Christopher Moore - Secondhand Souls

The scratching became more frantic. He reached back and opened the door just a crack.

“Need a cheez,” came a little voice at about shin level.

“Play with your ball. We’re out of cheese.”

“Need a cheez,” said the voice again.

Charlie closed the door, grinned at everyone, embarrassed, as the scratching resumed. “Maybe if you show him your boobs,” he said to Audrey.

Now, Charlie pretty much had everyone’s attention.

“No,” Audrey said, crossing her arms.

“Excuse me,” Charlie said. He got up, moved his chair, then got down on his knees and opened the door again.

“Need a cheez,” said the voice.

Charlie opened the door a couple of inches, reached in, grabbed something, and threw it. “Go play.” They could all hear the distinct sound of a tennis ball bouncing off surfaces and something scurrying after it, then nothing.

“There,” Charlie said, getting back in his seat. “He’ll be fine.”

“I have a basset hound,” said Carrie Lang. “Showing him my boobs doesn’t really have much of an effect on him.”

“Hmm,” Audrey said. “Go figure.” She moved to the center of the floor. “Okay, here’s what I’ve been thinking, about this new order.” She paused a moment, seeing if they would let her out of further explanations about her dog-training methods. Everyone appeared to be letting it go and she felt loving kindness toward all of them.

“The universe seeks balance, order. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, right?” Audrey was suddenly grateful that Lily was out of the room. She was feeling somewhat vulnerable to sarcasm as she waded into this concept. Everyone waited.

“So, for every dark, there is a light, the wheels turn, the planets spin, the machine seeks and finds order. But the universe also oscillates, pulses, expands and contracts—and, I’ve lost all of you, haven’t I?”

“Pretty much,” said Charlie. Now that it was out there, everyone agreed.

“Okay, let me come at it this way, The Book of Living and Dying , what you call The Tibetan Book of the Dead, talks about hundreds of demons and monsters that one will encounter on the journey from life to death and beyond. It describes them in detail, but warns not to be afraid, because they are all illusions, manifestations of human consciousness.”

“Like the Morrigan…”

“But, they aren’t an illusion,” said Charlie. “They are very real and deadly.”

“They become real,” Audrey said. “The Big Book warns not to let souls fall into the hands of those from the Underworld, but at one time, they weren’t in the Underworld, were they? Human souls empower them. They were part of someone’s living religion. So was that bullheaded thing, so was, or is, this elegant Death entity in the Buick, so are you guys, you Death Merchants. The Big Book is revised because things change, the rules change, and I don’t think this whole system of moving souls from one life to the next has always been that way. Every supernatural entity is a projection of human consciousness, going back for, well, who knows how long? And any change is going to be countered, always has been.”

She looked around the room. “Nobody?”

“We need to figure out what to do,” said Rivera.

“I don’t think you can solve a problem if you don’t know what it is, Inspector,” said Audrey. “I think that the order the universe found, for a time, anyway, was this ridiculously complex system of souls transferring through objects. Maybe there was a wobble a thousand years ago, and this is the universe trying to correct that, but now there’s another wobble. Maybe when Sophie was born, somehow as the Luminatus, there had to be a balance, so that horned death thing rose, and the hellhounds came to protect Sophie, and the Morrigan appeared to balance that. The whole conflict changed things, and for the last year it’s been seeking a new order. Subtle, like Mr. Baptiste being able to sell souls over the Internet instead of having a shop.”

Charlie said, “But if Sophie was on the light side, and has lost her powers, and this new Death has come, with the Morrigan, doesn’t that mean that everything is out of balance again?”

“Yes,” said Audrey. “It means we’re in a wobble. And there’s way too much on the dark side of the wobble. Something has to balance it out.”

“Some good guys?” said Charlie.

“Not necessarily,” said Audrey. “There’s order and disorder, we may not perceive whatever is balancing the dark as good. I’m just saying there has to be something to balance the dark, and if it’s not Sophie, there’s something else, some other being or force—”

“So,” Charlie said, “you’re saying that every god, throughout history, every supernatural being ever, is a manifestation of the power of the human soul?”

Audrey shrugged.

“The Ghost Thief,” Lily said from the doorway. Everyone looked up at her. “Mike Sullivan said that the ghost on the bridge told him we had to find the Ghost Thief.”

“Which is what?” said Rivera, starting to show some impatience now.

Lily held up the Emperor’s journal. “This is not a list of everyone who has died in the Bay Area, but it is a list of a lot of people who have died, most I confirmed. And so are all of your calendars. But none of the names on the Emperor’s list are in any of your calendars, except those in Charlie and Rivera’s calendars, and only Charlie’s from the last year.”

“Which means?”

“It means that if your soul object was retrieved, your name isn’t on the Emperor’s list. And after all those Death Merchants were murdered, the list got a lot longer fast. It means that there are a shit ton of unretrieved souls—souls out of order—floating around or taken by another entity. If what Audrey says actually applies, if they gain their power from human souls, there’s something very big and very scary that’s been taking these souls. I think that’s what Mike’s ghost girl was calling the Ghost Thief.”

“You know this for a fact,” said Charlie.

“No, Asher, I don’t know anything for a fact, I’m just putting it together from what we know and what Audrey is saying. I’m saying there’s a big hole in the system right now and I’m calling that hole the Ghost Thief. Could be good, could be bad.”

“So, there,” said Rivera. “What do we do?”

Lily looked to Audrey, “All yours.”

Audrey said, “I think you need to carry on, collecting soul vessels, getting them to new people, keep as many as you can out of the hands of the Underworlders. The cycle of living and dying is the order the universe is seeking.” She paused, scanned faces, got nothing. “I think.”

“Maybe it’s better to do it Mr. Baptiste’s way,” said Minty Fresh. “Not have them in our shops. Put them somewhere out of the way, a vault or something. Sell them remotely over the Internet.”

“My wife and I can sell them,” said Baptiste. “We would just need a photo of each vessel.”

“We could move them all to a vault somewhere,” said Minty Fresh. “Only go there to get the ones you will ship.”

Rivera said, “That might keep the soul vessels out of their hands, but it does ignore the more immediate problem, which is when they come for the souls, they kill us. Does no one else find that a problem?”

“Yeah,” said Minty Fresh. “That’s why I’m suggesting we hide the objects, then we hide. Stay out of our shops. Just go out to retrieve the new vessels. What do you want to do about it?”

“Go after them,” said Rivera. “Sure, we try to figure out who this Ghost Thief is, and I’ll use what resources I can to help, but the Morrigan require a little more direct action. We know they can be hurt by weapons, and they only get stronger as they accumulate human souls, so the sooner we go after them, the better chance we have of stopping them.”