I snorted at both him and Maggie. “It’s been what, five days? And I’m pretty sure you’re my client. The fact that you’re a middleman for the Lords of Hell has little to do with our business arrangement.”
“Me, them – it doesn’t matter all that much, does it?” Ferryman gave me a sallow smile.
“If you’re so worried, you should have come forward earlier.”
Would you please stop being sassy with Death? Maggie grumbled.
“I didn’t know about it earlier,” Ferryman claimed.
I thought about Judith Pyke. “I’m pretty sure you’re lying.”
Jesus Christ, Alek!
Ferryman finally turned his attention entirely away from his card game and scowled at me. “Now, why would that be in my best interest?”
“Because there’s something going on that you’d rather not tell me, even in confidence. But I’m neck-deep in your investigation. Time to fess up.” Ferryman glared hard at me, unresponsive. Once the silence had gone on long enough to be awkward, I removed the soul mirrors from my pocket and tossed them on the card table. “Do these have souls in them?”
Ferryman inhaled sharply. He picked up one of the mirrors and held it under his reading light. He checked the next mirror, then the next. “Five of the missing souls,” he proclaimed, setting them to one side. “I am pleased.”
“If you’re pleased, tell me what’s going on.”
Ferryman’s eyes narrowed.
“I did the math,” I continued. “That soul on top of the stack? I pulled that out of a woman named Judith Pyke. It had been sold to her secondhand by a group of imps. Having it in her body was killing her – fast. As far as I can tell, the imps planned on taking the soul back from her when she was too weak to fight them. They kill her, sell the soul to another poor sap, and the cycle continues. A way to make money in the mortal realm with otherwise useless souls, right?”
Ferryman nodded unhappily.
I went on. “Now, you told me that when a person dies, their soul returns to your realm to be reunited with their shade and become a full spirit again. You also mentioned that physical possession of the soul upon the death of the body is important. What I want to know is what happens when someone other than the Lords of Hell is in possession of the soul upon the original vessel’s death. And why is it such a big deal to you, personally?”
Ferryman let out a long-suffering sigh. I doubted anyone had ever questioned him this closely about how all this stuff worked. To most mortals, it was beyond their care or comprehension. To the Other, it was just business as usual. He dragged his arm across the table, erasing the game of solitaire and gathering the cards into a stack. He shuffled them twice and set the stack to one side. “Ada did warn me that you were persistent.”
“I’m just doing my job,” I said with a spike of annoyance. “And it’s easier to do when clients are honest with me.”
He leaned back in his rickety folding chair and took a drag on his cigarette. “It’s all about contracts. The Lords of Hell, the Avatars of Heaven, and hundreds of other organizations contract with me to store the shades, reunite them with souls, and send the spirits on to wherever they’re meant to go. If a person dies and is still in possession of their soul, it naturally seeks out the shade to be reunited. I don’t actually have to do anything in that case. If they are not in possession of their soul, then the soul must be brought to me by whoever has it.”
“So stolen souls means that you’ve got shades that can’t be reunited with their other half?”
“Exactly.”
I tried to ignore the goose bumps on the backs of my hands. “What happens if a soul and a shade are not reconnected?”
“It’s annoying, but I deal with it. The soul will always end up here eventually.” Ferryman grunted. “That’s not the problem.”
“Then what is?”
Ferryman took another long drag on his cigarette. I could practically see him deciding how much to tell me. “The problem,” he finally said, “is that shades are dying.”
I frowned. “I’m guessing that’s not normal?”
“It’s not. Just like souls and spirits, shades are forever. Immutable. My realm is made up of billions of shades, all waiting to be reunited with their souls.”
“And when a shade dies?”
“It sends my realm into chaos.”
Something in Ferryman’s voice set off alarm bells in my head. I wasn’t the only one. I could sense Maggie’s presence listening carefully from within the ring. “What do you mean?”
“Imagine…” Ferryman picked up a single playing card and tapped it against his chin. “Imagine that you own a home, and the ground shifts very slightly beneath it. Not a proper earthquake, but a definite shift. Cracks appear in the drywall. Pipes come out of alignment. Now imagine that as the shifting intensifies, so does the damage. As the keeper of this place, I’m tasked with maintenance.”
“You’re running around with a can of stucco trying to keep things looking nice?”
“Something like that.” Ferryman gave me his wan smile again. “Now imagine that your house has a mind of its own, and when the maintenance isn’t properly kept up, it likes to lash out against the mortal realm.” He began to lay out a new game of solitaire. “The last time my realm became unbalanced was when it was affected by a war between minor gods back in the fourteenth century. It lashed out in pain. Humanity got the Black Plague.”
My eyes widened. “Didn’t that kill two hundred million people?”
“One hundred seventy-three million, eight hundred forty-two thousand, six hundred and one, to be exact.”
That number was way too specific for my liking. My goose bumps intensified. “You’re saying that if shades keep dying, your realm is gonna murder humanity?”
“Oh, it won’t be anything that large. It’s more likely to be an earthquake or a flu epidemic or something relatively minor. But it’ll still hurt. A lot of people will die.”
I ran through my hair. “That’s a damn lot of pressure you’ve put me under.”
“There’s a reason I didn’t tell you this in the first place.”
“Thanks,” I said, not bothering to hide my sarcasm. I began to pace. “Okay, so what’s killing the shades?”
“All of those two hundred seventeen missing souls should have been processed into my realm over the new year.”
“You mean that all the original owners died?”
“Yes. It’s their shades that are dying.”
A light went on in the back of my head. “It’s because they’re putting the used souls into other people’s bodies?”
“I couldn’t figure it out myself until you brought me the information on Judith Pyke, but I suspect that is the case.”
“And what do we do about it?”
He cocked an eyebrow. “You’re doing it.”
I threw my hands in the air. “You’re Death! Can’t you just deal with this?”
“You of all people should know how important the Rules are. This is as involved as I can get in the mortal realm.”
“Then you should have handed it straight to OtherOps. The actual cops should be doing this this, not me.”
Ferryman snorted. “OtherOps might get results, yes, but they’re a bureaucracy. Those results will come in six months, or maybe a year. That’s not quick enough. And even if I convince OtherOps of the severity of the situation and they move lightning fast, they will let it slip to the public. It’ll cause mass panics, suicides, and humans and Other turning against each other. The Lords of Hell will see their business dry up overnight.”