sam caught up on my theory about Miss Evans. “I don’t know what she is, exactly. I’ve come across plenty of beings out there that use sex as a weapon, but none with the Helen of Troy-like allure she has. Long story short, I’m pretty sure she’s Vixen. She wants to make the Shard her BFF.”

  “Have you seen the snake ring on her?”

  “I haven’t. That doesn’t mean it’s not her, though.”

  We pulled into some swanky neighborhood bordering Lake Norman, located just north of Charlotte. All the houses around the lake were priced in the million and up range. I parked the car around the block from the televangelist’s home and killed the engine. I thought we should wait until the sun went down before heading in.

  “I don’t like this,” Sam said.

  “What’s to like?” I asked. “He lives in a mansion. We have no clue where the ring is, just that it’s in that freakin’ castle somewhere. We don’t know if anybody else is in there with the guy, and if the iPod dies on me for any reason, I’ll probably explode the second he starts preaching.” Voluntarily being close enough to hear a televangelist speak in person ranked pretty high on the list of dumb things a demon could do. A human, too, for that matter. Watching one on TV was one thing, but in person? Without any sort of filter? Pure insanity.

  “What about the stealing? Won’t that get us both in trouble?”

  “Think of it as borrowing. I guess they never taught you about necessary evils, did they?”

  Sam shook her head.

  “Things may have changed since I’ve been up there, but basically, if you have to commit an evil that’s necessary for the greater good, then it’s okay. An example would be killing all the firstborns in Egypt.” I left out the part where necessary evils can be a bit of a slippery slope. Angels could become addicted to necessary evils. The fun angels did, at least. But that slippery slope also tended to be frowned upon by the more uppity members of Heaven who refused to do what sometimes had to be done. Probably the reason they didn’t tell Sam about the loophole.

  “How do you want to do this?” she asked.

  Anything we did, from knocking on this guy’s door posing as Mormons or pretending to deliver a pizza, would raise suspicion. So we had to use that suspicion to our advantage by drawing the televangelist’s suspicion away from the actual mischief happening right under his nose.

  Since I had to listen to the Man in Black during this little operation, Sam and I decided to communicate with each other via text message. I would go inside and she would keep an eye on things outside, keeping tabs on him for me.

  Darkness set in about twenty minutes later. We got out of the car and rounded the block. Thirty yards separated the street from this guy’s front door. I hated that he got to live like a king, especially since televangelists were some of the lowest creatures around. They had the power of you-know-who at their disposal and most of them used that power for their own dirty deeds, yet never got punished for them. Made me jealous.

  “We should’ve brought Josh,” Sam said.

  “No, we shouldn’t have. He’s been nothing but trouble. And honestly, how can I expect to be at my best when someone I’m working with is always trying to kill me? It’s enough everybody else is trying to do that.” I glanced at a rock on the ground. “I’m going to smash one of the front windows. That will draw him out, then I’ll run around and slip in through the rear, if you get my drift.”

  She didn’t look impressed by my double entendre. “Grow up.”

  “Can’t. I was created this way.”

  I picked up the rock, and then took aim at one of the large windows. The rock shattered the glass. Sam hid behind a tree near the front door, and I rushed around to the side of the house. Leaning against the brick wall, I popped the earbuds in and turned on the Cash. The Man Comes Around played. One of my favorites.

  The front door opened. Powell stood on the front steps.

  “Whoever’s out there, I called the cops, so you’d do best to get the Hell off my property. Thank you and God bless.”

  What an ass. I ran around to the back of the house and onto the deck overlooking Lake Norman. Most people are pretty careful about keeping their front door locked, but the back is another thing altogether, especially here. People constantly went in and out to enjoy the view, so keeping the rear locked probably seemed like more of a nuisance than anything else. I pulled open the sliding door and stepped into the kitchen. I tiptoed around, looking for some kind of study or library. I found the room next to the den.

  Inside, all the crucifixes in the study almost blinded me. Big ones, small ones, old, new, gold, silver, wood, even one woven out of string. Powell had at least six different versions of the Bible in the bookcases and, naturally, a framed photo of himself with Jimmy Swaggart. I studied the picture.

  Son of a bitch.

  Arthur Powell was the same one I’d seen on TV when I first got out of Hell. I wished demons could excrete, because I would so take a dump on his floor. I did my best to have tunnel vision as I scanned the artifacts in the room, hoping that being near so many crucifixes wouldn’t literally blind me, or worse.

  Remy should’ve come along on this little expedition. The items in this room made his little party favors and shrunken skulls look like something out of a bubble gum machine at the grocery store. I found not one but five vials of the angel goo. I would’ve taken only one, but since I’d already suffered because of the televangelist’s ranting, I figured taking all of them would make us even. I kept looking but didn’t see any Ring of the Gods.

  My phone vibrated. A text from Sam.

  He’s going back inside. I think he’s wearing the ring. At least he’s wearing A ring.

  I dropped my head. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  My phone vibrated again. Cutting off his finger is not an option.

  “Why would it be?” I said to myself. It was only the easiest solution. I glanced at the corner of the study. A green robe hung on the wall, next to a photo of Pope John Paul II wearing the same robe. I sighed. This would hurt.

  I turned down the volume on Cash so I could hear, then slid the robe on and pulled the hood completely over my head, casting a shadow on my face. My skin burned where the robe touched me, and the smoke coming from those exposed areas only made me look that
much more intimidating. I walked out of the room toward the front door.

  Arthur Powell’s white hair somehow seemed even more striking in person. His gin blossoms and paunch told me he might’ve spent his professional life “serving” the Holy Spirit, but he’d dedicated his personal life to drinking as many spirits and touching as many kids as he could get his hands on. To be fair, I only guessed about the kids. He clung to a glass of Scotch. Or whiskey. I never can tell the difference between the two. The glass smashed on the floor when he saw me.

  “Sweet baby Jesus,” he said. “Who are you?”

  “Who do I look like?”

  “I don’t know, but you’re smokin’ somethin’ fierce. Like a car without a muffler.”

  “And I’m not even having a cigarette.” Though I definitely could’ve used one.

  He held up his hands. “What do you want? I’m just a simple servant of God.”

  I tried not to laugh. “We both know that’s not true.”

  “Please. That robe is priceless.”

  “You’ve been a naughty boy, Arthur. A simple servant of God wouldn’t live in such a palace.”

  “I don’t know where you’ve been gettin’ your information, but I haven’t been naughty. Hand to God.”

  “Quiet.”

  Powell bit his lower lip and nervously covered his face with his hand.

  I pointed at a finger, which had a weathered silver ring on it. The Ring of the Gods. It had to be. “The ring. Hand it over.”

  He covered the ring with his other hand. “Ring? What ring?”

  “The one you just covered up. Give it to me and I’ll be on my way.”

  “You know the cops will be here any minute. I called them when you smashed my window.”

  This time, I did laugh out loud.

  “Look at me.” I spread my arms out. Smoke billowed from every opening in the robe. I tried not to scream from the pain. “You think I’m afraid of a few cops? The ring.”

  “No. It’s a family heirloom. I can’t. Belonged to my grandpappy.”

  Lies, lies, lies. What an absolute weenie. I pulled my arm out of the robe’s sleeve and fished my lighter out. I lit it, and held the flame under the sleeve of the opposite arm.