Secondhand Souls (Grim Reaper 2)

“But you are coming back, right?” said, Lily trying to cheer him up.

“Probably not. We’ll never find the right body.”

“No, that’s the good news. That’s why I’m blackmailing you—­I mean, why I called. I think I have the body for you.”

“Lily, I have to be there almost at the moment of death. You can’t just grab a body out of the fridge.”

“Are you implying that I keep bodies in my fridge?”

“It’s just an expression.”

“That’s not an expression, Asher.”

“Okay, sorry. No, I don’t think you have a human body in your fridge.”

“Douche.” She pouted. She’d forgotten how much fun it was to pout in front of Asher. If only she could see the distress on his little face.

“I said I’m sorry,” he said. “Go on.”

“It’s a guy I met on the crisis line. He’s about your age, pretty nice-­looking, if you like that type, doesn’t seem to have any family, no wife or girlfriend, and he’s got balls the size of toaster ovens.”

“Trust me, Lily, enormous genitals are not as fun as they sound.”

“It’s just a figure of speech. He’s a painter on the Golden Gate Bridge, so he’s up on high steel, hundreds of feet above the water, every working day.”

“And how do you know he’s going to die? Did Minty find him in his date book?”

“No, M doesn’t know anything about this, the guy told me, himself. He wanted me to talk him out of jumping off the bridge.”

“That’s horrible. Is he depressed?”

“No. He says he’s not jumping to get away from anything, he’s jumping to get to something.”

“But don’t you have a moral obligation to talk him out of jumping?”

“It’s a gray area.”

“How can that be a gray area? You work on a suicide hotline. You can’t just say, ‘Okay, have at it.’ ”

“I have before.” She chewed a nail.

“Lily!”

“Shut up, they made a good case. Besides, nobody that I told to jump ever actually jumped.”

“I don’t know,” Charlie said. “We’ll have to ask Audrey. She’s the one who knows the rituals and stuff.”

“Do you want to see your daughter again or not?”

“Of course I do.”

“Then shut the fuck up and let me kill this guy for you.”

“Let’s talk to Audrey.”

“But if she says go, it’s a go, right?”

“Sure, I suppose.