Secondhand Souls (Grim Reaper 2)

era nodded.

“Don’t think badly of Helen. She has also asked me to keep the darkie nurses out of her room. A long time ago, when she was a little girl, someone planted a small seed of fear in her, and now, when all of her fears are bubbling up, this is one she has yet to let go, but she has not lived her life this way.”

“Then she doesn’t know you’re—­”

“I speak French with her,” said Baptiste with a shrug—­c’est la vie. “Now, for you, Inspector, how did you know it was a book?”

“How did you know I was looking for something?”

“How many ­people that you meet are surprised when you can see them, Inspector?”

“I’m asking the questions here,” said Rivera, feeling stupid for having said it. He remembered Charlie Asher having a similar reaction once when Rivera had spotted him up on a roof about to brain a Russian grandmother with a cinder block. Charlie had known then that Rivera was going to be a Death Merchant, long before the Big Book showed up in the mail.

“Oh, I understand. I work in a hospice. There is always a vessel close here, so much of the time I have to whistle or sing while I am working or ­people will run into me.”

Rivera decided to drop the pretense. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t already gone against the Great Big Book of Death’s warning about contact with other Death Merchants before this.

“You are one of us and you work in a hospice? Seems kind of easy. Lazy.”

“Me? You are a homicide detective and I am the lazy one?”

“I’ve never collected a vessel from one of my cases.”

“Seems like a waste of coincidence. Maybe you are just not very good at finding things. The Big Book says it is very bad to miss a soul vessel. Very bad indeed.”

“I could be better at it,” said Rivera. “I didn’t pick it up right away. I only started a little more than a year ago.”

“Me, too,” said Baptiste. “The book came in the mail a year ago and my wife opened it. I thought it was a joke until ­people started running into me at work and I began to see the soul vessels’ red glow. I have never met another person who does this.”

“There are a lot of us. I don’t know how many, exactly.”

“But you have met others?”

“Yes. A ­couple. Many in the city were killed a year ago. All of them shopkeepers. I think you and I must be their replacements.”

“Killed? What do you mean they were killed?”

And because to keep the secret would have been unfair to the point of endangering him, Rivera told Baptiste about the darkness rising, about the Morrigan, about the Underworld somehow expanding itself into the sewer system of San Francisco, about the battle under the city, and of how Charlie Asher had sacrificed himself to put things back in order. Baptiste, already well adjusted to this soul-­selling world, actually seemed pleased to have some dimension put on the responsibility that had been dropped on him from his mailbox.

“You said these Death Merchants were all shopkeepers? You and I are not shopkeepers.”

“I have a bookshop on Russian Hill. That’s how I knew that the soul vessel would be a book. Probably, anyway. If you don’t have a shop, then how—­”

“My wife sells them on the Internet.”

“You sell souls on the Internet?”

“It’s not always the Internet. Some Saturdays she will take them to the swap meet at the Cow Palace parking lot and sell them off a blanket. ­People pay a lot of money for the silliest things. We may be able to buy a house soon.”

“How do you know the right person gets the soul?”

“How do you know in your bookshop?”

Actually, Rivera didn’t know. While he had several soul vessels in his shop, he had yet to sell one. But when he did, there was no way to verify the right person was getting it. According to the Big Book, each soul would find its right person. He shook his head and they both looked into the gutter. Rivera had a million questions for the orderly, and he guessed that Baptiste felt the same toward him, but there was a feeling of wrongness to it, like somehow they were cheating on a test.

Finally, Baptiste said, “How long? For Helen?”

“Three days,” Rivera said. “But you know, the number isn’t always how long they have to live, only how long we have to collect the soul vessel. So probably less. I’m sorry.”