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"What you’re looking for"

"How did you know?"

"Because I do what you do I’m a Death Merchant"

"A what?"

Then Charlie remembered that Minty Fresh said he had coined the term, so maybe only the Death Merchants in San Francisco knew it "I collect soul vessels"

"No, you don’t You can’t see me You can’t seehis hands up and down in the air like he was drawing a curtain of deception before hi spiderwebs out of the roorinning

"What?"

"You don’t have Jedi powers, you git Just take the necklace"

"I don’t understand"

"Come with me," Charlie said "It’s tiuy out of hisroo up and casting shadows of the broken teeth of the red rock mountains around them "What’s your name?"

"Vern Vern Glover"

"I’ does she have, Vern?"

"What do youon your calendar How many days were left?"

"How do you know about that?"

"I told you I do what you do I can see you I can see that necklace glowing red I knohat you are"

"But you can’t The Great Big Book says that horrible Forces of Darkness will rise if I talk to you"

"See this cut over my ear, Vern?"

Vern nodded

"Forces of Darkness Fuck ’e does my mother have?"

"It’s your mother? I’m sorry, Charlie She has two"Then we’d better go get a doughnut"

"Pardon?"

"Doughnut! Doughnut! You like doughnuts, don’t you?"

"Yes, but why?"

"Because the continuance of huether"

"Really?" Vern’s eyes ide

"No, not really I’ with you" Charlie put his aret one anyway I’ll wake my sister for her watch"

Charlie called home from his mobile phone to check on Sophie Then, satisfied she was safe, he returned to the booth at Dunkin’ Donuts, where Vern and a cruller aiting for hi cap and had a wild lasses that made him look like a tan and wiry mad scientist

"So like she was really hot?"

"Vern, you wouldn’t believe I’oddess Covered with really fine feathers, soft as down" Charlie innately recognized another Beta Male like he recognized another Death Merchant, so he nearly stumbled over himself to tell the story of his adventure with the sexy sewer harpy, knowing he had a sy to put her claw through your brain, right?"

"Yeah, she said she was, but you know so, I think there was some chemistry there"

"You don’t think it was just that she had your crank in her hand at the timent"

"Yeah, there’s that, but still, you have to think, of all the Death Merchants in all of the cities on the planet, she chosefor es," said Vern, brushing a little laze from the corner of his mouth "That’s where it’s supposed to happen"

"Where what’s supposed to happen?" Charlie had really enjoyed being the senior Death Merchant, acting as the elder statesman to Vern, who had been called to recruit souls only sixBook of Death, it says that we can’t talk about e do, or try to find each other, or the Forces of Darkness will rise up in the City of Two Bridges and there will be a horrible battle and the Underworld will rise and cover the land if we lose You guys have two bridges in San Francisco, right?"

Charlie tried to hide his surprise Vern had obviously gotten a different version of the Great Big Book than they got in San Francisco "Well, twoties is so i "duh" look "Because that is where the new Luminatus, the Great Death, will take power"

"Oh yeah, of course, the Luminatus" Charlie thumped himself in the side of the head He had no idea what Vern was talking about

"You think that they won’t need us anymore, after the Great Death takes power?" Vern asked "IBook , but I’ve been "

Yeah, that’s going to be our probleht "I think we’ll be fine Like the book says, it’s a dirty job, but soht So this cop that shot the sexy-goddess babe, he didn’t do anything?"

"No, not nothing First he put eton when he showed up, and what had been going on for these last few years he’s been checking on me"

"And what did you tell him?"

"I told him that it was as much a mystery to me as it was to him"

"And he believed that?"

"No He didn’t But he did believe it when I told hiet worse, so we cauy with a gun taking a shot atThen when he was sure we had it straight, he took me to the station and I wrote out o"

"No, then he told me stories about his career, and the weird stuff he’s encountered, and why because of that, he was going to let uy is a coiant owls - he said that he once handled a call for a polar-bear attack in Santa Barbara"

"Wow," said Vern "You lucked out"

"I called hi to check on hter is okay" Charlie hadn’t told Vern about the hellhounds

"You must be worried sick about her," Vern said "I have a kid, she’s a junior in high school, lives with my ex-wife in Phoenix"

"Yeah, so you know," Charlie said "So, Vern, you’ve never seen any of these dark creatures? Never heard voices co like that?"

"Nope Not like you’re talking about We don’t have storh it"

"Right, but have you ever ot the Great Big Book, I thought it was a joke I skipped three or four of the happened?"

"Well, I wouldn’t say that I’d wake up early, and look up at the mountain aboveoil slick"

"So?"

"So, it would be on the wrong side of thethe course of the day, it moved down the mountain Oh, if you didn’t look at it, watch it, you’d look right by it, but it was co down into the city, hour by hour I drove out to where I saw it going, and waited for it"

"And?"

"You could hear crows calling I waited until it got a half a block froot louder and louder, like a huge flock of crows Scared the bejesus out of me I went hoht, and they lived in the neighborhood I’d been in The shadoas coet it?"

"I guess I didn’t"

"And nothing happened?"

"Oh yeah, so happened The next ti over And I followed it, and sure enough, it was heading right for a woman’s house whose name was onBook wasn’t bullshitting"

"But the shadow thing, it never came for you?"

"Third time," Vern said

"There was a third time?"

"Oh yeah, like you didn’t think this was all a load of crap when it first started happening to you?"

"Okay, good point," Charlie said "Sorry Go on"

"So, the third time, the shadow coht, during a fullin it Not like really see them, but like shadows of theain, took oing I pulled up a couple of doors down frouy’s house - to warn hi about us not being seen, otherwise I would have just gone for the soul vessel Anyway, I’ across the street, all the edges shaped like crows, and Scottie starts barking like uy Anyway, as soon as the shadow touches him he yelps and drops over dead Meantime, a woman comes to the door, and I look in and see a statue, like a fake Reton bronze on the table in the foyer behind her, and it’s glowing red, like red-hot And I blow by her and grab it And the shadow evaporates Just like that, it’s gone That’s the last ti," Charlie said "What did you tell the wo, I didn’t tell her anything She was talking to her husband in the next roo her, and she runs back to see what happened to hi a heart attack I took the statue, went and picked up Scottie’s body, and left"

"That had to be tough"

"I thought I was Death for a while, you know, special Because the guy croaked with me there, but it was just coincidence"

"Yeah, that happened to me, too," Charlie said But he was still disturbed by the whole "great battle" revelation "Vern, would youBook?"

"I don’t think so, Charlie In fact, I think we’d better say goodbye I ht, and I don’t have any reason to believe it’s not, then we shouldn’t even be talking"

"But it’s a different version than I have"

"You don’t think there’s a reason for that?" Vern said His eyes lasses made him look like a madman for a second

"Okay, then," Charlie said "But e-mail me, okay? That shouldn’t hurt"

Vern looked in his coffee cup like he was thinking, as if by telling the story of the shadow that cahtened himself Finally he looked up and smiled "You know, I’d like that I could use so weird starts to happen, we’ll stop"

"Deal," Charlie said He drove Vern back to his car, which was parked around the block froood-bye

Jane met Charlie at the door "Where have you been? I need the car to go get her floss"

"I brought doughnuts," Charlie said, holding up the box, maybe a little too proud

"Well, that’s not the same, is it?"

"As floss?"

"Dental floss Can you believe it? Charlie, if I’arrote arrote me with it"

"Okay," Charlie said "So other than that, she’s okay?"

Jane was digging in her purse, had found her cigarettes and was looking for her lighter "Like guer at this point Goddahter at the airport?"

"You still don’t smoke, Jane," Charlie said

She looked up "So what’s your point?"

"Nothing" He handed her the keys to the rental car "Can you grab ave up searching for the lighter and threw the cigarettes back into her purse "What is it with this fa any"

"Okay" Jane braced the keys in her hand, ready to go in the ignition, and tucked her purse under her arm like a football She dropped into a crouch and pulled down her lasses that, with her short platinum blond hair and Charlie’s black pinstripe suit,assassin fro ready to dash out into the poisonous at hot out there, isn’t it?"

Charlie nodded and held up the doughnut box again "The glazed have suffered"

"Oh," Jane said, lifting her glasses again "Cassandra called After you called this htstand Well actually, she said that Alvin and Mohaed her in there and pushed it at her She wondered if you needed it"

"What about Sophie, is she okay?"

"No, she’s been abducted by aliens, but I wanted you to digest the bad news about forgetting your date book first"

"You know, that right there is why Mohed "Guess what? She’s not"

"She’s not?"

"No, thisShe told me that she always kneho I was, always knehat I was, and that she has always loved me, just the way I am"

"Did you card her? There’s an impostor in our mom’s bed"

"Shut up, it was nice I that because she’s dying"

"She did say that she wished I wouldn’t wear men’s suits all the time"

"She’s not alone on that one," Charlie said

Jane fell back into assault mode "I’m off on the floss mission Call Cassandra"

"Done," Charlie said

"And Buddy needs a doughnut" Jane threw open the door and ran out into the heat screa the enemy

Charlie closed the door behind her so as not to let the air-conditioning out, and watched through the glass as his sister ran across the zero-scaped yard like she was on fire He looked beyond her to the red rockout of the desert There seemed to be a deep crevasse in it that he hadn’t seen there before He looked again, and saw that it wasn’t a crevasse at all, just a long, sharp shadow

Then he ran out into the driveway and looked at the position of the sun, then at the shadow It was on the wrong side of the mesa There couldn’t be a shadow on this side - the sun was also on this side He shaded his eyes and watched the shadow until he thought his brains were cooking in the sun It was , and not the way a shadow ainst the sun, toward his mother’s house

"My date book," he said to himself "Oh, shit"