“Where are the puppies?” Sophie asked.
“They’re having a T.O. in Daddy’s room. Can you go play and we’ll have some Cheese Newts in a little while?”
“Okay,” Sophie said, sliding to the floor. “Bye, Lily.” She waved to Lily.
“Bye, Sophie,” Lily said, looking even more pale than usual.
Sophie marched away in rhythm to her new chant, “Not in the butt—not in the butt—not in the butt.”
Charlie turned to face Lily. “Well, that ought to liven up Mrs. Magnussen’s first-grade class.”
“Sure, it’s embarrassing now,” Lily said, without missing a beat, “but someday she’ll thank me.”
Charlie tried to look at his shirt buttons as if he were deep in thought, but instead started to giggle, tried to stop, and ended up snorting a little. “Jeez, Lily, you’re like a little sister to me, I could never—”
“Oh, fine. I offer you a gift, out of the goodness of my heart, and you—”
“Coffee, Lily,” Charlie said with a sigh. “Could I just get you to make me a cup of coffee instead of doing me—and sit and talk to me while I drink it? You’re the only one who knows what’s going on with Sophie and me, and I need to try to sort things out.”
“Well, that will probably take longer than doing you,” Lily said, looking at her watch. “Let me call down to the store and tell Ray that I’ll be a while.”
“That would be great,” Charlie said.
“I was only going to do you in exchange for information about your Death Merchant thing, anyway,” Lily said, picking up the phone on the breakfast bar.
Charlie sighed again. “That’s what I need to sort out.”
“Either way,” Lily said, “I’m unbending on the butt issue.”
Charlie tried to nod gravely, but started giggling again. Lily chucked the San Francisco Yellow Pages at him.
“This soul smells like ham,” said Nemain, wrinkling her nose at a lump of meat she had impaled on one long claw.
“I want some,” said Babd. “Gimme.” She slashed at the carrion with her own talons, snagging a fist-sized hunk of flesh in the process.
The three were in a forgotten subbasement beneath Chinatown, lounging on timbers that had been burned black in the great fire of 1906. Macha, who was starting to manifest the pearl headdress she wore in her woman form, studied the skull of a small animal by the light of a candle she’d made from the fat of dead babies. (Macha was ever the artsy-craftsy one, and the other two were jealous of her skills.) “I don’t understand why the soul is in the meat, but not in a man.”
“Tastes like ham, too, I think,” Nemain said, spitting glowing red bits of soul when she talked. “Macha, do you remember ham? Do we like it?”
Babd ate her bit of meat and wiped her claws on her breast feathers. “I think ham is new,” she said, “like cell phones.”
“Ham is not new,” Macha said. “It’s smoked pork.”
“No,” said Babd, aghast.
“Yes,” said Macha.
“Not human flesh? Then how is there a soul in it?”
“Thank you,” Macha said. “That’s what I’ve been trying to say.”
“I’ve decided that we like ham,” said Nemain.
“There’s something wrong,” Macha said. “It shouldn’t be this easy.”
“Easy?” said Babd. “Easy? It’s taken hundreds—no, thousands of years to get this far. How many thousands of years, Nemain?” Babd looked to the poison sister.
“Many,” said Nemain.
“Many,” said Babd. “Many thousands of years. That’s not easy.”
“Souls coming to us, without bodies, without the soul stealers, that seems too easy.”
“I like it,” Nemain said.
They were quiet for a moment, Nemain nibbled at the glowing soul, Babd preened, and Macha studied the animal skull, turning it over in her talons.
“I think it’s a woodchuck,” Macha said.
“Can you make ham from woodchuck?” Nemain asked.
“Don’t know,” said Macha.
“I don’t remember woodchuck,” Nemain said.
Babd sighed heavily. “Things are going so well. Do you two ever think about when we are Above all the time, and Darkness rules all, about, you know, what then?”
“What do you mean, what then?” Macha asked. “We will hold dominion over all souls, and visit death as we wish until we consume all the light of humanity.”
“Yeah, I know,” Babd said, “but then what? I mean, you know, dominion and all that is nice, but will Orcus always have to be around, snorting and growling?”
Macha put down her skull and sat up on a blackened beam. “What’s this about?”
Nemain smiled, her teeth perfectly even, the canines just a little too long. “She’s pining about that skinny soul stealer with the sword.”
“New Meat?” Macha couldn’t believe her ears, which had become visible only a few days ago when the first of the gift souls had wandered into their claws, so they hadn’t been tested in a while. “You like New Meat?”
“Like is a little strong,” Babd said. “I just think he’s interesting.”
“Interesting in that you’d like to arrange his entrails in interesting patterns in the dirt?” Macha said.
“Well, no, I’m not talented that way like you.”
Macha looked at Nemain, who grinned and shrugged. “We could probably try to kill Orcus once Darkness rises,” Nemain said.
“I am a little tired of his preaching, and he’ll be impossible if the Luminatus doesn’t appear.” Macha shrugged a surrender. “Sure, why not.”
The Emperor of San Francisco was troubled. He sensed that something very wrong was going on in the City, yet he was at a loss as to what to do. He didn’t want to alarm the people unduly, but he did not want them to be unprepared for whatever danger they might face. He believed that a just and benevolent ruler would not use fear to manipulate his people, and until he had some sort of proof that there was an actual threat, it would be criminal to call for any action.
“Sometimes,” he said to Lazarus, the steadfast golden retriever, “a man must muster all of his courage to simply sit still. How much humanity has been spoiled for the confusion of movement with progress, my friend? How much?”
Still, he’d been seeing things, strange things. One late night in Chinatown he’d seen a dragon made of fog snaking through the streets. Then, early one morning, down by the Boudin Bakery at Ghirardelli Square, he saw what looked like a nude woman covered in motor oil crawl out of a storm sewer and grab a tall, half-full latte cup out of the trash, then dive right back in the sewer as a policeman on a bicycle rounded the corner. He knew that he saw these things because he was more sensitive than other people, and because he lived on the streets and could sense the slightest nuance of change there, and largely because he was completely barking-at-the-moon batshit. But none of that relieved him of the responsibility to his people, nor did it ease his mind about the disturbing nature of what he was seeing.
The squirrel in the hoop skirt was really bothering the Emperor, but he couldn’t exactly say why. He liked squirrels—often took the men to Golden Gate Park to chase them, in fact—but a squirrel walking upright and digging through the trash behind the Empanada Emporium while wearing a pink ball gown from the eighteenth century—well—it was off-putting. He was sure that Bummer, who was curled up sleeping in the oversized pocket of his coat, would agree. (Bummer, being a rat dog at heart, had a less than enlightened outlook upon coexistence with any rodent, no less one dressed for the court of Louis XVI.)
“Not to be critical,” said the Emperor, “but shoes would be a welcome complement to the ensemble, don’t you think, Lazarus?”