Free Billy Purgatory and the Curse of the Satanic Five by Jesse James Freeman Page B

confidence. Billy hoped that Luna was standing up from his seat at the root beer table, and was gonna let Mira know that she was his girl, and that he was gonna be her scientist dude for ever-and-after.
    Maybe that's what was going on down there, Billy didn't know really. He was high off of two root beers, and even though he still had a trampoline to find, he figured that even that much sugar wasn't gonna take him to much further into the night. He had a hill to walk up and figured it would take him an hour to find his bedroom again, maybe two hours if all those butlers were already sawing logs.
    Still, this new big world high above where he'd grown up that his mother was providing for him might end up being the best thing that ever happened to him. Billy felt a little more positive about the world and figured he might be done with monsters and drama and adventures.
    If he could only make it to the top of that hill and find a door that led inside the house.
    Billy was so lost in his thoughts and climbing that hill that he failed to notice the man who was watching him from the tree line. It was true, even if Billy had his telescope the man would be hard for him to spot — dressed in black and dark greens, blending in with the shadows and the foliage.
    The man who watched Billy had been on many adventures of his own, and if he would ever be able to make any sense of the world ever again it was going to take the help of the ten-year-old boy who trudged towards the mansion on the hill.
    Surely he didn't know it yet, but the boy would end up helping the man before all would be said and done — whether he liked it or not.
    VI.
    Billy Purgatory had taken to making himself scarce during the day around the grounds of Purgatory Manor. It seemed like there was a lot going on during the day; that's when people were milling about and the maids were polishing the silverware. Billy had slept like a baby the last couple nights on the new bed he'd been so skeptical of at first. Turns out whatever it was they pulled off a goose to stuff into those pillows was the right idea. Billy's skateboard even seemed more rested, but it didn't really talk much about its sleep habits, and the boy could only guess as to its actual well-being.
    Billy saw his mother in the mornings during breakfast, which she liked to take on the patio. It overlooked the gardens and fountains that rolled down the other side of the hill, on what amounted to a really big back yard. Beautiful flowers and manicured greenery for as far as one wanted to look at that sort of thing, rolling gently through one color pattern to the next, until it stopped at the stone wall, which formed the borderland of the estate proper and the tall fir trees of the woods.
    Emelia, as Billy had learned that his mother's given name was, always wore white, and she wore it well. Mom wasn't one for lots of heavy make-up and Billy didn't mind that at all, because his mother was classy enough with whatever color the gods had chosen to paint on her naturally before she'd been let loose into this big world. The only two pieces of jewelry she wore were a simple wedding band of gold and a tiny bracelet on her right wrist, which she kept a goldenskeleton key dangling from. Billy had already been lectured about her fondness for locked doors, and he figured that was the key that opened all those locks.
    Mother hadn't brought it up again, and Billy wasn't gonna be the one letting that cat made of words out of the bag again.
    Breakfast was always a big to-do. There was fresh squeezed orange juice that came from an orchard on the property. Mom was into fruit and things that were good for you to eat; therefore, Billy was forgoing things that were bad for him, like Captain Claw cereal and donuts. There was always bacon though, and Billy figured that if there was enough bacon and orange juice, he'd have all the fuel he'd need to tackle any surprises that came his way.
    Mom always had that faraway look in her eyes