Christopher Moore - Secondhand Souls

“Adornment of ego?” Bob said.

“Oh, yeah,” Charlie said. “Well have a look at this.” He started to untie his robe and Audrey held her hand out to stop him.

“I’ll make new clothes,” she said.

“For all of us,” Bob said.

“For all of you,” Audrey said.

“And extras. So we can change.”

“Fine,” said Audrey. “I’ll get started tonight.”

“Good,” said Charlie. “Because if we don’t get this done, the dark could rise again, and you know what comes then…”

“About that,” said Bob. He buttoned his jacket, picked up his spork, and turned to walk away. “You may want to get yourself a spork or something.”

“What?” Charlie scampered into the butler’s pantry after Bob, but he was gone. Charlie returned into the parlor. “There’s a vent in there behind the wastebasket—drops right into the space under the house.”

“You’re not a monstrosity, Charlie,” Audrey said.

“It’s okay,” he said, waving the thought away with a raptor’s talon. “But I can’t collect souls like this, and I don’t trust the Squirrel People.”

“I have an idea, but it might be a little, uh, humbling.”

“We just got owned by a guy who carries a spork.”

“Good point. Also, because you’re officially still a Death Merchant, at least your date book is still active, I’m hoping that you’ll still be invisible when you’re collecting a soul vessel.”

“Not invisible; people just don’t see you. If you call their attention to you, they can.”

“You didn’t have to be naked for that to work, did you?”

“No.”

“Good, because—”

“Yeah, I know,” he said.

“You know about the cat carrier?”

“No, I was thinking of something else.”

You can see me?” Rivera asked the guy with the mop. After actually collecting several soul vessels from the names on his list, he was starting to gain some confidence as a Death Merchant. He’d even managed to enter the houses of two of his “clients” unnoticed, passing right by people who didn’t realize he was there. All his years as a cop had conditioned him to take special care in entering a residence, so to ease his mind he had started to think of the names in his date book as warrants, which also expired if not served. The fresh names had worked, the older ones, not so much, but this name had only appeared in his book this very morning. Now he was busted while standing over this poor woman’s hospice bed like some kind of ghoul. There was only one proper way to deal with this: badge the shit out of the mop guy.

“Inspector Alphonse Rivera,” he said, flipping open his badge wallet to flash the seven-pointed gold star. “SFPD homicide.”

“Uh-huh,” said the mop guy, much less impressed than Rivera had hoped. “I am Jean-Pierre Baptiste. Are you lookin’ for something, Inspector?” He was black, about sixty, and spoke with a musical Caribbean accent—from a French-speaking island, Rivera guessed.

“I’m working a case, and I’m looking for a book that I was told I might find here.” All the soul vessels he had found had been books, which had been convenient, since he owned a bookstore, but then, it appeared that the universe preferred specialty retailing.

“This book you’re looking for, you think it might be glowing red?”

Rivera felt an electric shiver run from his heels to the crown of his head, only a little less paralyzing than when the banshee had shocked him with the stun gun.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Rivera said, not even convincing himself. He’d interviewed witnesses who lied so badly that he was embarrassed for them and had to look away to keep from wincing. Usually, after a few minutes, they would realize they weren’t pulling it off and would just cave in and tell the truth. Now he knew how they felt.

“Let us step out into the hallway,” Baptiste said, “so Madame Helen can get some rest.” To Helen he said, “À bientôt, madame, I will stop in before I go home.”

“ Monsieur Baptiste,” said Helen, gesturing for him to come closer.

“I am here, madame, ” he whispered.

“Don’t let that man alone in here with me. I think he’s Mexican. I think he’s after my Proust.”

“I will keep it safe, madame . But I don’t know where it is.”

“I had Nurse Anne wrap it in a towel and put it in the bottom drawer. Don’t look now, but check once you get rid of him.”

“I will, madame .” Baptiste looked to the little white dresser. There was one in each room, where patients’ personal things were kept. “I will.”

He left his mop bucket in the room and joined Rivera in the hall, then signaled for the policeman to follow him outside. He told the nurse at the desk that he was going on break and led Rivera outside to a spot by a covered bus stop. The hospice was in the outer Sunset, where San Francisco met the sea, and even though it was a sunny day, a cold wind swirled in the streets.

“You heard her?” Baptiste asked.

Rivera nodded.

“Don’t think badly of Helen. She has also asked me to keep the darkie nurses out of her room. A long time ago, when she was a little girl, someone planted a small seed of fear in her, and now, when all of her fears are bubbling up, this is one she has yet to let go, but she has not lived her life this way.”

“Then she doesn’t know you’re—”

“I speak French with her,” said Baptiste with a shrug— c’est la vie. “Now, for you, Inspector, how did you know it was a book?”

“How did you know I was looking for something?”

“How many people that you meet are surprised when you can see them, Inspector?”

“I’m asking the questions here,” said Rivera, feeling stupid for having said it. He remembered Charlie Asher having a similar reaction once when Rivera had spotted him up on a roof about to brain a Russian grandmother with a cinder block. Charlie had known then that Rivera was going to be a Death Merchant, long before the Big Book showed up in the mail.

“Oh, I understand. I work in a hospice. There is always a vessel close here, so much of the time I have to whistle or sing while I am working or people will run into me.”

Rivera decided to drop the pretense. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t already gone against the Great Big Book of Death ’s warning about contact with other Death Merchants before this.

“You are one of us and you work in a hospice? Seems kind of easy. Lazy.”

“Me? You are a homicide detective and I am the lazy one?”

“I’ve never collected a vessel from one of my cases.”

“Seems like a waste of coincidence. Maybe you are just not very good at finding things. The Big Book says it is very bad to miss a soul vessel. Very bad indeed.”

“I could be better at it,” said Rivera. “I didn’t pick it up right away. I only started a little more than a year ago.”

“Me, too,” said Baptiste. “The book came in the mail a year ago and my wife opened it. I thought it was a joke until people started running into me at work and I began to see the soul vessels’ red glow. I have never met another person who does this.”

“There are a lot of us. I don’t know how many, exactly.”

“But you have met others?”

“Yes. A couple. Many in the city were killed a year ago. All of them shopkeepers. I think you and I must be their replacements.”

“Killed? What do you mean they were killed?”

And because to keep the secret would have been unfair to the point of endangering him, Rivera told Baptiste about the darkness rising, about the Morrigan, about the Underworld somehow expanding itself into the sewer system of San Francisco, about the battle under the city, and of how Charlie Asher had sacrificed himself to put things back in order. Baptiste, already well adjusted to this soul-selling world, actually seemed pleased to have some dimension put on the responsibility that had been dropped on him from his mailbox.