“Cheerful?” she called.

She was answered by some shuffling in the back room. Why had she turned most of the lights out? The switches were in the back room, and she was moving by the case lights, which cast almost no light at the floor, where the noises were coming from.

“I have a gun, and I know how to use it,” she said, feeling stupid even as the words came out of her mouth.

This time she was answered by a muffled whimper. “Cheerful!”

She ducked under the lift gate in the counter and ran to the back room, fanning the area with her pistol the way she saw them do in cop shows. Another whimper. She could just make out Cheerful, lying in his normal spot by the back door, but there was something around his paws and muzzle. Duct tape.

She reached out to turn on the lights and something hit her in the back of the knees. She tried to twist around and something thumped her in the chest, setting her off balance. Sharp claws raked her wrists as she fell and she lost her grip on the revolver. She hit her head on the doorjamb, setting off what seemed like a strobe light in her head, then something hit her in the back of the neck, hard, and everything went black.

It was still dark when she came to. She couldn’t tell how long she’d been out, and she couldn’t move to look at her watch. Oh my God, they’ve broken my neck, she thought. She saw objects moving past her, each glowing dull red, barely illuminating whatever was carrying them—tiny skeletal faces—fangs, and claws and dead, empty eye sockets. The soul vessels appeared to be floating across the floor, with a carrion puppet escort. Then she felt claws, the creatures, touching her, moving under her. She tried to scream, but her mouth had been taped shut.

She felt herself being lifted, then made out the shape of the back door of her shop opening as she was carried through it, only a foot or so off the floor. Then she was hoisted nearly upright, and she felt herself falling into a dark abyss.

They found the back door to the pawnshop open and the basset hound taped up in the corner. Rivera checked the shop with his weapon drawn and a flashlight in one hand, then called Charlie in from the alley when he found no one there.

Charlie turned on the shop lights as he came in. “Uh-oh,” he said.

“What?” Rivera said.

Charlie pointed to a display case with the glass broken out. “This case is where she displayed her soul vessels. It was nearly full when I was in here—now, well…”

Rivera looked at the empty case. “Don’t touch anything. Whatever happened here, I don’t think it was the same perp who hit the other shopkeepers.”

“Why?” Charlie looked back to the back room, to the bound basset hound.

“Because of him,” Rivera said. “You don’t tie up the dog if you’re going to slaughter the people and leave blood and body parts everywhere. That’s not the same kind of mentality.”

“Maybe she was tying him up when they surprised her,” Charlie said. “She kind of had the look of a lady cop.”

“Yeah, and all cops are into dog bondage, is that what you’re saying?” Rivera holstered his weapon, pulled a penknife from his pocket, and went to where the basset hound was squirming on the floor.

“No, I’m not. Sorry. She did have a gun, though.”

“She must have been here,” Rivera said. “Otherwise the alarms would have been set. What’s that on that doorjamb?” He was sawing through the duct tape on the basset’s paws, being careful not to cut him. He nodded toward the doorway from the shop to the back room.

“Blood,” Charlie said. “And a little hair.”

Rivera nodded. “That blood on the floor there, too? Don’t touch.”

Charlie looked at a three-inch puddle to the left of the door. “Yep, I think so.”

Rivera had the basset’s paws free and was kneeling on him to hold him still while he took the tape off his muzzle. “Those tracks in it, don’t smear them. What are they, partial shoe prints?”

“Look like bird-feet prints. Chickens maybe?”

“No.” Rivera released the basset, who immediately tried to jump on the inspector’s Italian dress slacks and lick his face in celebration. He held the basset hound by the collar and moved to where Charlie was examining the tracks.

“They do look like chicken tracks,” he said.

“Yep,” Charlie said. “And you have dog drool on your jacket.”

“I need to call this in, Charlie.”

“So dog drool is the determining factor in calling in backup?”

“Forget the dog drool. The dog drool is not relevant. I need to report this and I need to call my partner in. He’ll be pissed that I’ve waited this long. I need to take you home.”

“If you can’t get the stain out of that thousand-dollar suit jacket, you’ll think it’s relevant.”

“Focus, Charlie. As soon as I can get another unit here, I’m sending you home. You have my cell. Let me know if anything happens. Anything.”

Rivera called the dispatcher on his cell phone and asked him to send a uniform unit and the crime-scene squad as soon as they were available. When he snapped the phone shut, Charlie said, “So I’m not under arrest anymore?”

“No. Stay in touch. And stay safe, okay? You might even want to spend a few nights outside of the City.”

“I can’t. I’m the Luminatus, I have responsibilities.”

“But you don’t know what they are—”

“Just because I don’t know what they are doesn’t mean I don’t have them,” Charlie said, perhaps a little too defensively.

“And you’re sure you don’t know how many of these Death Merchants are in the City, or where they might be?”

“Minty Fresh said there was at least a dozen, that’s all I know. This woman and the guy in the Mission were the only ones I spotted on my walks.”

They heard a car pull up in the alley and Rivera went to the back door and signaled to the officers, then turned to Charlie. “You go home and get some sleep, if you can, Charlie. I’ll be in touch.”

Charlie let the uniformed police officer lead him to the cruiser and help him into the back, then waved to Rivera and the basset hound as the patrol car backed out of the alley.

23

A FUCKED-UP DAY

It was a fucked-up day in the City by the Bay. At first light, flocks of vultures perched on the superstructures of the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges, and glared down at commuters as if they had a lot of goddamn gall to still be alive and driving. Traffic copters that were diverted to photograph the ranks of carrion birds ended up covering a spiral cloud of bats that circled the Transamerica pyramid for ten minutes, then seemed to evaporate into a black mist that floated out over the Bay. Three swimmers who had been competing in the San Francisco Triathlon drowned in the Bay, and a helicopter camera photographed something under the water, a dark shape approaching one of the swimmers from below and dragging him under. Numerous replays of the tape revealed that rather than the sleek shape of a shark, the creature had a wide wingspan and a distinctly horned head, unlike any ray or skate that anyone had ever seen before. The ducks in Golden Gate Park suddenly took to the wing and left the area, the hundreds of sea lions that normally lounged in the sun down at Pier 39 were gone as well, and even the pigeons seemed to have disappeared from the City.

A grunt reporter who had been covering the overnight police blotter noticed the coincidence of seven reports of violence or missing persons at local-area secondhand stores, and by early evening the television stations were mentioning it, along with spectacular footage of the Book ’em Danno building burning in the Mission. And there were hundreds of singular events experienced by individuals: creatures moving in the shadows, voices and screams from the sewer grates, milk souring, cats scratching owners, dogs howling, and a thousand people woke up to find that they no longer cared for the taste of chocolate. It was a fucked-up day.