Read Online A Dirty Job (Grim Reaper #1) by Christopher Moore - Free Book Online Page B

craftsmanship.”
    “But more importantly, it will permit you to make your rounds in good time.”
    The Emperor now betrayed the desire in his heart as he let fly a wide grin and hugged the cane to his chest. “It is fine, indeed. Charlie, I must confess something to you, but I ask you to grant me the credulity due a man who has just shared witness, with a friend, of two giant, raven-shaped shades.”
    “Of course.” Charlie smiled, when even a moment before he would have thought his smile lost somewhere in the months past.
    “I hope you won’t think me base, but the second I touched this, I felt as if I had been waiting for it my whole life.”
    Then, for no reason that he could think of, Charlie said, “I know.”
     
    A few minutes before, inside the store, Lily had been brooding. It wasn’t her general brood, the reaction to a world where everyone was stupid and life was meaningless and the mere act of living was futile, especially if your mother forgot to get coffee at the store. This one was a more specific brood, that had started out when she arrived at work and Ray had pointed out that it was her turn to wear the vacuuming tiara, and insisted that if she wore the tiara, she actually vacuum the store. (In fact, she liked wearing the rhinestone tiara that Charlie, in a move of blatant bourgeois sneakiness, had designated be worn by whoever did the vacuuming and sweeping each day, and no other time. It was the vacuuming and sweeping she objected to. She felt manipulated, used, and generally taken advantage of, and not in the fun way.) But today, after she’d put the tiara and the vacuum away and had finally gotten a couple of cups of coffee in her system, the brooding had gone on, building to full-scale angst, when it began to dawn on her that she was going to have to figure out this college-career thing, because despite what The Great Big Book of Death said, she had not been chosen as a dark minion of destruction. Fuck!
    She stood in the back room looking at all the items that Charlie had piled there the day before: shoes, lamps, umbrellas, porcelain figures, toys, a couple of books, and an old black-and-white television and a painting of a clown on black velvet.
    “He said this stuff was glowing?” she asked Ray, who stood in the doorway to the store.
    “Yes. He made me check it all with my Geiger counter.”
    “Ray, why the fuck do you have a Geiger counter?”
    “Lily, why do you have a nose stud shaped like a bat?”
    Lily ignored the question and picked up the ceramic frog from the night before, which now had a note taped to it that read DO NOT SELL OR DISPLAY in Charlie’s meticulous block-letter printing. “This was one of the things? This?”
    “That was the first one he freaked out about,” said Ray matter-of-factly. “The truant officer tried to buy it. That started it all.”
    Lily was shaken. She backed over to Charlie’s desk and sat in the squeaky oak swivel chair. “Do you see anything glowing or pulsating, Ray? Have you ever?”
    Ray shook his head. “He’s under a lot of stress, losing Rachel and taking care of the baby. I think maybe he needs to get some help. I know after I had to leave the force—” Ray paused.
    There was a commotion going on out in the alley, dogs barking and people shouting, then someone was working a key in the lock of the back door. A second later, Charlie came in, a little breathless, his clothes smudged here and there with grime, one sleeve of his jacket torn and bloodstained.
    “Asher,” Lily said. “You’re hurt.” She quickly vacated his chair while Ray took Charlie by the shoulders and sat him down.
    “I’m fine,” Charlie said. “No big deal.”
    “I’ll get the first-aid kit,” Ray said. “Get that jacket off of him, Lily.”
    “I’m fine,” Charlie said. “Quit talking about me like I’m not here.”
    “He’s delirious,” Lily said, trying to pry Charlie out of his jacket. “Do you have any painkillers, Ray?”
    “I don’t