Secondhand Souls (20 page)

20

Testing, Testing

O
n his first day back living in his old building, Charlie picked Sophie up at school and walked her to get ice cream. On their way home, cones in hand, they encountered a rat that was dying in the gutter, probably from poison. Charlie thought,
“A dead rat, well, that would be disgusting and cliché, but an
almost
dead rat, that sir, is an opportunity!”

Charlie looked around. He didn’t see anyone else out walking on this particular stretch of street, at least none close enough to tell what he was doing. He didn’t notice the yellow Buick Roadmaster parked on the next block, someone sitting behind the wheel.

“Sophie, honey, you know the word that you’re never supposed to say, and that thing you’re never supposed to ever do?”

“Yep.” She nodded, plowing a nose-shaped furrow into her orange sherbet.

“Okay, I need you to do that. With this rat.”

“You said never, ever.”

“I know, honey, but this creature is suffering, so this would help it.”

“Audrey said that life is suffering.”

“You can’t listen to her, she’s a crazy woman. No, I need you to try it. Just point at the rat and say the word.”

“Okay,” Sophie said. “Hold this.” She handed Charlie her cone and crouched down.

She pointed to the rat, looked over her shoulder at Charlie, just to make sure, and he nodded.

“Kitty,” she said.

L
ily was sitting at her call station, headset on, tablet before her, watching a French film about a man who goes insane when he shaves off his mustache, when her line rang. She could see on the terminal that it was one of the hard lines from the Golden Gate Bridge. She paused her movie, took a deep breath, and connected.

“Crisis hotline. This is Lily. What’s your name?”

“Hi Lily, this is Mike Sullivan.”

“Hi, Mike. How are you doing today.”

“Lily, this is
Mike Sullivan
. The Mike Sullivan who jumped . . .”

Lily stopped breathing for a second. No one who had actually jumped had called back before. She wasn’t sure she was trained for this. Sure, she would have ignored the training, but it would be nice to have it to fall back on.

“So, Mike, it says here you’re on the bridge, on one of the hard lines.”

“Yes. I’m just sort of connected. I don’t know how.”

“So, you’re not, like, standing there talking into the speaker box or anything?”

“No, nothing like that. I’m just sort of here. Not physically, but it feels like I’m talking to you.”

“You’re calling from the other side?” Lily said.

“What? Marin? No, right
on
the bridge.”

“It
is
you!” His doofuscocity had transcended even death.

“I’m here, Lily. On the bridge, like Concepción promised, like I thought it would be—well, not like I thought it would be, but I’m here. So it worked? Did Charlie get my body?”

“Yes, but that was a while ago. Do you not have the same perception of time?”

“It did seem to take a long time to figure out how to get through to you. I tried asking people on the bridge, even risked going to one of my old coworkers. Nothing. I don’t have whatever it is that Concepción and the others had to appear to me.”

“Maybe it was you,” said Lily. “Not them.”

“Really?”

“You’re talking to
me
from beyond the grave, although not literally. A lot of people have been on that bridge over the last seventy-five years, yet you’re the one she picked.”

“Oh, yeah. How’s your friend doing with my body?”

“He seems pretty comfortable. He’s boning a nun with it.”

“Oh no!”

“No, it’s okay. She’s into it. You met her.”

“Oh, Audrey?”

“Yes. So, what’s it like being dead?” Lily was suddenly aware of the other counselors in the room looking at her, which normally didn’t bother her. Sage was writing down the time on a Post-it, no doubt so she could find the call on the recordings when she reported Lily. “Just a second, Mike.” She’d forgotten for a moment that all the calls were being recorded.

She pressed the mute key and turned to Sage. “This guy thinks he’s a ghost,” she said. “I just need to indulge his delusions long enough to figure out how to get him down. You want to take over? I can put him on hold, probably.”

“No. Go ahead,” said Sage. “Sorry.”

“I’m back, Mike. You okay? One of my co-counselors was noting the time for the recording.”

“Recording? That’s not good, is it?”

“I just need to get you safely off that bridge, Mike,” she said, louder than was necessary.

“Well, I just called to tell you that I was okay, better than okay. I’m, well, I’m not just the me you’ve met, I’m a lot of people. And there are others here. Thousands.”

“Mike, as a trained crisis counselor, I’m not qualified or authorized to give you a diagnosis, but if someone less grounded than you were to say that—that he was ‘
a lot of people,
’ then I would have to recommend he seek counseling.”

“Isn’t that what I’m doing?”

“Not really a mystery that you didn’t have any friends in life, Mike.”

“Oh, the recording. Right. I need to know if you guys found the Ghost Thief yet. Concepción says we need to hurry.”

“Not yet, Mike. We’re trying to figure that one out.”

“Oh, okay. Thanks. Keep trying. I guess I won’t jump today, Lily. You’ve changed my outlook. I’m going to go seek some counseling right now.” He was possibly the worst liar she’d ever heard.

“Wait, Mike—”

He disconnected. Lily looked over her shoulder to see if Sage was still listening, but the frizzy-haired traitor in cargo pants was already on her way to the director’s office.

W
ell, she’s totally useless,” Charlie said as he entered the apartment.

Sophie ran by him into the apartment—wailing like a tiny fire engine—through the great room where Jane and Cassie were sitting, and into her room. She slammed the door.

Jane sat up, wineglass in hand. “I’m suddenly feeling a lot better about my parenting skills.”

Sophie opened her door and poked her head out. “I liked you better when you were dead!” she shouted at Charlie. She slammed the door again.

“So, good first day back?” asked Cassie.

Charlie plopped down on the couch next to his sister. “She can’t even kill a rat that’s already circling the drain. In fact, I think he perked up a little. She kept pointing and saying,
‘
Kitty! Kitty! Kitty!’
but nothing happened. A couple walking down the other side of the street gave me smiling pity nods because they thought she was slow.”

“You’re not supposed to say slow,” said Cassie. “It’s unkind. Although, Jane always says it.”

“That’s because she takes like an hour to vacuum the living room, not the developmentally kind of slow.”

“Unkind,” said Cassie.

Charlie scooted away from Jane on the couch. “You make a seven-year-old vacuum the living room? That’s horrible. You’re like a wicked stepmother.”

“First, I pay that child a living wage; second, the reason it takes her so long is because she gets to do whatever she wants during the process; and third, she wants to be a princess, so a wicked stepmother is like a pre-rec.”

“Well she’s not going to be a princess. She’s not even the Luminatus anymore.”

“You told her she isn’t the Luminatus?”

“Well, of course. I need to keep her safe.”

“Jane wouldn’t even tell her that she wasn’t a vegan,” said Cassie.

“It’s not a diet thing,” said Jane. “She really wants to fit in.”

“But she’s not a vegan, right?” Charlie said. “Lily said you told her she could eat animals that only eat vegetables.”

“Yeah, that’s when she was a vegetarian. Now that she’s a vegan she only eats orange food: mac and cheese, carrots, sweet and sour pork.”

“Sweet and sour pork is
not
vegan.”

“The kid had two dogs the size of cows at her command. If she wants sweet and sour pork to be vegan, then it is.”

“So you just let her do whatever she wants—run around here like a crazed barbarian.”

“She likes to think of herself as a warrior princess,” said Cassie.

“Are you guys fighting?” Charlie asked.

“It’s how we show affection,” said Cassie.

“Honestly, I’m kind of sad she’s not the Luminatus,” said Jane, slouching on the couch. “I feel bad for her. Plus, it really got me through discussions in line at Whole Foods. When the other mothers were going on about how awesome their kids were, I’d think:
Oh, your little Riley is an all-star in youth soccer, can play Bach on the cello, speaks Mandarin, and has a brown belt in ballet? Well, Sophie is the Luminatus. DEATH! The grim reaper. The big D. She rules the Underworld and can vaporize demons with
a wave of a hand. She’s guarded by indestructible hellhounds that can eat steel and burp fire,
so your little Riley can lick dog drool off my Sophie’s spiky red Louboutins, bitch!
Now I’ll never be able to say that.”

“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.

W
hen 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?”

T
he 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.”