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Minty’s eyes stopped darting. It seemed as if whatever part of him had been searching for reality had finally found it.
“They cut off my motherfucking custom-made leather pants?”
“Look at you, all alive and stuff,” she said. She thought she should have said something more profound, something from the heart sutra, “Form does not differ from the void, and void does not differ from form,” perhaps, but instead she said, “Who needs pants? You’re alive.”
“Spoken like someone who is alive and has pants.”
She threw him the scrubs. “I’ll turn my back and watch the hall.”
The big man sat up, turned sideways on the gurney, and began to worm his way into the scrubs.
“You presided at the death of a lot of people when you were a nun, right?”
“I guided one hundred and fifty-three souls through bardo.”
“So how was my death?”
“Pretty good. A solid seven. Well above average.”
“Did everyone cry?”
“Well, most of the crying was done when they were still trying to save you. Lily was a mess. I wasn’t in the room when you actually died, but it wasn’t long before Charlie told us you were coming back, so everyone cheered up. I think Lily said ‘yippee’ as she was leaving.”
“Why isn’t Charlie here? He told you, I’m guessing, where we went?”
“Yes, but your cousin Lemon took Sophie.”
“Shit.”
“The ghost on the bridge told Lily that Lemon has Sophie at Fort Point, under the bridge.”
“Dressed,” he said. The scrubs were extra large but not extra tall, so they fit him in the hips and shoulders. The pants, however hit him just below the knee and the shirt in the middle of his waist. He looked like a cross between a well-kept castaway and a very large Moroccan houseboy.
“Anyone hurt?”
“No. He just came to their apartment and took her. Jane and Cassie couldn’t do anything to stop him.”
“And the old Russian lady, she okay?”
“She’ll recover, they’re saying.”
“And you, my cousin mess with you when he had you? Hurt you?”
“No. In fact, he stopped the Morrigan from hurting me.”
“Why didn’t he?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I mean, why didn’t he hurt you? Why didn’t the old lady die? Why would he take Sophie? She’s just a little girl, now, right? If he’s such a badass, how is it you’re all alive?”
“Maybe he just wants a new order, like he said.”
“Don’t care what he wants,” said Minty Fresh. “I want to know what he can do. How’d he get in Asher’s building through all that security?”
“They didn’t say. Everything’s always locked there.”
“Then Lemon got a way of getting around that ain’t a ’49 Buick. You got a car?”
