15.3

 

Roisin held up her hands. “I’ll be fine, honestly. I just need some rest, And maybe some food. I haven’t eaten since yesterday.”

“Yesterday?” Paul looked at Steve. “Why hasn’t she eaten since yesterday?”

“How would I know? I’m not responsible for feeding her. She’s not a pet.”

“But you’ve been here and I’ve been at work.”

“I might have been here, but she hasn’t. The first time I’ve seen her today was when she came in followed by the soul harvester.”

“Wait. Guys!” Roisin had to raise her voice against the raised ones of her co-tenants. “Not only am I a grown bloody woman who is more than capable of looking after herself, so back off and just give me some food, please, but also ‘Soul Harvester?’ Is that what that shadow creature was?” She paused, frowning. “And thirdly, I thought we weren’t talking about souls, since that brought us into the realms of religion, which is a separate issue altogether.”

“I’ll see what we’ve got in the kitchen’” Paul gave Steve a hard star as he turned for the door and left them alone. Seconds later, she could see him moving about the kitchen, in silhouette from the beam of light from his phone.

“Looks like all the bulbs popped.”

“Only the ones left plugged in.” Steve shrugged. “That last burst we enough to blow them all in one go. I’ll put it down as a power surge. Don’t worry, You’re not going to get charged for the damage, although I really want to send you a bill for the Hera statue and the piece of Richard III.” He held up one hand. “I’m not going to, but you owe me one. Actually, two.”

“Yes, I get it. I’ll look out for live objects.”

“Everything is ‘live’ as you call it. What I’m looking for is ones that have too much for what they are. Imbed items. They get like that from having people touching them, transferring their essence into the object. That’s why a lot of the things I trade in are religious objects, though not all of them, obviously. The rock from Lewisham wouldn’t have been imbued with much if Shakespeare hadn’t written the play.”

“You said ‘trade.’ Does that mean you trade in souls?”

“This is why I don’t like referring to them as ‘souls.’ It’s not souls in the religious sense. You don’t get Jesus talking about the sanctity of the pebbles under His feet or even how the fish he’s passing out to the crowd  has as much of a right to life as the people eating it. Calling them ‘Spirit’ is not much better. It still paints an emotionally biased view of them. There should be another work for the power inside an object. Something that doesn’t have a religious reference to it.”

“How about ‘Karma?’”

Steve shook his head. “That still has religious connotations, though it’s better than ‘soul’ or ‘spirit.’ Same with ‘life’ and ‘mana.’ Actually, I think there’s a game that tracks Karma as a sort of life point counter, so you’re on the right track with that thought.”

“And how exactly do you deal in souls, then? Body parts to the highest bidder?”

“Yeah, Steve. What exactly do you trade in? I’ve always thought it was stuff that fell off the back of a lorry, but I think there’s more to it than that.” Paul re-entered the room and put a tray on Roisin’s lap. It consisted of a thick slab of dry toast and a bowl of cheap ramen, made up from a cup of boiling water and what looked like a handful of undercooked mung beans and topped with a mostly poached egg. Not that Roisin was surprised. She’d seen all of these in the cupboard and hadn’t had the desire to eat any of them.

“I’m not a fence.” Steve puffed out his chest. “The things I deal with aren’t stolen. Not as such, anyway. They don’t have bills of trading attached to them, and most of them are intrinsically worthless except to the people who want that particular type of energy.”

“Like that thing in the doorway?”

“Yes, exactly. If that got into the house it would hoover up every piece I had in my possession. It’s only because the house is in a dead zone that I can keep them here, otherwise they wouldn’t last two minutes.”

“And who buys these objects you spend so much effort to acquire?”

Paul nodded as he sat back on the little table. “I’d quite like to know that, too.”