She took Copper’s collar in her hand and led her toward the kitchen, and the smell of coffee.
Father Aguirre was wearing a faded T-shirt as he cooked. Selena checked for the Roman collar automatically, didn’t see it, and felt briefly confused, as if the priest were somehow in disguise.
Copper had no such concerns. He was cooking bacon, and therefore in Copper’s world, he was her dearest and oldest friend.
He looked up and smiled at both of them. “Good morning. Do you want some breakfast?”
The script for this was “Thank you, I’d love some if it’s not too much trouble.” Selena got about half of it out and then her brain overrode her mouth, so that she ended up saying, “Thank you I’d loveis this really happening?”
“Try that again, maybe?”
She took a deep breath. “Is this really happening?”
Grandma Billy would have said, “What, breakfast?” but Father Aguirre was a more sympathetic soul. He nodded instead.
“It is. I know, it’s hard to believe at first. There’s coffee in the pot.”
“But how?Howis it happening? How is there a—a—roadrunner spiritbehind this? How are there spirits at all?”
She poured herself some coffee. Father Aguirre flipped bacon onto a plate with a sizzle and moved on to other breakfast foods—eggs and chorizo and thin green peppers. “First of all, we don’t know that’s who did it, regardless of what Grandma Billy thinks.”
“And how are there spirits?”
“Now,that’sa complicated question,” he admitted. “Let’s start with solid Catholic doctrine and move on to the heresy, shall we?”
Selena wasn’t sure if that was a joke or not, so she didn’t laugh.
“If you put enough human cells together, you get a human body,” he said, sitting down across from her. “And when you get a human body, it quickens, by which we mean that a soul comes to live in it.”
This seemed like a strange way to put things, but Selena nodded.
“Same with dogs,” he said, ruffling Copper’s ears. “Put enough dog cells together and you get a home for a dog soul. Are you with me so far?”
“You think animals have souls?”
“Heavens, yes. A God that watches each sparrow’s fall wouldn’t bother if they didn’t matter to Him in some fashion.”
Selena ate a piece of bacon, wondering if God also watched owl monsters swarming the houses of agnostics, and what He thought of the matter.
“Now,” said Father Aguirre, “as for spirits ... well, there’s a lot of options. I’m told the Koran says that God made djinn out of fire. In the Middle Ages, they thought fairies were angels that had remained neutral during the Fall. Me ...” He spread his hands. “My pet theory is that they’re not that different from you or me. Except that instead of cells, they’re made up of things.”
Selena looked blank.
“I’m explaining this badly. Okay. If you put a bunch of buildings together, you get a city, right?”
“I guess . . . ?”
“And I don’t know about you, but I think some cities have souls.” He laughed abruptly. “Which is probably heresy, and I am not entirely sure how one might arrange to make sure that a city is saved. But presumably God has planned for that already, and there are others more equipped to deal with it than I am.”
Possibly it was the coffee, but Selena was beginning to relax a little. “Maybe some cities are missionaries to the others.”
“Nowthere’sa thought.” Father Aguirre grinned into his coffee. “Urban sprawl, explained at last. At any rate, to get back to spirits—the sort of spirits we deal with here—I have always thought that perhaps one gets a spirit by simply ... err ... having enough things of that sort about. If a city is made when you have enough buildings to get a soul, and a human is made when you have enough cells to provide a home for a soul, perhaps when you reach a certain ... um ... critical mass of things,theyget a soul. A thousand crows cause a crow spirit to quicken, or a thousand roadrunners, or a thousand rattlesnakes.”
“A thousand squash plants,” said Selena, thinking of the green-skinned man at the bottom of the garden.
Father Aguirre gestured with his coffee cup. “Exactly. And just as you can influence what the human cells that carry you around do, at least on a very large scale ... well, maybe a squash spirit can influence the plants that caused him to quicken.”
“Is this how it works?” asked Selena. “This is what makes spirits?”
