Secondhand Souls (Grim Reaper 2)

Lily tilted her head toward the sleeping Sophie, saying, more or less, because of the kid, “I’m not going to leave town, M. Even if Jane and Cassie go. I have work tomorrow. I’m going to be on those lines if Mike calls in from the bridge.”

Minty Fresh tapped out three beats with his size sixteens, a habit he’d acquired from arguing with Lily over the last year. “Well, at least go to your mother’s place. Stay there tonight. There’s no way Lemon will know to look for you there, even if he’s been watching you.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” said Charlie. “Lemon? This man in yellow that Sophie has been talking about is called Lemon?”

Minty Fresh glanced around the waiting room, as if there might be some obvious explanation written on one of the pieces of innocuous motel art. “Well, yeah, that’s sort of a shorthand I made up, you know.” To Lily, he said, “Anyway, will you at least stay at your mother’s house and take a cab to work? Please.”

Looking at Rivera, Charlie said, “Would you guys run by the Buddhist Center and check on Audrey. I was on the phone when all this happened. We got disconnected and I haven’t been able to get hold of her.”

“We will,” said Rivera.

Charlie held out a key. “This is for the front door.”

Minty Fresh took it and turned on a heel. “We’ll call you in ten minutes.”

“Thanks,” Charlie said, and watched them go. He sat on the other side of Sophie and stroked her hair as she slept.

“He loves you, you know,” he said to Lily.

“Not going to discuss this with you.”

“Okay.”

They passed the next few minutes by not talking and not looking at ­people who were trying not to look at them, except for those who looked at Sophie, sleeping, and smiled. Charlie leafed through some magazines to distract himself, only to find that he was made more anxious by wondering what kind of sociopathic fuck-­weasel would do all the puzzles in Highlights in pen. These monsters walk among us, he thought.

His phone buzzed. “She’s fine,” said Rivera.

“How is she fine? Why didn’t she call?”

“She said she dropped her phone and it broke and she didn’t have your new number written down anywhere. She left a message on your sister’s landline. She’s in the car with us. You want to talk to her?”

“Yes! Well, yes!”

“Hi, Charlie,” Audrey said. “Sorry. There was a little bit of a meltdown with the Squirrel ­People. Anyway, the inspector and Mr. Fresh are going to take me to your place, if that’s okay.”

“Sure.” He looked at Lily, mouthed, She’s okay. “Of course that’s okay, but I’ll be here awhile. Mrs. Korjev’s son is flying up from Los Angeles. We still haven’t heard on her condition other than she’s still critical.”

“I hope she’ll be okay. I have W.C. with me. He’s—­well—­the Squirrel ­People were mean to him.”

“Okay. I think there’s some mozzarella sticks in the fridge. I’ll be home as soon as I can. I was really hoping we could spend tonight together, since, you know, we may not get any more after tomorrow.”

“How could you say that? Don’t say that? You guys—­” There was a muffled rustling on the line that sounded like she was holding the phone against her chest as she spoke to whoever was in the car.

A doctor came through the double doors in scrubs, head down, looking very serious. He headed right for Charlie, who dropped his phone in his lap.

Jane and Cassie parked in the emergency-­only lane at the hospital. Jane stayed with the car while Cassie snuck into the waiting room to retrieve the sleeping Sophie, who hung in her arms like a snoring rag doll. Cassie emerged from the double doors just as Audrey was climbing out of Rivera’s unmarked police car, with a cat carrier containing Wiggly Charlie. Jane jumped out and herded Mrs. Ling down from the landing into the backseat of the car. Mrs. Ling’s cart stubbornly refused to fold up, so Jane chucked Wiggly Charlie’s cat carrier into the cart and fitted it into the backseat between Audrey and Mrs. Ling.

The same sort of stealth fire drill happened when they were bringing Sophie back to the apartment. Jane let Audrey into Charlie’s new apartment and Cassie carried the sleeping Sophi

e into their apartment, leaving Mrs. Ling to fend for herself. When the elevator cleared, Mrs. Ling looked into her cart to see the cat carrier. She wheeled it to her apartment on the third floor, then unzipped the cat carrier just far enough to peek inside, and smiled for the first time since her friend had fallen down.

She had cooked a creature almost exactly like this one before, when one of the early Squirrel ­People who fancied himself an assassin broke into the building, only to find himself in Mrs. Ling’s soup pot. Duck in Pants, she had called the dish. This one would make a nice soup that she could take to Mrs. Korjev at the hospital. She went to the kitchen and filled her blackened soup pot with water and turned on the flame.

“Need a cheez,” said Wiggly Charlie from his carrier.

Rivera slammed two five-­hour energy drinks as an act of faith. Not the faith of his father, which he now looked upon as quaint ritual, but faith in his own anger, because if he looked at the situation rationally, five hours was probably about four and a half hours longer than his current life expectancy. He was exhausted, having driven all over town through most of the night doing what he had come to think of as the “To-­Do List of the Dead,” but now dawn was breaking and he and Minty Fresh were pulling into the concrete channel where the old train tracks cut into the knoll at Fort Mason.

“Back in,” said Minty Fresh.