Christopher Moore - Secondhand Souls

“Of course there is.”

So Rivera told Minty Fresh about the Emperor’s quest to record the names of the dead, of his insistence that they would be forgotten, and how in the past, the kindhearted madman had been somewhat ahead of the police on supernatural goings-on in the city. When he finished he said, “So, do you think there’s anything to it?”

Minty Fresh shrugged. “Probably. You broke the universe, Inspector, no tellin’ how bad.”

“You sound happy about that.”

“Do I? Because I don’t like that the universe is broken, I keep all my shit there.” For the moment, he did feel a little better, because as much as he had convinced himself that he was losing his grip on his cool, here was someone who was clearly worse off than he. Then he looked at Rivera, standing there easy in his Italian suit, his lines and aspect sharp as a blade, and he realized that the cop, or the ex-cop, had not lost his cool. The world might be unraveling around him, but Rivera was chill as a motherfucker.

“So what do I do?”

“I’d start with doing your job.”

“I’m retired—semiretired.”

“I mean picking up the soul vessels.”

“You think they’d still be there?”

“You had better hope they are.”

“How do I find them?”

“I’d start with your date book full of names, Detective Inspector—that was your title, right?”

Some of Rivera’s chill seemed to slip a bit. Rivera undid a button on his suit jacket, evidently to show that he was in action mode.

Minty smiled, a dazzling crescent moon in a night sky. “Did you just unbutton your coat so you could get to your gun?”

“Of course not, it’s just a little warm in here. I carry my gun on my hip.” Rivera brushed back his jacket to show the Glock.

“But you’re still packing, despite your retirement?”

“ Semiretirement . Yes, I started carrying my old backup. The banshee took my stun gun. She zapped me with it.”

“So she can just appear out of nowhere and knock you out?”

“Looks that way.”

“Well, good luck with that,” said Fresh, feeling ever so much cooler.

“I’ll call you,” said Rivera. “Let you know how it goes.”

“If you feel you have to.”

Rivera turned as if to leave, then turned back. “Didn’t you have a pizza and jazz place at Charlie Asher’s building in North Beach?”

“For a while. Didn’t pencil out.”

“You were in it with that spooky girl from Asher’s shop?”

“Also didn’t pencil out.”

“Sorry,” said Rivera, and he seemed genuinely so. “That can be tough. I’m divorced.”

“No damage can’t be buffed out.” said Minty. “Girl ain’t nothin’ but tits and sass.”

Rivera nodded. “Well, good luck with that.” He turned and left the shop, once again, chill as a motherfucker.

Minty Fresh shuddered, then picked up his mobile and began to scroll through his contacts, stopping on Lily’s number, but before he could hit call to set in motion another humiliating surrender of his cool, the phone buzzed and the screen read Three Jewels Buddhist Center.

“Sheeiiiiiiit,” said the Mint One, slow and dreadful, pronouncing the expletive with a long, low sustain of dread.

An iguana in a musketeer’s costume ran under Minty Fresh’s chair and through the beaded curtain into a butler’s pantry, where Charlie Asher sat on an empty mixed nuts can.

“Nice hat,” Charlie said.

The musketeer removed his hat, holding it with perfect little hands (previously raccoon paws, Charlie guessed), and bowed grandly over it.

“You’re welcome,” Charlie said.

The musketeer scampered on through the butler’s pantry into the kitchen. Charlie looked through the swinging beads at Minty Fresh, who was sitting on an inverted dining room chair, his knees up around his elbows, putting Charlie in mind of a very large, mint-green tree frog.

“You never seen that hat before?” asked Minty.

“Every day, but it makes him feel special if you notice it.”

“Ain’t you sweet.”

Charlie slid off his can and started through the beaded curtain.

Minty Fresh waved him off. “Ease on back there, Asher. I need to talk to you.”

“Why can’t you talk to me if I’m on the same side of the curtain as you?”

“Because I start looking at you, and before I know it I forget what I’m talking about, and I think maybe I should chase you away with a stick.”

“Ouch.” Charlie slunk back into the pantry and sat on his can. “What’s on your mind?”

“You called me.”

“But you showed up.”

Minty Fresh hung his head, rubbed his scalp. “I’m thinking maybe us talking isn’t the same now as it was before.”

Charlie was happy to hear it. “So you think now that Sophie is the Luminatus, everything is over, so we don’t have to worry about the rise of the Underworld?”

“No. I think that shit might already be rising. When you were collecting soul vessels, how many you think you picked up a year? On average?”

“I don’t know, a couple a week. Sometimes more, sometimes less.”

“Yeah, me, too. So that’s about a hundred a year. And about fifty-five hundred people a year die in the city proper. So that means there must be, call it, fifty-five Death Merchants.”

“That sounds about right,” Charlie said. “I met the Death Merchant in Sedona who collected my mother’s vessel, he said about two a week, too.”

“Right,” said Minty. “So, when they all came up, when it hit the fan, we only knew a dozen Death Merchants in the city, and the Morrigan killed all but three of us. Two if we count you as dead.”

“Which I don’t,” Charlie said.

“But you don’t collect soul vessels anymore. You don’t have a shop to turn them around.”

“Okay, don’t count me.”

“And I sent your copy of the Great Big Book of Death to Inspector Rivera.”

“Yeah. I wonder how he’s doing.”

“He was in my shop right before you called. A banshee appeared in his bookstore and zapped him with a stun gun.”

“So, not adjusting well to retirement?”

“He hasn’t collected a single soul vessel.”

“None?”

The Mint One shook his head. “That’s at least a hundred souls not collected, not passed on to the new owner. Plus, we don’t know what happened to the souls the other dead Death Merchants were supposed to collect.”

“I always assumed that when a Death Merchant died someone took his place. Audrey says the universe just takes care of the mechanics of it. Everything seeks balance.”

“Audrey, the one who put you inside that little monster?”

Charlie waved his talons in the air as if to dismiss the point and realized that he might be helping to make it. “So you’re saying—what are you saying?”

“Rivera said the names appeared in his date book, even though he didn’t pick up the souls. What if no one has been collecting the souls of the Death Merchants who were killed? What if by defeating the Underworlders we threw things out of balance? What if the Death Merchants who were killed weren’t replaced? What if there are a thousand souls that haven’t been collected since the Morrigan rose? Maybe more. A lot of people were killed in the city at that time. What if some of them were Death Merchants we didn’t know about, and all of those souls haven’t been collected?”

“I used to hear them moving under the streets, calling out, if I was late collecting just one ,” said Charlie. “When they got their hands on all the soul vessels in our shops—”

“It was a shit storm,” said Minty. “Now multiply that by ten, twenty.”