Christopher Moore - Secondhand Souls

“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.