“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 vote for that,” I say. “Death loves a joke. Pull my finger he says and poof, you’re gone.”
Traven lays his hand on the table.
“I’m telling you. Death has sent us a gift. This man is useful to the cause. I don’t know exactly how, but it will reveal itself.”
“How do you know that he isn’t lying about everything?” the Magistrate says. “From where he came from to his alleged friendship with Death?”
“Because I knew him.”
“When you were alive.”
“Yes.”
“How do you know he is the same man you knew then? Perhaps he’s gone mad. Perhaps he’s a spy.”
“Excuse me,” I say. “What time does the buffet start? The service here it terrible.”
“Stop it, Pitts,” snaps Traven.
The Magistrate shakes his head.
“Yes. Stop it, Mr. Pitts. We will know everything when Mimir gets here,” he says.