“Yeah.”

“They grow up so fast,” Charlie said.

“Yeah.” Audrey smiled.

“I got this.” He reached behind his chest plate and pulled out the Sarah McLachlan CD that pulsated with red light.

Audrey nodded and reached out for the disc. “Let’s put that over here where you can keep an eye on it.” As soon as her fingers touched the plastic case the light went out and Audrey shuddered. “Oh my,” she said.

“Audrey.” Charlie tried to sit up, but was forced back down by the pain. “Ouch. Audrey, what happened? Did they get it? Did they take her soul?”

She was looking at her chest, then looked up at Charlie, tears in her eyes. “No, Charlie, it’s me,” she said.

“But you had touched that before, that night in the pantry. Why didn’t it happen then?”

“I guess I wasn’t ready then.”

Charlie took her hand and squeezed it, then squeezed it much harder than he intended as a wave of pain washed through him. “Goddammit,” he said. He was panting now, breathing like he might hyperventilate.

“I thought it was all dark, Audrey. All the spiritual stuff was spooky. You made me see.”

“I’m glad,” Audrey said.

“Makes me think I should have slept with a poet so I could have understood the way the world can be distilled into words.”

“Yes. I think you have the soul of a poet, Charlie.”

“I should have made love with a painter, too, so I could feel the wave of a brushstroke, so I could absorb her colors and textures and really see.”

“Yes,” Audrey said, brushing at his hair with her fingers. “You have such a wonderful imagination.”

“I think,” said Charlie, his voice going higher as he breathed harder, “I should have bedded a scientist so I would understand the mechanics of the world, felt them right down to my spine.”

“Yes, so you could feel the world,” Audrey said.

“With big tits,” Charlie added, his back arching in pain.

“Of course, baby,” Audrey said.

“I love you, Audrey.”

“I know, Charlie. I love you, too.”

Then Charlie Asher, Beta Male, husband to Rachel, brother to Jane, father to Sophie (the Luminatus, who held dominion over Death), beloved of Audrey, Death Merchant and purveyor of fine vintage clothing and accessories, took his last breath, and died.

Audrey looked up to see Sophie come into the room. “He’s gone, Sophie.”

Sophie put her hand on Charlie’s forehead. “Bye, Daddy,” she said.

EPILOGUE

Things settled in the City of Two Bridges, and all the dark gods that had been rising to erupt out over the world remembered their place and returned to their domains deep in the Underworld.

Jane and Cassie were married in a civil ceremony that was dissolved and sanctioned a half-dozen times over the years. Nevertheless, they were happy and there was always laughter in their home.

Sophie went home to live with her Aunties Jane and Cassandra. She would grow to be a tall and beautiful woman, and eventually take her place as the Luminatus, but until then, she went to school and played with her puppies and had a fairly wonderful time as she waited for her daddy to come get her.

While Minty Fresh had believed in the adage that in every moment there is a crisis, his belief had been somewhat academic until he started seeing Lily Severo, when it became very practical indeed. Life jumped up several steps for him on the interesting scale, to the point where the Death Merchant part of his existence became the more prosaic of his pursuits. They became renowned around town, the giant in pastels always in company with the short, Gothic chef, but the City really stood up and took notice when they opened up the Jazz and Gourmet Pizza Place in North Beach in the building that had once housed Asher’s Secondhand.

As for Ray Macy, Inspector Rivera set him up with a lady pawnbroker from the Fillmore named Carrie Lang, and they hit it off almost immediately, having in common a love of detective movies and handguns, as well as a deep mistrust for most of humanity. Ray fell deeply in love, and true to his Beta Male nature, was doggedly loyal to her, although he always secretly suspected her of being a serial killer.

Inspector Alphonse Rivera has spent most of his life trying to change his life. He’d worked in a half-dozen different police departments, in a dozen different capacities, and although he was very good at being a cop, he always seemed to be trying to get out. After the debacle with the Death Merchants and the strange, unexplainable things that had gone on around it, he was simply exhausted. There had been a brief time when he’d been able to leave police work and open a rare-book store, and he felt as if that might have been the only time he had ever truly been happy. Now, at age forty-nine, he was ready to try it again: take an early retirement and just read and live in a calm, unevent-filled world of books.

So he was somewhat pleased when, two weeks after the death of Charlie Asher, he went to his mailbox to find a substantial envelope that could only be a book. It was like an omen, he thought as he sat down at his kitchen table to open the package. It was a book—what looked like a very rare and bizarre children’s book. He opened it and turned to the first chapter. So Now You’re Death: Here’s What You’ll Need.

The Emperor enjoyed a happy reunion with his troops and went on to rule benevolently over San Francisco to the end of his days. For leading Charlie into the Underworld, and for his boundless courage, the Luminatus gave Bummer the strength and durability of a hellhound. It would fall to the Emperor to explain how his now all-black companion—while he never weighed more than seven pounds soaking wet—could outrun a cheetah and chew the tires off a Toyota.

Audrey continued her work at the Buddhist center and did costuming for a local theater group, but she also took a volunteer job with hospice, where she helped people to the other side as she had done for so long in Tibet. The hospice position also, however, gave her access to bodies that had been recently vacated by their souls, and she used these opportunities to cycle the squirrel people back into the human flow of birth and rebirth. And for a while, there were remarkable instances of people recovering from terminal illness in the City, as she exercised the p’howa of undying.

She didn’t give up her work with the squirrel people altogether, however, as it was a skill she had come to over a long time and a lot of work, and it could still be extraordinarily rewarding. At least that’s how she was feeling as she looked over her latest masterpiece in the meditation room of the Three Jewels Buddhist Center.

He had the face of a crocodile—sixty-eight spiked teeth, and eyes that gleamed like black glass beads. His hands were the claws of a raptor, the wicked black nails encrusted with dried blood. His feet were webbed like those of a waterbird, with claws for digging prey from the mud. He wore a purple silk robe, trimmed in sable, and a matching hat with a wizard’s star embroidered on it in gold thread.

“It’s only temporary, until we find someone,” Audrey said. “But take my word for it, you look great.”

“No, I don’t. I’m only fourteen inches tall.”

“Yeah, but I gave you a ten-inch schlong.”

He opened his robe and looked down. “Wow, would you look at that,” Charlie said. “Nice.”