one millisecond I believe you, and the old lady was supposed to die, but didn't, and that because of it you were shot with a crossbow and that thing I shot in the alley appeared - let's just say I believe all that, what am I supposed to do about it?"
"You need to be careful," Charlie said. "You may be turning into one of us."
"Pardon?"
"That's how it happened to me. When my wife passed away, in the hospital, I saw the guy that came to collect her soul vessel, and wham, I was a Death Merchant. You saw me today, when no one else could, and you saw the sewer harpy, that night in the alley. Most of the time, I'm the only one who can see them."
Rivera really, really wanted to turn this guy over to a psychiatrist at the hospital and never see him again, but the problem was, he had seen the woman-thing, that night and another time on his own street, and he had seen reports of weird stuff happening in the City over the last two weeks. And not just normal San Francisco weird stuff, but really weird stuff, like a flock of ravens attacking a tourist in Coit Tower, and a guy who slammed his car through a storefront in Chinatown, saying that he had swerved to miss a dragon, and people all over the Mission saying that they'd seen an iguana dressed like a musketeer going through their garbage, tiny sword and all.
"I can prove it," Charlie said. "Just take me to the music store in the Castro."
Rivera looked at the sad, naked ice cubes in his glass and said, "Anyone ever tell you that it's hard to follow your train of thought, Charlie?"
"You need to talk to Minty Fresh."
"Of course, that clears things up. I'll have a word with Krispy Kreme while I'm there."
"He's also a Death Merchant. He can tell you that what I'm telling you is true and you can let me go."
"Get up." Rivera stood.
"I'm not finished with my wine."
"Leave the money for the drinks and get up, please." Rivera hooked his finger in Charlie's handcuffs and pulled him up. "We're going to the Castro."
"I don't think I can work my cane with these things on," Charlie said.
Rivera sighed and looked down on the surfers. He thought he saw something large moving in a wave behind one surfer, but as his heart leapt at the prospect, a sea lion poked his whiskered face out of the curl and Rivera's spirits sank again. He threw Charlie the handcuff keys.
"Meet me in the car, I have to take a leak."
"I could escape."
"You do that, Charlie - after you pay."
Chapter 22
22
RECONSIDERING A CAREER IN SECONDHAND RETAIL
Anton Dubois, the owner of Book 'em Danno in the Mission, had been a Death Merchant longer than anyone else in San Francisco. Of course he hadn't called himself a Death Merchant at first, but when that Minty Fresh fellow who opened the record store in the Castro coined the term, he could never think of himself as anything else. He was sixty-five years old and not in the best health, having never used his body for much more than to carry his head around, which is where he lived most of the time. He had, however, in his years of reading, acquired an encyclopedic knowledge of the science and mythology of death. So, on that Tuesday evening, just after sundown, when the windows of his store went black, as if all the light had been sucked suddenly out of the universe, and the three female figures moved toward him through the store, as he sat under his little reading light at the counter in the back, like a tiny yellow island in the vast pitch of space, he was the first man in fifteen hundred years to know exactly what - who - they were.
"Morrigan," Anton said, with no particular note of fear in his voice. He set his book down, but didn't bother to mark the page. He took off his glasses and cleaned them on his flannel shirt, then put them back on so as not to miss any detail. Just now they were only blue-black highlights moving among the deep shadows in the store, but he could see them. They stopped when he spoke. One of them hissed - not the hiss of a cat, a long, steady tone - more like the hiss of air escaping the rubber raft that is all