Christopher Moore - Secondhand Souls

“So you think this banshee—?”

“I think the bitch is announcing coming attractions.”

“Sssssshit,” Charlie said, letting the s hiss out between his multitude of teeth.

“Uh-huh,” said Minty. “You know where your old date book is?”

“At my apartment, I guess. I can’t imagine Jane would have thrown it out.”

“Call her.” Minty pulled his phone from his jacket pocket.

“You’ll have to help me dial.” Charlie waved his talons before his face again. They were not suited for touch screens and buttons. He gave Minty Fresh the number. Cassie answered and they waited while she found Charlie’s date book—a three-year calendar with only one year used when he had died.

“It’s filled in for the whole year, Charlie,” said Cassie over the speaker. “The latest entry is today. How can that be?” Charlie looked up at Minty Fresh and again missed having eyebrows—if he’d had them, he’d have raised one at the tall Death Merchant.

“I don’t know, Cassie. I’m trying to figure it out. Let’s put the book back and I’ll call you as soon as I know anything. Thanks.”

Minty disconnected them. “With you and Rivera, that’s a couple of hundred souls uncollected right there.”

“And you think it might be thousands.”

“In the Bay Area alone.”

“We’re probably fine, all those souls and nothing has happened.”

“Banshee,” said Minty, holding a long finger in the air to mark his point. “She calls herself a harbinger of doom, Asher. You know what a harbinger is?”

“I’m really hoping it’s a brand of Scotch.”

“It’s a messenger that tells you what is going to happen. With a banshee, that message is that death is coming.”

Charlie shrugged. “Big Death or little death?”

Fresh shrugged, shook his head.

“Then you need to help me find a body,” said Charlie.

“What?”

“That’s why I called. You help me find a body, then I can help you fix whatever the banshee is warning us about.”

“Like a corpse-type body?”

“Not exactly. Someone who is going to be a corpse, but before they become a corpse.”

“Doesn’t that describe everybody?”

“I mean right before they die. Like we have to be there at the moment of death.”

“Are you asking me to help you kill someone, because no.”

“Let me get Audrey. She’ll explain.”

Chöd,” said Audrey. The d was silent, it rhymed with “foe.”

“Chöd?” Minty Fresh repeated. He couldn’t stop looking at the surprised comma of her hair, for which he was grateful, because it kept him from looking at Charlie, which made him uncomfortable. When Audrey came in she insisted that Charlie come out of the pantry, so now they sat at an oak table in the breakfast room of the Buddhist Center, Audrey and he on chairs, Charlie sitting on his mixed nut can atop the table.

“Chöd’s the ritual I will perform to get Charlie a new body.”

When Minty had first seen her in his shop, several years ago, when she was rail thin, wore no makeup, and her shaved head was still in stubble, it would have been easy to believe she was a Buddhist nun, although he remembered at the time thinking she might be a chemotherapy patient, but now, with her drag-queen hair and a girlish shape filling out jeans and a San Francisco Giants thermal, it was hard to make the leap. This woman had been given the secret books of the dead by a Tibetan master? How could that be? She was dating a puppet!

“She can’t use the p’howa of forceful projection ritual that she used to put souls into the Squirrel People,” said Charlie.

“There would be no way to know that there wasn’t another soul in someone’s body,” Audrey said.

“We don’t know what would happen, but at best you’d end up with two personalities battling,” Charlie added.

“More likely two lunatics in one body, neither functioning,” said Audrey.

“And y’all can’t just use a corpse why? Your thingy of undying?”

“ P’howa, ” Audrey supplied.

“Because it’s not permanent,” Charlie said. “You remember the old ladies who were here at the Buddhist Center when you and I first came here, the ones that were in my book but who didn’t die because Audrey used the p’howa of undying on them?”

“Yeah, weren’t they living here?”

“Well, they’re all dead.”

“Six months,” said Audrey. “That’s the longest anyone lasted.”

“Really? Sorry. Why didn’t you call me?”

“The Big Book said we weren’t supposed to call you,” said Charlie. “I believe you said something like, ‘Don’t ever call me, Asher. Ever, ever, ever.’ ”

Minty bowed his head and nodded. He had said that. He said, “But you did call, and there you sit, you and all your little friends are fine, a year later, not even a stain on your wizard coat, while those old ladies died in six months.”

“We don’t quite know how they work—the Squirrel People,” Audrey said, wincing a little toward Charlie.

“It’s okay,” Charlie said, putting his claw out to comfort her. “I’m one of them.”

Audrey put her index finger in Charlie’s talon and looked into his expressionless black eyes.

“Wait,” said Minty Fresh. “Y’all aren’t…?”

“No,” said Charlie.

“No way,” said Audrey.

“That would be creepy,” said Charlie. “Although, did I show you this?” He started to unbelt his robe, beneath which he appeared to be wearing an innertube wrapped around his waist.

“No!” said Minty Fresh. “I mean, yes, you showed it to me.” He held up a hand to block his view of Charlie and squinted between his fingers until the croc-headed puppet person retied his wizard robe. He found it easier to cope with the sight of Charlie if he pretended he was a really complex speakerphone, but a speakerphone with an enormous peen was a peen too far.

“Mister Fresh,” said Audrey, “we need you to help us find someone who will willingly vacate their body for Charlie.”

Fresh pushed back on his chair as if he needed distance in order to see her. “How the hell would I find someone like that, and if I did, why the hell would they do that?”

“Well,” said Charlie, “if they knew they were going to die anyway, that their soul was going to leave their body anyway, they might.”

And at last Minty Fresh knew why they had called. “Y’all want me to tell you when a new name appears in my date book so you can what, go talk someone into giving up their body?”

“Yeah, and it’s going to have to be the right person,” said Audrey. “It’s going to have to be someone who will die accidentally. If it’s someone who is terminally ill, I don’t know if the disease won’t just continue like it did with the ladies.”

Fresh shook his head. “You know the names don’t come annotated with a cause of death? Just a name and the number of days we have to retrieve the soul.”

“Right,” said Charlie. “But Audrey can go find the person. See if they’re sick. If they’re the right gender. I don’t think I could deal with being a woman.”

“Because being a woman would be a step down from what you are now?” Minty Fresh smiled.

“Because if I woke up in the morning and saw my breasts, I’d never get out of the house,” Charlie said.

“He does like breasts,” said Audrey.

“Although we only had the one night together,” Charlie said.

“But you were very attentive,” said Audrey.

“I’m always attentive. I’m looking at them right now.”