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“Not necessarily,” said Audrey. “There’s order and disorder, we may not perceive whatever is balancing the dark as good. I’m just saying there has to be something to balance the dark, and if it’s not Sophie, there’s something else, some other being or force—”
“So,” Charlie said, “you’re saying that every god, throughout history, every supernatural being ever, is a manifestation of the power of the human soul?”
Audrey shrugged.
“The Ghost Thief,” Lily said from the doorway. Everyone looked up at her. “Mike Sullivan said that the ghost on the bridge told him we had to find the Ghost Thief.”
“Which is what?” said Rivera, starting to show some impatience now.
Lily held up the Emperor’s journal. “This is not a list of everyone who has died in the Bay Area, but it is a list of a lot of people who have died, most I confirmed. And so are all of your calendars. But none of the names on the Emperor’s list are in any of your calendars, except those in Charlie and Rivera’s calendars, and only Charlie’s from the last year.”
“Which means?”
“It means that if your soul object was retrieved, your name isn’t on the Emperor’s list. And after all those Death Merchants were murdered, the list got a lot longer fast. It means that there are a shit ton of unretrieved souls—souls out of order—floating around or taken by another entity. If what Audrey says actually applies, if they gain their power from human souls, there’s something very big and very scary that’s been taking these souls. I think that’s what Mike’s ghost girl was calling the Ghost Thief.”
“You know this for a fact,” said Charlie.
“No, Asher, I don’t know anything for a fact, I’m just putting it together from what we know and what Audrey is saying. I’m saying there’s a big hole in the system right now and I’m calling that hole the Ghost Thief. Could be good, could be bad.”
“So, there,” said Rivera. “What do we do?”
Lily looked to Audrey, “All yours.”
Audrey said, “I think you need to carry on, collecting soul vessels, getting them to new people, keep as many as you can out of the hands of the Underworlders. The cycle of living and dying is the order the universe is seeking.” She paused, scanned faces, got nothing. “I think.”
“Maybe it’s better to do it Mr. Baptiste’s way,” said Minty Fresh. “Not have them in our shops. Put them somewhere out of the way, a vault or something. Sell them remotely over the Internet.”
“My wife and I can sell them,” said Baptiste. “We would just need a photo of each vessel.”
“We could move them all to a vault somewhere,” said Minty Fresh. “Only go there to get the ones you will ship.”
Rivera said, “That might keep the soul vessels out of their hands, but it does ignore the more immediate problem, which is when they come for the souls, they kill us. Does no one else find that a problem?”
“Yeah,” said Minty Fresh. “That’s why I’m suggesting we hide the objects, then we hide. Stay out of our shops. Just go out to retrieve the new vessels. What do you want to do about it?”
“Go after them,” said Rivera. “Sure, we try to figure out who this Ghost Thief is, and I’ll use what resources I can to help, but the Morrigan require a little more direct action. We know they can be hurt by weapons, and they only get stronger as they accumulate human souls, so the sooner we go after them, the better chance we have of stopping them.”
He looked at Charlie. “You need to figure out if your little girl still has her powers, because if she doesn’t, her history with them is probably all that’s protecting her, and without her hellhounds, that’s about it. So even if we can’t kill them, we can at least weaken them, slow them down.”
Minty Fresh rubbed his shaved head, as if polishing an idea in there, then looked at Charlie. “How did you find them last time?”
“Bummer found them,” Charlie said. “I sort of wandered around in the sewers with the Squirrel People until we ran into Bummer. He led us to them.”
“They’re definitely going to be out of the light,” Lily said.
“We heard one, the Inspector and I, in a sewer in the Sunset,” said Baptiste.
“That’s my neighborhood,” said Lily. “I’m officially pro-fuck-up-the-sewer-harpies’-shit. Now you just have to find them.”
The Emperor held up a hand. “I know where they are.”
“Okay, well, that was easy,” said Lily. “You don’t know where the thousands of souls listed in your book are, do you?”
The old man shook his head dolefully. “I’m sorry.”
Baptiste thought it was perhaps the strangest meeting he had ever attended, and even when it was over, and they were all leaving, he looked to Minty Fresh and said, “Mr. Fresh, can you tell me please, what happened just now?”
“You know in a horror movie, when the scientist comes in and explains that there’s a zombie virus or there are vampires in the city?”
