Christopher Moore: Secondhand Souls

Rivera shrugged. “It’s her best quality, as far as I can tell.”

“You’re going to have to figure something out, you can’t keep stunning her, I can smell burning—is that Scotch?”

“Peat, I think. Yeah. That’s not from the stun gun, that’s just how she smells.”

“Want me to cuff her? Take her in? I can probably get a psych hold on her for the outfit alone.”

“I think she might be a supernatural being,” Rivera said. He rubbed his temples so he didn’t have to look at Cavuto’s reaction.

“Like the alleged bird woman you allegedly shot nine times before she allegedly turned into a giant raven and allegedly flew the fuck off? Like that?”

“She was going to kill Charlie Asher.”

“You said she was giving him a hand job.”

“This one’s different.”

“No hand job?”

“No, in that she’s a completely different creature. This one doesn’t have claws that I can see. This one just screams.”

“But you’re sure she’s supernatural because…?”

“Because when she screams my head fills with images of people dying and other horrible things. She’s a supernatural being.”

“You’re a supernatural being, ya berk,” said a female voice from the floor. She sat up.

Rivera and Cavuto jumped back, the latter with a slight yip.

“One of those wee soul collectors, ain’t ya? Sneakin’ about all invisible-like.” She tossed her hair out of her face—a twig flew out onto the carpet.

“You’re not from around here, are you?” said Cavuto, acting as if he hadn’t just yipped in fear like a tiny frightened dog.

“AHHHHHHHHIEEEEEEEEE!”

The two jumped back farther as she climbed to her feet. Cavuto shook his head as if trying to clear a cloud from his vision.

“See?” Said Rivera.

“Do you have any ID ma’am?” asked Cavuto.

“I’m Bean Sidhe , ya great mortal twat! AHHHHHHHIEEEEEEEE!”

“ZZZZZT!” said the stun gun.

She fell back into a pile of rags. Cavuto had snatched the stun gun and put her down himself. He handed it back to Rivera then knelt, drew the handcuffs from his belt, and snapped them around her slight wrists.

“She’s cold.”

“Supernatural,” said Rivera.

“She’s not the only one, evidently.” He took off his hat so Rivera could see his cocked eyebrow of inquisition.

“I’m not supernatural.”

“I don’t judge. I am not a judger. It’s traumatic. I know how I felt when I got outed by surprise.”

“How was that a surprise? You were marching in the Pride Parade wearing your dress blue uniform with no pants and a yellow codpiece.”

“Didn’t mean I was gay; Cops without Pants was the theme that year. You got any duct tape? That shriek is fucking spooky.” Cavuto rolling with the weird, as he always had. He had the ability to deny a supernatural situation while simultaneously dealing with it in a practical way, which is why Rivera had called him in the first place.

“You’re going to tape her mouth?”

“Only until I get her to St. Francis and can get them to sedate her and sign off on a psych hold. I’ll say she did it herself.”

“St. Francis isn’t ten blocks from here. Throw her in the car, hit the lights, and you’ll be there before she comes to.”

“I’m not going to carry her to the car when she is perfectly capable of walking on her own, probably.”

“I’ll help you. It might be twenty minutes before she comes to.”

“Plenty of time for you to go buy burgers down the block and bring them back.”

“I’ll call the order in and go pick it up.”

“Curly fries. Two doubles, no tomato. You’re buying.”

“Inspector Cavuto, you are a huge lunch whore,” said Rivera, reaching for the phone.

“ Protect and served, lunch —SFPD motto.” The big cop grinned. “But it may not be a bad idea to keep her down. I have some zip restraints in the car for her ankles. Call for burgers.”

Rivera hit the burger button on speed dial and watched his ex-partner lumber out to the brown Ford sedan, which was, as usual, parked in a red zone. The big man popped the trunk and stirred around inside.

The girl from the burger place came on the line with a perky, “Polk Street Gourmet Burgers, can I help you?”

“Yeah, I’d like—”

ZZZZZT!

He barely heard the sound, just a spine-wrenching white-hot pain that started at the back of his neck and bolted to his extremities. Through the sizzling disruption of his thoughts he remembered he’d left the stun gun on the counter behind him. When he came to, Cavuto was kneeling over him.

“How long was I out?”

“Ten, maybe fifteen seconds.”

Rivera rubbed the back of his head. Must have hit it on the edge of the counter when he fell. Every joint in his body hurt. He rolled to his hands and knees and looked back to where the raggedy woman had been lying.

“Gone,” said Cavuto. He dangled his handcuffs in front of Rivera’s eyes. They were still locked. “I heard her scream again, ran in, she was gone.”

“The back door is locked,” said Rivera. “Go after her.”

“Not going to matter. She’s gone.”

“What’s with all the smoke? She start a fire?”

“Nope. Just a cloud of smoke behind the counter where I guess she was standing when she zapped you.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” said Cavuto. “You’re going to need to call someone with more experience at this than me.” He picked up the phone receiver from the floor, held it to his ear. “Yeah, did you get that order? Two double burgers, medium well, everything but tomatoes, curly fries.” He looked at Rivera. “You want anything?”

Sophie Asher was seven years old. She lived in San Francisco with her aunties, Jane and Cassie, on the second floor of a building that overlooked the cable-car line in North Beach. Sophie had dark hair and blue eyes, like her mother, and an overactive imagination, like her father, although both parents were gone now, which is why she was looked after by her aunties; two widows who lived in the building, Mrs. Ling and Mrs. Korjev; as well as two enormous black hellhounds, Alvin and Mohammed, that had simply appeared in her room when she was a toddler. She liked dressing up like a princess, playing with her plastic ponies, eating Crunchy Cheese Newts, and making grandiose declarations about her power over the Underworld and her dominion over Death, which was why she was currently in a time-out in her room while Auntie Jane was frantically chattering into the phone out in the great room.

From time to time, Sophie popped her head out the door and fired off another salvo of flamboyant nonsense, because she was the Luminatus, dammit, and she would have the last word.

“I am become Death, destroyer of worlds!” she shouted, her passion somewhat diffused when the pink ribbon holding her pigtail caught in the door as she ducked back into her room.

“So, that’s what we’re dealing with here,” said Jane into the phone. “She’s gotten completely out of hand.” Jane was tall, angular, and wore her short platinum hair sculpted into various unlikely permutations, from angry spikes to soft finger waves, all of which played counterpoint to the tailored men’s suits she wore when she worked at the bank, making her appear either fiercely pretty, or frightfully confused. Right now she wore a houndstooth tweed Savile Row suit she’d inherited from Charlie, waistcoat with watch chain, and a pair of eight-inch patent-leather red pumps the same shade as her bow tie. She might have been the result of a time-travel accident where Doctor Who parts were woven into the warp with those of a robot stripper.