A Dirty Job (Grim Reaper 1)

"We come in, lock door," explained Mrs. Korjev. "Fish are fine. Put Sophie in car seat like always we are doing, then go look in hallway for coast to be clear. When Mrs. Ling look back, fish are dead. "

"Not me! Is Russian who see dead fish," said Mrs. Ling.

"It's okay," Charlie said. "Did you see any birds, anything dark in the apartment?"

The two women shook their heads. "Only upstairs," Mrs. Ling said.

"Let's go look," Charlie said, moving Sophie to his hip and picking up his sword-cane. He led the two women to the little elevator, did a quick assessment of Mrs. Korjev's size versus the cubic footage, and led them up the stairs. When he saw the broken bay window he felt a little weak in the knees. It wasn't so much the window, it was what was on the roof across the street. Refracted a thousand times in the spiderwebbed safety glass was the shadow of a woman that was cast on the building. He handed the baby to Mrs. Korjev, approached the window, and knocked a hole in the glass to see better. As he did, the shadow slid down the side of the building, across the sidewalk, and into the storm drain next to where a dozen tourists had just disembarked from a cable car. None of them appeared to have seen anything. It was just past one and the sun was casting shadows nearly straight down. He looked back at the two windows.

"Did you see that?"

"You mean break window?" Mrs. Ling said, slowly approaching the window and peering through the hole Charlie had made. "Oh no. "

"What? What?"

Mrs. Ling looked back at Mrs. Korjev. "You are right. Flowers need water. "

Charlie looked through the hole in the window and saw that Mrs. Ling was referring to a window box full of dead, black geraniums.

"Safety bars on all the windows. Tomorrow," Charlie said.

Not far away, as the crow flies, under Columbus Avenue, in a wide pipe junction where several storm sewers met, Orcus, the Ancient One, paced, bent over like a hunchback, the heavy spikes that jutted from his shoulders scraping the sides of the pipe, throwing off sparks and the smell of smoldering peat.

"You're going to fuck up your spikes if you keep pacing like that," said Babd.

She was crouched in one of the smaller pipes to the side, next to her sisters, Nemain and Macha. Except for Nemain, who was beginning to show a gunmetal relief of bird feathers over her body, they were devoid of depth; flat absences of light, absolute black even in the gloom filtering down through the storm grates - shadows, silhouettes, really - the darker ancestors of the modern mud-flap girls. Shades: delicate and female and fierce.

"Sit. Have a snack. What good to take the Above if you look like hell in the end?"

Orcus growled and spun on the Morrigan, the three. "Too long out of the air! Too long. " From the basket on his belt he hooked a human skull on one of his claws, popped it in his mouth, and crunched down on it.

The Morrigan laughed, sounding like wind through the pipes, pleased that he was enjoying their gift. They'd spent much of the day under San Francisco's graveyards digging out the skulls (Orcus liked them decoffinated) and polishing off the dirt and detritus until they shone like bone china.

"We flew," said Nemain. She took a moment to admire the blue-black feather shapes on her surface. "Above," she added unnecessarily. "They are everywhere, like cherries waiting to be stolen. "

"Not stolen," said Orcus. "You think like a crow. They are ours for the taking. "

"Oh yeah, well, where were you? I got these. " The shade held up William Creek's umbrella in one hand and the fur jacket she'd ripped away from Charlie Asher in the other. They still glowed red, but were rapidly dimming. "Because of these, I was Above. I flew. " When no one reacted, Nemain added, "Above. "

"I flew, too," said Babd timidly. "A little. " She was a tad self-conscious that she'd manifested no feather patterns or dimension.

Orcus hung his great head. The Morrigan moved to his side and began stroking the long spikes that had once been wings. "We will all be Above, soon," said Macha. "This new one doesn't know what he is doing. He will make it so we can all be Above. Look how far we've come - and we are so close now. Two Above in such a short time. This New Meat, this ignorant one, he may be all we need. "

Orcus lifted his bull-like head and grinned, revealing a sawmill of teeth. "They will be like fruit for the picking. "

"See," said Nemain. "Like I said. Did you know that Above you can see really far? Miles. And the wonderful smells. I never realized how damp and musty it is down here. Is there any reason that we can't have a window?"

"Shut up!" growled Orcus.

"Jeez, bite my head off, why don't you. "

"Don't tease," said the bullheaded Death. He rose and led the other Deaths, the Morrigan, down the pipe toward the financial district, to the buried Gold Rush ship where they made their home.

Chapter 10

PART TWO

SECONDHAND SOULS