“That’s okay. I like the view right here.”
She rests her hand on the grip of her pistol, cop-style. She’s packing a Colt 1911. Not a new gun, but it still blows nice holes in things.
“The Magistrate wants you with a clear head, so I’m not going to shoot you anywhere that’ll kill you. Just where it hurts.”
“Fine. I’ll go to prom with you, but you’re paying for the limo.”
I swing my legs down out of the truck and yell, “Father! We’re up.”
Traven comes out of his camper, putting on the ragged duster.
We follow Daja to a Hellion motor home. It looks less like something your grandparents would drive to the Grand Canyon and more like a Gothic mansion on wheels—one designed by insects and decorated by something with more tentacles than taste. Hellion chic. Daja opens the door and we go in.
The light inside comes from glowing glass globes that seem to float above the furniture. A cramped sofa along one wall and a small table with chairs in the center of the claustrophobic room finish off the nightmare.
The Magistrate sets down a book he was reading when we come in. He points to chairs at the table for me and Traven, then sits down across from us. Daja doesn’t sit. She stays behind me doing her best to loom. At another time and place I’d say it didn’t work and I’d mean it. But right here and right now, I’m a little off my game and I don’t like her and her gun behind me.
The Magistrate says, “Thank you for coming without causing any more trouble. I somehow think it’s not in your nature to so graciously respond to a summons.”
I shrug. “It beats bleeding in a truck. Do you have anything to drink around here?”
The Magistrate turns around, takes a glass off a small table, and sets it in front of me.
“I had a feeling you might be thirsty.”
I sniff it. No smell.
“Water?” I say.
He nods.
I squint at him.
“You wouldn’t try to roofie a guest, would you?”
“Do I strike you as that sort of man?” says the Magistrate.
“No. But I’ve been wrong before. And we are in Hell.”
Back in the world, I can usually tell when someone is lying. I can hear their heart, watch the pupils of their eyes and micro-expressions on their face. But most of that doesn’t work on the dead. No heartbeat. Micro-expressions dulled by death. And it’s too dark in here to see the Magistrate’s eyes.
I down whatever’s in the glass, though, because at this point I’d drink paint thinner out of a hobo’s galoshes.
What I swallow seems like water. There’s no weird aftertaste and my eyes don’t start spinning. So far so good.
“Feeling better?” he says.
“Okay. But I’d feel great if you had something stronger.”
The Magistrate moves his head from side to side. “We shall see,” he says. “Now that you’re feeling better, are you still Mr. Pitts in here or can we start off on a friendlier footing?”
“Are you still the Magistrate in here?”
“Of course.”
“Then I’m still Mr. Pitts.”
Traven gives me a look, but I give him one right back.
“As you wish,” says the Magistrate. “What were you doing on the mountain?”
His speech is clipped, like English isn’t his first language. But I can’t identify his accent.
I say, “I have no idea.”
He cocks his head.
“You weren’t spying on us?”
“Until you stopped I thought you were a dust devil come to pick my bones clean.”
“Who else is on the mountain?”
“No one that I know of. I told you that when I fried your friend.”
I hear Daja move behind me, but she stops when the Magistrate holds up his hand.
“How did you get onto the mountain? Where did you come from?” he says.
“I was busy getting murdered on Earth.”
“You’re dead?” blurts Traven.
I hold up my left arm to show him that it’s my old human arm again and not a biomechanical Kissi prosthetic.
The Magistrate looks to him, then me, then back to Traven and his big goddamn mouth.
“Why would Mr. Pitts being dead surprise you, Father?” he says. “Hell is a place of the dead.”
Traven mumbles, “It’s just that …”
“This isn’t my first time in Hell,” I say.
The Magistrate leans back.
“I see. Another mortal foolish enough to make a deal with the Devil. Did he send you back with promises of immortality? How did it feel when you realized you’d been tricked?”
“It wasn’t like that,” I say. “In fact, Lucifer and me are pretty simpatico these days. The old Lucifer. The retired one. He’s the one who thought it would be funny to leave me on the fucking mountain.”
The Magistrate continues to lean back, but he doesn’t look so smug anymore.
“You mean the Lucifer who has become Death?” he says.
I upend the glass and get a few more drops of water.
“Do you know a bunch of other Lucifers?”
He leans forward and rests his arms on the table.
“You are friends with Death. My, how special you must be.”
“We don’t go to karaoke or anything, but we’ve had a cocktail or two.”
“I find it hard to believe you, Mr. Pitts.”
I push the glass back to his side of the table.
“I don’t give a single fuck what you believe. Unless it means I don’t get a drink later. Then I care a lot.”
The Magistrate takes the glass and puts it back on the small table.
“Why would your ‘friend’ Death leave you here in the middle of nowhere?” he says.
“Isn’t it obvious?” says Traven.
“No. It is not. Why do you think he was there?”
Traven opens a hand to the Magistrate and then to me. “For this. This moment. This meeting. This is why Mr. Pitts was on the mountain. Death wanted us all to meet.”
“To what end?” says the Magistrate.
“To help with the work, of course.”
“You’re so sure?”
Traven leans forward, speaking quietly, but intensely.
“Death could have left him in Pandemonium or at the gates of Heaven with the other refugees. He could have left him in the wilderness where no one would ever find him. But no. He left him right here in the Tenebrae, directly in our path.”
“Perhaps Death left him so that we could dispatch him to Tartarus,” says the Magistrate.
“Perhaps he has something we need.”
“Or perhaps Death was having a joke on all of us.”
“I