Tears splattered on the CD case and Charlie wouldn’t look up.

Minty Fresh stood and cleared his throat, his face clear of any rage or accusation. He seemed almost ashamed. “Audrey, I’ve been driving around the City for days, I could sure use a place to lie down if you have it.”

She nodded, her face against Charlie’s back. “Ask Esther, she’ll show you.”

Minty Fresh ducked out of the pantry.

Audrey held Charlie and rocked him for a long time, and even though he was lost in the world of that CD that held the love of his life, and she was outside, crouched in a pantry that glowed red with cosmic bric-a-brac, she cried with him.

After an hour passed, or maybe it was three, because that’s the way time is in grief and love, Charlie turned to her and said, “Do I have a soul?”

“What?” she said.

“You said you could see people’s souls glowing in them—do I have a soul?”

“Yes, Charlie. Yes, you have a soul.”

He nodded, turning away from her again, but pushing back against her.

“You want it?” he said.

“Nah, I’m good,” she said. But she wasn’t.

She took the CD out of his hand, pried his hands off of it, really, and put it with the others. “Let’s let Rachel rest and go in the other room.”

“Okay,” Charlie said. He let her help him up.

Upstairs, in a little room with cushions all over the floor and pictures of the Buddha reclining amid lotuses, they sat and talked by candlelight. They’d shared their histories, of how they had come to be where they were, what they were, and with that out of the way, they talked about their losses.

“I’ve seen it again and again,” Charlie said. “More with men than with women, but definitely with both—a wife or husband dies, and it’s like the survivor is roped to him like a mountain climber who’s fallen into a crevasse. If the survivor can’t let go—cut them loose, I guess—the dead will drag them right into the grave. I think that would have happened to me, if it wasn’t for Sophie, and maybe even becoming a Death Merchant. There was something bigger than me going on, something bigger than my pain. That’s the only reason I made it this far.”

“Faith,” Audrey said. “Whatever that is. It’s funny, when Esther came to me, she was angry. Dying and angry—she said that she’d believed in Jesus all her life, now she was dying and He said she was going to live forever.”

“So you told her, ‘Sucks to be you, Esther.’”

Audrey threw a cushion at him. She liked the way that he could find the silliness in such dark territory. “No, I told her that He told her that she’d live forever, but He didn’t say how. Her faith hadn’t been betrayed at all, she just needed to open to a broader understanding.”

“Which was total bullshit,” Charlie said.

Another cushion bounced off his forehead. “No, it wasn’t moo-poo. If anyone should understand the significance of the book not covering everything in detail, it should be you—us.”

“You can’t say ‘bullshit,’ can you?”

Audrey felt herself blush and was glad they were in the dim orange candlelight. “I’m talking faith, over here, you want to give me a break?”

“Sorry. I know—or, I think I know what you mean. I mean, I know that there’s some sort of order to all this, but I don’t know how someone can reconcile, say, a Catholic upbringing with a Tibetan Book of the Dead, with a Great Big Book of Death, secondhand dealers selling objects with human souls, and vicious raven women in the sewers. The more I know, the less I understand. I’m just doing.”

“Well, the Bardo Thodrol talks about hundreds of monsters you will encounter as your consciousness makes its journey into death and rebirth, but you’re instructed to ignore them, as they are illusions, your own fears trying to keep your consciousness from moving on. They can’t really harm you.”

“I think this may be something they left out of the book, Audrey, because I’ve seen them, I’ve fought with them, wrenched souls out of their grasp, watched them take bullets and get hit by cars and keep going—they are definitely not illusions and they definitely can hurt you. The Great Big Book isn’t clear about the specifics, but it definitely talks about the Forces of Darkness trying to take over our world, and how the Luminatus will rise and do battle with them.”

“Luminatus?” Audrey said. “Something to do with light?”

“The big Death,” Charlie said. “Death with a capital D. Sort of the Kahuna, the Big Cheese, the Boss Death. Like Minty and the other Death Merchants would be Santa’s helpers, the Luminatus would be Santa.”

“Santa Claus is the big Death?!” Audrey said, wide-eyed.

“No, that’s just an example—” Charlie saw she was trying not to laugh. “Hey, I’ve been bruised and electrocuted and tied up and traumatized tonight.”

“So my seduction strategy is working?” Audrey grinned.

Charlie was flustered. “I didn’t—I wasn’t—was I staring at your breasts? Because if I was, it was totally by accident, because, you know—there they were, and—”

“Shh.” She reached over and put her finger on his lips to shush him. “Charlie, I feel very close to you right now, and very connected to you right now, and I want to keep that connection going, but I’m exhausted, and I don’t think I can talk anymore. I think I’d like you to come to bed with me.”

“Really? Are you sure?”

“Am I sure? I haven’t had sex in fourteen years—and if you’d asked me yesterday, I’d have told you that I’d rather face one of your raven monsters than go to bed with a man, but now I’m here, with you, and I’m as sure as I’ve ever been of anything.” She smiled, then looked away. “I mean, if you are.”

Charlie took her hand. “Yeah,” he said. “But I was going to tell you something important.”

“Can’t it wait till morning?”

“Sure.”

They spent the night in each other’s arms, and whatever fears or insecurities they had been feeling turned out to be illusions. Loneliness evaporated off of them like the steam off dry ice, and by morning it was just a cloud on the ceiling of the room, then gone with the light.

During the night someone had picked up the dining-room table and cleaned up the mess Minty Fresh had made when he crashed through the kitchen door. He was sitting at the table when Charlie came down.

“They towed my car,” said Minty Fresh. “There’s coffee.”

“Thanks.” Charlie skipped across the dining room to the kitchen. He poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down with Minty. “How’s your head?”

The big man touched the purple bruise on his forehead. “Better. How’re you doing?”

“I accidentally shagged a monk last night.”

“Sometimes, in times of crisis, that shit cannot be avoided. How are you doing besides that?”

“I feel wonderful.”

“Yeah, imagine the rest of us all bummed about the end of the world, not being cheerful.”

“Not the end of the world, just darkness over everything,” Charlie cheerfully said. “It gets dark—turn on a light.”

“Good for you, Charlie. Now ’scuse me, I got to go get my car out of impound before you start with the whole ‘if life gives you lemons you make lemonade’ speech and I have to beat you senseless.”

(It’s true, there is little more obnoxious than a Beta Male in love. So conditioned is he to the idea that he will never find love, that when he does, he feels as if the entire world has fallen into step with his desires—and thus deluded, he may act accordingly. It’s a time of great joy and danger for him.)

“Wait, we can share a cab. I have to go home and get my date book.”

“Me, too. I left mine on the front seat of the car. You know those two clients I missed—they’re here. Alive.”

“Audrey told me,” Charlie said. “There’s six of them altogether. She did that p’howa of undying thing on them. Obviously that’s what’s been causing the cosmic shit storm, but what can we do? We can’t kill them.”