Billy Joe

**Billy Joe**

## Introduction

**Billy Joe** was a hard-drinking, cigar-smoking card shark in life and is one of Cassie's only friends. Billy Joe is a ghost who resides inside a locket belonging to Cassandra Palmer. He occasionally assists Cassie, especially if she's in trouble. It doubled as a talisman—soaking up magical energy from the natural world and transmitted it to its owner, or in this case, to its owner's ghost.

## About

Cassie considers Billy Joe to be her guardian spirit, but that isn't entirely accurate.

### Died

* Died in 1858. Some cowboys drowned him in the Mississippi River.

### Powers & Abilities

* General Ghostly abilities
* could move small things if he really concentrated
* One of those spirits who can absorb energy from a living donor, rather like a vamp.
* Ability to drift through people and eavesdrop on them mentally, picking up whatever they're thinking at the time.
* Vamps can't read ghosts
* Billy, as a ghost, ran a kind of spiritual interference so that Tony and his thugs couldn't trace Cassie.

### Weaknesses

* He is unable to stay away from his home base (the locket) for too long or his power runs dry—the farther from the source, the faster his strength runs out.
* To be active, he needs to draw energy from Cassie.

### Residence

* Billy Joe inhabits a very old and very ugly necklace that Cassie unwittingly bought when she was age seventeen and she always wears unless she knows she'll be around Demons who devour ghosts.
* Former residence: 1850's Kansas

### Countess

* Billy had won a variety of favors off a visiting countess—at least he claimed she'd had a title-one of which was an ugly ruby necklace that doubled as a talisman.

### Locket

* Cassie constantly wore it—it bound her and Bill Joe together even when we were apart.
* A monstrosity made of hand-wrought gold, heavy and intricate, with a mass of squirming vines and flowers around a central cabochon ruby. The junk dealer had assumed it was glass.
* It has a lot of pawn marks, but Billy Joe always redeemed it back.
* Talisman—It soaked up magical energy from the natural world and transmitted it to its owner,.

### Deal with Cassie

* In return for her giving him energy, Billy Joe had agreed to keep watch for Tony's thugs.
* One of the points Billy had used to make their deal was that he'd run a kind of spiritual interference against Tony finding her.

### Occupation

* Occasionally assist Cassie
* Former gambler in previous life

### Character / Personality

* Big mouth and a yellow streak.
* Most of the time grumbles and bulks about anything dangerous.
* Damned good spy, but he can't be trusted—but he'll leave something out that might cause him trouble if he can get away with it.
* Greatest fear: getting stuck in a rural, one-horse town with no honky-tonks, strip clubs or gambling dens within reach.
* Spits ghostly chewing tobacco that leaves an icky ectoplasmic trail.
* heavily into wine, women and song in life.

### Accent

* Mississippi drawl combined with bits of Irish brogue

### Physical Description

* Semi-transparent
* Hazel green eyes
* Curly chestnut hair
* With Ghost Vision: looks like a shining green column of vaguely cowboy-shaped smoke.

**Attire**:

* Usual gambler-cowboy-ladies' man getup
* Dressed in "cowboy chic"
* Wore a Stetson and frequently pushed it up.
* Shirt was bright red
* His shirt was fashionable for 1858.
* Wears a string tie.

**In Faerie**:

* pale and needed the shave
* dark-haired man wearing a bright red shirt

### Interests

* Gambling
* woman

### Family

* Family: one of ten kids
* Friend: Cassandra Palmer
* Other:

### Other Details

* Thought it was funny as hell to rig the casino games
* Billy is more mobile than the rights because he haunts a necklace rather than a house or a crypt.
* Cassie sees mini movies of Biily's life when they merger for his energy draw.
* Billy Joe can sigh on purpose, not automatic thing for a ghost.
* Music: Elvis and Hank Williams
* Smoke an insubstantial cigarette, makes floating smoke rings
* When Billy comes out of the locket, he looks like the way a Genie would look when coming out of a bottle.
* Vampires can't summon Cassie through a bite—likely because of a ghost always so close, interrupted the signal.
* When he babysits Cassie's body while she time travels, nothing feels reall—like there's a film over everything.

### Historical Details

* Part of his childhood was spent starving on the Emerald Isle. He'd immigrated, changed his name, and made a new life in the New World, but he'd never completely lost the accent.
* Won the necklace off a countess.

## Relationship with Cassie

Over time, they'd developed a sort of **symbiotic relationship**. Billy Joe is one of those spirits who can absorb energy from a living donor, rather like a vampire. But Billy Joe vastly prefers a willing donor, not to mention that he says the "hit" is much longer lasting from Cassie for some reason. In return for her giving him additional energy from time to time, Billy Joe had agreed to keep watch for signs of Tony's impending return.

They sniped and argued and bitched at each other all the time, that was standard in the families they both grew up in—they didn’t handle the softer emotions so well, since they hadn’t encountered them very often.

## Backstory—How Cassie found Billy Joe

When Cassie was seventeen, she bought the necklace that was haunted by Billy Joe in a junk store by accident as a birthday gift for her governess, Eugenie. She’d ended up with some hankies that were unhaunted instead, and Cassie ended up a nineteenth-century Irish gambler.

## Biography

Billy Joe was formerly an Irish American gambler who failed to lose the right hand of cards in 1858. A couple of irate cowboys, who correctly assumed they'd been cheated, shoved him into a sack and tossed it in the Mississippi. Luckily for him, he'd recently relieved a visiting countess of a large, ugly necklace that served as a sort of supernatural battery, collecting magical energy from the natural world and storing it until needed. When his spirit left his body, it came to rest in the necklace, which he haunted the same way other ghosts did more conventional things, such as crypts. It gave him enough power to continue to exist, but it was Cassie's occasional donations of living energy that made him as mobile as he was. Cassie had found the necklace in a junk shop at age seventeen. Billy and her have been a team ever since.

Billy had been part of a raucous family of ten kids, and while I got the impression that his parents had been affectionate to a degree, there had been only so much to go around.

## Related Characters, Groups, Places, etc.

* Cassandra Palmer
* Laura
* Portia
* Tony's Court
* John Pritkin

## Events in the Series

*This section may have **spoilers**. If you want to avoid spoilers, please think of the book title as a "Spoiler Warning". The purpose of this section is to be able to **find things in the series**.mary for a book that you have not read yet. Think of the book title as a "Spoiler Warning". Please use References*.

### 1. Touch the Dark

Reports to Casie while she's taking a bath—1. There were no vamp bocies left behind, only lots of blood and chaos from teh fight, and cops all around; 2. location and descripton of locale where Cassie is: M.A.G.I.C.; 3. Rasputin is causing trouble because his senate seat went to Mei Ling—killed four Senate members, wounded two others, nd now he's challenged the Consul to a duel. 4. Borrowed Louis-Cesare as her champion from Consul in Europe as a favor—Mei Ling is not happy about it; 5. Kit Marlowe said that Rasputin turned three of his own vamps against him; Marlowe took out a couple of his attackers, but nobody can ID the dead vamps. 6. Jimmy the Rat is in town.

### 2. Claimed by Shadow

Billy appears right after John Pritkin arrives. Cassie asks him to possess the Golem—he bounces and bangs, ricocheting around crashing into things, including Pritkin. Warns Cassie the Circle sent about three dozen War Mages and all exits are covered. He retrieves a key to a locker for her. Billy reports to Cassie the Circle closed Dante's looking for her. They're accusing Cassie of the murder of two mages that were killed by the Gargoyles in self-defense, the evidence backs it up. But the Circle wants to brand her a murderer. Casanova is saying that Cassie started wrecking the place because she's mad at Tony, and accused Tony of he illegal Gargoyles. Billy reasons with her about getting her ward fixed by Mac. At M.A.G.I.C., Billy reports that Mac's friends are on guard duty and that the Senate has Tomas—they're planning on executing him.

He gained a version of his body once he arriced in Faerie. Both he and **Billy Joe** freaked out about his new state, ran around the room in Mac's Tattoo Shop, bumping into things, and the Pritkin's newly alive golem and screaming. John Pritkin takes Billy to the nearby town to use as message runner back to them. Billy's happy to go to try the pub. Billy was locked in a Dark Fey cell with Pritkin's Golem near Cassie's cell. He was drunk. he tells Cassie that Kit and Pritkin are trying to convince a pixie to let them go. Billy wondered what would happen to him if he were killed in Faerie, they don't seem to have ghosts there. Before exiting Faerie through the portal, Billy's worried about whether he'll have a body. Radella slaps him with the flat of her sword into the portal saying: "Get in the portal, remnant, we don't need your kind here.”

When Cassie comes to in Headliners at Dante's, Kit tells her he hadn't seen Billy, the Pixie or the girl. Just as Cassie was about to shift out of Headliners with Marlowe while fireballs were flying, and the War Mages closing in, Billy tells her not to shift in a panicky small voice—he's stuck. When he gets unstuck, he flies into her gibbering nonsensically just before she shifts out seeking Myra.

Billy tells Cassie he almost didn't come back as a ghost after he died a second time coming through the portal. Cassie leaves her body to possess Augusta, Billy stays in her body to babysit it in hiding while she hunts Myra with Pritkin.

✥

### 6. Tempt the Stars

While back in time in Tony's Farmhouse, Cassie called up Billy to help her get information from Laura, a child-ghost who was playing hide-n-seek. He appeared, like a genie from a bottle out of an ugly necklace. Billy freaked out about being at the farmhouse because there were so many ghost there and most were vengeful and hated other ghost coming in there. He demanded that Cassie use her ghost vision so she'd believe him. There were glowing green trails all over.

Billy finds Cassie in Pritkin's room and scolds her for being there. Cassie presses him for the information that he got from Laura—and he tells her that her parents are in the boathouse surrounded by demons. He tries to talk her out of going to see her mother and going to save Pritkin.

## Quotes

There once was a ghost name of Billy,
Who got in a jam rather silly,
He found a beautiful lass
And quick made a pass
Forgetting he only had mist for a willy.
"I almost didn't come back this time, Cass," he said weakly. "It's not automatic, you know.” ... "What isn't?” ... "Becoming a ghost. Nobody keeps stats, or if they do, they're not telling me, but it's pretty damn rare! And I almost… I got lost… I wasn't here, I wasn't there and I couldn't see anything. All I could feel was a pull, trying to wash me away, and the only thing holding me was the sound of your voice. And then you started talking about leaving, and then I found out-" He broke off with a strangled gasp. — Billy and Cassie in 1889 London, Lyceum Theatre,
"You will have to find somewhere else to feed tonight. The girl goes with me.” ... "What girl?” ... Billy was sitting with his back to the ticket booth, knees drawn up, red dress so big that it almost swallowed him. He looked up at me and his mouth gave a slight quirk. "**He means me, Cass**.” ... Then I understood. — Pritkin, Cassandra Palmer, **Billy Joe**, in 1889 London, Lyceum Theatre. Cassie has possessed Augusta, *Billy is inside Cassie's body, and Pritkin is trying to stop who he thinks is a vampire from feeding on who he thinks is Cassie*.
## Note

* Source for Images and Into: Author's site. The Artist is not credited or I would name the artist.

## Book References

1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 1.16 1.17 1.18 1.19 1.20 *Touch the Dark*, ch. 5
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 *Touch the Dark*, ch. 1 Cite error: Invalid `<ref>` tag; name "CP1ch1" defined multiple times with different content
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 *Claimed by Shadow*, ch. 2
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 *Claimed by Shadow*, ch. 4
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 *Touch the Dark*, ch. 10
6. ↑ *Tempt the Stars*
7. ↑ *Touch the Dark*
8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 *Tempt the Stars*, ch. 1 Cite error: Invalid `<ref>` tag; name "CP6ch1" defined multiple times with different content Cite error: Invalid `<ref>` tag; name "CP6ch1" defined multiple times with different content
9. ↑ *Touch the Dark*, ch. 8
10. ↑ *Touch the Dark*, ch. 6
11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 *Claimed by Shadow*, ch. 8
12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 *Tempt the Stars*, ch. 1, p. 11 Cite error: Invalid `<ref>` tag; name "CP16ch1" defined multiple times with different content Cite error: Invalid `<ref>` tag; name "CP16ch1" defined multiple times with different content
13. ↑ *Touch the Dark*, ch. 1
14. ↑ *Claimed by Shadow*, ch. 5
15. ↑ *Claimed by Shadow*, ch. 8
16. ↑ *Claimed by Shadow*, ch. 10
17. ↑ *Claimed by Shadow*, ch. 11
18. ↑ *Claimed by Shadow*, ch. 12
19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 19.2 19.3 *Claimed by Shadow*, ch. 13
20. ↑ *Tempt the Stars*, ch. 4, p. 46–54

## External Links

**Specific Links**

**General Links**:

* Take A Chance: Gallery
* Cassandra Palmer series - Urban Fantasy Wiki
* Cassandra Palmer Series ~ Shelfari
* The Cassandra Palmer series - Wikipedia