“Help!” Charlie called. “Help, I’m being humped to death!”
“Aye, love,” said the banshee. “But it’s a dry hump.”
“Not him,” said Minty Fresh, his voice now filled with the booming resonance of Anubis.
“No, goggies!” called Sophie. “Down! Down!”
The hounds looked over to Sophie, dropped Charlie like a drooly tennis ball, then bounded over to her. Lemon forgot completely what he was doing, forgot he was drawing down the power of thousands of souls, forgot that when he finished he would rule over the realms of light and darkness, and turned to run. The stream of ghosts that he had been pulling down to him snapped back to the bridge.
Lemon threw his hands apart as if pushing soapsuds off the surface of a washbasin, and a portal opened in the fortress courtyard—shimmering like a black mirror. He took a step back to gather speed to leap the four floors when Alvin’s jaws clamped down on his arm, jerking him back like a rag doll. His yellow homburg hat fluttered from his head and disappeared into the Underworld.
Alvin shook him twice before Mohammed caught his other arm.
“Hold,” said Minty Fresh, who was Anubis. The hellhounds stopped, held Lemon, and growled like idling Ferraris. Minty stepped from where he’d been frozen in place and stood before Lemon, who was Set, once Egyptian lord of the Underworld.
“Hey, Lemon, how you like the goggies?” Minty spoke in his own voice now.
“I ain’t gonna lie, cuz,” said Lemon. “I do not care for them.”
“You done here. You know that, right?”
Lemon hung limp between the two hounds, defeated for a second, then he grinned. “That was gonna be some big-ass consciousness, though, once I become the Luminatus. Some muthafuckin’ world-burnin’ will.”
“Yeah, that ain’t never going to happen. Here’s what going to happen. These goggies are going to take you to a pit where Ammut has been waiting for your tender ass for thousands of years. Now, I know he can’t end you, but he going to chew you up and shit you out in little pieces. And if you ever get your shit together, because that happens with our peoples, these two hellhounds will be waiting on you, Lemon. You can slow them up, but you can’t stop them. They will follow you to the ends of the world and the ends of the Underworld, they will never give up and they will never die. You can’t control them, and you can’t kill them, and they ain’t but one person can ever call them off, and she standing right there.” Minty pointed.
“ ’Sup?” said Sophie.
“There is no kryptonite for these motherfuckers, Lemon, do you feel me?”
“You a hard man, Minty Fresh,” said Lemon.
“Go!” said Minty.
The hellhounds leapt off the arcade with Lemon between them and fell the four stories into the portal to the Underworld, which closed behind them with the sound of a lightbulb popping.
“Bye, goggies,” said Sophie.
Minty Fresh looked up to the lone figure standing on the bridge above them, amid the maelstrom of ghosts, and waved. Mike Sullivan waved back and disappeared into the flow.
29
So That Happened
Crisis Center, this is Lily. What’s your name?”
“Lily, this is Mike.”
“Mike, what’s going on? Asher said it’s over. What’s over?”
“I found out, Lily. I found out why I listened to all those stories, what I’m doing here. I’m supposed to lead them. I’m the Ghost Thief.”
“That’s great, Mike, I have no idea what that means.”
“I’m supposed to lead them all off the bridge, show them where they’re supposed to go. All the souls stuck here with unresolved lives, they just need to live another life, learn the lesson. That’s what the Ghost Thief was supposed to do. Steal the ghosts from the bridge.”
“Why you?”
“Evidently I’m an ascended soul—or I will be.”