“That would be nice, Inspector.”
“Alphonse,” he said.
She nodded. “I’m Elizabeth. Liz.”
“Liz,” he repeated, smiled. “Liz, I’ve know Lily since she was sixteen,” Rivera said. “You had your work cut you for you. She was a spooky kid.”
“Oh, you have no idea,” she said.
“Maybe I do. What do you take in your coffee?”
He was about to head back out the glass doors into the hallway when he saw a familiar doctor walk up to the nurses’ desk, confer with the attending nurse, then look around until he caught Rivera’s eye. Rivera intercepted him at the desk. Dr. Hathaway, Rivera reminded himself.
“How are you doing Inspector?” asked the doctor.
“That depends,” said Rivera.
“I don’t think there’s anything we can do for him. We were going to move him to a quiet room where everyone could be with him, but honestly, I don’t think there’s time. His organs are shutting down and I’m surprised he’s even conscious, so if you need to ask him anything, I’d do it right now.”
“Actually, he’s a friend.”
“I’m sorry. Before—”
“It’s okay, Doctor.”
“Code blue, Doctor,” called the nurse. She ran around the desk and into the room where Minty lay.
Without a word the doctor turned and followed her in. Lily came stumbling out of the glass doors, makeup-blackened tears running down her face.
26
The Underworld
Under the San Francisco Bay, in a maintenance storage room just off a BART service tunnel, the Morrigan pooled among the heavy track-repair and debris-clearing tools. Every few minutes a train would go through the tunnel and they would dig what was left of their claws into the concrete to keep from being sucked out into the greater train tunnel.
“Close the door,” said Babd, “and that won’t keep happening.” It was almost completely dark in the room and their eyes looked like silver disks floating in ink.
“I can’t close the door,” said Nemain. “It’s big and rusty and I can’t pull it loose. I only have one hand.”
“We should go back through the sewers to that house with all the little soul puppets,” said Macha. “Get our strength back.”
“We could get the ones that escaped under the house where we couldn’t fit.”
“Well, we could fit now,” said Babd. She, like her sisters, had barely any dimension now; even her shadow form showed holes and tears from buckshot.
Nemain, who was the most solid of the three, had lost a hand, and as much as she stared at it and cursed at it, it wouldn’t grow back, even in a shadow form. “We should go someplace where there are no guns.”
“Or cars,” said Babd.
“Or Yama.”
“Why is it,” said Macha, “that every time we become strong enough to do something about Yama, someone shoots us up?”
“I feel used,” said Babd. “Do you feel used? I don’t know why we need him.”
“I say we go eat the soul puppets, then flay Yama right away,” said Nemain.
“Take his head,” said Macha, who was always keen on taking heads, it being her specialty.