shiela reveal

I lifted my eyebrows at him and lifted my pentacle, willing it to light. "Here," I said. "Shiela, I hope you don't mind if they come in?"
Butters peered up at me and then around him.
"Harry?" he asked.
"Yeah?"
"Um, who are you talking to?"
I stared at him for a silent second.
And then a few details floated together in my mind, and the bottom dropped all the way out of my stomach.
I closed my eyes for a moment, and opened my inner vision, my wizard's Sight, and turned to face Shiela.
The little apartment simply dissolved, sliding away like paint being washed away by a stream of falling water. In its place I could see a dimly lit, gutted building. Studs stood naked where the drywall had been removed. There were piles of scrap wiring, half-rotted-looking ducts, and similar refuse, which had been removed from the building and thrown aside into refuse piles. The place had been prepared for renovation-but it was empty. The only window I could see was broken. Thunder rumbled, the sound slightly different than it had been a moment before. The driving rain gained a couple of notches of volume, beating hollowly on the old apartment building.
I stared at Shiela with my Sight, and she stood there unchanged- except that I could see a faint tint of light around her, subtle but definite. It meant that she was either a noncorporeal presence or an illusion of thought and energy rather than a reality. But if she'd been an illusion, she should have faded away entirely, as the apartment had done.
I released my Sight again. My stomach twisted on itself, a burning, bitter feeling. "Shiela," I said quietly. "Stars and stones, it's all but your real name, isn't it? Lasciel."
"It's close," Shiela agreed quietly.
"Harry?" Butters whispered. His eyes were very wide. "Who are you talking to?"
"Shut up a minute, Butters," I said, staring at her. She regarded me quietly, her eyes now steady on mine. "That's what Billy was talking about. Bock started looking awfully odd when I was speaking to you at the bookstore. And you never interacted with anyone else. Never opened any doors in the store. Didn't pick up the book when I was looking for it." I glanced down at my hand, where she'd written her number in permanent ink. It was now gone. "Illusions," I said.
"Yes," she said calmly. "Some of appearance only. Some of seeming."
"Why?"
"To help you," she said. "I told you that I could not make open contact with your conscious mind. That is why I created Shiela." She gestured down at herself. "I wanted to help you, but I couldn't do it directly. So I tried to do it this way."
"So you lied to me," I said.
She arched a brow. "I had little choice in the matter."
"What about after you made contact with me?" I said, and my voice was bitter too. "I used the Hellfire and you came to me in a dream."
"That was after you met Shiela, if you will recall," she said.
"But you didn't need Shiela anymore."
"No," she said. "I didn't. But I found that I..." She rolled her shoulders in a shrug. "That I enjoyed being Shiela. That I enjoyed interacting with you as one person to another. Without being regarded with fear and suspicion. I know that you understand what it is like. You've felt it often enough in your own life."


Dead Beat Chapter 35, Page 312