Secondhand Souls (Grim Reaper 2)

“He just let you go?” Charlie said.

“Who the fuck Yama?” said Minty.

“The man in yellow,” said Audrey. “He’s a Buddhist personification of Death. The legend was that he was a monk who was told if he meditated for fifty years, he would achieve enlightenment, so he went into a cave in the mountains, and he meditated for forty-­nine years, three hundred and sixty-­four days, and on the last day, some thieves came into the cave, leading a bull they had stolen, and they decapitated it, and when he asked to be spared, they decapitated him, too. He was reincarnated as Yama, a powerful demon-­god, and he put the head of the bull on his own body and then killed the thieves and became the prime ruler over Death, the protector of Buddhism. He’s one of the demons we’re told to ignore when we are training to lead ­people through bardo, from life to death.”

“Yama, huh?” Minty Fresh said.

“Yes, I’m so sorry, I should have told you all.”

“That’s okay. How ’bout you let go my leg.”

Audrey had been hugging his calf and foot through the entire Yama story, now she was embarrassed as well as sorry.

“But you didn’t ignore him, right?” said Charlie.

“Honestly, I didn’t really remember him until now. Does that make sense?”

“It’s all right, Audrey,” Minty said. “He has some kind of gris-­gris he put on ­people. Kid that works for me was all woo-­woo with it, too, asking me about where my soul vessels went. I knew something was up with him. Motherfucker been sneaky since we was little.”

“Pardon?” said Charlie.

“Yama my cousin.”

“Wait,” said Audrey. “What?”

“He might be Yama now, but when I knew him, his name was Lemon, and he was my cousin.”

“Lemon Fresh?” asked Charlie. “So that isn’t a nickname you made up?”

Rivera turned aside and tried to hide his smile.

“Don’t you laugh,” said Minty. “Lemon was not an uncommon name in Louisiana in those days. And I’m dying here.”

“He said he’s just trying to establish a new order,” Audrey said, even more distressed now. “And that’s what we thought was happening. That’s part of the cycle, part of the wheel of life and death . . . Right?”

“Audrey,” Minty Fresh said, his eyelids fluttering a bit now. “I don’t want to rush y’all, but I probably got a limited time to live, so if you could just tell us—­”

“I think I told him the lost souls are on the bridge,” Audrey said.

Minty Fresh looked from Charlie to Rivera back to Audrey. “Was anyone going to tell me?”

“I was going to,” said Charlie, “but I only found out yesterday afternoon and things hav

e moved kind of fast since then. Were you going to tell us that the new menace to reality as we know it is your cousin?”

“Don’t sass me, Charlie, I’m dying.”

“You can’t keep playing the death card.”

“I don’t want to keep playing the death card. But the death card been played. Just let me go with a little dignity.” He closed his eyes, took a gasping breath.

“You mean instead of lying like a rug,” said Charlie.

One of Minty Fresh’s eyes popped open, his dignified death having been postponed by being called on his shit. “You know, Asher, just because you have biceps now doesn’t mean you can talk to me like that.”

“Your cousin?”

“He sent me the book, all right? He made me into a Death Merchant twenty some years ago, then he disappeared. Only reason I knew he was in town is he still driving that raggedy old Buick Roadmaster. I would spit but my mouth is dry.”