Secondhand Souls

19. Wiggly Charlie’s Adventure

Wiggly Charlie lived in a big house with his friends Audrey and Big Charlie. He liked mozzarella cheese sticks, chasing his tennis ball, and putting his purple wizard hat on his willy and pretending they were friends.

One day, he was playing with his ball in the butler’s pantry (which was a small room where rich people used to keep their prisoners until they needed them to bring them a beverage). When Big Charlie reached in the door, took the ball, and threw it for Wiggly Charlie, it bounced into a vent behind the wastebasket and disappeared.

Wiggly Charlie didn’t even take time to be sad or think how throwing his ball down a vent was kind of a dick move, but instead jumped right into the vent after it. He slid down and down and plopped out on his bottom in the dirt. All around him were little lights in many colors. He stood up and turned all around, looking up at all the pretty colors. He saw that there was a little doorway, just his size, and on the other side he could see his ball.

He went through the doorway and found himself in a passageway made of green glass, so he could still see the colored lights attached to the floor joists of the big house, as well as others that were strung through the glass hallway. He threw his ball and chased it down the hallway, catching it in his mouth just as it was about to roll down some stairs. Then he saw something wonderful.

In front of him was a big round room, like a hole, only nicer, and all around it were little people just like him. He dripped drool on his toes as he looked around in wonder at all the little people, all with different heads and feet, different hands and different clothes, all just about his size. They gathered around a stage in the center of the round room as one of them talked at the others.

“Bring the head for Theeb,” said the little person on the stage. He was wearing a red uniform, had a face that looked like a cat skull, and a very nice black-and-red hat. When he talked, he waved around a spoon that was a fork, or a fork that was a spoon—whatever it was, Wiggly Charlie thought it was very clever.

The little people parted and two of them carried a tray with the head of an animal Wiggley Charlie didn’t recognize down an aisle. (It was the head of an opossum, but the o was silent, as often happens with the decapitated.) The red suit guy took the head and put it on a table on the stage.

“Bring the body for Theeb.”

“Bring the body for Theeb,” everyone chanted, and two more little people brought a big piece of meat on a tray and fitted it on the table with the head.

“Bring the legs for Theeb!”

And the legs were brought.

“Bring the voice!”

As each pair of little people brought their pieces, they took tools out of little pouches and sewed the pieces on the body. When the arms were attached, a person with a lizard face wearing a pretty pink dress brought some clothes, and the new body on the stage was dressed. Wiggly Charlie had seen Audrey making clothes just like the ones they fitted onto the body. These must be Audrey’s secret friends, thought Wiggly Charlie.

“Bring the soul, so Theeb the Wise may give it life,” said the special fork-spoon guy.

“Bring the soul. Bring the soul. Bring the soul.”

There were many, many little people in the round room now. More than a hundred, but Wiggly Charlie didn’t count very well, so he just thought there were many, many. Each of them had a red light in his or her chest, glowing even through their clothes. Now they opened two doors in the side of the round room, and behind it were many different kinds of objects: shoes, trophies, boxes, tools, bowls, rings, clocks, radios—there were many, many things, and each of them glowed a dull red, just like the little lights each of the little people had in his chest.

“Bonjour,” said a voice right next to Wiggly Charlie, and he was so surprised that he dropped his ball. It bounced down the steps and into the crowd of little people. He looked to where the voice had come from and he saw the very pretty face of a calico cat.

“Soyez la bienvenue,” she said. She had a pink ribbon around her neck and wore a pink outfit like the ones Audrey made. In the center of her chest a red light glowed very brightly and Wiggly Charlie jumped and clicked his talons because he liked it so much.

“Shhhhh,” said the cat person. She held a finger to her mouth, which Wiggle Charlie knew meant he should be quiet because Audrey and Big Charlie did it all the time. She pointed to the middle of the big room, then patted a spot next to her on the stairs for him to sit next to her. He did, and watched.

“Je m’appelle Helen,” said the cat person.

Wiggly Charlie didn’t know what kind of nonsense she was talking about, but she was nice, so he sat down and watched the show going on in the middle of the big round room. “Ball,” he said, pointing to the spot in the crowd where he thought his ball might have rolled.

A radio was brought on the stage and set beside the body they had stitched together. The fellow in red raised his fork-spoon and said:

“Now Theeb the Wise will bring life to one of the People.”

The crowd chanted, “Theeb the Wise. Theeb the Wise. Theeb the Wise.” Not everyone could say the words, and some just growled in rhythm or stamped their feet. “Theeb the Wise! Theeb the Wise! Theeb the Wise!”

Fork-Spoon Guy took papers from his red coat and spread them out on the stage, then started to chant in a different language. Wiggly Charlie had seen pages like that in Audrey’s book room, and he knew that you were not supposed to lick or chew or drool on them, but what he didn’t know was that these were very special pages that had been given to Audrey by the high lama of her monastery in Tibet, and she should have probably not left them lying around like she did with most of her things because she was still not good with having things.

Anyway, the Fork-Spoon Guy chanted and chanted, and before long, the light in the radio moved through the air and settled in the chest of the body they had stitched together, and everyone said “ooooo” and “ahhh,” unless they couldn’t talk then mostly they just hissed or clicked, but when the light had moved the body twitched. It twitched again.

The Spoon-Fork Guy stopped chanting, stood over the body, and said, “He’s alive!”

“Alive!” everyone chanted, and Wiggly Charlie bounced up and down and made his most excited sound and clicked his talons because everything was so wonderful and everyone was just his size.

“Alive!” everyone said. And the body sat up. The new little person looked around.

Wiggly Charley jumped to his feet, and as he chanted with the others he bounced down the stairs, clicking his talons. “Alive! Alive! Alive!”

The Spoon-Fork Guy lowered his spoon-fork and everybody stopped chanting.

“Alive! Alive! Alive!” Wiggly Charlie chanted on. And everyone turned and looked to him, even the new person, so Wiggly Charlie chanted much quieter and stopped on the stairs, halfway down.

“Not one of us,” said the Spoon-Fork Guy, pointing his fork-spoon at Wiggly Charlie.

“Not one of us! Not one of us! Not one of us!” they all chanted, and pointed.

“Not one of us! Not one of us! Not one of us!” chanted Wiggly Charlie, glad that he wasn’t chanting by himself anymore.

The Fork-Spoon Guy came off the stage and the crowd opened up for him as he passed through and came up the stairs until he was standing right in front of Wiggly Charlie.

“Theeb the Wise demands silence!” shouted the Fork-Spoon Guy.

“Not one of us. Not one of us. Not one of us,” chanted Wiggly Charlie, the rest of the crowd leaving him hanging. Finally he trailed off and looked around, hoping someone else had been chanting, but they hadn’t.

“I am Theeb the Wise,” said the Fork-Spoon Guy. He pointed to his red coat with the shiny gold buttons.

“Steve,” said Wiggly Charlie.

“No. Theeb,” said Theeb. “I did not know who I was, but now I have remembered. I am the leader of the People. I am Theeb.”

“Steve,” said Wiggly Charlie.

“Steve! Steve! Steve!” chanted the crowd.

“No!” shouted Theeb. “She put our souls in these vessels, and they gave us false names. I was called Bob, then, but our real names have come back to us. We remember!”

“Steve! Steve! Steve!” chanted the crowd.

“No, you dumbfucks!” shouted Theeb, although he didn’t look as sure of himself as when he had started.

“You are not one of us. You are not one of the People. You are incomplete.” He pointed to the little light in his own chest, then at the enormous pile of things that were red. “You are missing something!”

“Need a cheez,” said Wiggly Charlie.

“Need a cheez! Need a cheez! Need a cheez!” chanted the People.

Theeb bellowed, “She gave us hideous form, and no memory, but now we have memory.”

“Need a cheez! Need a cheez! Need a cheez!”

“Shut up!” shouted Theeb, and the crowd did.

“She gave us no voices, but the new People have voices!”

“Need a cheez! Need a cheez! Need a cheez!”

“She gave us no lips. But we have grown lips!” said Theeb.

“Lips! Lips! Lips!” the People chanted.

“Lips,” said Wiggly Charlie, handing Theeb his enormous dong, which Theeb the Wise wisely let drop to the ground.

“Sure, you have that, because you are her favorite, but you have no soul.”

“Lips,” said Wiggly Charlie.

“We were people, and she trapped us in these hideous creatures, but we have her books, and using them we have become more. There will be more of us. Thousands of us! And the People shall all have voices! All shall have lips! So sayeth Theeb the Wise!”

“Steve the Wise! Steve the Wise! Steve the Wise!” everyone, including Wiggly Charlie, chanted.

Theeb the Wise was not pleased, for he was pretty sure his name as a human had been Theeb, not Steve, but then, Steve really did make quite a bit more sense, didn’t it? Now he was angry.

“Guards!” called Theeb, possibly Steve, previously Bob.

Four of the People, all wearing the new colored cotton outfits that Audrey had sewn, came out from behind all the soul vessels. Each carried a different weapon, a knife, a hatchet, a sickle, and a screwdriver, although not a spork, for the Spork of Power was reserved only for Theeb the Wise. Each also wore a little belt, more crudely fashioned than their clothes, and tucked in it were canisters of pepper spray.

“Seize him!” said Theeb.

“Seize him! Seize him! Seize him!” chanted the People.

“You don’t have to chant that!” shouted Theeb, and they pretty much fell silent but for a few stragglers, who were still working the “lips” chant and were behind.

The guards took Wiggly Charlie by the arms and he let them, asking each of them if they might have a mozzarella stick handy, using the traditional “need a cheez” phrase.

“You, her soulless minion, have been sent to us as a sign, Charlie Asher. We will take Audrey’s soul, and put it in your soulless body, so she, too, will know what it is to be trapped in a hideous little creature!” Theeb waved his spork maniacally and laughed.

Wiggly Charlie struggled, and two more guards came and grabbed his feet. Audrey gave him cheezes and had boobies and other parts that made him sleepy. He didn’t want them to hurt her.

“Take him away,” said Theeb. “Tie him up, and prepare to seize the heretic maker, Audrey!”

“Tie him up! Tie him up! Tie him up!” chanted the people, although to be honest, most of them weren’t sure what was going on. The guards dragged Wiggly Charlie out of the big round room.

“Mon Dieu!” said the cat person called Helen, who was still at the top of the stairs. She hurried off the other way to the passageway that led out under the porch.

20. Testing, Testing

On his first day back living in his old building, Charlie picked Sophie up at school and walked her to get ice cream. On their way home, cones in hand, they encountered a rat that was dying in the gutter, probably from poison. Charlie thought, “A dead rat, well, that would be disgusting and cliché, but an almost dead rat, that sir, is an opportunity!”

Charlie looked around. He didn’t see anyone else out walking on this particular stretch of street, at least none close enough to tell what he was doing. He didn’t notice the yellow Buick Roadmaster parked on the next block, someone sitting behind the wheel.

“Sophie, honey, you know the word that you’re never supposed to say, and that thing you’re never supposed to ever do?”

“Yep.” She nodded, plowing a nose-shaped furrow into her orange sherbet.

“Okay, I need you to do that. With this rat.”

“You said never, ever.”

“I know, honey, but this creature is suffering, so this would help it.”

“Audrey said that life is suffering.”

“You can’t listen to her, she’s a crazy woman. No, I need you to try it. Just point at the rat and say the word.”

“Okay,” Sophie said. “Hold this.” She handed Charlie her cone and crouched down.

She pointed to the rat, looked over her shoulder at Charlie, just to make sure, and he nodded.

“Kitty,” she said.

Lily was sitting at her call station, headset on, tablet before her, watching a French film about a man who goes insane when he shaves off his mustache, when her line rang. She could see on the terminal that it was one of the hard lines from the Golden Gate Bridge. She paused her movie, took a deep breath, and connected.

“Crisis hotline. This is Lily. What’s your name?”

“Hi Lily, this is Mike Sullivan.”

“Hi, Mike. How are you doing today.”

“Lily, this is Mike Sullivan. The Mike Sullivan who jumped…”

Lily stopped breathing for a second. No one who had actually jumped had called back before. She wasn’t sure she was trained for this. Sure, she would have ignored the training, but it would be nice to have it to fall back on.

“So, Mike, it says here you’re on the bridge, on one of the hard lines.”

“Yes. I’m just sort of connected. I don’t know how.”

“So, you’re not, like, standing there talking into the speaker box or anything?”

“No, nothing like that. I’m just sort of here. Not physically, but it feels like I’m talking to you.”

“You’re calling from the other side?” Lily said.

“What? Marin? No, right on the bridge.”

“It is you!” His doofuscocity had transcended even death.

“I’m here, Lily. On the bridge, like Concepción promised, like I thought it would be—well, not like I thought it would be, but I’m here. So it worked? Did Charlie get my body?”

“Yes, but that was a while ago. Do you not have the same perception of time?”

“It did seem to take a long time to figure out how to get through to you. I tried asking people on the bridge, even risked going to one of my old coworkers. Nothing. I don’t have whatever it is that Concepción and the others had to appear to me.”

“Maybe it was you,” said Lily. “Not them.”

“Really?”

“You’re talking to me from beyond the grave, although not literally. A lot of people have been on that bridge over the last seventy-five years, yet you’re the one she picked.”

“Oh, yeah. How’s your friend doing with my body?”

“He seems pretty comfortable. He’s boning a nun with it.”

“Oh no!”

“No, it’s okay. She’s into it. You met her.”

“Oh, Audrey?”

“Yes. So, what’s it like being dead?” Lily was suddenly aware of the other counselors in the room looking at her, which normally didn’t bother her. Sage was writing down the time on a Post-it, no doubt so she could find the call on the recordings when she reported Lily. “Just a second, Mike.” She’d forgotten for a moment that all the calls were being recorded.

She pressed the mute key and turned to Sage. “This guy thinks he’s a ghost,” she said. “I just need to indulge his delusions long enough to figure out how to get him down. You want to take over? I can put him on hold, probably.”

“No. Go ahead,” said Sage. “Sorry.”

“I’m back, Mike. You okay? One of my co-counselors was noting the time for the recording.”

“Recording? That’s not good, is it?”

“I just need to get you safely off that bridge, Mike,” she said, louder than was necessary.

“Well, I just called to tell you that I was okay, better than okay. I’m, well, I’m not just the me you’ve met, I’m a lot of people. And there are others here. Thousands.”

“Mike, as a trained crisis counselor, I’m not qualified or authorized to give you a diagnosis, but if someone less grounded than you were to say that—that he was ‘a lot of people,’ then I would have to recommend he seek counseling.”

“Isn’t that what I’m doing?”

“Not really a mystery that you didn’t have any friends in life, Mike.”

“Oh, the recording. Right. I need to know if you guys found the Ghost Thief yet. Concepción says we need to hurry.”

“Not yet, Mike. We’re trying to figure that one out.”

“Oh, okay. Thanks. Keep trying. I guess I won’t jump today, Lily. You’ve changed my outlook. I’m going to go seek some counseling right now.” He was possibly the worst liar she’d ever heard.

“Wait, Mike—”

He disconnected. Lily looked over her shoulder to see if Sage was still listening, but the frizzy-haired traitor in cargo pants was already on her way to the director’s office.

Well, she’s totally useless,” Charlie said as he entered the apartment.

Sophie ran by him into the apartment—wailing like a tiny fire engine—through the great room where Jane and Cassie were sitting, and into her room. She slammed the door.

Jane sat up, wineglass in hand. “I’m suddenly feeling a lot better about my parenting skills.”

Sophie opened her door and poked her head out. “I liked you better when you were dead!” she shouted at Charlie. She slammed the door again.

“So, good first day back?” asked Cassie.

Charlie plopped down on the couch next to his sister. “She can’t even kill a rat that’s already circling the drain. In fact, I think he perked up a little. She kept pointing and saying, ‘Kitty! Kitty! Kitty!’ but nothing happened. A couple walking down the other side of the street gave me smiling pity nods because they thought she was slow.”

“You’re not supposed to say slow,” said Cassie. “It’s unkind. Although, Jane always says it.”

“That’s because she takes like an hour to vacuum the living room, not the developmentally kind of slow.”

“Unkind,” said Cassie.

Charlie scooted away from Jane on the couch. “You make a seven-year-old vacuum the living room? That’s horrible. You’re like a wicked stepmother.”

“First, I pay that child a living wage; second, the reason it takes her so long is because she gets to do whatever she wants during the process; and third, she wants to be a princess, so a wicked stepmother is like a pre-rec.”

“Well she’s not going to be a princess. She’s not even the Luminatus anymore.”

“You told her she isn’t the Luminatus?”

“Well, of course. I need to keep her safe.”

“Jane wouldn’t even tell her that she wasn’t a vegan,” said Cassie.

“It’s not a diet thing,” said Jane. “She really wants to fit in.”

“But she’s not a vegan, right?” Charlie said. “Lily said you told her she could eat animals that only eat vegetables.”

“Yeah, that’s when she was a vegetarian. Now that she’s a vegan she only eats orange food: mac and cheese, carrots, sweet and sour pork.”

“Sweet and sour pork is not vegan.”

“The kid had two dogs the size of cows at her command. If she wants sweet and sour pork to be vegan, then it is.”

“So you just let her do whatever she wants—run around here like a crazed barbarian.”

“She likes to think of herself as a warrior princess,” said Cassie.

“Are you guys fighting?” Charlie asked.

“It’s how we show affection,” said Cassie.

“Honestly, I’m kind of sad she’s not the Luminatus,” said Jane, slouching on the couch. “I feel bad for her. Plus, it really got me through discussions in line at Whole Foods. When the other mothers were going on about how awesome their kids were, I’d think: Oh, your little Riley is an all-star in youth soccer, can play Bach on the cello, speaks Mandarin, and has a brown belt in ballet? Well, Sophie is the Luminatus. DEATH! The grim reaper. The big D. She rules the Underworld and can vaporize demons with a wave of a hand. She’s guarded by indestructible hellhounds that can eat steel and burp fire, so your little Riley can lick dog drool off my Sophie’s spiky red Louboutins, bitch! Now I’ll never be able to say that.”

“Sophie has spiky red Louboutins?” Charlie said. “I don’t think those are good for a kid’s posture.”

“No, I was embellishing. Really not the point of the speech, Chuck. It was that Sophie had a thing, but it had to be a secret. They’re all so gifted.” Jane said ‘gifted’ with a tone normally reserved for reference to skin-boring parasites. “You know one mother has her kid in Ninjitsu. Ninja lessons! Kid is seven, why does she need invisible assassin skills?”

“Well, as important as your self-esteem in the line at Whole Foods is, I’m more concerned that if she doesn’t have her powers, with the hellhounds gone, we don’t have any way to protect her from—you know.”

Cassie and Jane both knew how Cavuto had been killed. They played darting-eye tennis between them until Cassie lost and so had to say something positive.

“Maybe she’s just having a hiatus or something. She had them when she needed them, right? Well, maybe her powers will return. Like when she hits puberty. Maybe one day when she’s in sixth or seventh grade she’ll get her period, the skies will darken, and the Apocalypse will be on.”

“That’s how it happened for me,” said Jane.

“It did not,” said Charlie. “I don’t remember that.”

“You were at camp.”

“Well, even if that’s the case, we need to get her to sixth or seventh grade. Look, I need you guys to take her somewhere out of the city until this is all sorted out.”

“I can’t. I have work,” said Jane.

“You’re sitting around drinking wine at three in the afternoon on a Monday.”

“If you give me a day,” said Cassie, “I’ll get my classes covered. How far do you think we should go and how long do you need us to stay away?”

“Thanks, Cass,” Charlie said. “I think maybe a day’s drive will do it. Whatever is going on, it’s clearly centered in the city. The others are talking about going after the Morrigan. I’ll ask them to wait until you’re safely out of town.”

“Done,” said Cassie. “It’s sad that your best sister is not related to you by blood.”

“I was going to do it,” said Jane. “I just wanted to make a bigger deal out of it.”

“Why is all this centered in San Francisco?” Cassie asked. “Seems like it should be a worldwide thing, right? Did you guys figure that out in your meeting?”

“I suppose that’s something we should have talked about,” said Charlie.

When Mike Sullivan first stepped into space, into Concepción’s arms, he was surprised not only that it didn’t hurt, but just how completely joyful he felt.

“My beautiful Nikolai,” Concepción said.

“You said that before,” Mike said. “But I’m not—” Then he felt it, the thread of time, going back from the bridge, through a dozen lives in a dozen times, men, women, births, deaths, strung out like lights, the brightest the Russian, the count, Nikolai Rezanov, made radiant because of the light of Concepcíon de Argüello, his love. He kissed her, as he perceived that he could kiss her, because the boundaries of their bodies no longer existed, and they were, for a moment, completely and absolutely one. But she pulled away, and again he could see her, and she him.

“Not yet,” she said.

“No? But you waited so long.”

“I had to wait, but I was happy to wait, I could do nothing but wait, and I can wait a little more? Then—”

“So, you had to find me before you could rest?”

“Rest? Oh, no, my love. We will be together, at last, but it will not be to rest. Look at them, feel them, all of these ghosts?”

Mike looked, then reached out, aware of every strand and rivet of the bridge and the ghosts that flowed over and through them, over and through one another, oblivious, the bridge their only anchor to any world.

“There is much to do,” said Concepcíon.

“I can feel that,” said Mike, feeling the tug of the thread of his past lives like fish on a long line.

“And they and many more than them are trapped if we do not find the Ghost Thief.”

“Did you look under the couch?” Mike said. “In my many lives, I remember that lost things are often—”

“You fell off a fucking horse?” said Concepcíon, the spell between them broken for now. “You couldn’t have told someone to send word. A note?”

The Morrigan were gathered at a sewer junction under Mission Street, staying pressed against the walls, flat as shadows, to avoid the light filtering down from a grate above. Babd was manifesting a slight, blue-black, feathered pattern on her body, while her sisters were merely flat masses of darkness. Babd had managed to snag one of the little creatures who carried human souls—souls that they could consume as they once consumed the souls of dead warriors on the battlefield in the days when they had ruled as goddesses. She ate it in front of her sisters as it squealed, and they watched jealously as the feathers appeared on her with the power in the soul. When she had consumed all but a few gooey drops of the red soul, she threw them each one of the creature’s legs, which they sucked out of the air like groupers snapping down fry.

Babd speared the piece of meat the creature had been carrying, bit into it, then spit it out in revulsion. “Just meat,” she said. “Ham, I think.”

“I thought we liked ham,” said Nemain, looking enviously at her sister’s talons, which had manifested with the power of the soul she’d just consumed.

“These things holding the souls, aren’t they made of ham?” asked Macha. She very much wanted to pick up the little creature’s head, which lay in a stream of water in the pipe, but didn’t have the corporeal substance to pick up and hold anything. It would make a lovely pendant, at least until she could get a human head to replace it, which was her preference.

“No, it’s just meat,” said Babd. “But they are gathering it for something. Maybe they have a nest.”

“A nest?” said Macha, a dreamy tone to her voice. “A nest, built with bones of men. Lamps of skulls all around—”

“And cushions,” said Nemain, joining in the reverie. “To lie on.”

“To push a dying warrior down on and fuck him to death,” said Babd.

“—lick his soul from your claws as his light goes out,” said Macha, shuddering at the pleasure of the thought.

“Oooo, a nest,” said Nemain. “We should go back to the tunnel near the Fort, for when Yama brings us the souls.”

“No, we should wait for more of these things,” said Babd, pointing to the skull. “Follow them to their nest.”

“With the souls we get from Yama we can go above,” said Macha. “Above! Find the soul sellers. Grow stronger. Hold dominion. Build a nest.”

“With cushions,” added Nemain.

“I don’t trust Yama,” said Babd, emboldened by her easy soul score. “The last time—the banshee.”

“And the gun,” said Macha.

“And the way he walks in the light,” said Nemain. “How does he do that?”

“Shhhh,” shushed Babd. There were voices in the pipes. Not filtering down from above, but in the pipes with them. Small voices. She bridged herself over the top of the pipe, disappearing into the darkness there as best she could, fighting the form she had gained. Her sisters moved away from the grate above and became part of the darkness once again.

The procession of creatures moved by them, perhaps ten of them, each with the little light showing through his clothes, each carrying some bit of meat or animal part, except the last, who carried what looked like a porcelain candy dish that also glowed with the light of a human soul.

The Morrigan followed them for blocks, flowing along the sides of the pipes, watching as the little creatures climbed a makeshift ladder and hopped, one by one, through an open storm grate. Babd moved to look out but the daylight singed her and she pulled back.

“Wait,” she said.

When darkness fell an hour later they gathered at the storm grate and looked out.

“I remember this place,” said Nemain.

“That tall green one kept running over us here,” said Macha. “Cars suck.”

Babd rose up, spotted a very large Victorian house across the street, a sign in front that she could not read.

“What is it?” asked Nemain.

“The nest,” said Babd.

The director messaged Lily to see him in his office when her shift was finished. She set an alarm on her phone that would go off five minutes into her appearance and would sound like a phone call. The door was open and she could hear Mr. Leonidas and Sage talking. She listened long enough to determine they weren’t talking about her, then knocked.

“Come in,” Leonidas said. He was dark and a little doughy, with eyebrows that Lily found it hard to look away from because they really looked like they might have ideas of their own. Because of her fascination with his eyebrows, Leonidas thought that Lily paid rapt attention to everything he said and consequently showed her favor over the other counselors. Leonidas had a background in psychology and public health, so being a snarky bitch around him was deeply unsatisfying because he would always try to find the root of her discontent, the hurt behind her hostility; getting a rise out of him was like trying to give a handjob to a parking meter: you were going to end up frustrated and exhausted long before a cop came along to haul you away. In spite of herself, she kind of liked Leonidas. Having Sage in the room, the enemy, was presenting a dilemma.

“Mr. Leonidas,” Lily said. “What can I do for you? I can wait until you’re done with Sage if you’d like.”

“No, please have a seat. Sage brought something to my attention and I thought it fair that she be here to see how it was handled.”

“Oh, right,” said Lily. “For her thesis. Sure.” She sat down, looked over the array of a dozen or so family pictures propped across Leonidis’s desk. “How’s the fam? Have any more kids?”

“No, still just the six, same as when you asked me two weeks ago.”

“Well, I know how busy you are,” Lily said. “What’s up?”

“Lily, Sage heard some disturbing dialogue in the call center today, and I thought we would all listen to the recording together so we could understand what happened.”

“I don’t see what she has—”

Leonidis held up his hand to stop her right there. “Let’s just listen.”

He hit a key on his PC keyboard and Lily heard her own voice coming out of the speakers. Sage sat back and nodded, as if she’d just wrapped the big case on Law & Order.

“Crisis Center, this is Lily, what’s your name?”

And there was silence. Nothing.

“Hi, Mike,” Lily’s voice said on the recording. “How are you doing today?”

And there was another gap. And Lily’s voice continued, her entire half of the conversation, and only her half, and as the recording ran, Sage started to squirm in her chair and Lily fought, fought very hard, not to grin, and was really thankful when the alarm on her phone went off so she could make a big deal out of ignoring the imaginary call.

They listened to the entire conversation, Lily’s side only. When it ended, Leonidas looked at Sage and said, “That’s it. That’s the entire call.”

“But she always does—” Sage stopped. “I’ve heard her before, she’s so profane.”

“I think we can see what was going on here,” Leonidas said. He raised his eyebrows at Sage in what he probably thought was an open, understanding manner, but Lily thought they looked like two bristly caterpillars crouching, ready to pounce. He turned to Lily and she pushed back a little from his desk—the eyebrows, they were sizing her up. “Lily, while I don’t approve of high jinks in the call center, I understand the point you were making with this little performance.”

“Uh, thanks, Mr. Leonidas,” Lily said. Point them at Sage. Point them at Sage.

“And, Sage, while you may not immediately see the efficacy of Lily’s method, she does get results, she connects with the clients, and ultimately, that saves lives. Perhaps less focus on her process and more on yours and we’ll be able to connect with more people. Help more people. Don’t you agree?”

Sage nodded, looking into the abyss of one of the buttons on her cargo pants.

It was a Leonidas ass-chewing—as close as he ever got to one. Lily resisted doing a booty dance of triumph against Sage’s stupid sweater because that would be immature, so she did it mentally and said. “Friends?” She stood and held out her arms to force Sage into hugging it out. And as she held Sage a little too long, feeling the slight woman get tenser and tenser as the embrace continued, even as she puffed Sage’s frizzy-ass hair out of her mouth, exhibiting her victory—nay—her domination, Lily also warmed with the satisfaction of her own specialness.

She was the only one who could hear him—the only one who could talk to the ghost of the bridge.

21. Killing Villarreal

Mike Sullivan hung from one of the vertical suspension cables by one hand. “Look, I’m as light as a feather. There’s hardly even a breeze and I’m standing straight out.”

“You are lighter than a feather, my love. Let go and you will not fall, and the bridge will not let you blow away.”

“Yeah, I think I’m going to wait on the letting-go part.”

“You are beyond fear. And you are bound to the bridge just as you were drawn to it.”

“Just the same, you died of what, diphtheria? What if right after you died I was to offer you a big steaming cup of diphtheria, how would you feel?”

“They can put it in a cup now? It was invisible in my day.”

“A Cleveland steamer was a ship, in your day, my sweet Conchita.”

She reclined on the oceanside railing—the walkway on that side of the bridge was closed most of the time, the foot and bicycle traffic confined to the bay side. Not that it would have mattered. People would have walked right through her and have only felt a chill, which was normal for the Golden Gate.

She said, “There is someone who needs to speak to you, my love.”

“Another one? I don’t understand. Why do they want to talk to me?” There had been scores of them, each telling a different story; a woman who was trapped overnight in a stationery cabinet with a janitor after the earthquake of 1989 and didn’t share the Pepsi she had in her purse, a man who hallucinated he was being pursued by a giant squirrel in John Muir Woods. The only thing the stories had in common was some unresolved element, some lesson unlearned, something sad.

“I don’t know why, my love, any more than I know why I had to wait two hundred years for you, and that you have been on your way here for two hundred years, but I trust there is a reason. I have faith.”

“Faith? But all those years as a nun, didn’t you—I mean, did it prepare you for this?”

“For this? No. True devotion is done not for a reward, but for the devotion itself. All my works, all my prayers, were for forgiveness of my selfishness, my weakness, because I could never love God as much as I loved you. What my time as a nun prepared me for was the damnation of being without you for these centuries, which I deserved. For this, you, here, with me, this joy, for this I was not prepared.”

Mike settled on the walkway beside her and took her in his arms; she embraced him, and in an instant they were a single entity—the only thing the third ghost could see of them was a white gardenia that Concepción wore in her hair, glowing.

“This is where I’m supposed to talk to the guy, right?” said the third ghost.

Mike and Concepción divided like a luminous amoeba and each stood on the walkway.

“My love, I am going to drift,” she said. “Good day, sir.”

The third ghost, who wore a baseball uniform, tipped his cap. “She asks someone what a Cleveland steamer is, might be your last—uh, whatever that was you two were doing for a while.”

“You heard that?” asked Mike.

“Yep. You want to have a smoke or something?”

“I’m good. How long have you been there?”

“Awhile. You don’t get many conversations here, as you probably know. Most people are kind of flighty.”

“Good description.”

“Besides, I wanted to see what happened if things got hot. Never seen that before either.”

“How long you been on the bridge?”

“Ah, not long, ten, maybe fifteen years. Hard to say exactly. Time, right?”

“Do you know why you’re here? I mean, any of us, but let’s just say you?”

“Cursed, I guess,” said the ballplayer. “Cursed long before I took the last out.”

“Yeah?” said Mike. “Tell me.”

“You a baseball fan?”

“I watched a game now and then.”

“So you heard of Skipper Nelson, Giant’s shortstop, right?”

“Nope,” Mike said. “Sorry.”

“So I’ll start where it started,” said Skipper.

I used to think I was cursed because of the bird, but now that I’ve thought about it, it was probably because I planned the murder of Villarreal. I first ran across Villarreal in the minors, before the bird, so it was probably him. Probably.

I was drafted as a shortstop right out of high school by the Giants and sent to their double-A team in Richmond, Virginia, the Flying Squirrels, which is where I got my nickname—the squirrel—when I finally got sent up to the majors, because of the way I could track down a grounder and turn double plays—“like a squirrel after a nut,” the announcer says, and it sticks. It coulda been worse, though. I could of gone to the Grand Chute, Crotch Crickets, and then had to deal with that nickname for my whole career. A year after me, Villarreal was drafted out the Dominican League to the Chattanooga Lookouts, which were the double-A club for the Dodgers, a catcher, switch hitter, batted.325 in the Dominican, arm like a cannon. He was an early draft pick, so you knew he wouldn’t be in double-A ball for long, but a butterball, five nine, two-fifty—you could time his forty-yard dash with a sundial, so the Dodgers wanted to see if they could take some weight off of him and give him a little more speed on the bases.

First time I meet him he’s catching for a one-pitch lefty name Markley, one of those guys you see a lot in the minors—scary heat, pushing a hundred miles an hour, but no movement, a laser beam—you know if it’s going to be over, it’s going to be right at your knees in the middle of the plate, then, after about eight pitches, he’s going to be spraying deadly leather all over the goddamn place, so if you can avoid getting a burning, baseball-sized hole through your body somewhere, you draw a walk. One out, guy before me whiffs so bad, I can feel the wind off his bat in the on-deck circle. But I’m not worried, I can see heat. It’s a gift. Then, as I’m walking up, before I even get in the batter’s box, Villarreal starts talking…

“How you doing? Nice to meet you? Are you married? Got any kids? How’s your mother? How was the bus trip? You guys staying at the Travelodge? How’s the rooms? You got a mini-fridge?” And he just keeps talking, mostly questions, for the next fifteen fucking years, but I don’t know that. Right then, I know, absolutely know, I can hit Markley before he goes all Wild Thing on me, I just have to watch one go by to measure, but I’m listening to Villarreal the whole time, and I whiff. And so it begins…

Fortunately, that first one was an exhibition game, so we don’t play Chattanooga again, before I get brought to the bigs the next year when the Giants’ starting shortstop is trying to turn a double play and gets a knee bent back by a sliding base runner. Already I have a reputation as being nimble on the turn, and no matter what the odds of it happening twice in a season, a ball club loses a starter to a certain kind of injury, they want to avoid it happening again, so I get the nod instead of the shortstop at Fresno, who has a better batting average then me, but can be flat-footed at times.

Villarreal gets called up by the Dodgers the same season, backup catcher, because their starter has taken a lot of shots to the head and is kind of goofy. In those days, before the concussion rules, if a guy could count to ten and tell his left from his right, he was good to play, and to be honest, I know a couple of ballplayers couldn’t pass that test without getting hit in the head, but they have Villarreal ready, and he’s been batting over.300 in the minors with a lot of home runs, so he was coming up soon anyway, despite still being shaped like a pregnant mailbox.

So, I finally get my first at-bat in the bigs against the Dodgers. It’s bottom of the ninth, and we’re tied two to two. The utility infielder playing short ahead of me, Manny Ignacio, a lefty, strikes out three times, and they got a left-handed closer pitching, so the skipper needs a righty at the plate. We’re playing in Candlestick Park, which, as you know, sits out on a peninsula in San Francisco Bay, and usually has a prevailing seventy-five mile an hour wind, but what I’m not used to, is about the ninth inning of every game, the seagulls start coming in, getting ready to swoop down on the uneaten fries and hot-dog buns, and they do it like they’re psychic or they can read the scoreboard or something.

So it’s two outs, we got a guy on second with some speed, and I come up and who is catching, but Chava Villarreal. Chava is short for Salvador, which makes about as much sense as a guy named Villarreal that can’t pronounce the letter V even if you put him in a Volvo and drive him to Visalia for Valentine’s Day. And he’s off; “Hey, man, nice to see you again. How you doin’? You get married? You got any kids? How’s your mother? You like San Francisco? You been to the Mission?” And he goes on, and on, and on, until between him and the seagulls diving on the outfield beyond the pitcher, I think it’s going to be a miracle if I even see the ball, let alone hit it.

And, “You like Caribbean food? I take you for the best plantains in the city when you come to Los Angeles.”

And the pitcher throws me a hanging curve that moves like a balloon, time slows down, Villarreal is a mosquito buzzing in another city, and I let go on that son of a bitch—whole body swing, toes to hips to fingertips, and it has that clack-stick sound of a homer, I can feel it and the crowd can hear it and they’re on their feet—it’s going to be a line-drive homer, not high, just a rocket off the field, except before it gets off the infield there’s an explosion of feathers, a literal explosion—I’m not even out of the batter’s box and this circular snowstorm of feathers appears right over the second baseman’s head, and this bird drops, crushed and limp, and the ball drops, plop, and the second baseman shakes his head like he’s got water in his ears, because he was following the ball to go out like the rest of us, but now it’s sitting at his feet and he picks it up and throws me out at first. We go on to win, but my first big league at-bat, I kill a bird, and not a seagull or a pigeon, oh no. My line drive killed a friggin’ goony bird. An albatross. Like a five-foot wingspan. I basically knocked a turkey out of the sky with my first hit in the bigs, and the last thing I hear before the ball hits the first baseman’s mitt is Villarreal. “Oh, man! Oh, shit! I can’t believe it. Oh, man!”

So that’s it, right? I’m cursed. But it turns out, I’m not that cursed, and I bat.260 that season and we get to the National League playoffs and by next year I’m starting shortstop, but here’s the thing, Villarreal is starting catcher for the Dodgers, and we have to play those sons-a-bitches nineteen times during the season. And three or four times every game, for nineteen games, when I come up, that fat fuck is, “So how you doing? You feeling good? I heard you got married. You have any kids? How’s your mom?” And between that and the albatross I get to be almost worthless on offense against the Dodgers, batting a flat buck-fifty against them when I’m batting in the high two hundreds, low three hundreds against everyone else.

My third season with the Giants, we’re neck and neck with the Dodgers for the division and the guy I jumped over at Fresno is batting.375 and fielding just as well, so I figure I’m maybe two, three bad games from losing my starting position, so when I come up in the second game against the Dodgers, I say, even before I get in the box, “Villarreal, just shut the fuck up. Just shut your fucking mouth while I’m in the box, you hear me?”

Evidently, though, he didn’t hear me, because through three balls, four foul balls, and a swing and a miss, Villarreal jabbered, “I’m sorry, man, I didn’t know it bothered you. You want me to shut up, I’ll shut up. I’m a pro, man. A batter needs it quiet, I’m quiet. I was just wondering, you know, how your mom was.”

Two Dodger games later, right after the ump calls a third strike which was a gift to the pitcher, because it’s like a foot off the plate, I turn around and say, “You cocksucker, you don’t shut the fuck up I’m going to knock your fucking head off.”

And the ump says, “You’re out of here.” And makes to throw me out of the game. “You can’t use language like that,” he says, which is more explanation than he has to give.

And I say, “I wasn’t calling you a cocksucker, I was calling this cocksucker a cocksucker. You ought to throw him out of the game. He’s got to drive you nuts, right? He never, never shuts the fuck up.”

It was a Sunday day game, and there was a lot of kids at the park, and it was televised nationally, and they muted me, but it turns out that people read lips a lot better than you’d think, so the cocksucker—and this time I mean the ump—suspended me for two games, and that cocksucker Villarreal hit a game-winning homer against us that day. So I think you can see where I’m going with this. That’s right, it might not have been the albatross. And every baseball fan in the country thinks I have a black box over my mouth because they can’t even play the highlights without I’m calling every granny watching the six o’clock news a cocksucker.

Every game, it’s all I can do to not hit Villarreal in the throat every at-bat. And then we’re coming into the fall, and I get my chance. I’m on second when Joe Rollo smacks one into the gap in center, sending it to the wall. I’m hell on wheels going for home, and their center fielder has a good arm, but the third-base coach sends me, and I look up and see Villarreal is blocking the plate, and the ball is going to get there before I do. So I got one choice, and one choice only. That’s to cream him and knock the ball loose. I’ve got four seasons of frustration going down that baseline with me, and not only is this a run, it’s my chance. I’m going to take his fucking head off. I’m going to explode him like that ball exploded the albatross. I’m going to leave broken bits of can’t-shut-the-fuck-up Dominican cocksucker scattered over the infield. So when I’m a good five feet from him I make my move. I go like I’m going for Olympic gold in the pole vault, which led to what was to be known as the Superman Slide.

Yes, he was a fat fuck, and he ran like he had tubs of lead tied to his cleats, but he was quick, so as I leave my feet, Villarreal has the good instinct to duck, and I sail, vertical, over him, not even grazing him, past the ump (on the replay you can see him saying “what the fuck?” even through his mask) and I land a good three feet on the far side of home plate, having never touched it. Villarreal spins and tags me out while I’m still wondering what happened.

When you kill a goddamn albatross with your first big league at-bat, you think, yeah, that’s going to be the highlight they play when I do something good. They’re going to go, “Oh, nice turnaround by Nelson, but let’s take a look at that time he killed the rare seabird.” But no. You show the world that you have the athletic prowess to not be able to run into a fat Dominican when there’s a fucking line painted up to him, that piece of film is going to Cooperstown, and ne’er a day shall pass from now to the end of time when your name is mentioned that with it is not shown your dumb ass flying through the air to land with your dick in the dirt to be tagged out as gentle as Jesus picking a baby to be born.

Doesn’t get any worse, right? Can’t, right? Nineteen times a season. Regular season. Twenty-five times if you count spring training games. I got to the point where a week before we played the Dodgers I’d start losing my shit. Making dumb mistakes in the field. I get some beta-blockers from my doc to slow my heart down when we’re playing L.A. so I can hit, but I can’t field for shit on them either. So they bring up a kid from the minors who takes my place as the starter. I become the utility guy, playing when someone is hurt or bats from the wrong side. Pinch hitting, unless it’s against the Dodgers, because believe me, I’m not the only one who notices I’m cursed. As bad as it can get, right? If I’m a pitcher and I let a guy get into my head this bad, I’m selling Chevys in Petaluma, because fuck-knows I can’t go into broadcasting and have the Superman clip play every goddamn day, and the front office isn’t going to hire the dead bird/cocksucker guy to coach or scout, right? So I still have a job, year-to-year contract, minimum money, which isn’t bad, except now I have a kid and wife who wants to hang with the wives whose husbands are making major coin, and she spends and dresses like them, too. Could be worse, though, right?

Then the Giants’ starting catcher decides to shoot his coke dealer in the off-season in a Miami disco, at the same time that Villarreal’s contract is up at the Dodgers, so that babbling fucking ball of chorizo becomes our starter. So it’s every day, every goddamn day I go into the clubhouse. “How you doin, Skipper? How’s your wife? Your kid getting big, huh? How’s your mom?” Guy has been in the States ten years now and he’s still only got about forty words of English, which he rearranges a hundred times a day to get up my ass.

“She’s dead, Chava. Just like she was this morning! Just like she will be in twenty fucking minutes when you ask me again, Chava. She’s dead!”

She wasn’t dead. My mother is still alive and lives in Jupiter, Florida, with seven miniature poodles, but that’s not the point. The guy was annoying.

He says, “Oh, I’m sorry, man. Anything I can do? Man, that must be so hard. I lose my mother, I don’t know what to do. My heart goes out to you, man. How’s your wife holding up?”

So that’s when I decided to kill the cocksucker. But not right away, because now that he’s not playing for the Dodgers anymore, my batting average is going up and I don’t want to jinx it. So instead, I compromise and decide to get him kicked out of the game and ruin his life in the interim.

This is a time in baseball when steroids have become a pretty big deal. On our team, you got Barry Bonds, who is hitting home runs like a mortar barrage, and whose head has grown to a size where when they make his promotional bobble-head, they just do the whole thing to scale, while across the bay in Oakland, Mark McGwire now has forearms like Popeye and will only speak in dialects of horse, and they’re keeping José Canseco chained to a post under the ballpark and throwing him raw meat until right before game time, so the league is starting to get sensitive about it. Personally, I stay away from the juice, as I already have what my wife calls “anger issues” and steroids are suppose to be bad for that, but the league is starting to spot-check players, so I figure this might be my chance to get rid of Villarreal without jinxing my hitting.

By this time, my wife was breeding Yorkshire terriers, so naturally I’m nearly able to claim her vet as a dependent on my taxes, so in exchange for a stack of prime tickets behind home plate, the vet hooks me up with some animal steroids in powder form, which are supposed to be tasteless except for a slight hint of dog balls, which I figure Villarreal will never notice because he constantly eats jerk chicken and Caribbean pulled pork, which, for all I can tell, are spiced with garlic, fire, and dog balls anyway. So I start slipping a spoonful of powdered dog balls in Villarreal’s Gatorade in the clubhouse, and after a week or so, when I figure it has built up in his system enough to be detected in a piss test, but before he starts barking and humping an ump’s leg, I have my wife call the anonymous tip line to rat him out.

Now, it’s a hard sell with the league to convince them a guy is on performance-enhancing drugs when he’s so slow that when he hits a double, fans can go take a leak and still get back to their seats to see him slide, but my wife, it turns out, is a terrific liar, so I’m thinking that Villarreal is going to be peeing in the hundred-game suspension cup any day, but the day before the spot test, the son of a bitch whiffs on a backdoor slider, winding himself into a knot and snapping the hamate bone in his right hand, which gets him put on the disabled list for three weeks while he has the bone removed. (Turns out the hamate bone is one of those things like the appendix, the tonsils, and algebra, that you don’t really need but is left over from a time when we used to live in trees and didn’t have calculators.)

But with Villarreal out of the clubhouse for a month, my batting average jumps up twenty-five, my blood pressure drops twenty points, and I’m starting to make some good plays on defense. At this point, when my guard is down, my wife decides that we need to buy a house in Marin with a bigger yard for her dogs, and I’m in such a good mood, I give in, and before you know it, I’m commuting to the ballpark across the Golden Gate Bridge every day.

A week before he can actually start playing, Villarreal comes back from Arizona, where he was doing rehab on his hand, and he’s in the clubhouse, all day, every day, “How you doing? You getting some good at bats, man. How’s your wife? She like the new house?”—six thousand times a day, and my batting and fielding go to shit again and I’m afraid I’m going to get sent down to the minors unless Villarreal shuts the fuck up. But how?

So my wife is on me about the new house, how there are all these plants in the backyard that aren’t safe for her precious puppies and maybe even the kid and she wants them out of there. Foxglove, she calls them. Really tall flowers. I look at the Yorkies, which are about a foot tall at best, and the foxglove, the poison part are the flowers, which are about four feet off the ground, and I tell her I’ll get to it next time we have a day off.

“Digitalis,” she says. “It’s in the flowers. If one of them eats one of those flowers, their little heart will explode and we won’t even know what it was from.”

“What?” I say. I say, “What?”

“Digitalis. They make heart medication from it. If you have a weak heart—”

Before she finishes her sentence I decide it’s time to do some yard work because, goddammit, those little dogs give her a lot of joy and you can’t have one of their little hearts explode from eating those horrible flowers. So I cut those sons-a-bitches down, pile them up until I have a whole bale of them, then put them in the garage workshop where the puppies can’t get to them, and so they can dry and I can get rid of them responsibly.

So next day off at home the team has, I strip all the dried flowers off the stems and crunch them up in a coffee grinder, until I have about a baby-food jar full of fine powder, I mean really fine, like you pinch it between your fingers and it just sticks in that shape. Of course I don’t taste it, but it doesn’t have very much odor at all, and I can’t wait to get to the clubhouse next game day and get ready for the team meal. I mean I am excited. I cram as much of the powder into the jar as I can, and I’m off to the ballpark. But as I’m driving down the hill out of Sausalito and onto the bridge, I’m almost too excited. I mean, I’m sort of out of breath, and I’m sweating like crazy. Then my vision gets kind of blurry, like vibrating blurry, and I lose sight of the road for a second, I drifted out of my lane a little, I guess.

It turns out that there was a semi-truck coming the other way that stopped me from really hurting anyone else, although don’t let them fool you, no matter what they say about how safe Mercedes are, they cannot withstand a head-on with an eighteen-wheeler at fifty miles per hour. Guy driving the truck was fine.

Yeah, it turns out that digitalis can be absorbed through the skin, so I probably should have worn gloves when I was preparing my powder. Who knew?

Villarreal batted.335 that year and you can bet your ass he didn’t shut up the entire time. I’m just glad I wasn’t there for my funeral, because I know he probably talked until half the people there wanted to join me in the casket just for some peace and quiet.

“So, like I said, I’m cursed. You think it was the bird or the murder plot?”

“I don’t know,” said Mike.

“Do you believe in karma? Because if karma is a thing, I’m thinking it’s the murder plot.”

“That sounds reasonable,” said Mike. “But why are you telling me about it?”

“You don’t know?”

“That’s why I asked.”

“Well, because I’m stuck. I’m not moving on. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. Mind you, I don’t know how it’s supposed to be, but this isn’t it—stuck on a bridge forever with a bunch of other loopy spirits. I thought you were the one that was supposed to move things along.”

“And telling me about an annoying catcher is supposed to help that how?”

“It’s supposed to make you realize it, I suppose,” said the ballplayer. “It’s like stealing second base. The manager can tell you to go, the first-base coach can signal you to go, the batter can know you’re going to go, but you have to watch the pitcher, watch the catcher, watch the first baseman, you have to see all the signs, then you know it’s right to steal. I’m just one of the signs, but you have to make the move to steal.”

“That’s the least helpful sports analogy I’ve ever heard.”

“Well, you’re not the one who needs help, are you?”

22. Fresh

Bird played “Summertime” on the speakers. Minty Fresh stepped out of the back room of his store when he heard the bell over the door jingle and saw a man in a yellow suit and homburg hat coming down the aisle. Minty caught himself against the counter. The man in yellow pulled up, almost losing his balance, but for sure losing his cool with the misstep. The man in yellow had no more expected to see Minty Fresh than Minty expected to see him. He turned his surprise into a fingertip-to-the-brim-of-his-hat salute.

“Minty,” he said.

“Lemon,” said Minty Fresh, all of sudden feeling his shit tightening down.

“I didn’t expect to find y’all here.”

“I expect not,” said Minty.

“I had some business with Evan.”

“Yeah, he don’t work here anymore.”

Lemon looked to the back of the store, where a fortyish African American man in a nice suit was browsing the jazz vinyl.

“I don’t suppose y’all got them souls vessels here, do you?”

“No, cuz, I do not. Those motherfuckers are not here.”

The man in the suit—he wore caduceus pin on his lapel, a doctor—came to the counter with a first pressing of Mile Davis’s Birth of the Cool. He set it on the counter, and as the Mint One rang it up on his old-style mechanical register, the doctor looked from Minty, to Lemon, to Minty, then back to Lemon. From the seven-foot, shaved-head man wearing a mint-green shirt and chocolate dress slacks in light wool, to the linebacker-sized gent dressed head to toe in yellow, even down to his yellow python-skin shoes.

“Are you two for real?” he asked.

“Pardon?” said Lemon.

“You two. You look like you walked out of a seventies blaxploitation film. You know, when you reinforce the stereotype like that, you make it harder on all the younger brothers coming up, right? Difficult enough for a young man to make his way without every old white lady in town terrified she just spotted Superfly down on Market Street. Forget about a black woman trying to be taken seriously.”

He laid down his cash and took his change and the record. “I have a hard enough time getting my son not to talk like a thug as it is, and having you two dinosaurs riding in on the Soul Train from the Cretaceous is not helpful. You are grown-ass men. Act like it. Do you feel me?”

Lemon and Minty both nodded slowly, remembering doing that same contrite, synchronized nod when they were boys. The doctor shot his lapels, tucked his record under his arm, and strode out of the store.

Lemon glared at the door, then turned back to Minty. “Harsh.”

“Seventies? Motherfucker, I had these shoes made last year,” said Minty, his voice two indignant octaves higher, looking down at his Italian patent-leather loafers in mint green, as smooth and shiny as pillow mints.

“Excuse me for perpetuating your stereotype,” said Lemon, “but we got some archetypical shit to do up in here and we need to dress the part.”

“You don’t never be lyin’,” said Minty, using the phrase for the first time in twenty-five years. “You don’t never be lyin’.”

“But he do have a point,” said Lemon.

“Yeah, you do be a bit ostentatious,” said Minty.

“Me?” said Lemon, pointing to himself, touching his diamond tie tack in the process as if pushing an irony button. “Me? You ever look at yourself, niggah? Nine-feet-tall motherfucker weigh thirty-two pounds—shit, you be ostentatious standing in the weeds wearin’ camouflage.”

“Style can’t be denied, Lemon. That’s the difference between you and me: you a slave to fashion and I’m a sultan of style.”

Lemon laughed, started to talk, then laughed some more, pointing at Minty to hold the moment until he got his breath. When he did, he shrugged grandly, raised his arms as if appealing to the holy spirit, and said, “Since when was this fashionable?”

“ ’Bout the time that piece of trash Buick was new,” said Minty, grinning.

“Know what? Fuck that niggah, he don’t know us when we didn’t have but a single pair of raggedy-ass trousers each, am I right?”

“You know you are?” Minty in the groove now of how they talked to each other.

“How your mama?”

“Still dead.”

“So sad, that woman a saint, what she put up with. I learned some shit over the years. Counseling. Your daddy was emotionally unavailable, you know that?”

“That’s right.”

“And my daddy treated women like they was throwaway things—you know that fucked up my shit.”

“You a broke-dick dog, Lemon Fresh.”

“You know I ain’t at all what I used to be.”

“I was picking up on that. New hat, right?”

Lemon laughed again, wheezing a little bit. “You funny. Hey, you still got that book I sent you?”

“No, I passed it on, like you do.”

“You did all right, though.”

Minty looked around the shop, at his handmade Italian shoes, back at Lemon. “I coulda used some coaching.”

“You know how it is, we was young and stupid.”

“We?”

“But we ain’t now.”

“No, we ain’t.”

“In fact, I’m not even who I am no more, you know, ’cept for my good looks and charm and whatnot.”

“That right?”

“My shit is informed by a thousand-year-old super-enlightened being from the Underworld up in here.” Lemon thumped his lapel with an open hand.

“Super-enlightened, huh?” Minty looking baffled.

“What you sayin’?”

“Super-enlightened and he still let you drive that ugly-ass, dog-bit old Buick.”

“You saw that, did you? I was gonna get that shit pounded out.”

“Look like something happen when you was running. You always was afraid of dogs. Walk a quarter mile not to go by that white dog Miss McCutcheon had fenced up in her yard. Was you running from them doggies, Lemon?”

“That white dog come over that fence once, you wasn’t there. I spent best of an afternoon top a Oldsmobile before Miss McCutcheon come get him. I hated that dog.”

“You was running.” Minty smiled. “S’alls I need to know.”

“You think you smart. I know you, Minty Fresh. I watch yo mama whip yo ass for having pee pants when you was five. But you don’t know me. This ain’t gonna be like it was before. I ain’t like Orcus.”

“Who?” Minty tsking like, What you wasting my time with now?

“Orcus. Big, black motherfucker with wings, tore shit out of this town. Kill him a bunch of y’all motherfuckers. You know who I mean.”

“Oh.” Minty searched his memory. “Oh, yeah, what ever happened to him?” He knew what happened to Orcus. He’d been torn apart by the Morrigan.

“Not the point,” said Lemon. “I ain’t like him, all bustin’ shit up, biting people’s heads off and shit. I’m moving in smooth, in the daylight.” He held out his arms, just letting sunlight through the front windows get all over him. “Shit about to get real up in here, Minty.”

“It feel like it is.”

“But nobody don’t get between me and what I want got a worry in the world.”

“That’s good to know.”

“Not even that pale white girl of yours.”

“Mmmp,” Minty said. A percussive sound, like disappointment hitting home. He shook his head slowly, looking at the counter, just wishing, regretting, truly unhappy that Lemon had gone there, and when he looked up, when his head snapped up, his eyes were like golden fire. “You ain’t bad, Lemon.”

Lemon’s eyes went wide for a second, then he tightened down, tried to show some swagger. “You don’t know me. You ain’t just talkin’ to me anymore, cuz.”

“You ain’t shit, Lemon.”

“You don’t know what I am now, Minty. I been fifty years in a cave, I have outwaited mountains, I have slain multitudes, I have brought dark death down on whole cities. Do not fuck with me.”

“Uh-huh.” said Minty, unimpressed. “Of all of us, all of us that collect souls, pass them on, do the business of Death, you all of sudden chosen by this badass lord of darkness to lead his conquest over light? You, Lemon Fresh? You? Why you? What make you special? Your blood? Is it your golden eyes?”

Minty leaned on the counter, leaned forward, eyes wide, so Lemon could get his point. “Is that it, motherfucker? You the only one in the whole world picked to start a new order, the only upstart from the Underworld to rise in my motherfucking city? You? Bitch-ass Lemon motherfucking-broke-ass-Buick Fresh? Niggah, please.”

“You need to chillax, cuz.” Lemon was suddenly interested in the rack of CDs near him. “You got any Xanax, or gin or something back there you can self-medicate with, ’cause that anger is not healthy. Our peoples got high blood pressure. They a vein standing out on your head, right here.” He took off his hat and pointed to a spot on his own head. “Right here, like throbbin’ and shit. You probably havin’ a stroke.”

Minty said: “You touch any of my people, what happened to Orcus will look like a spa day compared to what happen to you. Now get the fuck out my store.”

Lemon looked up from the CDs. “Don’t push me, niggah. I will end you right here.”

Minty now held his arms out to his sides, angry Jesus style, suffer all the bitch-ass motherfuckers need an ass-whoopin’ unto me, for I shall rain wrath down upon them—that look.

Lemon took a step toward the counter, then saw something there in Minty’s stare that stopped him. He checked his watch, which was thin and gold and looked feminine on a man his size. “You lucky I got appointments and shit.” He turned on his heel and strolled away, limping a little from his burden of unshakable chill. The bell over the door jingled and he was gone.

“You a lying motherfucker,” Minty said. He went to the back room, found a bottle of cognac he kept in the desk, uncorked it, then paused, corked it, put it away. He didn’t need to steady his nerves. He went back out front. Flipped and cued the album on the turntable, then sat on the high-backed stool he kept behind the counter, stretched his legs out, threw his head back, closed his eyes, and let Bird’s notes wash over him.

He didn’t know what he would have done if Lemon had come at him, if whatever Lemon was now, or what deity was wearing Lemon had come at him—he didn’t have a plan, didn’t have a clue, but he was steady, cool as a sea breeze, unafraid, because there was something, even if he didn’t know exactly what it was. Even as he’d asked Lemon, What make you special? he had felt it. You ain’t the only one, Lemon.

Lily said, “Has it ever occurred to you that this Death Merchant thing is just a shitty job?”

“A dirty job,” Charlie said. “The Big Book says it’s a dirty job. But, yeah. I used to think that we were like Death’s middle management, but we’re not. We’re Death’s grunts.”

They were sitting at the bar in Charlie’s empty shop, there to plan what they were going to do with it. “Whatever you are, it’s ridiculous. There’s no vacation time, no retirement, and if you fuck up, the universe as we know it will collapse. Plus, the system is insanely complex, and you know what chaos theory says about that.”

“Sure,” said Charlie. “But go ahead and say so I’ll know that you know, though.”

“Chaos theory, more or less, says that in any complex dynamic system, it’s impossible to predict behavior because even the tiniest variable can have a huge effect down the line, throw everything into chaos.”

“Right,” Charlie said. “But Audrey doesn’t think that chaos is necessarily bad. It sounds kind of bad to me.”

“That’s because you’re thinking of chaos as disorder, but they’re not the same thing. And she’s a Buddhist, and they’re all about just making sure you’re paying attention or something. Remember what she said about the universe seeking order, balance, and the wobbles when it can’t find it? Well, chaos is the condition between order and disorder, the transition between one system and another. So that’s what’s going on.”

“Well good,” Charlie said. “I should check on Sophie. I left her playing upstairs.”

“You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”

“Yes, it’s just that when I try to apply it… No. How do you know this stuff? Isn’t chaos theory math or something? I thought you went to culinary school.”

“That’s where I learned it. First day, right after you learn to wash your hands and sharpen a knife. You have to know chaos theory to make basic biscuits.”

“Really? For biscuits? I never gave my mom credit… Really?”

“No, not really, Asher. Did your brain stay tiny and reptilian when Audrey changed you into a real boy? I’m trying to tell you I don’t think we should reopen your store. I don’t think you’re going to need it, because there’s a new system happening. I’m trying to tell you I don’t want to work in retail, for you or for Rivera. I have a thing now. I’m beyond working in retail.”

“The crisis line, I understand.”

“No, not the crisis line—yes, the crisis line, but there’s something else. Look, I’ve always had an empty place in my life that I’ve alternatively tried to fill with food and penises, but now I have something. Mike, the guy who used to be you, that guy you look like, he’s calling me. He’s calling me from the bridge—from beyond the grave. Just me, only me.”

“Wow,” Charlie said. “Like, now? Since—I mean—after he’s dead?”

“Yesterday,” Lily said. “From one of the hardwired lines on the Golden Gate.”

“Wow,” Charlie said.

“Yeah,” Lily said.

“How’s he doing?”

“Kind of hard to say. He sounds happy, but a little freaked out that he’ll be accused of boning a nun.”

“Hey, that’s consensual. And she’s not really a nun anymore.” He hung his head. “I miss her.”

“And it’s been how long since you’ve seen her?”

“Yesterday.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Asher. One day? M and I broke up months ago, and still when I think about him as I’m going to sleep, my heart sounds like someone falling down the stairs. One day?”

“But I just got her back, sort of.”

“One day? Mike told me the ghost on the bridge has been waiting for her lover for two hundred years. And there’s thousands of others, waiting. Who knows how long. Blow me, one day, Asher.”

“Wait, thousands?”

“What? Yeah. He said there are thousands of ghosts on the bridge.”

Charlie swiveled on his stool, looked at her head-on—up until then they’d been more or less talking at a Cinzano poster that had been left up from the pizza and jazz days. “Lily, when you looked at the Emperor’s ledger the other night, was Mike Sullivan’s name in it?”

“Yeah, he was one of the last. But I thought that was just because his soul wasn’t retrieved by one of you guys, like all the others.”

“Can you call him?”

“Of course I can’t call him. He calls through magic or something, there’s no number. But I’m the only who can hear him. That’s what I’m saying, Asher. I have to stay at the Crisis Center. That’s my special thing.”

“I’ve got to go call Audrey. I left my phone upstairs.”

“You massive wuss. Are you missing the fact that I am the only person who can speak to the dead, Asher?”

“Right, just you and the Emperor,” Charlie said. “Be right back.” He ran through the back room and up the stairs.

“It’s a big fucking deal!” she shouted after him, then settled into her well-practiced pout. Fuckstick, she thought. “Fuckstick!” she called after him, knowing he wouldn’t hear it, but saying it because it needed to be said.

“Lily!” called a voice from the stairwell.

Sophie ran, stumbled, hopped, tumbled, down the stairs the way she did, then climbed up on the bar stool next to Lily.

“I needs me my gin and juice,” she said.

“No gin,” said Lily.

“Just juice, then,” Sophie said.

Lily slid her Starbucks over to the kid, who took a sip, made a face, then slid it back.

“Where’s Daddy—I mean Mike?”

“You just missed him.”

More noise on the stairs, deliberate, heavy steps, lots of them, a tired horse descending.

Sophie leaned over and whispered wetly, “I’m not ’sposed to call my dad Daddy in front of anyone because it would be weird.”

“Well, we wouldn’t want it to be weird,” Lily said.

Mrs. Korjev came out of the back room, eclipsing Mrs. Ling, who was right behind her, but identifiable by the squeak of the little cart she always rolled her groceries in, despite having to fold and unfold it to get it up and down stairs, and up curbs, and on and off buses, or trains, about a thousand times every trip.

Lily greeted each of the grandmothers and they returned her greetings with the same distaste and distrust they had paid her since she was sixteen and had first come to work for Charlie Asher.

“Lily,” each of them had said in turn, slowly, as a greeting, just short of spitting in three languages after.

“We take Sophie to buy vegetable,” said Mrs. Korjev.

“Maybe snack,” said Mrs. Ling, defiantly, for no apparent reason.

“Both of you?” Lily asked.

Mrs. Ling stormed forward in teeny-tiny steps, stopping twice to uncatch her cart from the edge of the bar, but stormed right up in Lily’s face, well, in Lily’s general bosom area, but she was looking at her face. “You think we not know how to take care Sophie? We take care Sophie since baby. We know what good for her. Not Mike.”

“What is manny?” said Mrs. Korjev. “Is not real. Is imaginary. He is drug fiend. I see on Oprah.”

“Dlug fiend!” said Mrs. Ling. Then she said something in Cantonese, most of which Lily didn’t get except for “white devil,” which she’d learned a long time ago because it was how Mrs. Ling referred to anyone who wasn’t Chinese.

“Maybe you ladies should wait for Mike to come back. He shouldn’t be long.”

“We go,” said Mrs. Ling. “We go, four block to market on Stockton Street, four block home. Two hour, tops. You tell. We go.”

The two matrons herded Sophie through the back room and out the steel door into the ally, and Lily let them because, really, it was only four blocks, and it was the middle of the afternoon, so there was no danger from the Morrigan, and because she was a little afraid of both of them. “Bye, Lily,” Sophie called as the door closed behind them.

Lily’s phone buzzed. It was M. She contemplated sending it to voice mail for a half a second, then remembered that he hadn’t yet found out about her specialness.

“Speak,” she said.

“Lily, where are you?”

“I’m at the restaur— at Asher’s.”

“You okay?”

“I’m mysterious.”

“Good. Look, Asher said he’s sending his daughter out of town with his sister. I want you to see if you can go with them.”

“No. I have a job. I can’t—”

“Dammit, Lily. Would you—” She could hear the exhale, his effort to calm his voice. “I need to know you’re safe.”

“Chill, M. I’m fine. It’s broad daylight.”

“Doesn’t matter. It’s not the Morrigan. We’re talkin’ ’bout a whole different level of badass. This motherfucker can go anywhere, any time of day. You hear me, girl? You need to get gone, right now, and stay gone until this shit is over or everything is over. I need that from you.”

She slid off the bar stool, ran around the bar, into the back room, and opened the steel door into the alley. No one was out there.

“Uh, M, I’m going to have to call you back.”

23. Strange Attractors

Audrey was missing her Charlies. Big Charlie, because he was her companion, her lover, her best friend, and Wiggly Charlie because

in the absence of Big Charlie, he was good for a laugh, better company than a dog, and a little more self-maintaining. Sort of like a talkative cat who wasn’t a jerk, but could still be entertained by a piece of string.

Charlie had been in his new apartment in his old building for only a day and a half, and she was already trying to think of ways to alter their living arrangement so they could be together, yet both attend to their responsibilities. Her first instinct was to have Charlie and Sophie move into the Buddhist Center. After all, she carried Sophie’s mother’s soul; the kid would get over the fact that she wasn’t Jewish soon enough. But Charlie didn’t think it would be fair to Jane and Cassie, who had really thrown themselves into raising Sophie as their own, plus the fact that Charlie, who inhabited Mike Sullivan’s body, did not look like the Charlie the world knew as Sophie’s father and who the world thought to be dead. The simplest solution, although not the easiest for Audrey, would be for her to leave her position at the Buddhist Center and move into Charlie’s building with him and Sophie, which would make her, what? Was her clinging to her title as the venerable Amitabha Audrey Walker Rinpoche, of the Three Jewels Buddhist Center, a regression in consciousness? Was she clinging to a self that had no meaning. Was she, in fact, a hypocrite for not letting go of ego, of desire, of attachment, as she prescribed in her teaching?

The bright side was that it might all be moot if the imbalance that seemed to be wobbling through the greater Bay Area destroyed the world of light as they knew it, and they would all be cast together into a dark pandemonium of destruction and disorder. So she had that going for her. She decided that she would call Charlie to celebrate their liberation into doom, but as she was scrolling through her contacts looking for Mike Sullivan’s phone number, one of the center’s landlines rang. She pocketed her cell and picked up a handset in the kitchen. MIKE SULLIVAN showed on the screen.

“Hi, Charlie. I was just going to call you. You really need to change the name on your phone.”

“Audrey, the bridge, I think they’re on the bridge.”

“You may have to be more specific, sweetie.”

“Lily talked to Mike Sullivan, the dead one. His soul, or his ghost, whatever, is on the Golden Gate Bridge. He says there are thousands of other ghosts there.”

Audrey wasn’t sure how to react, wasn’t sure that she should really question Lily talking on a ghost phone, considering everyone’s history. “So if that’s true—”

“That could be where all the missing souls went. Lily said Mike Sullivan’s name was on the Emperor’s list. What if all those souls, going back hundreds of years, are on the bridge?”

“I suppose it makes as much sense as someone’s soul trapped in an ashtray or a ceramic frog, and we’ve seen that.”

“Or a CD,” Charlie said. His wife, Rachel’s, soul had moved into a CD when she died shortly after Sophie was born, then moved out of it into Audrey. He’d seen it happen.

“What do we do?” Audrey asked.

“I don’t know, that’s why I called you.”

There was a skittering noise in the next room, then the sound of something falling over, maybe a wastebasket. Wiggly Charlie, she thought. “Wait a second, Charlie. I heard something. Wiggly Charlie has been missing, it might be him. Hang on, while I check.”

“Sure.”

As she came out of the kitchen into the dining room she saw one of the Squirrel People on the other side of the room and something grabbed her ankle. As she tried to steady herself, something caught her other ankle and she fell forward, losing the handset as she went.

“Audrey?” Charlie’s voice over the phone.

“No, I’m okay,” she said. “Tripped. Just a second—”

Audrey twisted her head and saw one of the Squirrel People with a duck’s face and especially nimble paws pick up the handset and click it off. Then they were on her, all over her, the sound of duct tape ripping, tension around her ankles, tiny claws raking her, pulling her hands behind her back.

Mrs. Korjev led them up Stockton Street and into Chinatown, clearing the way through the crush of shoppers like a blocking-back, Sophie right behind her, and Mrs. Ling bringing up the rear, the wheels on her cart squeaking like distressed mice. At Jackson Street, Mrs. Korjev moved toward a luscious display of pears at the corner market, whose trays of fruit and vegetables ran along the sidewalk and around the corner for another quarter block on either side. Mrs. Ling went in low, did a quick hand-sweep that threw a competing grandmother off balance, and snagged the perfect pear before her opponent could do anything about it. Doing tai chi every morning in Washington Square Park to Motown songs with a hundred other oldsters might seem a waste of time at first glance, but when those slow, repetitive moves were cranked up to marketing intensity, only the grandma with the strongest kung fu would emerge with the perfect pear. Eat dragon dung, loser. Mrs. Ling dropped the pear into her cart and moved on to some bok choy of superior crispness.

Meanwhile Mrs. Korjev was quarrying carrots from a display, holding up one after another for Sophie’s consideration.

“No,” said Sophie.

“This one?”

“No, not big enough.”

The market owner stood at his scale, watching the systematic destruction of his carefully arranged carrot display with muted alarm, one eye twitching slightly.

“You want broccoli?” asked Mrs. Korjev.

“Is there orange broccoli?” Sophie asked.

“Green broccoli is good for you, make you strong, like bear.”

“But it’s not vegan.”

“We put on Cheez Whiz, make vegan for you.”

“Okay, broccoli,” said Sophie.

Sophie moved behind Mrs. Korjev, skipped around the corner, and yipped like a trod-upon Chihuahua.

“Hey, Shy Dookie.”

Instead of finding a new crowd of shoppers, Sophie stepped into a cleared space, a bubble of quiet, and in it stood the man in yellow.

“That’s not my name,” said Sophie.

“That’s my name for you,” said Lemon.

“Eat shit and die!” Sophie shouted.

Mrs. Korjev came around the corner like a mother bear, spotted Lemon, put her hand on Sophie’s shoulder.

“Sophie, is not nice to say. What you say to gentleman?”

“Pleeeeeease,” Sophie said, grinning at Lemon, unafraid.

“Know something, Shy Dookie, you ain’t the Big D no more. You ain’t shit.”

“You better be careful,” Sophie said.

Perplexed, Mrs. Korjev started to pull Sophie away. “You are nasty man,” she said to Lemon. “She is little girl, she not know better. You—you should know better.”

“Yeah?” said Lemon. He held out his hand to Mrs. Korjev, fingers spread, then closed it in front of her, like a starfish closing over a mollusk. Mrs. Korjev gasped, and collapsed on the spot. Sophie screamed, leaned on the fallen matron’s shoulder, and screamed some more. The crowd closed around them, their cell phones beeping for 911.

Sophie looked up to see the man in yellow strolling away. She made the same hand-closing gesture at him that he had just made to Mrs. Korjev. He looked back and said, “You got nothin’, Shy Dookie.” Despite the commotion and her own screaming, Sophie heard him as if his lips were pressed against her ear.

Rivera loaded shotgun shells into a riot gun, one by one, at the counter of his store. The shades were pulled down, the sign turned to CLOSED. He hadn’t opened the store, or even cleaned up since Cavuto had been killed here. There were still books shredded by gunfire and a bloodstain on the floor.

He had collected two soul vessels on his calendar, easy finds, and they were tucked safely into the trunk of the brown, unmarked Ford parked out front. The plan was to pick up Baptiste and his soul vessels, then ride shotgun, literally, as they went to Minty Fresh’s store, then Carrie Lang’s place, and picked up their inventory. They’d take them all to a vault storage facility that people used for storing fine art and furs in the Hayes Valley, near City Hall. Ultimately, Baptiste would photograph each item, and his wife would post them to sell on the Internet. They would retrieve them for shipping as they sold—those details were not really worked out—the key was to get all the soul vessels they controlled out of reach of the Morrigan and this mysterious man in the yellow Buick. Once the souls were secured, and Charlie Asher got his daughter out of town, they’d move on the Morrigan.

Rivera pushed the last shell into the shotgun, then slipped on a knife-resistant vest that he had borrowed from the county jail, feeling a little silly. He had two bullet-resistant vests of his own, but they weren’t going up against assailants with guns. His Beretta 9-mm was in a shoulder holster, and the smaller Glock on his ankle. As he put on a sport coat, one he’d had tailored especially for hiding tactical gear, his phone buzzed. Baptiste.

“Are you ready?” Rivera said by way of greeting.

“Hello,” said Baptiste. “Yes, I am ready, Inspector, I have all of the soul vessels, even the one stolen from the hospice the day you were there.”

“You found it? How?”

“Well, that is why I am calling. It—well—it is speaking French and walking around.”

Rivera, armed and armored for battle, his plan arranged to the minute, and steeled by anger and the desire to avenge his friend, felt unprepared for this conversation.

“I don’t think I follow,” said Rivera. “It’s, what, one of those talking dolls?”

“In a manner of speaking. I think she is what Audrey referred to at the meeting as a Squirrel Person. I can see her soul glowing in her chest, and it is Helen, she remembers me, but, well, she is knee-high and has the head of a cat. And hands”—whispering in the background—“the hands of a raccoon.”

“And you think it’s your Helen?”

“That’s what she says.”

“Well, you can’t sell her on the Internet.”

“No, that would be wrong. We are friends.”

“How did you find her?”

“She came to me, when we were leaving the meeting at the Buddhist Center. She forced her way into my car.”

“How did she force anything if she’s not even knee-high?”

“She is very insistent.”

“Audrey will know what to do. We’ll take Helen back to the Buddhist Center after we leave Carrie Lang’s pawnshop.”

“She doesn’t want to go there. She says they are all mad. She says we must help the cheese monster.”

“The cheese monster?”

“Yes, that is what she says. I think. Her French is—she is working on her French. The monster who wants cheese, she says.”

“Did you call Audrey?”

“No, I called you.”

“Well, find a way to get Helen to the car. Put her in a box or something. Even with another stop, we should be able to get the souls in storage before dark. I’ll call Audrey.”

“Very well, but she heard what you said and she says she will not get into a box.”

“Do your best,” said Rivera. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.” He disconnected then called the Buddhist Center. Voice mail. He couldn’t really have a uniform unit run by the Buddhist Center to check on her. He was pretty sure there wasn’t even a radio code for “cheese monster in distress.” If they ran out of daylight, then the Helen creature could just stay with Baptiste. Or Minty Fresh. Or Charlie Asher. Just not him. He was not going to go into mortal combat tomorrow worrying about a cat-headed lady talking in French about a cheese monster.

You gave us life, but you gave us no voices!” He waved his spork menacingly, only inches from her face.

Audrey lay on the floor in the parlor, her feet and hands duct-taped, surrounded by Squirrel People, many of whom she didn’t recognize except for the miniature hospital scrubs they wore. There were more than she had made, many more. Over a hundred.

“What’s the matter with you, Bob? If you needed supplies, all you had to do was ask.”

“Ha!” said Bob. “Don’t call me Bob. That is my slave name. I now remember my name from before, when I was a man. I am Theeb the Wise!”

“Theeb! Theeb! Theeb!” the People chanted.

“Hey, you guys can talk,” Audrey said. She felt she really should have been more frightened, but being menaced with a spork by a fourteen-inch-tall megalomaniac in a beefeater’s uniform seemed too absurd to be frightening. Especially when she had collected and sewn his parts together herself. “What did you do?”

“We have collected our bodies from markets across the city, parts from Chinatown, from animals who died in the road, from trash bins. We have taken these unwanted parts, and we have made new People. We have stolen the souls from the Death Merchants and with the Book of the Dead we have given them voices.”

“I didn’t know how to do that when I made them,” said Audrey. She really felt quite bad about it. She’d learned as she’d gone along. Bob and Wiggly Charlie had really been the finest examples of her craft, although there had been some mistakes along the way.

“You have trapped us in these horrible meat creatures, with no voices, with no genitals, except for him.” Two Squirrel People, mostly lizard, pulled Wiggly Charlie through the crowd. His little arms were taped at his sides, his feet bound together, and his enormous willy dragged across the rug.

“Need a cheez,” said Wiggly Charlie.

“Hi, W.C.,” Audrey said. “I’m so sorry.”

“What did you do to him?” asked Bob. “He seems, well, he’s kind of goofy.”

“Head injury,” said Audrey.

“Really, but his soul is gone.”

“He fell really hard. I really should make a helmet for him. I know, I’ll make helmets for you all.”

“No. You have done enough.”

“It’s no bother, really,” Audrey said. “Helmets for everyone!”

“Helmets for everyone! Helmets for everyone! Helmets for everyone!” the little People chanted.

“Good crowd,” Audrey said to Bob under her breath.

“There will be no helmets!” said Bob.

Various moans and murmurs of disappointment sounded around the room.

“That’s on you, buddy,” said Audrey. “Don’t blame me if you take a tumble and end up like him.”

“Need a cheez,” said Wiggly Charlie.

“No! You have made us miserable meat creatures and now you shall be a miserable meat creature. Seize her! Take her to the hall of souls.”

A score of Squirrel People lifted Audrey, which was very uncomfortable, but she didn’t struggle because most of them had sharp claws and she’d already learned that the more she struggled, the more scratched up she got. They carried her through the parlor, into the butler’s pantry, where one of them kicked the wastebasket out of the way while the rest shoved her head into an uncovered vent. Which was all that fit. Just her head. Her shoulders caught on the side.

“She won’t fit,” said a little voice.

“We can’t take her in through outside, she won’t fit though the hall of glass either,” said another voice.

“New plan!” said Theeb.

“New plan! New plan! New plan!” the People chanted.

The Morrigan waited, peering out of the storm sewer at the Buddhist Center until darkness fell, then they flowed across the street like miscast shadows, their edges fringed with the ragged pattern of swarming birds. Babd saw a window cracked open just an inch on the second floor and so flowed up the wall and through the crack. Macha and Nemain flowed around either side of the downstairs walls, looking for an opening, then, finding none, slipped under the back porch, down the passageway made of auto glass, then up through the vent and into the butler’s pantry, not even remotely aware that they were passing just a few yards from the Squirrel People’s cache of soul vessels.

In the parlor, Theeb the Wise stood between Audrey and Wiggly Charlie, who lay trussed up on the floor, and finished reading the p’howa of forceful projection to move Audrey’s soul into W.C.’s body. With a great flourish Theeb finished the reading, enunciating the Sanskrit perfectly with his newly grown lips, then loomed over Wiggly Charlie. “Now you know the suffering that is our lot.”

“Need a cheez,” said W.C.

“He still doesn’t have a soul,” said the duck-faced guy. “No glow.”

“It didn’t work,” said Theeb. He hopped to a spot in front of Audrey’s face. “What happened?”

“The p’howa of forceful projection moves the soul out of a soul vessel, into a new body, like yours. It won’t work from a living human to, uh, you guys.”

“Then from a dead human,” said Theeb.

Audrey said, “That won’t work either—”

“Guards!” Theeb called.

Four Squirrel People carrying weapons, came forward through the crowd.

“Theeb the Wise demands you stab her!” said Theeb, and in doing so, he stepped away from Audrey and next to Wiggly Charlie to give his guards stabbing room.

“No!” shouted Wiggly Charlie, and bit down on Theeb’s leg, engaging a majority of his seventy-eight needle-sharp teeth. Theeb squealed and tried to pull away, but instead ended up sawing his leg against W.C.’s teeth.

The People all moved away from the calamity in the middle of the parlor, those with voices crying out in distress. A lizard-headed musketeer started to scamper up the big open staircase, only to be met by Babd, who was oozing down the staircase, claws first. She caught the musketeer, tore him in half, and bit into the red light of his soul, her head and talons taking on dimension as she fed.

Macha and Nemain slid out of the butler’s pantry, Macha across the ceiling, Nemain across the floor.

“Run!” Audrey screamed. “All of you, run!”

Nemain impaled two of the People on her claws and they screeched piteously as she bit into one’s torso, and the other squirmed on her talon, the light of its soul dimming in an instant. Macha dropped from the ceiling like an inky blanket and fell upon a half dozen of the People, gathering them in a death embrace, crushing them. Bones cracked, splintered, four souls went dark. Macha stood full form in the middle of the parlor, holding one of the People in each hand, gore dripping down her face and chest.

The People scattered, running for every exit, through the dining room, crowding the vent in the butler’s pantry, some scrambling up the stairs, a few skittering through the foyer and trying to get to the front doorknob. Theeb struggled to free himself from Wiggly Charlie’s jaws. Nemain stepped by Wiggly Charlie, and Theeb stuck her in the ankle with his spork.

“Fuck! Ouch!” She kicked Theeb, who was ripped out of W.C.’s mouth and went flying into the butler’s pantry. Wiggly Charlie went spinning across the floor the other way. One of the guards, an iguana-headed fellow in green scrubs brandishing a screwdriver, charged her, and Nemain impaled him in the chest on a single claw and lifted him to her eye level. She turned him in the air, as if she was examining a particularly fascinating hors d’oeuvre. She looked down at Audrey. “Did you make these? They’re delicious.” Nemain closed her eyes, and tilted her head back in ecstasy as the light pumped out of the guard’s soul —absorbed through her claw as if she was filling a syringe.

Across the room, Macha slung the lifeless body of a squirrel ballerina against the wall, then reached for Wiggly Charlie, saw there was no soul light in him, and tossed him aside. She dropped to all fours and crawled up to Audrey until their faces were nearly touching. Audrey squirmed to move away, wiggled a few feet back before encountering a chair leg, her breath coming in little yips, as if each breath had to resist turning into a scream.

Macha said: “I don’t know whether to take your head, or just open your veins and watch your life drain out on the floor.”

“Oh, you have to take her head,” said Nemain, now standing over them both.

“I vote head,” said Babd, moving up behind Nemain, blood dripping from her talons.

“There you have it,” said Macha. She scissored her claws in front of Audrey’s face.

“Hurry,” said Nemain. “All the souls are getting away.”

Macha snarled, reared back. Audrey screamed, tried to tuck her face into her knees.

“That will be enough, ladies,” came a voice from the foyer. They stopped. Lemon filled the parlor doorway. “Go catch you some critters, ladies. I’ma have me a chat with the venerable Rinpoche Audrey.”

24. Battle

It was 7 P.M. and Charlie Asher had been at St. Francis Hospital for two hours, with no word of how Mrs. Korjev was doing, if the soul vessels had been safely moved, or what was going on with Audrey. He had called everyone, and no one had picked up. He suspected either they didn’t remember he was using Mike Sullivan’s phone, or someone was fucking with him. Strangely enough, despite having jettisoned the body that carried his original, beta-male DNA, he still had the personality of a beta, and its built-in, double-edged imagination, which, in addition to helping him anticipate and avoid danger, engendered a suspicion that someone, usually someone unknown and cleverly wicked, was fucking with him. Possibly, and even probably in this case, the mobile phone people.

Fortunately the hospital cafeteria had macaroni and cheese, so he was able to feed Sophie (their other vegan selection being Wood and Leaves with Suffering). Now she was in the waiting room, sleeping next to Lily in one of the vinyl padded chairs designed so you wouldn’t sleep in them. She’d refused to go home with only Lily, but if he could reach Jane and Cassie, maybe he could get her out of here without waking her. Finally, a text buzzed into his phone from Jane. We’re on our way.

He walked over and slumped in the chair next to Lily.

“Something like this happens,” he said, “you realize you don’t really even know the people you know. She’s lived in my building for ten years. She’s helped me with Sophie since she was a baby. There are things I should have told her. There were things I wanted to ask her.”

Lily nodded, knowingly. “Like why she never had that thing taken off her lip?”

“No. Important things. Things so she’d know that she was important to me, to my family. Now…”

“You couldn’t have known.”

“I did know,” said Charlie. “And so did you. Which is why you should have stopped them from going out.”

“This is my fault?”

“No, but I’d prefer it if it were.”

“Fine. It’s on me.”

“You should never pass up an opportunity to be kind. You should never not thank someone. You should never not say something nice when you think it.”

“I don’t.”

“Okay, then.”

“You done?”

“I suppose so.” He slumped down farther in the chair. “You hear from Minty?”

“Not yet. But…” She nodded through the double-glass door, which Minty Fresh was approaching. “Tell him I was badass.”

“You were afraid to confront two old ladies.”

“Okay, tell him I was helpful.”

She had been helpful, in a way, in that she had broken into Mrs. Korjev’s apartment and found her matron’s address book so Charlie could call her sons, one who lived in Seattle, the other in Los Angeles.

Minty Fresh wore a black leather car coat with his usual ensemble of shades of green, but Rivera was wearing an ill-fitting tweed sport coat.

Charlie stood to meet them.

“The old lady okay?” said Minty Fresh.

“We don’t know. It was her heart,” said Charlie.

“But she’s hanging on?”

“So far. They won’t really talk to us—me—since I barely know her, officially. Maybe when Jane gets here.”

“Oh, right. You know that Chinese lady from your building is out on the front stoop. What’s she doing out there?”

“Pacing. They won’t let her bring her cart in and she won’t leave it.”

“Well, leave it in your car.”

“We came in a cab. Followed the ambulance.”

Minty Fresh shrugged.

Rivera said, “I can have a uniform unit take her home.”

“She won’t go,” said Charlie.

Minty looked to Lily.

“Why are you still here?”

Lily tilted her head toward the sleeping Sophie, saying, more or less, because of the kid, “I’m not going to leave town, M. Even if Jane and Cassie go. I have work tomorrow. I’m going to be on those lines if Mike calls in from the bridge.”

Minty Fresh tapped out three beats with his size sixteens, a habit he’d acquired from arguing with Lily over the last year. “Well, at least go to your mother’s place. Stay there tonight. There’s no way Lemon will know to look for you there, even if he’s been watching you.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” said Charlie. “Lemon? This man in yellow that Sophie has been talking about is called Lemon?”

Minty Fresh glanced around the waiting room, as if there might be some obvious explanation written on one of the pieces of innocuous motel art. “Well, yeah, that’s sort of a shorthand I made up, you know.” To Lily, he said, “Anyway, will you at least stay at your mother’s house and take a cab to work? Please.”

Looking at Rivera, Charlie said, “Would you guys run by the Buddhist Center and check on Audrey. I was on the phone when all this happened. We got disconnected and I haven’t been able to get hold of her.”

“We will,” said Rivera.

Charlie held out a key. “This is for the front door.”

Minty Fresh took it and turned on a heel. “We’ll call you in ten minutes.”

“Thanks,” Charlie said, and watched them go. He sat on the other side of Sophie and stroked her hair as she slept.

“He loves you, you know,” he said to Lily.

“Not going to discuss this with you.”

“Okay.”

They passed the next few minutes by not talking and not looking at people who were trying not to look at them, except for those who looked at Sophie, sleeping, and smiled. Charlie leafed through some magazines to distract himself, only to find that he was made more anxious by wondering what kind of sociopathic fuck-weasel would do all the puzzles in Highlights in pen. These monsters walk among us, he thought.

His phone buzzed. “She’s fine,” said Rivera.

“How is she fine? Why didn’t she call?”

“She said she dropped her phone and it broke and she didn’t have your new number written down anywhere. She left a message on your sister’s landline. She’s in the car with us. You want to talk to her?”

“Yes! Well, yes!”

“Hi, Charlie,” Audrey said. “Sorry. There was a little bit of a meltdown with the Squirrel People. Anyway, the inspector and Mr. Fresh are going to take me to your place, if that’s okay.”

“Sure.” He looked at Lily, mouthed, She’s okay. “Of course that’s okay, but I’ll be here awhile. Mrs. Korjev’s son is flying up from Los Angeles. We still haven’t heard on her condition other than she’s still critical.”

“I hope she’ll be okay. I have W.C. with me. He’s—well—the Squirrel People were mean to him.”

“Okay. I think there’s some mozzarella sticks in the fridge. I’ll be home as soon as I can. I was really hoping we could spend tonight together, since, you know, we may not get any more after tomorrow.”

“How could you say that? Don’t say that? You guys—” There was a muffled rustling on the line that sounded like she was holding the phone against her chest as she spoke to whoever was in the car.

A doctor came through the double doors in scrubs, head down, looking very serious. He headed right for Charlie, who dropped his phone in his lap.

Jane and Cassie parked in the emergency-only lane at the hospital. Jane stayed with the car while Cassie snuck into the waiting room to retrieve the sleeping Sophie, who hung in her arms like a snoring rag doll. Cassie emerged from the double doors just as Audrey was climbing out of Rivera’s unmarked police car, with a cat carrier containing Wiggly Charlie. Jane jumped out and herded Mrs. Ling down from the landing into the backseat of the car. Mrs. Ling’s cart stubbornly refused to fold up, so Jane chucked Wiggly Charlie’s cat carrier into the cart and fitted it into the backseat between Audrey and Mrs. Ling.

The same sort of stealth fire drill happened when they were bringing Sophie back to the apartment. Jane let Audrey into Charlie’s new apartment and Cassie carried the sleeping Sophie into their apartment, leaving Mrs. Ling to fend for herself. When the elevator cleared, Mrs. Ling looked into her cart to see the cat carrier. She wheeled it to her apartment on the third floor, then unzipped the cat carrier just far enough to peek inside, and smiled for the first time since her friend had fallen down.

She had cooked a creature almost exactly like this one before, when one of the early Squirrel People who fancied himself an assassin broke into the building, only to find himself in Mrs. Ling’s soup pot. Duck in Pants, she had called the dish. This one would make a nice soup that she could take to Mrs. Korjev at the hospital. She went to the kitchen and filled her blackened soup pot with water and turned on the flame.

“Need a cheez,” said Wiggly Charlie from his carrier.

Rivera slammed two five-hour energy drinks as an act of faith. Not the faith of his father, which he now looked upon as quaint ritual, but faith in his own anger, because if he looked at the situation rationally, five hours was probably about four and a half hours longer than his current life expectancy. He was exhausted, having driven all over town through most of the night doing what he had come to think of as the “To-Do List of the Dead,” but now dawn was breaking and he and Minty Fresh were pulling into the concrete channel where the old train tracks cut into the knoll at Fort Mason.

“Back in,” said Minty Fresh.

Rivera flipped a Y-turn and backed the brown Ford into the channel until they were about twenty-five yards from the big steel doors that led into the tunnel, then stopped, popped the trunk, and got out. Minty Fresh unfolded out of his side of the car and met Rivera at the back; Minty in green leather trousers and black trainers, Rivera in his oversized sport coat, jeans, and black nylon tactical boots.

Rivera pulled two folding “Men Working” barricades out of the trunk and handed one to Minty Fresh. They set them up in front of the car and turned on the flashers.

“I told dispatch that animal control was going to be using some charges to chase rats and ground squirrels out of the tunnel, so if they get any calls for people hearing gunfire, they have an explanation.”

“They believed that?”

“They love having an answer.”

They walked back to the trunk.

“You got bolt cutters?” asked Minty Fresh, shooting a glance over his shoulder toward the steel doors.

“Yeah, but I think we can probably climb over. They’re what, eight feet tall? I’m not that old.”

“I ain’t worried about getting in, but if shit go sideways, I sure don’t want to have to get over those motherfuckers in a hurry getting out.”

Rivera ticked off a point well-made in the air, pulled the bolt cutters from the trunk, and leaned them against the bumper. He handed Minty Fresh a light flak vest. “Blade-resistant,” he said. “Prison guards wear them. Should fit, just may not cover you all the way down.”

Minty Fresh shrugged off his leather coat and the double shoulder holsters with the massive Desert Eagle pistols. He put on the vest.

“Turn,” Rivera said. “Lift your arms.” The Mint One did as instructed and Rivera cinched the vest up tight on him. Minty put on his shoulder holsters, buckled them down, then his coat. Rivera held up a riot helmet. “I guessed at the size.”

Minty Fresh looked at the helmet like it was a foul dead thing. “Yeah, I ain’t wearing that.”

“It’s Kevlar. Lights and goggles. You said one of them flings venom from her claws.”

Minty Fresh pulled a pair of wraparound sunglasses from the breast pocket of his coat, flicked them open, and put them on.

“Going to be dark in there.”

“I have excellent night vision.”

“Suit yourself,” said Rivera. He put on his own helmet and pulled down the goggles.

Rivera handed Minty some orange foam earplugs. “You’re going to want these.”

“I’ll be all right.”

Rivera grinned, looking—in all the tactical gear—like a victorious soldier in the tooth-whitening wars. He reached into the trunk and pulled back the flap on a nylon satchel, revealing a row of grenades clipped into elastic straps. “Flash bangs. Trust me, you’re going to want earplugs.”

Minty smiled. “We going to throw grenades in the park and 911 going to tell people we’re animal control?”

“Aren’t we?”

Minty held out his palm and Rivera dropped the earplugs. Rivera handed him a riot shotgun with a pistol grip, a laser sight on the top, and a flashlight slung under the barrel. “You ever use one of these?”

“I have.”

“Semiautomatic, just click off the safety and pull the trigger. I have double-ought buckshot in them. They’ll tear the hell out of whatever they hit, but they’re not Magnum loads, so they’ll kick less, and if you have to shoot quickly you’ll still be able to aim. You have nine shots with one in the chamber, five each extra on the elastic on the stock, four on the forestock.” He pulled a box of shells from the trunk. “You want some extras for your jacket pocket?”

Minty Fresh laughed. “No, Inspector, I think eighteen shots and our handguns are either going to do the trick or we gonna get done.”

Rivera nodded and shrugged off his sport coat, revealing the Beretta slung in a shoulder holster under his left arm, two extra clips under his right. He was checking for the tenth time that each was loaded when he heard gravel crunching and a silver-blue Honda pulled up in front of his Ford. He checked his watch.

“I thought you told him seven, it’s barely six-fifteen.”

“I did,” said Fresh.

Charlie Asher climbed out of Audrey’s Honda and stood by the door. “You guys are ready already?” He wore a leather jacket and was carrying a black cane with a silver handle, but otherwise he looked like Mike Sullivan out to buy a paper.

“How’s the old lady?” asked Rivera.

“She’s stable. Heart attack. Her son is there.”

“But alive,” said Rivera. He looked at Minty Fresh.

“That’s good,” said Minty, meaning more than it was good that she was alive, it was good that Lemon had attacked her and she’d managed to survive it. It meant Lemon was vulnerable.

“Where’s the Emperor?” Charlie asked.

“Jail,” said Rivera.

“Really?”

“Just until this is over. Actually I had them lock him in a cage at the animal shelter so his men could stay with him. They owed me a favor.”

Charlie joined them at the back of the Ford. “My motocross leathers got all cut up when I—when Mike jumped off the bridge, so I only have this jacket. Should be okay, right?”

“Yeah, you ain’t going to need them,” said Minty Fresh.

“Go home to your daughter, Charlie,” Rivera said.

“What are you talking about? This is my battle. I’m not a afraid of them. I’ve done this before.”

“We know,” said Rivera. “That’s not even the issue. You have to go back to Audrey and your daughter and your sister because you have them to go back to.”

“We don’t,” said Minty Fresh.

“I have guns now. Look at these bad boys,” Charlie said, flexing his biceps. “I didn’t have these before.”

“Have you ever been to the animal shelter, Charlie?” Rivera said. “I could show you around.”

“Go home, Charlie,” said Minty Fresh. “I didn’t go to all that trouble to bring you back to life so you could get killed again. If something happen to me, you look out for Lily, you hear?”

“You know I will.” Charlie slumped, knowing he was defeated. They had decided this long before now. If he hadn’t shown up early, it would all be over by now. And they had a point. He had charged into battle against the Morrigan once before, and Sophie had lost her daddy for a year. He couldn’t do that to her again.

“Well, at least take this with you.” Charlie held out the cane. “It’s my sword cane.”

“We look like we need more weapons?”

“It was my soul vessel — where my soul went before Audrey put it into that little body. It might be good luck or something.”

“Didn’t you have this with you when you got killed?” the Mint One asked.

“Kind of.”

Minty took the cane from him and tucked it into his belt. “Thank you.”

“Give a brother a pound?” Charlie held out his fist to receive a pound. The Mint One left him hanging.

“Don’t do that,” said Minty.

“Sorry.” Charlie turned to Rivera, started to go in for a hug, which Rivera intercepted and turned into a handshake. “Something happens, you can have my suits,” he said.

“Nothing’s going to happen,” said Charlie.

Rivera smiled. “If you’re going to stay out here, tell anyone who comes up that we’re animal control and they should move along because of the chemicals.”

“What chemicals?”

“The dangerous imaginary ones,” he said. Rivera looked to Minty Fresh. “You ready?”

Rivera started for the doors, Minty Fresh followed, the bolt cutters in one hand, the shotgun in the other.

Minty Fresh said, “Are you absolutely sure you want to do this? Seems like maybe it would make more sense to call in a SWAT team or Special Forces.”

“That won’t work, isn’t Special Forces where everyone gets a hug?” Charlie called.

“That’s the Special Olympics,” Rivera said over his shoulder. To Minty he said, “How are you going to explain this, the Morrigan?”

“Just so we’re clear, then,” said the Mint One, “we’re only doing this because we want to avoid an awkward explanation to other police, right?”

Rivera paused. “No. We’re doing this because they murdered my partner and I don’t think they’re going to come along quietly if I try to arrest them. They’re going to come for us, eventually, and if we wait, it will be on their terms. Now is better.”

“You don’t never be lyin’,” said Minty Fresh. He stopped at the doors and leaned the shotgun against the concrete wall. “Do you smell something burning?

“Oh, hell,” said Rivera. He cringed and braced himself.

“AIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!” called the banshee.

Minty Fresh dropped the bolt cutters, snatched up his shotgun, and brought the sight down on the sooty wraith.

“Don’t shoot her, don’t shoot her, don’t shoot her.” Rivera stepped away from the banshee and pushed down the barrel of Minty Fresh’s shotgun.

“What do you think you’re doing, ya ninny?” said the banshee. “Ya can’t go in there.”

“We have to,” said Rivera.

“I tried to warn your great fat friend, and ya know how that turned out. And the harpies are even stronger now than they were then.”

“I know. Thank you,” said Rivera. “But we have to do this.”

“Fine. I’ll nae sing at your funeral, you bloody loony.” The stun gun crackled in the air and she was gone.

“She thinks it’s a box of lightning,” Rivera explained. “She thinks it adds drama to her entrances and exits.”

“Right, ’cause what the bitch need is more drama.”

Because the Morrigan were goddesses of war, they were attracted to the sound of war drums. So when they first rose in the modern world, a pocket of the Underworld opened under the rumbling boom they followed. As it turned out, they had entered the world under a bowling alley, and it was there that they absorbed the dialect of English that they now spoke.

“This sucks,” said Babd. “I don’t know why we have to stay down here now.” She was reclining in the bucket of a skip-loader, methodically licking the last remnants of some Squirrel Person from her claws.

They were all strong, and lithe, and they shimmered in the dim light of the tunnel like swaths of starry night. Macha leaned against the tunnel wall and preened her breast with her claws, retracted to the length of a cat’s claws.

“We can go into the light,” said Nemain, who was crouched over a wolf spider, dripping venom from her talon as the creature tried to escape, then blocking its path with another sizzling drop as it bolted the other way. “What does Yama know?”

They had flown in their raven forms to the tunnel while it was still dark. Bloated with the power of new souls, moving again as shadows was beyond them, at least for a while.

“We could find the rest of the soul stealers,” said Babd. “Take their souls. Kill them.”

“Yama says if we go into the light we’ll attract the attention of humans,” said Nemain.

“I thought that was the point,” said Macha. “Have our names on their breath as they die. Have them cower when a raven passes over them.”

“Why can’t we just kill everybody?” said Babt, pouting.

An inhuman shriek sounded from the far end of the tunnel.

Nemain impaled the spider she’d been torturing with her talon and stood. “Did you hear that?”

Babd climbed out of the skip-loader basket, looked down the tunnel around the column of heavy machinery. “There’s too much light. Someone’s moving down there.”

“Snacks,” said Macha, grinning in anticipation, her fangs showing against her lower lips.

Something clattered against the wall on Macha’s left and fell at her feet, it looked like a green soup can. Another object rattled and bounced down the other side of the tractor and settled a few feet from Babd.

The flash bangs exploded. Deafening concussion. Blinding light. Babd was thrown back into the bucket of the skip-loader. Macha staggered, spun, bouncing off the wall, her arms up by her ears as she willed them not to turn into wings to flee—not in the tunnel.

Babd shrieked, her most ferocious battle cry, the call that had made warriors soil themselves and cower in terror on the battlefield as their enemies harvested their heads. She was answered with a flash and a shot and her left arm was shredded. Another shot, her foot blown out from under her.

“You fuckers!” Her scream resonated in the metal of the machines.

On the opposite side of the tunnel Macha fell into a crouch, having deduced where the attack was coming from. A light and a red dot panned up the side of the tunnel, settled on her as she dove and the projectiles took her full in the side, rolling her over in the air to land against the bucket of the skip-loader.

Nemain fell between the unused train tracks. Light and lasers and explosive fire were blazing down either side of the tractor in front of her. She watched as parts of her sisters were shaken and shredded with impact. Flares smelling of sulfur came bouncing down the tunnel and projected shadows of her sisters’ torment across the ceiling. She scuttled forward under the tractor, rolled onto her back, pulled herself up onto the driveshaft, and hung there, perhaps a foot off the ground, as the conflagration raged on either side of her. Fear was foreign to her—in a thousand years on and over the battlefields of the North she’d never had to defend herself. It was war, someone was going to die and she was Death; it had always been win-win.

The roar of gunfire paused. Human footfalls, the hiss of the burning flares, a mechanical clicking noise. Light beams bouncing in the sulfur smoke.

“Anything?” A man’s voice.

“Something on my side headed away—further down the tunnel.”

“One here, too. The tunnel is walled up at the other end, heavy wooden slats, into Fort Mason parking lot. Reloading.” Click. Click. Click.

Then she saw them, human legs moving up the tunnel, one man on either side of her, the one on her right closer. Take down one and then make a dash after Macha and Babd.

The one on the right, then, in the green leather. She unsheathed her claws on that side to their full length. Venom dripped and softly sizzled on a steel rail below…

Minty Fresh was trying to keep the light on the shotgun pointed down the tunnel as he pushed fresh shells into the tubular magazine, which made his grip on the gun precarious at best. When the Morrigan’s claws struck his calf, he lost his grip on the shotgun and fumbled it away, the light bouncing around the tunnel like an epileptic Tinker Bell.

He pulled away from the pain and his feet were yanked out from under him. He landed hard on his side, his breath knocked out, and he felt himself being yanked under the tractor. With one hand he caught a piece of metal that protruded from the front wheel of the tractor, a steering bar, perhaps, while he swung a fist at his attacker, hitting nothing.

Rivera shouting. White pain in his leg. Frantic digging in his coat with his free hand for one of the Desert Eagles. He touched one, was yanked, lost orientation, reached again. His free hand whipped around, settled on something round—at first he thought another piece of the tractor—but it was Charlie Asher’s sword cane. He pulled it free from the scabbard and swung in the direction of his attacker as hard as he could.

A screech, not Rivera. The grip on his calf gone, he fell slack on the train tracks. A shotgun firing, a figure, illuminated by the highway flares, rolling out from under the tractor, awkwardly scrambling to her feet. Another shotgun blast and she was spun around, fell, and scuttled off into the dark screeching.

“You okay?” asked Rivera, his face appearing by a wheel on the opposite side of the tractor.

“Yeah. The fuck?” Now, on the ground by his leg, he saw the severed claw of the Morrigan twitching, evaporating into a feathery vapor spewing from the severed wrist until, in a few seconds, it was gone. “She got my leg.”

Rivera ran around the front of the tractor, crouched beside the Mint One. He pulled a flashlight out of his vest, played it over Minty Fresh, set it on the ground pointing at his leg. The blood looked like tar. Rivera took off his belt and wrapped it around Minty’s leg just above the knee, tightened it down, putting his foot on it for the tension. “Hold this. Tight.” He handed the free end of the belt to Minty Fresh.

“Go get them,” Fresh said.

Rivera shook his head, dug his phone out of his jacket pocket, checked the signal. “Fuck. I’m going to have to go back out to get a signal and call help.”

Rivera helped Minty Fresh sit up against the tractor wheel, then took the end of his belt from the big man and tied it off. He picked up his own shotgun and handed it to Minty. “Two still in it, the extras still on the stock.”

“Yeah, reloading might have been my mistake,” said Minty.

“I’ll be back.”

Rivera picked up his flashlight and stood. As soon as the light played back toward the entrance he saw the new, fitter Charlie Asher coming out of the darkness. “A really scary-looking woman in black rags told me you guys might need help,” Charlie said.

“Grab an arm,” Rivera said. “We need to get him out of here.” He looked down to see that Minty Fresh was unconscious.

25. The Death Card

Charlie hadn’t told Audrey he was going to attack the Morrigan—he hadn’t told her anyone was going to attack the Morrigan. The last she had heard about it, the attack was theoretical, Inspector Rivera blowing off steam, she’d thought.

Charlie had taken a taxi home from the hospital after Mrs. Korjev’s son had arrived from Los Angeles, and let himself into the new apartment, which still smelled of paint and cleaning products. He crawled into bed with Audrey and kissed her awake enough to tell her that Mrs. Korjev was stable, and for her to tell him that Sophie was sleeping in her own bed in the other apartment, but she hadn’t told him anything else.

They made love and she flinched once when he brushed against her ankle, which was raw from where she’d been duct-taped by the Squirrel People, but she’d passed the movement off as passion and she fell asleep in his arms, feeling safe for the first time in days. She had awakened when he rose at dawn, went right back to sleep when he kissed her on the temple and crept out of the apartment, leaving a note on the breakfast bar that said, Had to go out. Will call you in a couple of hours. Tell Sophie I love her. Love, Charlie. Not, Going to engage the powers of darkness, because that worked out so well the last time. Not, I’m a complete moron with no common sense and no consideration for the people who love me. No, just, Had to go out. So when he called her around seven and said he was headed to San Francisco General Hospital because that’s where the ambulance was taking Minty Fresh and he would pick her up outside in five minutes, well, she’d been a bit surprised, and a little angry.

When he pulled up out front in her Honda and she crawled in, she really wanted to shout at him—hug him first, then maybe hit him a bunch of times, which caused her years of training to kick in, and instead she took a long, slow breath and let it out over a count of ten. One did not become the caretaker for the forgotten chapters of the Book of Living and Dying by indulging in random freak-outs every time one encountered difficulty. So she only hit him once.

“Ouch! What’s that for?”

“Why didn’t you tell me what you were doing?”

“I didn’t want you to worry.”

She let that sit for a while. Were her reasons for not telling him about the massacre at the Buddhist Center any more pure? Wasn’t she just trying to keep him from being distressed? She had done so much wrong, with good intentions, but wrong nonetheless. She had done the right thing, not the easy thing, by not telling him. Probably. Maybe.

The man in yellow wasn’t like the other creatures. He might be dark, he might be of darkness, but wasn’t darkness necessary? Light, dark, male, female, yin, yang: balance. He’d convinced her as much after saving her from the Morrigan.

He’d righted an unbroken chair and pulled it over to where she lay bound on the floor, the remnants of shredded Squirrel People littered the room.

“Do you mind if I sit?” he asked. The absurdity of him asking her approval when she was trussed up on the carpet almost made her laugh.

“Please,” she said.

He tipped his hat as if spilling silky sax notes off the brim, then took five shuffling steps to get around from the back of the chair to the front, shaking a leg on every other step. He sat, leaned forward.

“How you doin’?” he said. He had a gold crown on an upper right bicuspid and he showed it to her with a smile.

“I’m tied up on the floor and I’ve almost been murdered twice in five minutes.”

“Well, the night is young,” he said, a little too much cheer in his voice.

She took a deep breath, let it out while reciting a Sanskrit chant in her mind. Right now, in this instant, she was fine.

He laughed, “I’m just fuckin’ with you. Ain’t nobody gonna hurt you, Red. You mind I call you Red? That whole ‘venerable Rinpoche’ jazz a bit of a mouthful.”

Strictly speaking, her hair wasn’t red, but auburn, but she nodded approval anyway. “And you are… Death?”

“That really more a title than a name. You probably wanna gonna call me Yama.”

“Yama?” She thought she’d been as surprised as she could be tonight. Apparently not. “Protector of Buddhism?”

“That’s right, but we not using titles, right? Now, Red, I cut you loose, you not gonna freak out and go all kung fu and shit on me, are you?”

“I’ll make tea,” she said.

He laughed, pulled a straight razor from his jacket pocket, and leaned over. “Hold still, now.” He cut the tape on her wrists, then handed her the razor so she could do her ankles herself. The handle of the razor was ivory or bone, yellowed with age. She cut the tape then folded the razor and handed it back to him. Careful not to step in anyone, she braced herself and ripped the remaining tape off her ankles and wrists. He cringed at the sound, in sympathy with her pain.

“You got somewhere else we can chat? Disorder in here harshing my mellow.”

She led him through the dining room into the kitchen.

“Your minions made that mess. Those were human souls?” She wasn’t afraid of him. She had come face-to-face with Death three times tonight already, including him, and she was unafraid.

“Well, that is true,” he said, pulling out a chair at the oak table. “But they weren’t the ones put them human souls in those little monsters, now, were they? They freed those souls to their natural course. They methods can be rough, but they do get the job done. Truth told, they ain’t my minions, but I do admire a strong, black woman.”

“They slaughtered them,” Audrey said.

“Slaughtered who, Red? The ladies can’t take a soul from a human. Mighta been a time, back in the day, but not now. Them things you made weren’t people, they was prisons. The ladies just busted them out.”

She was more shaken by that than by all the violence of the night. She had been wrong. Her intentions might have been pure, but her actions had not been. Had the Morrigan really freed the souls of the Squirrel People? She had seen them grow more solid, stronger, with each soul they devoured. She put on the kettle and went about the homey ritual of making tea. The fire on, she turned her back to the counter to face him.

“You’re right. Why didn’t you let them kill me?”

Lemon looked around, as if someone might be listening. “They no need for that. That’s not why I’m here.”

“They killed Inspector Cavuto.”

“Not my intention. You know how things get out of hand? They got out of hand that night. They was a long time down, they get a little drunk with being up here.”

“So they’re not here to bring up the darkness to cover the world and reign for a thousand years, like they said before.”

“Before? You mean when they with Orcus? That dumb motherfucker? Fuck no, that ain’t what I’m doing here. You tell soldiers what they need to hear to go to war. Bitches need a mission, not a goal. It’s my war.”

“War on who?”

He shrugged. “Not for me to say. I’m just fillin’ a need, puttin’ things in order. Ain’t no sides. Death don’t discriminate. I don’t judge. I don’t deny anyone. I don’t shun anybody. I accept everyone. Death be not proud, Red.” He shot his lapels, grinned. “Death be chic, baby, but not proud. I am loving-kindness. You think you know what life worth more than me? I speed these souls on to become one with all things. Y’all fucked things up. Y’all and all these motherfuckers selling souls in this city. You know that, Red. What you think call me up after a thousand years? This ain’t your first barbecue; you think this through, you’ll see I ain’t the one knocking things out of order, I’m the one putting them back. Y’all just need to stay out of my way.”

“Okay,” she said. There was a truth to what he said. A logic. The universe sought balance and the universe oscillated, and when it oscillated, between the beats of the heart of the universe, there rose the agent of change: chaos. Chaos sat at her table. “What kind of tea would you like?”

“You got any decaf? Caffeine make me jumpy.”

“Decaf green or decaf cinnamon spice?”

“Cinnamon spice sound nice.”

“So, you’re the Ghost Thief?”

“Thought we wasn’t using titles.”

“Why did you move the souls to the bridge, then?”

“The bridge? Yeah, the bridge. Well, you know, seems like a good place for safekeeping.”

She had believed him then, believed that he was putting things in order, but now, after finding out about Mrs. Korjev’s heart attack, which Sophie insisted had been brought on by the man in yellow, after Minty Fresh had fallen under the Morrigan, well… Yama hadn’t really explained why he couldn’t control the Morrigan. He hadn’t explained why establishing his new order involved so much destruction, and for some reason, she hadn’t questioned him. She’d felt strangely calm after talking to him, drinking tea at the kitchen table, at peace. But now, not so much.

Charlie parked in one of the hospital garages and they spent twenty minutes asking people where they might find a Mr. Fresh before Charlie’s phone buzzed with a text from Rivera directing them to intensive care.

Rivera had shed his tactical gear but was still wearing the ill-fitting sport coat.

“I tried to talk the doctor into giving him some antivenom but he wanted to know the species of snake.”

“Did you tell him ‘big’?” Charlie said.

“Yeah, he wanted more than ‘big.’ He probably passed out from blood loss or shock rather than the venom. The wound wasn’t as deep as we thought, but it nicked an artery. Lucky we got a tourniquet on him right away. He should be sewed up by now.”

“Did someone call Lily?” Audrey asked.

“Would you? Her number’s in my contacts.” Charlie handed her his phone and Audrey stepped outside of the waiting room.

As soon as Audrey was out of earshot, Rivera said, “I went back in.”

“What? Alone?” Charlie trying to whisper, but it was coming out louder than if he were talking in a normal voice. The few people sitting in the lobby looked up.

“They were gone. I went all the way to the other side of the tunnel. It’s closed off.”

“Do you think they are just gone, like before?” Charlie said. “Like when Sophie did whatever she did? Atomized them, I guess?”

“I don’t think so. Certainly the one that clawed Fresh wasn’t hurt very badly. We hit the other ones hard, though. I saw what happened. But they were really strong, a lot more than the one I shot in the alley when—you know.”

“I was mesmerized by her or something,” said Charlie, still embarrassed about the time he had let the Morrigan give a handjob in an alley off Broadway and Rivera had delivered nine rounds of lifesaving.9-mm cock-block. “And sad. I was weak and sad.”

“Doesn’t matter, Charlie. What I’m saying is they got out of that tunnel somehow, and there’s no way out except the entrance we came in, not even a maintenance passageway like in the BART tunnels. And they didn’t get by me.”

“Did you check for drainage grates? You know they were sliding in and out of the storm sewers, they don’t need much space when they’re—”

“There’s a Buick in the tunnel,” Rivera said. “A big, old, yellow Buick. All the way at the Fort Mason end, which is boarded up with four-inch-thick beams. So either this man in yellow moved twenty pieces of heavy equipment out of the tunnel, parked his car, then moved twenty pieces back in, or he has another way of getting in and out of that tunnel. A way I can’t see.”

Audrey came back through the glass double doors and joined them.

“Her mom is bringing her over now.”

“Oh, good, she’s not alone,” Charlie said. “Lily’s mom is nice. Kind of surprisingly.”

“You’re dead to her,” Audrey said.

“Why, what did I do to her?”

“No, I mean you need to remember that Charlie Asher is dead to her. She’s not going to recognize you in this body.”

“Oh, yeah. Right.”

A nurse came in from the ward side of the waiting room and everyone looked up. She headed right for Rivera. “Inspector, he’s awake and asking for you.” She looked apologetically at Audrey and Charlie. “I can only let the inspector in, or family. I’m sorry.”

“We’re family,” Charlie said.

The nurse looked at him, then at Audrey, and seemed as if she was trying to think of exactly how to answer without seeming horrible and racist, when Rivera said, “They are part of this investigation. I didn’t want to tell the doctor, but this was an assault. Mr. Sullivan is a herpetologist and Ms. Rinpoche is a sketch artist.”

The nurse appeared almost relieved, but did look for Audrey’s sketch pad. Audrey held up Charlie’s smartphone. “All digital now.”

“We gave him something for the pain,” said the nurse.

As the nurse led them into Minty’s room, which was behind a glass wall facing the nurses’ desk, Audrey whispered, “My last name isn’t Rinpoche, that’s a title.”

“You’re not a sketch artist either, are you?” Rivera whispered back. “I couldn’t remember your last name.”

Minty Fresh’s injured leg was bandaged and held in traction so his knee was at a right angle. His hospital bed was propped up about thirty degrees and his other leg jutted a foot and a half out into space. He smiled when they came in. His face was starting to go gray.

“This is some bullshit,” said the Mint One. “I’ma die and my foot is cold.”

Audrey tried to adjust his blanket, but with the one leg propped up she couldn’t make it work without uncovering him to the waist. She whipped off her sweater and wrapped it around his foot. “Until I can get the nurse to bring you another blanket.”

“Thanks,” said the big man.

“How you doing?” said Charlie.

“How was you doing when this happened to you?” Minty looked to Audrey. “Don’t you put me in one of those creepy puppet things like you did him, just let me go, you hear?”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Audrey said. She hugged his jutting foot. “I didn’t know. I would have warned you. I watched them get strong, so strong, with each of the Squirrel People they killed. It was so horrible. I didn’t know you were going to go after them. I didn’t know.”

“What are you talking about?”

So she told them about the attack on the Buddhist Center, about how the Morrigan had grown, taken form as they slaughtered the Squirrel People. She told them about Yama releasing her, saving her from the Morrigan, and what he had said about trying to establish the new order.

“He just let you go?” Charlie said.

“Who the fuck Yama?” said Minty.

“The man in yellow,” said Audrey. “He’s a Buddhist personification of Death. The legend was that he was a monk who was told if he meditated for fifty years, he would achieve enlightenment, so he went into a cave in the mountains, and he meditated for forty-nine years, three hundred and sixty-four days, and on the last day, some thieves came into the cave, leading a bull they had stolen, and they decapitated it, and when he asked to be spared, they decapitated him, too. He was reincarnated as Yama, a powerful demon-god, and he put the head of the bull on his own body and then killed the thieves and became the prime ruler over Death, the protector of Buddhism. He’s one of the demons we’re told to ignore when we are training to lead people through bardo, from life to death.”

“Yama, huh?” Minty Fresh said.

“Yes, I’m so sorry, I should have told you all.”

“That’s okay. How ’bout you let go my leg.”

Audrey had been hugging his calf and foot through the entire Yama story, now she was embarrassed as well as sorry.

“But you didn’t ignore him, right?” said Charlie.

“Honestly, I didn’t really remember him until now. Does that make sense?”

“It’s all right, Audrey,” Minty said. “He has some kind of gris-gris he put on people. Kid that works for me was all woo-woo with it, too, asking me about where my soul vessels went. I knew something was up with him. Motherfucker been sneaky since we was little.”

“Pardon?” said Charlie.

“Yama my cousin.”

“Wait,” said Audrey. “What?”

“He might be Yama now, but when I knew him, his name was Lemon, and he was my cousin.”

“Lemon Fresh?” asked Charlie. “So that isn’t a nickname you made up?”

Rivera turned aside and tried to hide his smile.

“Don’t you laugh,” said Minty. “Lemon was not an uncommon name in Louisiana in those days. And I’m dying here.”

“He said he’s just trying to establish a new order,” Audrey said, even more distressed now. “And that’s what we thought was happening. That’s part of the cycle, part of the wheel of life and death… Right?”

“Audrey,” Minty Fresh said, his eyelids fluttering a bit now. “I don’t want to rush y’all, but I probably got a limited time to live, so if you could just tell us—”

“I think I told him the lost souls are on the bridge,” Audrey said.

Minty Fresh looked from Charlie to Rivera back to Audrey. “Was anyone going to tell me?”

“I was going to,” said Charlie, “but I only found out yesterday afternoon and things have moved kind of fast since then. Were you going to tell us that the new menace to reality as we know it is your cousin?”

“Don’t sass me, Charlie, I’m dying.”

“You can’t keep playing the death card.”

“I don’t want to keep playing the death card. But the death card been played. Just let me go with a little dignity.” He closed his eyes, took a gasping breath.

“You mean instead of lying like a rug,” said Charlie.

One of Minty Fresh’s eyes popped open, his dignified death having been postponed by being called on his shit. “You know, Asher, just because you have biceps now doesn’t mean you can talk to me like that.”

“Your cousin?”

“He sent me the book, all right? He made me into a Death Merchant twenty some years ago, then he disappeared. Only reason I knew he was in town is he still driving that raggedy old Buick Roadmaster. I would spit but my mouth is dry.”

There was a squeeze bottle of water on the nightstand, Audrey held it for Minty Fresh to have a drink.

“Where my shades? Let me die with a touch of cool.”

Rivera took Minty Fresh’s sunglasses from his jacket pocket, helped fit them on the big man, then they all stood there for a minute, waiting.

“Anybody got any ’Trane on they phone?” asked Minty. “Some Miles?”

Sad shaking of heads.

“Figures,” said Minty Fresh. He lay back as if he was hearing the notes. They all listened to his breathing and watched the cardiac monitor’s jagged line.

The nurse came through the glass door and everyone stood a little straighter and tried to look a little more official, as if she couldn’t have seen them through the glass before she came in.

“Mr. Fresh?”

“What? What? What?” Minty Fresh said, lifting his head up. “It so dark. Why it so dark? Here I go. Here I come, Lemon, you bitch-ass motherfucker—”

“You have your sunglasses on,” said the nurse.

“Oh, yeah. Sorry.”

“Mr. Fresh, there’s a young woman out here who says she’s your priest.”

“Big titties? Dress like a vampire?”

“Well, I guess,” said the nurse, giving Rivera a nervous look. “She’s kind of dressed more like a Catholic schoolgirl.”

“Yeah, that my priest. Send her in.”

“So, some good pain meds?” Rivera said.

“Fine as frog fur,” said the Mint One. He offered Rivera a pound with his non-IV hand and Rivera returned it.

Charlie Asher frowned. Having never gotten a pound from the big man, he felt slighted.

“Let’s give them some privacy,” said Audrey. They passed Lily on the way out of the room, each giving her a pat on the shoulder.

In the lobby, among the other distressed and waiting, stood a slim woman in her forties with dark hair, wearing a sharp knit suit with military-style gold trim. Charlie recognized her as Lily’s mother, but unless you saw them both side by side without eye makeup (which was a condition in which Charlie had never seen Lily) and saw that they had the same wide, blue eyes, you’d have never guessed they were related. Charlie elbowed Rivera and whispered, “Lily’s mom, Mrs. Severo.”

Rivera showed one second of an “are you kidding me” look then gathered his composure and introduced himself to her.

“Inspector Rivera?” she said, shaking his hand. “I’m afraid to ask how you know my daughter.”

“I met her at Charlie Asher’s shop when she worked there.”

“Charlie Asher was a good man.”

“He was,” said Rivera.

“He was good for Lily. She was a wild child, but I think her job at Charlie’s store kept her grounded, at least some of the time. I work so much, it’s just been Lily and me—I’m not even sure she’s over Charlie’s passing; now this.”

Rivera could tell she was feeling responsible for her daughter’s pain and he wanted to tell her just how much this was not her fault. He wanted to put his arm around her and be a decent human being, but he wasn’t finding it easy, because this—the attack on Minty—was murder, and he had a protocol for dealing with the loved ones of the victim. It didn’t seem right.

“Mr. Fresh is a good guy.”

“I don’t know him. Never met him, of course. I worried he was older than her, but she really seems to care for him. I don’t want her to be alone. It sucks to be alone.”

“I know,” he said. “I was going to offer to be here for Lily if you needed to get to work, but I’m guessing you’ll be staying. Can I get you a cup of coffee?”

“That would be nice, Inspector.”

“Alphonse,” he said.

She nodded. “I’m Elizabeth. Liz.”

“Liz,” he repeated, smiled. “Liz, I’ve know Lily since she was sixteen,” Rivera said. “You had your work cut you for you. She was a spooky kid.”

“Oh, you have no idea,” she said.

“Maybe I do. What do you take in your coffee?”

He was about to head back out the glass doors into the hallway when he saw a familiar doctor walk up to the nurses’ desk, confer with the attending nurse, then look around until he caught Rivera’s eye. Rivera intercepted him at the desk. Dr. Hathaway, Rivera reminded himself.

“How are you doing Inspector?” asked the doctor.

“That depends,” said Rivera.

“I don’t think there’s anything we can do for him. We were going to move him to a quiet room where everyone could be with him, but honestly, I don’t think there’s time. His organs are shutting down and I’m surprised he’s even conscious, so if you need to ask him anything, I’d do it right now.”

“Actually, he’s a friend.”

“I’m sorry. Before—”

“It’s okay, Doctor.”

“Code blue, Doctor,” called the nurse. She ran around the desk and into the room where Minty lay.

Without a word the doctor turned and followed her in. Lily came stumbling out of the glass doors, makeup-blackened tears running down her face.

26. The Underworld

Under the San Francisco Bay, in a maintenance storage room just off a BART service tunnel, the Morrigan pooled among the heavy track-repair and debris-clearing tools. Every few minutes a train would go through the tunnel and they would dig what was left of their claws into the concrete to keep from being sucked out into the greater train tunnel.

“Close the door,” said Babd, “and that won’t keep happening.” It was almost completely dark in the room and their eyes looked like silver disks floating in ink.

“I can’t close the door,” said Nemain. “It’s big and rusty and I can’t pull it loose. I only have one hand.”

“We should go back through the sewers to that house with all the little soul puppets,” said Macha. “Get our strength back.”

“We could get the ones that escaped under the house where we couldn’t fit.”

“Well, we could fit now,” said Babd. She, like her sisters, had barely any dimension now; even her shadow form showed holes and tears from buckshot.

Nemain, who was the most solid of the three, had lost a hand, and as much as she stared at it and cursed at it, it wouldn’t grow back, even in a shadow form. “We should go someplace where there are no guns.”

“Or cars,” said Babd.

“Or Yama.”

“Why is it,” said Macha, “that every time we become strong enough to do something about Yama, someone shoots us up?”

“I feel used,” said Babd. “Do you feel used? I don’t know why we need him.”

“I say we go eat the soul puppets, then flay Yama right away,” said Nemain.

“Take his head,” said Macha, who was always keen on taking heads, it being her specialty.

“I’m in,” said Babd. “Let’s go.”

“Ladies,” came a deep voice out of the dark, which was strange, because they could all see in the dark, and they couldn’t see where the voice was coming from.

“Ladies,” said Lemon. Now he stood there, a palm out, an open flame burning on his palm, illuminating the room. “What are you doing in this shit hole?”

“They came into the other place with guns. Blowed us up,” said Macha.

“Look at us,” said Nemain.

“Don’t look at us,” said Babd.

“We need to go get the rest of the soul puppets, the ones that taste like ham.”

“No, we not going back there, ladies. But I know a place where you can scoop souls out the air like eatin’ cotton candy. Thousands of them. Y’all ain’t seen nothin’ like it. Why, I bet once you done there, you be able to rip souls right out of a human like the old days. Ain’t no gun or car can hurt you, then.”

“Where?” asked Macha.

“Why, when y’all are done, you’ll probably be able to bring the Underworld up anywhere y’all want. Maybe everywhere.”

“Where? Where? Where?” asked Nemain.

“What’s cotton candy?” asked Babd, who was the dimmest in a triad of very dark creatures.

“Well, I’ll show y’all,” said Lemon. “But we going to have wait until it’s dark out. They’s a lot of open ground to cover to get there.”

“Open a door into that place,” said Macha.

“I’ll get y’all close, but you can’t just wade in and scoop them all up. You nibble round the edges, maybe, and before anyone know what happen, they’s one soul in particular you gotta shred. You don’t get that one, you lose the rest.”

“Take us there,” said Nemain.

In the days when the Underworld was in flux with the light, and gods rose and fell like mushrooms in a damp forest, there came into being two brothers, Osiris and Set. Osiris, with his queen, Isis, rose to reign over the kingdom of light, and Set ruled over the dark, the Underworld, with his queen Nephthys, who was fine. Set was jealous of his brother’s land and worshippers, and plotted against him, while Osiris, radiant and self-assured, yearned for a taste of the dark world in Nephthys, and so he did tap that ass. From that union came a son, the dark, dog-headed god, Anubis. (As well as his jackal-headed brother Upuaut, who would be put in a basket and set adrift in the sea, to make his way unguided in a new land, but his is another story.*)

When Set learned of his wife’s affair, he murdered Osiris, and to assure that Osiris would never be reincarnated, Set cut the body into pieces and hid the pieces among the darkest, most distant corners of the Underworld. Isis was overcome with grief and searched in vain for her beloved. But the dutiful dog-headed god, Anubis, Osiris’s son in the Underworld, found the pieces of his father’s body and returned them to Isis. Anubis mummified his father’s body and Isis raised his spirit to rule over the people of the sun. For his service, Anubis was given the realm of the dead in the Underworld, and it was his lot to see that order was kept and justice done to the passing souls of man.

Set was left to seethe with jealousy and wait for chaos to come about, and with it, his opportunity to rise again to power over the kingdoms of light and darkness.

In the waiting area, Lily sobbed in her mother’s arms while Rivera, Charlie, and Audrey stood by feeling helpless. Audrey squeezed Charlie’s hand until it hurt, but he was actually grateful for the pain, because it took his mind off of everything else. Rivera stood aside, observing, until Lily’s mom looked over her daughter’s shoulder at him. He recognized that same helplessness in her eyes that he’d seen in the families of so many murder victims—and he touched her back, lightly, and for only a second, to let her know he was there, another human being: backup.

The medical crash team had pulled curtains across the glass in Minty Fresh’s room, but after twenty-two minutes the curtain whooshed aside and the doctor came through, paused a second at the desk, then turned to come through the double doors into the waiting room, the look on his face broadcasting what he was going to say: “There was nothing we could do.”

Before the doctor reached them, Charlie felt himself go light-headed; his vision tunneled down, went black, and he collapsed. The doctor helped Audrey catch him and lower him into a chair.

Asher, what the fuck you doing here?” said Minty Fresh.

Charlie looked around, saw literally nothing but the big man, standing perhaps ten feet away from him, wearing only a bedsheet.

“Where’s here?” asked Charlie.

The Mint One adjusted his sheet, which was too small for a man his size to wear as a toga, opting instead for a sarong/towel wraparound effect. He looked around. They might have been standing on a sheet of black glass under a starless night sky, except he could see Charlie and Charlie could see him, so technically, it wasn’t dark. When he rubbed his eyes and looked again he could see that they were inside a large stone chamber, lit with bronze oil lamps that jutted from the wall and threw long shadows up to a high, pointed ceiling. Across one wall and plane of the ceiling stretched the elongated shadow of a dog’s head with long pointed ears. Minty searched but couldn’t see the dog that was casting the shadow, yet there it was, a shadow thirty feet tall, and still reaching only halfway to the apex of the ceiling.

“I’m going to guess the Underworld,” said Minty Fresh.

“You’ve been here before?”

“I had it described to me once,” said Minty Fresh. “And you look like your old self.”

Charlie was his non-Mike Sullivan self, dressed in one of his Savile Row houndstooth suits.

“Oakland?” asked Charlie.

“Not Oakland,” came a voice that echoed through the chamber.

A circle of torches appeared; in its center, a tall, dog-headed man in an Egyptian kilt stood by a stone table on which stood a gold balance scale. In front of the table was a stone pit, perhaps five meters across; something down there was growling and snarling.

“You know who I am?” said the dog man.

“I do,” said Minty Fresh. “Anubis. A man I knew came here once, met you, told me about you.”

“He was my brother’s avatar on earth, you are mine.”

Anubis crouched, leaned forward, opened his eyes wide; the irises glowed deep gold.

“The eyes,” said Charlie. “Of course.”

Minty Fresh looked at Charlie. “Of course? This all makes sense to you?”

“Sure,” Charlie said. He inched forward until he could see into the pit. Thirty feet below, a creature the size of a hippo circled the floor, with the body of a lion and the jaws of a crocodile. The floor of the pit was littered with bleached human bones; Charlie could make out skulls here and there in the orange light of the oil lamps. He backed away from the edge until he stood next to Minty again. “Maybe not.”

“You will go back,” said Anubis. “You will be my avatar on earth and you will put things in order again. Do you understand?”

“I’m not good at taking orders,” said Minty Fresh.

The dog-headed god seemed disturbed at the answer. “You’re not afraid, then?”

“Of what? I’m dead already, aren’t I?”

“You are,” said Anubis.

“Then no, I’m not afraid.”

“Good. And you?” Anubis nodded to Charlie.

“I’m fine,” said Charlie. “Dogs love me.”

Minty Fresh’s gaze fell on Charlie like it had fallen off a table. “Really?”

“Sorry.” Charlie looked at his shoes.

“The weapons of men will not help you. Your enemies are of the realm of the dead. You cannot kill them. You shall have my gifts to meet your adversary,” said Anubis. “Defeat him, restore balance, order. You are mine and I am you. Now return.”

“That is totally not helpful,” said Charlie.

“Why are you even here?” said Minty Fresh.

“He must keep them from desecrating your body until you return to it. Away with you,” said the dog-headed god.

The torches faded, the blackness returned, and once again they were standing as if they were in empty space at the end of the universe, nothing but the two of them and the faint barking of hounds.

And then Charlie was in the waiting room, Audrey standing over him.

“Are you okay?”

“Fine,” he said. “I’m fine. Fainted or something. How long was I out?”

Audrey looked at Rivera, then shrugged. “About eight seconds, I’d guess.”

“Hmmm. Seemed longer.” Charlie looked at the doctor. “No autopsy.”

The doctor seemed surprised. This was not the reaction he was accustomed to getting from people who had just received the news of the passing of a loved one.

“In cases of a crime,” said the doctor, “it’s the law…”

“No autopsy,” Charlie said to Rivera. “No embalming, no autopsy. It’s important.”

Rivera said, “Doctor, if we could hold off on the autopsy, I’d appreciate it.”

The doctor nodded. “It will be up to the coroner after I sign off,” said the doctor.

“I’ll take care of it,” said Rivera.

“I’m very sorry,” said the doctor. He turned and went back through the doors.

Once the doctor was gone, Charlie went to Lily. “Hey,” he whispered in her ear. Lily’s mother looked up. Lily nodded to her that it was okay to let this stranger close.

“Kid, come here,” Charlie said. He put his arm around Lily’s shoulder and walked her away from her mother, away from the others.

“He told me to go to work,” Lily said. “Those were his last words, ‘Go to work, Darque.’ ”

“Yeah, that’s the thing,” Charlie whispered. “You probably need to go to work.”

“Fuck you, Asher. I’m grief-stricken. And I’m not even being overly dramatic.”

He didn’t want to tell her that with the black eye makeup smeared down her cheeks like a sad clown, she was overly dramatic without saying a word, but in her hour of grief, he let it go. “Yeah, I know, and I know that’s a first, but you need to have your mom take you to work, because you need to stay busy, and keep your mind off of this. And when I tell you this next thing, you can’t overreact. Promise me.”

Lily looked at him with the familiar “could you be any more annoying?” look that she reserved for him, and he knew he could plunge on.

“Promise?”

“Okay, fine, I promise. What?”

“He’s not dead.”

She stared. Just stared. Stunned.

“He’s coming back,” Charlie said. “Don’t scream.”

She didn’t move. She stopped breathing, then started again, in short, halting gasps.

“I don’t know when, but soon. I just saw him in the Underworld. There’s a god called Anubis—”

“Asher, if you are fucking with me—”

“I’m not! Really, I’m not.”

Now she was catching her breath. She leaned in. “He told me once that an Indian guy in Montana told him he was, like, the chosen of Anubis. That’s why he had—has golden eyes.”

“Yeah, apparently that’s true.”

She put her fingers to her lips as if she were holding in a laugh and bounced on her toes in a circle like an overjoyed little girl.

“You’re going to need to stop that.”

“Right,” she said, stopping that. “Sorry.”

“Now you’re going to have to figure out what to tell your mom that I just told you that made you do that.”

“No problem. I’ll tell her that you said the last thing he said to you was that he only regretted never telling me that I was right about everything.”

“He would never say that.”

“She never met him.”

“Fine. Now look sadder and get your mom to take you to work. You’re our only contact with the ghosts on the bridge. You need to be on the crisis line. And we need her out of here so I can tell the others. I’ll call your cell when I know more.”

“Okay, I’m going to hug you now, Asher.”

“Okay.”

“It’s not a real hug, it’s theater. I’m faking it.”

“Right. Me, too,” said Charlie.

Lily and her mother had only been gone seconds when Charlie’s phone buzzed: Jane. He answered.

“He took Sophie,” Cassie said. “He just came in the door and took her. We couldn’t do anything. We tried.”

An electric chill surged through his body. “Who?”

“The black guy in yellow—the one she talked about hurting Mrs. Korjev.”

“Where’s Jane?”

“She’s right here. He did something to her. She ran at him and he just put out his hand and she dropped. She’s coming to, woozy, but she seems okay.”

“You called the police?”

“Yes, they’re on their way. I’m still on the other phone with 911.”

Charlie heard her talking to someone, describing the man in yellow.

“Was he driving? On foot?”

“I don’t know, Charlie. I couldn’t move. He just looked at me and I couldn’t move. Sophie kept yelling for him to put her down. Called him Dookie Face. She wasn’t screaming, afraid screaming. She was yelling, angry yelling. I’m so sorry. We should have been gone by now.”

“Tell the police everything,” Charlie said. “I’ll be there as soon as I can. Ten minutes, maybe.”

Rivera and Audrey stood behind him, waiting for instructions, having read the situation from his end of the conversation. “We have to go,” he said to Rivera. “Audrey, can you stay with Minty Fresh’s body? Don’t leave him for even a second. You have to be there when he comes back.” He held out her car keys.

“What?” Audrey asked, taking the car keys by reflex.

“He’s coming back, I don’t know when, but stay with him. Tell them whatever you have to. I would do it, but I have to go.”

“Go,” she said, “Go, go, go.” She kissed him and pushed him toward the door. She pushed Rivera after Charlie. “Call me when you know anything.”

“You, too,” said Rivera. “And if they give you any trouble—”

“Go. I’ve got this. Go.”

Rivera ran after Charlie.

Crisis Center, this is Lily. What’s your name?” Her screen showed the call was coming from one of the hardwired lines on the bridge. Her heart leapt.

“Lily, it’s Mike.”

“Holy fuck, do you have any idea what’s going on?”

And once again, everyone in the call center turned to look at her.

“I mean, hello, Mike, how can I help? This call may be recorded,” she said, letting him know why she was being formal, “but only my side, so you should feel safe to say whatever you’d like.”

“Okay,” said Mike. “I thought you should know. There’s someone here, at the bridge, and all the ghosts are riled up. It’s like a storm here. Not that you could see, but here in my world.”

“I was going to tell you that I think we found that thief you were looking for.” Lily was trying to figure out how her side of the conversation might sound on the recording. Incoherent was fine. She could claim she was responding to someone who was suffering from delusions. “So, it looks like the suspect is a large African American man who is dressed all in yellow. I see. And his name is Lemon Fresh, maybe, possibly Yama?”

“I don’t know about that last part, but he’s here, and he has a little girl with him. He’s why everyone is riled up.”

“On the bridge?”

“No, not on the bridge, he’s right under the bridge. In Fort Point.”

“Fort Point,” Lily repeated. “I see. Shall I send someone to you?”

“If you think they can help,” said Mike.

“Well, they’ll certainly try. Can you hold on a minute while I contact those people to help you?”

“Sure,” said Mike. “Lily, I can’t find Concepción, either. It’s like she’s lost in this storm.”

“Let me see what I can do, Mike.”

Lily pushed the hold button, looked around the center. Mercifully, Sage wasn’t working tonight, but a couple of the other counselors were glancing her way every few seconds. Leonidas was standing in the doorway of his office, his finger to the earpiece of a wireless headset. The fucker was listening in on her live. Fine, he’d only hear her side and think her terminal was out of order. Pretending to scroll through contact numbers on her screen, she pulled her phone out of her purse and texted Charlie Asher: HE’S AT FORT POINT. UNDER THE BRIDGE.

She looked over her shoulder. Leonidas was frowning. He would have expected to hear her call to emergency services, even if he couldn’t hear Mike’s end of the conversation. She clicked off the hold button.

“Hi Mike, I’m back. Sorry about that, something seems to be wrong with my terminal. I texted the bridge authority and they are on their way to you. I’ll stay on the line with you until they reach you.”

“I know you’re covering, Lily. You need to know, I think I’m starting to get the point of all the stories the ghosts have been telling me, but I need to find Concepción. She just evaporated, right in front of me.”

“I’m sure she’ll be back any minute, Mike. I just had a similar experience and I know how distressing that can be, but just stay calm and—”

The line clicked. The screen showed disconnected. She had the ability to call back each of the hard lines on the bridge and she hit the button.

“Hello?” A male voice, but different. She could hear wind, traffic, not the ghostly static that she heard when Mike called.

“Mike?”

“No, this is Jeremy. Who is this?”

“This is the Crisis Center for the bridge.”

“Well, you guys should have blankets up here or something. It’s really cold. I thought it was supposed to be warm in California.”

“Well, you’re standing over the mouth of a bay, at night, in the winter, you fucktard, of course it’s cold.” She disconnected. When she looked back, Leonidas was heading for her desk.

Her phone buzzed with a return message from Asher: HE HAS SOPHIE.

Fuck! The little girl Mike mentioned.

She stood up, turned to Leonidas, did a traffic-cop signal for him to stop right where he was. “Get the fuck back in your office. This is my thing, and I need to be here. It’s not my fault that this terminal isn’t working right, but you didn’t hear the other side of the conversation. If that guy calls back and I’m not here, someone is going to die, so get back in your office and chew my ass or fire me at the end of shift, but right now I need to be here.”

Leonidas, paused, seemed to be thinking, then said, “End of shift.” He turned and headed back to his office.

Lily texted Charlie: MIKE SAW SOPHIE WITH LEMON AT FORT POINT.

* Coyote Blue.

27. Fort Point

Audrey dug her wallet out of her purse as she approached the nurses’ desk. For the first time since she’d returned from Asia, she wished

she was wearing her monk robes. She had three or four cards with her name and title ready, as well as her driver’s license, which proved she was the person on the other cards. This was a first for her, but desperate times…

“Hello, I’m the venerable Amitabha Audrey Walker Rinpoche, head of the Three Jewels Buddhist Center.” Click, click, click went the cards on the desk. “I am Mr. Fresh’s spiritual guide. Our faith requires that I be present with the body at all times to help usher his spirit through bardo, from life to death. I need to be with Mr. Fresh.”

The nurse looked skeptically over her reading glasses. Luckily, she wasn’t the nurse to whom Rivera had presented Audrey as a sketch artist, but she’d been at the desk for a while. She’d seen them all come and go, their strange displays of sorrow and joy, but she was used to dealing with people who were often at the most stressful point in their lives, and they didn’t always react rationally when things got rough.

“He said the girl in the slutty schoolgirl outfit was his priest.”

Audrey knew she had some wiggle room here, because what most Americans knew about Buddhism came from a forty-year-old television show, the star of which had accidently hanged himself while having a wank in a hotel wardrobe, so it was unlikely she’d be caught stretching the truth on doctrine.

“She is, but hers is a different discipline. To those who practice our faith, outward appearance is an illusion, a distraction from the true nature of our dharma.” Wait, let that sink in. No one knows what dharma is. Wait. Wait. This will work.

“He did have her down as his next of kin.”

“All people of our faith are considered family.” No, that sounded culty. She wanted to sound nice, not culty.

“And you need to be with the body how long?”

“Until the soul has passed. Usually less than a day.”

“Could you step in here, please?” The nurse went to the part of the desk that was behind the glass partition and waited for Audrey to pick up her IDs and come through the doors.

“Look, Ms. Walker, we are going to have to send Mr. Fresh’s body down to the morgue in a few minutes. Whether they let you stay with him will be up to them. You can stay with him until they come to get him, and I can vouch for you with the orderly who takes him down, but once you get down there, you’re going to have to tell them why you’re there and see if they let you stay with him.”

“What if I told them I was with the police? You saw we were with Inspector Rivera.”

The nurse’s glasses slipped down again. “You’re a Buddhist priest and a policeman?”

“Undercover. And, technically, I’m a nun.”

“I would watch that show,” said the nurse. “I wouldn’t believe it, but I would watch it.”

“Pardon?”

“Go stay with Mr. Fresh. But stay with him. No wandering around doing detective work while you’re tending to his soul.” The nurse wondered why people never figured out that once you got your way, you could stop lying. It almost made her want to back up and revoke the permission she’d just given.

“Thank you,” said Audrey. “Blessings.”

Thirty minutes later Audrey was standing in a hallway by the gurney on which Minty Fresh’s body lay when his eyes popped open.

“Hi,” she said.

She hit send on her phone, sending the message she’d typed in: HE’S ALIVE.

His eyes went wide and darted around, as if he were trying to remember how to speak.

“You were dead a little under an hour,” she said. “Think of it like a nap, really. Charlie told me you’d be back.” Audrey watched as the confusion seemed to settle in Minty’s eyes. This process was all new to her, too, but she had been present when the Squirrel People came to life after they received a human soul; they were always disoriented and seemed to have to remind themselves of the confines of reality, because for them, reality had just been put in a jar and shaken vigorously. For some it would settle; for others, it never seemed to.

“You’re probably cold. They cut your pants off of you, and I don’t know what happened to your shirt. I brought you these.” She held up a pair of green scrubs she’d plucked from a bin as the orderly had rolled Minty Fresh’s body though the basement hallway. “I have your coat and your shoes, too. Shelf under the gurney. There’s blood on one shoe. Sorry.”

Minty’s eyes stopped darting. It seemed as if whatever part of him had been searching for reality had finally found it.

“They cut off my motherfucking custom-made leather pants?”

“Look at you, all alive and stuff,” she said. She thought she should have said something more profound, something from the heart sutra, “Form does not differ from the void, and void does not differ from form,” perhaps, but instead she said, “Who needs pants? You’re alive.”

“Spoken like someone who is alive and has pants.”

She threw him the scrubs. “I’ll turn my back and watch the hall.”

The big man sat up, turned sideways on the gurney, and began to worm his way into the scrubs.

“You presided at the death of a lot of people when you were a nun, right?”

“I guided one hundred and fifty-three souls through bardo.”

“So how was my death?”

“Pretty good. A solid seven. Well above average.”

“Did everyone cry?”

“Well, most of the crying was done when they were still trying to save you. Lily was a mess. I wasn’t in the room when you actually died, but it wasn’t long before Charlie told us you were coming back, so everyone cheered up. I think Lily said ‘yippee’ as she was leaving.”

“Why isn’t Charlie here? He told you, I’m guessing, where we went?”

“Yes, but your cousin Lemon took Sophie.”

“Shit.”

“The ghost on the bridge told Lily that Lemon has Sophie at Fort Point, under the bridge.”

“Dressed,” he said. The scrubs were extra large but not extra tall, so they fit him in the hips and shoulders. The pants, however hit him just below the knee and the shirt in the middle of his waist. He looked like a cross between a well-kept castaway and a very large Moroccan houseboy.

“Anyone hurt?”

“No. He just came to their apartment and took her. Jane and Cassie couldn’t do anything to stop him.”

“And the old Russian lady, she okay?”

“She’ll recover, they’re saying.”

“And you, my cousin mess with you when he had you? Hurt you?”

“No. In fact, he stopped the Morrigan from hurting me.”

“Why didn’t he?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean, why didn’t he hurt you? Why didn’t the old lady die? Why would he take Sophie? She’s just a little girl, now, right? If he’s such a badass, how is it you’re all alive?”

“Maybe he just wants a new order, like he said.”

“Don’t care what he wants,” said Minty Fresh. “I want to know what he can do. How’d he get in Asher’s building through all that security?”

“They didn’t say. Everything’s always locked there.”

“Then Lemon got a way of getting around that ain’t a ’49 Buick. You got a car?”

“In the parking garage.”

“Lead on,” said the Mint One. He hopped as he pulled on his black trainers, then grabbed his leather car coat from under the gurney. “We’re going to Fort Point.”

Audrey sent a text to Charlie as they walked: ON OUR WAY TO FORT PT.

Fort Point?” said Rivera. “Charlie, I don’t know if I can get us in there. It’s a national park. Since 9/11 it’s been under Homeland Security. There are guards there with M4 rifles; even the park rangers are armed. After what we pulled at the Fort Mason tunnel, there’s no way the department is going to back me up if they call in to verify me.” They were in Rivera’s Ford, just passing Fort Mason and the Marina Safeway on their way to Fort Point.

Charlie said, “It’s okay, they’ll let me in.”

“Why would they let you in?”

Charlie pulled Mike Sullivan’s bridge authority ID and held it up. “Because I’m an employee. They need me to find another job in the park that gets me off the bridge, so even if they call in, someone will vouch. Everyone knows Mike Sullivan’s story. I’ll say I wanted to check it out when there were no tourists.”

“They’ll never let us in with our weapons,” said Rivera.

“Anubis said weapons won’t do us any good. They won’t touch him.”

“Well, I’m not sure what good we can do here, then.”

“We have to be here. He has my daughter. She’s just a little kid.”

“Actually, she’s probably not.”

“What’s that mean, ‘she’s probably not’?”

“Why would this thing—this deity, go back and kidnap a little kid? What use is a random little kid to him? We would have taken a break if he hadn’t taken her.”

“I never thought about that. You think he still thinks she’s the Luminatus?”

“He knows more about this stuff than I do, and he took her.”

“She is in the advanced reading group.”

“Well, there you go,” said Rivera.

Charlie’s phone buzzed. Message from Audrey. HE’S ALIVE.

Rivera pulled into the tourist parking area, which was still a good half mile from the fort. The remainder of the road had heavy vehicle barriers that rose out of the concrete to limit traffic to pedestrians and bicycles; however, currently, the barriers were down. Rivera killed the lights and drove to the parking lot adjacent to the fort. He stopped the car at the far edge of the parking lot and turned off the engine. There were a few vehicles near the fort, but they looked official, light trucks and SUVs with national park insignias.

Fort Point was a Civil War — era fortress with four-foot-thick brick and concrete walls, and gun ports designed for a battery of cannons to defend the entire entrance to the San Francisco Bay. Even though the fort had lost its strategic value by the 1930s, the Golden Gate Bridge had been designed specifically so the fort would be preserved as an example of military architecture. The entrance from the city side of the bridge was a great, structural steel arch that went directly over the top of the fort, rather than the more practical straight pylons that could have been built if the fort had been removed.

As they climbed out of the car, Charlie’s phone buzzed again. Audrey’s message: ON OUR WAY TO FORT PT.

Charlie said, “They’re on their way. Maybe twenty minutes out.”

“We should wait,” said Rivera as he popped the trunk. “This Yama probably doesn’t know we know he’s here. We shouldn’t blow our surprise when Fresh is the only one who has any way to fight him.” Rivera put his Beretta and holster in the trunk. “I’m keeping the Glock on my ankle. If the guards notice it, I’ll say I forgot I had it on.”

“I have my sword cane,” said Charlie. “As far as they know, I just fell off the bridge. They’re not going to take away my walking stick.”

“If it makes you feel better,” said Rivera.

The wind covered the sound of the car trunk closing, but also whipped their trouser cuffs around their legs. Strangely enough, Rivera’s hair stayed perfect.

“It’s freezing out here,” Charlie said.

“We should wait in the car,” Rivera said.

They climbed back in the Ford. Charlie texted Audrey that they would wait for them in the parking lot. He hoped that she wasn’t texting while driving, because that would be dangerous. No, she was smart, she’d hand her phone to the newly resurrected Egyptian demigod of death rather than do anything careless.

The light shining down from the bridge plus a three-quarter moon gave them light to see the entire southern side of the fort. No one was visible. Not even at the main gate.

“Where are the guards?” Rivera asked. “The park rangers?”

“You know I never actually worked on the bridge, right? Mike Sullivan did. I didn’t even know there were guards here until you told me.”

“When Fresh gets here, you and Audrey need to stay here.”

“No.”

“Charlie, where are the guards? You don’t know that they haven’t been shredded by the Morrigan and are lying in pieces inside.”

“No,” said Charlie.

“Fresh and I will get Sophie.”

“My daughter is in there, Inspector. Plus, do you think I’ve done battle with sewer harpies, been poisoned and died, been resurrected and lived as a meat puppet, then had someone throw himself off the Golden Gate Bridge to give me his body so I could sit in the fucking car?”

Rivera considered it, ticked off Charlie’s points in his head, considered his lack of concern for his own safety, then said, “Okay.”

“Okay,” said Charlie.

They sat in silence until Rivera spotted headlights in his mirror and watched them go out even as the car continued on. “Good girl, Audrey,” he said.

When Minty Fresh climbed out of the Honda, Charlie ran to him and threw his arms around the big man’s waist. Minty held his arms out to his sides and looked from Audrey to Rivera with the humiliated but resolved look of a dog enduring a bath until Charlie finally let go and stepped back.

“Sorry,” Charlie said.

“It’s okay,” said the Mint One.

Audrey bailed Charlie out by performing the same, yet somewhat more appropriate run and hug move on him.

“So, how was dying?” Rivera asked Minty. Rivera raised an eyebrow at the Mint One’s outfit.

“Not as relaxing as you’d think,” said Minty.

“Charlie says you have some Yama-stopping mojo.”

“Yeah, about that; Anubis was less than clear what particular talent I would have, other than I would be his avatar in this world. Right now I’m thinking pants would have been a good start.”

“Audrey?” Rivera said, looking to the nun. “Any hints?”

“I’m Buddhist. We believe all gods are illusions and constructions of ego. As far as I know, even you guys might be illusions.”

“That’s helpful,” Rivera said.

“Namaste,” Audrey replied. “If that’s even your real name.”

“What?”

“Sorry, Buddhist humor. Carry on.”

Rivera glanced over his shoulder at the fort. “Okay, here’s what we know. We can’t see any guards or park rangers, but if they’re there, and they should be, they’ll be armed with M4 automatic rifles. There was nothing on the radio about gunfire here, so we have to assume that if Yama is in there, as the ghost says, then they either haven’t seen him, or they haven’t seen him as a threat, which means he doesn’t have the Morrigan with him, because I can’t really see them as coming off as nonthreatening.”

“Or all the guards are dead,” said Audrey.

“Yes, there’s that cheerful possibility,” said Rivera. “So, what do you think? Shotguns and stab-resistant vests?”

“Nah, this ain’t gonna be no battle, Inspector.” Minty Fresh held up a finger as if testing the wind. “Anyone else hear that?”

There was a whirring sound, above the crash of the surf, the wind, and the traffic on the bridge, like the spooling up of an enormous jet engine. The others nodded, looked around.

“The fuck is that?” said Minty Fresh.

Audrey pointed up at the bridge, beyond the indirect floodlights that illuminated it and the red aircraft warning lights at the top of the towers, the bridge was beginning to glow, as if streaks of light were playing across its surfaces, someone painting it with moving lasers.

“Y’all seeing that?”

Charlie’s phone buzzed. It was a message from Lily: MIKE SAYS THE GHOSTS OF THE BRIDGE ARE COMING UP. GO NOW. He read the message to the others.

“That light must be visible for twenty miles,” Audrey said. “Why isn’t traffic screeching to a halt on the bridge?”

“Because they can’t see or hear it,” said Minty Fresh. “Same way they can’t see the glow in a soul vessel but we all can.”

“I think we need to go now,” said Rivera. He led them across the parking lot to the steel gates of the fort. There was a single heavy door in the middle of the gates. It was wide open. Rivera stopped at the edge, looked in, went back against the wall. He could see all the way into the center courtyard of the fortress. The side they were on had been the barracks, more or less just reinforced brick buildings with rooms for quartering and feeding soldiers. The other side of the fort was an arcade, three stories of heavy arches, in which the cannons had once nested, facing out to the bay. But now the spaces were empty of cannons and resembled rows of small theatrical stages. No one was visible from the door: no guards, no rangers, no man in yellow.

The roar of the ghosts of the bridge was less like a jet now and more like an atmosphere, like the low rumble of a huge crowd, ten thousand voices in a small room. Rivera reached down and drew the Glock from his ankle holster.

“I’m going in first. I’ll signal when it’s clear to follow.”

Minty Fresh said, “You got some kind of death wish?”

“Apparently,” said Rivera.

“Oh, you can go first,” said Minty. “But put your gun away. You don’t know there aren’t guards in there might take someone sneaking in holding a Glock personally.”

“I’ll go,” said Charlie as he breezed by them.

28. The Taunting of Minty

Daddy!” Sophie called when Charlie entered the open courtyard of the fortress. She was standing four floors above him on a concrete gun platform. Lemon Fresh stood next to her. In the arched bay on the level below them, the Morrigan stained the bricks as tattered shadows. Only one of them still stood in three dimensions, cradling an arm with no hand attached. She hissed and Charlie jumped back a little.

“How you doin’?” said Lemon.

“Are you okay, honey?” Charlie said.

“I’m okay,” said Sophie. “But it’s cold and I haven’t had a snack in days.” She glared at Lemon. Her dark pigtails whipped around her face in the wind.

“Don’t be scared, honey. Daddy is here.”

“I’m not scared, Daddy. I just need some crunchy Cheese Newts up in this bitch.”

Lemon looked over at Sophie, who, because she stood on the gun mount, was eye level with him, “Where you learn to talk like that, child?” Lemon looked down at Charlie. “What you teachin’ this child?”

“She’s gifted,” Charlie said.

“More important,” Lemon said, moving his right hand in a stirring motion, “why ain’t you sleeping?”

Charlie looked around. Along the edges of the courtyard—the arcade on Lemon’s side, and the colonnade on his side—slept a half-dozen rangers. Not dead or injured: they looked as if they’d simply gotten tired and decided to take a nap. One woman was curled up around her M4 rifle as if it were a body pillow. Amid the whir of the ghosts of the bridge above, Charlie could hear one fellow who was sitting against a column on his side of the courtyard, snoring softly, his face under the cover of his Smokey the Bear hat.

“I guess I’m gifted, too,” said Charlie. He gestured for the others to join him. Minty Fresh stepped out of the shadows right behind him. Audrey was a few columns down, checking on a sleeping ranger. Rivera looked out from behind a column.

“New meat,” snarled Nemain. “This time you’ll stay dead. I’ll suck the soul from you while you’re still bleeding.”

“The fuck, Lemon?” said Minty Fresh. “Control your bitches.”

Lemon shrugged—What you gonna do? “Y’all act like I brought the ladies to the party, but they come on they own, cuz. A door open up out the Underworld, there they is. It’s y’all’s fault they here. All y’all let shit get so fucked up here they was drawn here like hoes to coke.”

“He took my hand,” said Nemain.

“And you said you killed him,” said Lemon. “Yet there he is, alive as a motherfucker, wearin’ some poor child’s pj’s.” With that, Lemon started to laugh, then bent over and wheezed a little bit, raising a palm to hold his place in the taunting. “Wha’chu wearin’, Minty?”

“I’m comfortable,” said Minty. “Why don’t you send that child down here to her daddy, Lemon. You and me talk this out.”

“Nah, she mine now,” said Lemon. He reached out to stroke Sophie’s cheek and his irises lit up like fire.

Inspector Alphonse Rivera had been a policeman more than twenty-five years, and in all that time, from working a patrol car, to narcotics, to homicide, he had never shot a person. He had drawn his weapon, of course, but he had never had to fire on a human being. He’d always been very good at assessing a situation and acting quickly and appropriately when he needed to, as if his mind could prepare dozens of if/then triggers that would put him in motion without hesitating. When Lemon Fresh touched Sophie’s cheek, one of those trigger’s fired. In a single motion, Rivera went to one knee, drew the Glock from his ankle holster, aimed, and fired four shots in quick succession. Everyone including the Morrigan jumped at the sound of gunfire.

Four copper-jacketed bullets hung in the air—stopped—about two inches from Lemon’s face. All could have fit in the space of a tennis ball. Rivera had never shot a person, but Nick Cavuto had been a bit of a handgun enthusiast, so the partners had spent a lot of hours together practicing at the range.

“Hooo-weeee,” said Lemon Fresh. He looked all around the bullets, getting a view from different angles. “This motherfucker can shoot.”

Nemain screeched and leapt out of the arch where she had been standing across the open courtyard toward Rivera, the claws of her only remaining hand extended. Rivera fired four times again, adjusting aim with each shot, catching her in the collarbone once and in the face three times, spattering bits of black, feathery goo into the air. She landed face-first on the concrete floor and slid several feet until she was only inches from Rivera, who held aim on her. As they watched she melted to an inky shadow and flowed backward, up the arches, until she joined her sisters as another tattered sillouette against the red bricks.

“Well, that didn’t work,” said Nemain.

“Told you,” said Babd.

“When we get the souls, he’s the first to go,” said Macha.

Rivera ejected the spent clip and snapped a full one from his jacket into the gun.

“Sho can shoot,” said Lemon. He made a fist and the bullets hanging before him dropped out of the air with a thud and clatter. “Yo standard-issue Negro wouldn’t stand a chance, but I am what…?” He deferred with a bow to Sophie.

“A dookie face,” she said.

“That’s right,” said Lemon, winking at her, “a Magical Negro.” He looked to Rivera. “And because I am only interested in nonviolence and harmony among all creatures, I am going to put you to sleep rather than crush you like a motherfucking bug.” Lemon waved his palm at Rivera like a hypnotist putting a subject to sleep. Rivera adjusted his aim for the movement, but otherwise did not move. Lemon repeated the sleep gesture. Nothing. He searched the courtyard until he found Audrey, who was checking the pulse of another downed ranger, and tried the sleep gesture on her.

“Yeah, nothing,” said Audrey.

“What, did y’all stop at Starbuck’s on the way here? Well, I tried. Ladies, I think you gonna need to go get you some breakfast. Go get him.”

With that, the Morrigan slithered out of their archway, up the wall, over the roof of the fortress, and away. Sophie ran to the edge of the wall to follow their progress then came back to Lemon’s side.

“They’re silly.”

“You don’t never be lyin’, peanut,” said Lemon.

Charlie was caught between being horrified and relieved that his darling little girl was discussing the silliness of a trio of Celtic death goddesses with a vengeful Buddhist deity dressed like a citrus fruit.

“Lemon, enough of this nonsense,” said Minty Fresh. “You need to send that little girl down here now. Me and you’ll work this out.”

“Can’t do that, cuz. I need her for what I’ma do. You do know she the Big D, right?”

Minty Fresh looked around at his companions. If Lemon didn’t know Sophie had lost her powers, he didn’t think it good strategy to tell him now.

“There they go.” Lemon turned and looked at the bridge. Three dark streaks were making their way up the concrete pylons toward the steel cables and arches, which were glowing with the neon flow of mad ghosts.

“They just need to move one more obstacle out of my way and we’ll all be done here. All them poor souls will be released and whatever bullshit y’all have been perpetratin’ here will be over. Everything will be copacetic. In order. Bitches just need to shred them a Ghost Thief. I expect by the time they find him, they be plenty strong enough. Going to cost some souls, bless their hearts.”

Charlie felt his phone buzz in his pocket and checked it: Lily. “Hold that thought,” he said. “I have to take this.”

Lily said, “Asher, I’m on the hard line with Mike Sullivan. He says the ghosts on the bridge are out of control and there’s some dark force moving on them.”

“That’s the Morrigan.”

“Well, stop them.”

“They’re kind of out of range.”

Charlie looked back over his shoulder. The dark streaks of shadows that were the Morrigan were almost to the steel arch above them. The ghosts, or the light, or the ghost light seemed to be moving toward them, as if to meet them, swarming along the arch above the fort.

“Lemon says that they are going to shred the Ghost Thief. Tell Mike.”

Charlie could hear Lily in the background talking on her headset. “I told him,” she said.

“What did he say?”

“He said that was weird.”

They all watched as the dark streaks that were the Morrigan took shape as a cloud of black birds, then morphed into their human woman forms. The Morrigan stood on the girders of the arch above them, but the dark tide of ghosts continued to swell toward them until the Morrigan’s dark edges began to glow, then pulsate, brighter and brighter. Finally, the three of them popped like soap bubbles, black confetti or tiny feathers burst into three distinct bursts, like negative fireworks made of darkness. An elliptical lens opened in the sky beneath the bridge—a trick of light. The Morrigan confetti fell into it and the lens closed.

“Mike says it’s okay now,” Lily said. She disconnected.

When Charlie turned back around, Lemon Fresh was bent over laughing again. “That shit is funny. You see that? They went sucked up and bust like balloons. Like we used to feel when yo’ mama made hush puppies, Minty. That woman could fry her some hush puppies, rest her soul.”

“Don’t act like you planned that, Lemon,” said Minty Fresh.

“I did plan that, cuz. Them bitches was crazy. I told you, I am here to see all them poor, lost souls released from that bridge. All them souls y’all got in jars and golf clubs and I-don’t-know-what, that ain’t right. That ain’t the right way of things.”

Audrey moved to Minty Fresh’s side. “He did save me from them. And he didn’t hurt any of these guards. He hasn’t harmed Sophie. He may just be making way for a new order, a new path. There’s always chaos when systems are realigning. Yama is a god of death, but he was made protector of Buddhism, protector of the way.”

“That’s right, Minty, I’m protector of the way. I don’t judge, like y’all do. The Morrigan was a different thing. They all about war. Me, I’m all about love.”

“Uh-huh,” said Minty, unconvinced.

“I’m going to get my daughter,” Charlie said. He started up one of the four flights of stairs on their side of the fortresses.

“She fine right here,” said Lemon. “Once I’m done with my business, y’all can take her home.”

“All right,” said Minty Fresh. “I’ll wait up there, then.” He started for the staircases on the side of the courtyard opposite where Charlie had gone up. Once they got to the top, they’d be closing on Lemon from either side.

Rivera joined Audrey in the edge of the courtyard, the Glock hanging at his side. “You believe what you just said?”

She shook out her hair. “I did when I said it.”

Minty came around the roof of the fortress on the left, Charlie on the right.

“Ya’ll can stop right there,” said Lemon. “I need peanut here for my business.”

Sophie jumped down from the gun platform and ran toward Charlie. “Daddy!”

Lemon dropped his hand and Sophie stopped in her tracks. Charlie drew the sword from his cane. “Let her go.”

Lemon raised his hand toward Charlie, who stopped and struggled, as if his feet were stuck to the cement. Minty Fresh was only twenty feet away from Lemon when the yellow fellow turned and stopped him with the same gesture. “Not now, cuz. Let me get to this.”

“Lemon, I’m gonna bust your ass I get hold of you,” said Minty. Under his breath he said, “Anubis, you going to give me some mojo, now would be a good time.”

Lemon moved until he was standing directly over Sophie. She screamed. He turned toward the bridge with his arms raised high in invitation. “C’mon y’all. Come on here.”

The ghosts of the bridge swirled and stormed, the light moving out now, away from the structure, the streams of ghosts arching toward Lemon. “Come on, my babies. Daddy gonna take you home.”

“I burned up your Buick,” said Rivera from below in the courtyard.

Lemon tried not to, but looked over his shoulder at the cop. “What you say?”

“This morning. After everyone else left the tunnel at Fort Mason, I went back and threw a highway flare in the backseat of your Buick.”

“You did not,” said Lemon.

“Let him go,” Audrey said. “He’s trying to free those souls.”

“I got out of there before it blew up, but it did blow up. Like a blast furnace in there,” said Rivera. “I’m in a bit of trouble over it, but on the bright side, your Buick is nothing but frame and warm lug nuts now.”

“You a dead five-oh,” Lemon said. He turned toward Rivera and lost whatever concentration he had on the bridge. The ghosts resumed their frenzied trip back up the metal frame and cables. Lemon raised an arm as if winding up a baseball pitch, and before he could come down, a dark figure appeared behind him.

“AIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEE,” shrieked the banshee, and she touched the stun gun to Lemon’s neck. ZZZZZZZZZT!

As Lemon turned to face his attacker, the banshee ducked under his arm, grabbed Sophie’s hand, and pulled her away from him. “Hello, love,” said the banshee, pulling the child into her skirts.

“You smell like barbecue,” Sophie said.

Lemon rubbed the back of his neck as if he’d smacked a particularly annoying mosquito, the stun gun no more than a minor annoyance. “You’ll not do that again,” he said, his voice sounding different now, not the smooth and amused Lemon.

“The Buick was in the tunnel?” Minty Fresh asked Rivera. “How did the Buick get in that tunnel?”

“Same way the Morrigan got out, I guess,” said Rivera.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, you great dog-headed ninny, what are you waiting for?” said the banshee.

Lemon turned to her and froze her as she backed away with Sophie.

“You too, banshee, when I’m finished,” said Lemon, still in a voice that was very un-Lemony. He raised his arms and began drawing down the ghosts of the bridge again, their light arching toward him. Above, on the steel arch of the bridge, stood a lone figure wearing painter’s coveralls.

“Let him do it,” Audrey said. “Yama is the guardian. He’s bringing on the new order.”

“He’s not Yama, you twit,” said the banshee. “He’s bloody Set, lord of darkness and betrayal and general fuckery, isn’t he? He’s not releasing these souls to become part of the bloody universe, he’s trying to absorb them. They’ll become part of his great twatty ego, and good luck then.”

“Oops,” said Audrey.

Lemon spun on the banshee and made to strike her, but his hand passed right through her. “AHHHHHHHIEEEEEEEEEE!” she shrieked at him.

“The Buick was in the tunnel,” Minty said. “Oh. I see.”

“Yes, love,” said the banshee. “Set has been opening portals into the Underworld to get around, as any proper demigod would. Do you need a diagram?”

“I knew we needed a diagram,” Charlie said. “Thumbtacks and string, right?”

Minty Fresh’s golden eyes began to glow like Lemon’s now and he smiled.

The portal opened in the tunnel under Fort Mason Green and the hellhounds emerged. They were creatures of fire and force with the scent of their prey in their noses and they entered the world above at a full run, their paws throwing up bits of burned Buick as they crashed through the wooden barrier at the end of the tunnel in a shower of splinters and they made for Fort Point. There were few people out at that hour, and those who saw them thought them a trick of the light, shadows thrown by a spotlight from Alcatraz perhaps, because nothing real could be moving that fast that far away from the road.

They stayed close to the shore, leaping fences or parked cars when necessary, tearing through hedges like cannonballs through lace curtains. Past the Marina green, where children flew kites and played soccer during the day, past Crissy Field, where thousands gathered to watch fireworks or boat races, past the St. Francis Yacht Club, the old fort warehouses, now businesses, down the old battery trail, their paws kicking back gravel with enough force to chip a windshield. A snowflake flurry pattern spattered in the windscreen of Rivera’s Ford as they raced through the Fort Point parking lot.

They were creatures of spirit and elation and they hadn’t seen him in well over a year, yet they knew his scent, his essence, even though he wore a new body. They came through the fort gates frisking like lambs, slobbering and whining in great doggie joy, bounded up the stairs, and fell upon Charlie, soaking him with hellish dog spit.

“Goggies!” called Sophie, with a little girl yodel of a laugh.

Frozen in place by Lemon’s magic, Charlie endured the great hounds’ affection as best he could, bending here and there as they rubbed their faces on him, licked him, and finally made him the center of an enormous welcome-home double-dog hump, a mighty black pyramid of doggie delight, red rocket dog dinguses thrusting at him like slippery spears.

“The goggies love to dance with Daddy,” Sophie said, offhand, to Lemon, whose eyes had gone wide at the sight of the great hounds. “They missed him.”

“Help!” Charlie called. “Help, I’m being humped to death!”

“Aye, love,” said the banshee. “But it’s a dry hump.”

“Not him,” said Minty Fresh, his voice now filled with the booming resonance of Anubis.

“No, goggies!” called Sophie. “Down! Down!”

The hounds looked over to Sophie, dropped Charlie like a drooly tennis ball, then bounded over to her. Lemon forgot completely what he was doing, forgot he was drawing down the power of thousands of souls, forgot that when he finished he would rule over the realms of light and darkness, and turned to run. The stream of ghosts that he had been pulling down to him snapped back to the bridge.

Lemon threw his hands apart as if pushing soapsuds off the surface of a washbasin, and a portal opened in the fortress courtyard—shimmering like a black mirror. He took a step back to gather speed to leap the four floors when Alvin’s jaws clamped down on his arm, jerking him back like a rag doll. His yellow homburg hat fluttered from his head and disappeared into the Underworld.

Alvin shook him twice before Mohammed caught his other arm.

“Hold,” said Minty Fresh, who was Anubis. The hellhounds stopped, held Lemon, and growled like idling Ferraris. Minty stepped from where he’d been frozen in place and stood before Lemon, who was Set, once Egyptian lord of the Underworld.

“Hey, Lemon, how you like the goggies?” Minty spoke in his own voice now.

“I ain’t gonna lie, cuz,” said Lemon. “I do not care for them.”

“You done here. You know that, right?”

Lemon hung limp between the two hounds, defeated for a second, then he grinned. “That was gonna be some big-ass consciousness, though, once I become the Luminatus. Some muthafuckin’ world-burnin’ will.”

“Yeah, that ain’t never going to happen. Here’s what going to happen. These goggies are going to take you to a pit where Ammut has been waiting for your tender ass for thousands of years. Now, I know he can’t end you, but he going to chew you up and shit you out in little pieces. And if you ever get your shit together, because that happens with our peoples, these two hellhounds will be waiting on you, Lemon. You can slow them up, but you can’t stop them. They will follow you to the ends of the world and the ends of the Underworld, they will never give up and they will never die. You can’t control them, and you can’t kill them, and they ain’t but one person can ever call them off, and she standing right there.” Minty pointed.

“ ’Sup?” said Sophie.

“There is no kryptonite for these motherfuckers, Lemon, do you feel me?”

“You a hard man, Minty Fresh,” said Lemon.

“Go!” said Minty.

The hellhounds leapt off the arcade with Lemon between them and fell the four stories into the portal to the Underworld, which closed behind them with the sound of a lightbulb popping.

“Bye, goggies,” said Sophie.

Minty Fresh looked up to the lone figure standing on the bridge above them, amid the maelstrom of ghosts, and waved. Mike Sullivan waved back and disappeared into the flow.

29. So That Happened

Crisis Center, this is Lily. What’s your name?”

“Lily, this is Mike.”

“Mike, what’s going on? Asher said it’s over. What’s over?”

“I found out, Lily. I found out why I listened to all those stories, what I’m doing here. I’m supposed to lead them. I’m the Ghost Thief.”

“That’s great, Mike, I have no idea what that means.”

“I’m supposed to lead them all off the bridge, show them where they’re supposed to go. All the souls stuck here with unresolved lives, they just need to live another life, learn the lesson. That’s what the Ghost Thief was supposed to do. Steal the ghosts from the bridge.”

“Why you?”

“Evidently I’m an ascended soul—or I will be.”

“Which is?”

“It means I’m finished having lives. I move on now.”

“What about Concepción? Did you find her?”

“She’s here, with me now.”

“Well, she might have told you.”

“She didn’t know. She just knew we had to find the Ghost Thief. We didn’t know who it was, what it was. I had to hear the stories of the ghosts of the bridge, become aware of what they were and what we were—what we are. She’s an ascended soul, too.”

“How is that possible, she’s been stuck on the bridge, well, in the Golden Gate for what? Two hundred years?”

“She was waiting for me. I guess I had lives to live to catch up to her.”

“Well, really, a smart girl would have been wasted on you.”

“I wanted you to know, Lily. I’m moving on. And after hundreds of years waiting, Concepción is moving on, too. We’re going together.”

“To where? Because I’ve been to Marin and it’s not that great.”

“Can you envision two beings, people, meant for each other, the elation of being in love — completely aware of your connection to that person, like you are part of them, and they are part of you, inseparable?”

“That’s a thing? That’s what you have with Concepción?”

“Yes, but an ascended soul feels that way toward everything, is that way with everything. That’s where we’re going. Sort of everywhere.”

“Well, you’ll want to take a jacket.”

“I wanted to say thanks, Lily.”

“You’re welcome.”

“And good-bye.”

“Bye, Mike. I’ll be here if shit gets weird.”

“We wouldn’t want that,” said Mike.

Then he showed them the way, those souls that had been lost at the Golden Gate for years, decades, centuries, mad as bedbugs, they came to themselves, and those who had lessons to learn, returned to new bodies, new lives, to take a turn on the wheel of life and death once again, and those like Mike and Concepción, who were the compilation of dozens of lives, who had found the way, become aware, ascended together in loving kindness, to hold each other and all things, one with the universe, complete.

Rivera was leading the Emperor and his men out of the kennel at the department of animal control when she appeared.

“AHHHHHHHIEEEEEEEEEE!” cried the banshee.

Rivera didn’t even jump, although Bummer and Lazarus saw to it that the sooty wraith got a good barking-at before the Emperor distracted them with a beef jerky Rivera had brought for just such an emergency.

“So this is going to continue?” Rivera said. He was very tired and still had to get two dogs and a lunatic across town to the utility closet where they lived before he rested.

“No, love. The doom is done. I’m just popping by to ask if I can keep this.” She held up the stun gun and gave it a buzz. “The wee box of lightning adds spice to the task.”

“Sure, keep it,” said Rivera. “What now?”

“I thought I’d go shriek at someone. I quite enjoy that.”

“Yes, you do. Be careful with that thing.”

“Not a worry, I’ll only use it on those who aren’t properly surprised by the shrieking. By the by, love, when you get back to your store, I think you’ll want to have a look in your death book. Surprises, don’t you know.”

“Thanks, I will.”

“Ta,” she said, and in a wisp of smoke, she was gone.

“That’s somewhat disturbing,” said the Emperor. The men frisked at his sides, hopeful eyes searching for another beef jerky.

“She does that,” said Rivera. He led them to the brown Ford and opened the rear door for them. “Did you get your journal?” he asked.

“In the recycle bin,” said the Emperor. “Its purpose has been served. I’m going to turn my attentions to the living citizens of my city. They need me.”

“Of course they do,” said Rivera. The Emperor and his men tumbled into the Ford and Rivera drove them to North Beach, where he installed them in their closet with a large sausage pizza, several bottles of water, and two new wool blankets, before he went home and fell into a sleep as deep as the dead.

Religion in Chinatown, as in most places, is based less on a cogent theology and more on a collection of random fears, superstitions, prejudices, forgotten customs, vestigial animism, and social control. Mrs. Ling, while a professed Buddhist of the Pure Land tradition, also kept waving cat charms, lucky coins, and put great faith in the good fortune of the color red. She gave gifts of money on the Chinese New Year, threw I-Ching coins for guidance, believed in the comfort of ghost brides for old men who died alone, and was very much in favor of any tradition, superstition, or ritual that involved fireworks, including New Year’s, Independence Day, and the end of the Giants’ season. She followed the Chinese zodiac with a stubborn devotion, and because she was born in the year of the dragon, she thought them the luckiest of all creatures. Which was why her friend Vladlena Korjev found her in the state she did when she returned home from the hospital.

Having not encountered her friend in the hallways after two days home, and hearing strange noises at Mrs. Ling’s door, Mrs. Korjev did as they had agreed (“In case we fall, and break hip, like bear”) and used her key to let herself into Mrs. Ling’s apartment. She found her friend seated at one end of the sofa, watching her stories on the Chinese channel, while at the other end of the sofa sat Wiggly Charlie. Each was joyfully eating a mozzarella stick, and Mrs. Ling, who was mildly lactose intolerant, let fly with a diminutive “bfffffrat” of gas every thirty seconds or so, at which both she and Wiggly Charlie would snicker until they wheezed.

“He lucky dlagon,” explained Mrs. Ling. Wiggly Charlie had avoided the braised fate of a prior, and less chatty, Squirrel Person when, after being roughly yanked from his cat carrier by his feet, he asked the petite matron for a cheese, thereby establishing his lucky-magic-dragon-ness. Mrs. Ling agreed that if Mrs. Korjev would keep the secret, she could share in the dragon’s luck, and the three spent many a pleasant afternoon sitting on the sofa, dragon in the middle, grandmother on either end, watching stories, eating cheese sticks, and gleefully giggling at Mrs. Ling’s delicate condition.

Some mornings, Mrs. Ling would put Wiggly Charlie in the cat carrier and take him for a ride around the neighborhood in her cart, feeling very special and blessed among the multitudes in North Beach and Chinatown, for she alone rolled with a dragon. Other mornings Wiggly Charlie spent with Mrs. Korjev, who would stand him on her counter and drill him like a Cossack sergeant major:

“Need a cheez,” Wiggly Charlie would say.

“How you need cheese?” Mrs. Korjev would inquire.

“Like bear,” the lucky dragon would reply.

And thus a cheese would be bestowed upon the long-donged dragon.

The care and feeding of their lucky dragon, as well as the leap in credibility engendered by his very existence, helped the two grandmothers better adjust to the condition of their Sophie, who now had not two, but three mommies, and to the fact that the sneaky, usurping drug fiend Mike Sullivan was, in fact, Charlie Asher.

Once you accept you have a miniature talking dragon in your midst, the idea that your former landlord has changed bodies and has taken a Buddhist nun as a bride is a minor leap of faith. Audrey left her resident position at the Buddhist Center and moved in with Charlie despite some objections from Sophie (“Really, Dad, the shiksa booty nun?”) and they, with the help of two loving aunties, and the two rental grandmothers, set about raising the little girl who would possibly grow up to be Death.

“Maybe she has always had the powers, but just didn’t want to hurt anyone,” said Audrey.

“So you think my daughter may still be Death, but she’s broken?” Charlie said.

“Not broken,” Audrey said, “just not finished yet.”

“I’m telling you, that child is not normal,” said Minty Fresh, who had seen her through the eyes of Anubis and knew. “For one thing, she got a mouth on her like a sailor.”

“Her auntie Jane is very proud of that,” said Charlie.

After a time, their suspicions about Sophie’s future were confirmed when the hellhounds returned and remained Sophie’s constant companions everywhere but at school, where they waited patiently outside as she instructed until they could escort her home in the afternoon. The goggies were quite happy and fairly well behaved, only occasionally sneaking down to a North Beach sidewalk café where one would eat a comfort dog off the lap of some self-indulgent diner, only to return looking innocent but for the leash hanging out of the corner of his mouth. To atone, Charlie encouraged San Francisco’s animal control people to put the hellhounds down, and at Sophie’s instruction, they would go away in the back of a truck, only to return a few hours later, justice done, somewhat stoned on whatever poison they’d been given, to resume spinning bags of kibble into great steaming spools of stool.

When Inspector Alphonse Rivera returned to his bookstore and opened his copy of the Great Big Book of Death, he found the entire text had been changed to the following:

“Congratulations, you were one of the select few chosen to act as Death. It was a dirty job, but someone had to do it. A new order has been established and your services will no longer be required. Feel free to keep the calendar and the number two pencils for your own personal use. Best of luck in all your future endeavors.”

Rivera called the other Death Merchants that he knew to confirm that their copies of the Big Book had changed as well, which they had. For a moment, he considered putting a price tag on his copy of the Big Book and offering it for sale in his shop, but after contemplating how sneaky and ever-changing the universe appeared to be, he decided instead to keep it in his personal collection, just for reference, in case things got weird.

He also decided, having served twenty-five years as a policeman and survived the reset of the Wheel of Life and Death still never having shot a human being, nor having been shot, that he would take a second retirement and become a bookseller full-time, despite the precarious prospects of that profession.

On his second day of his second retirement, Rivera called Lily Severo’s mother, Elizabeth, and invited her to join him for coffee. The two found they quite liked each other, and started dating regularly. What began as gratitude for being rescued from loneliness developed into love; they reveled in sharing who they were and how they had come to this place in their lives, and everything was made that much sweeter by how much their relationship annoyed Lily.

Lily, having served nobly as oracle to the bridge, found the specialness she felt by having been chosen remained, even after the ghosts moved on. She comported herself, at least outwardly, with less cynicism and hostility toward the world, and at times, with humility and style, if only because she knew secretly how much it annoyed everyone who had known her before.

“So,” Charlie Asher said to her, “I’m going to reopen the shop. I mean, it was a successful business for my family for thirty years before I became Death, there’s no reason why it can’t be again. And the pizza oven is still in there. So I thought we might go into business together.”

“So it would be Asher’s Random Used Crap and Artisanal Pizza?”

“No. Not necessarily. You could put your name on the sign, too.”

“Thanks, Charlie, but I don’t think so. I’m going to stay at the Crisis Center and go back to school. Get a degree in counseling, maybe even become a psychologist.”

“That’s horrifying,” Charlie said. “I mean, I’m happy for you. I’m proud of you, but your poor patients.”

“Hey, blow me, Asher. Those crazy fucks will be lucky to have me.”

“That’s what I meant,” he said.

“I have a knack with the damaged,” Lily said. “It’s my thing. Speaking of which, I’m supposed to go see M.”

The Mint One, his duty as a demigod done for now, returned to Fresh Music and resumed his business to great success. Despite the lack of any supernatural stimulus, the current horde of elitist music enthusiasts with money that were infesting the city, each looking for anything more obscure and/or arcane than his contemporaries, had created a booming market for worthless crap that Minty Fresh had long ago relegated to the realm of unsellable, and the buyback market, fueled by their mercurial smartphone-crippled attention spans, was whipped into a light and frothy profit.

He was adding up the day’s receipts, and Bitches Brew was playing in the background when Lily came into the shop.

“Look,” she said, “you are not the love of my life, but you are definitely a love in my life, so if you’re okay with that, I’d love to spend some more time with you, but if I break your heart, I warned you, so it’s fair.”

“I’d like that,” said Minty Fresh. “But you’re not going to break my heart. I am the human presence of an ancient Egyptian god of death, girl.”

“Sure, throw that in my face. But I got my thing, too. And besides, you cried on my voice mail.” She made as if to draw her phone out and play the proof. “You want me to break your heart, that’s not healthy.”

“I do not want that. I am not the blues, I am jazz. I want to be present in the moment, not wallow in it. Do you feel me?”

“About that; how is it you’re all erudite and nerdy some of the time, and other times you’re all smooth and badass and black?”

“I’m black as I need to be. I use the language that serves what I have to say. You cool with that?”

“Are you cool with me thinking that Miles Davis sounds like he’s smothering squirrels?”

Minty Fresh feigned taking an arrow to the heart, then shook it off.

“I guess Miles don’t work for everybody.”

“And Pizazz was a stupid name for a restaurant.”

“Well, I don’t—”

“Admit it!”

“All right, Pizzaz was a stupid name for a restaurant.”

“Good, I win,” she said, moving close enough to the counter so he could kiss her when the time came. “Now we can play for fun.”

When the ghosts of the bridge rose to find their places in the universe, so, too, did all the souls in all the soul vessels around the world. The souls of the surviving Squirrel People, who had turned to neo-druids since the attack of the Morrigan, and who had built a miniature Stonehenge from stolen hotel mini-fridges in their amphitheater beneath the Buddhist Center, also found their way back onto the Wheel of Life and Death, most moving on to live new lives as humans, except for Bob (who was Theeb), whose soul would be reincarnated twice as a woodchuck and once as hedgehog to present to him the lesson of humility, because the universe thought he had been kind of a dick.

When the ghosts of the bridge rose to find their places in the universe, Jean-Pierre Baptiste just happened to be cradling the cat person who had been his patient and friend, Helen. She went limp in his arms and he could see the red glow of her soul in her chest ascend and pass through the ceiling. Baptiste knew he would have some difficulty breaking the habit of being kind to Helen, and would have to console himself by being actively kind to other patients, as did most of the people of his calling.

Not coincidentally, halfway around the world, in Paris, on the four-hundred-year-old stone bridge over the Seine called the Pont Neuf, a craftsman named Jacques was repairing one of the carved marble faces that decorated the fascia of the bridge when a ghost appeared sitting on the railing above him. She wore the midcalf tweed skirt and crisp white blouse of a college girl from the midtwentieth century on her semester abroad in Paris. She wore her hair shoulder length and curled under in the style of Katharine Hepburn’s in Bringing Up Baby, Kate being her idol.

“Bonjour, monsieur,” she said to Jacques. “Je suis Helen.” And she proceeded to outline, in French with a heavy American accent, what would be required of him. And different ghosts, each more charming than the last, appeared to people on bridges all over the world, and thus was established the new turn of the Wheel of Life and Death, so that each soul on its journey between bodies, would pause in a place between places, and then continue on toward its proper place as part of the universe.