As soon as she touched him she pulled away. "You're warm. "
"Thanks. " In that moment he realized that she wasn't. Her fingers had been ice-cold.
"Then you're not one of us?"
He tried to think of what "us" might be? Irish? Low blood pressure? Nymphomaniac? Why did he even think that? "Us? What do you mean, 'us'?"
She backed away a step. "No. You don't just take the weak and the sick, do you? You take anyone. "
"Take? What do you mean, 'take'?"
"You don't even know, do you?"
"Know what?" Charlie was getting very nervous. As a Beta Male, he found it difficult enough to function under the attention of a beautiful woman, but she was just plain spooky. "Wait. Can you see this thing glowing?" He held out the cigarette case.
"No glow. It just felt like it belonged here," she said. "What's your name?"
"Charlie Asher. This is Asher's. "
"Well, Charlie, you seem like a nice guy, and I don't know exactly what you are, and it doesn't seem like you know. You don't, do you?"
"I've been going through some changes," Charlie said, wondering why he felt compelled to share this at all.
The redhead nodded, as if confirming something to herself. "Okay. I know what it's like to, uh, to find yourself thrown into a situation where forces beyond your control are changing you into someone, something you don't have an owner's manual for. I understand what it is to not know. But someone, somewhere, does know. Someone can tell you what's going on. "
"What are you talking about?" But he knew what she was talking about. What he didn't know was how she could possibly know.
"You make people die, don't you, Charlie?" She said it like she had worked up the courage to tell him that he had some spinach in his teeth. More of a service to him than an accusation.
"How do you - ?" How did she -
"Because it's what I do. Not like you, but it's what I do. Find them, Charlie. Backtrack and find whoever was there when your world changed. "
Charlie looked at her, then at the cigarette case, then at the redhead again, who was no longer smiling, but was stepping backward toward the door. Trying to stay in touch with normal, he focused on the cigarette case and said, "I suppose I can do an appraisal - "
He heard the bell over the door jingle, and when he looked up she was gone.
He didn't see her moving by the windows on either side of the door; she was just gone. He ran to the front of the store and out the door onto the sidewalk. The Mason Street cable car was just topping the hill up by California Street and he could hear the bell, there was a thin fog coming up from the Bay that threw colorful halos around the neon signs of the other businesses, but there was no striking redhead on the street. He went to the corner and looked down Vallejo, but again no redhead, just the Emperor, sitting against the building with his dogs.
"Good evening, Charlie. "
"Your Majesty, did you see a redhead go by here just now?"
"Oh yes. Spoke to her. I'm not sure you have a chance there, Charlie, I believe she's spoken for. And she did warn me to stay away from you. "
"Why? Did she say why?"
"She said that you were Death. "
"I am?" Charlie said. "Am I?" His breath caught in his throat as the day played back in his head. "What if I am?"
"You know, son," the Emperor said, "I am not an expert in dealing with the fairer sex, but you might want to save that bit of information until the third date or so, after they've gotten to know you a little. "
Chapter 7
7
THANATOAST