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“Of course,” she says, her voice muffled by the oxygen mask. “How can I help?”
The Magistrate looks at me.
“Mimir, I am concerned that Mr. Pitts here might be a spy or intend to harm us in some other way. He says that he found himself on the mountain and that he was placed there by Death himself. Is he telling the truth?”
“Do you mean, did Death leave him or that he believes Death left him?”
“How did he get onto the mountain, Mimir?”
She opens a canvas Safeway shopping bag (Have I mentioned recently that they bootleg a lot of our stuff in Hell? They steal cable, too. Don’t tell anyone.) and lays a whole spook show on the table. At the center is a bowl made from the skull of a Hellion with three horns that make three perfect little legs for it. She pours in powders, a few drops of a potion, a seed pod, and a lot of other crap I can’t identify. As she grinds it all together, I wish Vidocq was here. I bet Vidocq wishes he was here. The alchemist in him would be going nuts right now. He’d know what kind of moonshine Popcorn Sutton here is brewing. All I know is that I don’t want to drink it when she’s done. Things might get tense soon.
When she’s finished, I put my hands on the table, ready to push back and try to knock Daja off balance before she can shoot me.
But Mimir doesn’t come up with the glass. She pulls a match from her bag and lights the mess in the bowl. Just as it starts to stink, she unhooks her respirator from the oxygen tank and puts the tube over the Dumpster fire she’s started.
I start to say something stupid, but Traven’s hand closes on my arm in a goddamn death grip.
Mimir sucks in the smoke and suddenly I want another Malediction. Her eyes roll back in her head. She begins to shake. She mumbles something unintelligible, like she’s chanting or speaking in tongues. It’s your basic oracle carny act. I’ve seen a million of them. They always look like they’re about to have an aneurysm. If they didn’t, the rubes wouldn’t think they were getting their money’s worth.
After a long moment, Mimir pulls out the tube and puts a lid on the skull bowl. She blows a long trail of smoke from out of the tube, clearing her wheezing lungs, and hooks her respirator back to the oxygen tank. She takes several long, deep breaths.
“What did you see?” says the Magistrate. He looks at me. “Is he telling the truth, Mimir?”
I get ready again to bash Daja.
Mimir takes one more long breath and nods her head.
“He is not a spy?”
“He is not,” she rasps.
I hear a rustle of leather behind me and the quiet click of a small hammer being lowered onto a small gun. Daja was playing me all along. She knew what I’d do if things went bad. I was ready for her to pull her pistol, but she had a little pocket gun—a Derringer or something—on me the whole time. Suddenly I hate and like her even more all at the same time.
“How did he make his way up the mountain?” says the Magistrate.
“Death placed him there,” says Mimir.
“Why?”
“Death’s reasons are his own. To look too closely is to risk having his gaze fall upon you.”
“I understand,” the Magistrate says.
He pats Mimir’s shoulder as her breathing returns to its normal wheeze.
“I have one more question for you,” he says, and looks at me. “The gentleman that Death so graciously brought us calls himself Mr. ZaSu Pitts. Is that, in fact, who he is? And if not, who is he really?”
I tense again. This time Daja pulls her big pistol. The barrel brushes my ear. It tickles, which pisses me off. I don’t want to go to Tartarus giggling.
Traven looks at me and I look back at him. I’m stuck between a witch, a dime-store desert prophet, and a gunslinger who wants me extremely dead. And I can’t even reach my cigarettes.
Mimir takes the bowl and tosses the burning herbs outside. She comes back to the table and, lucky me, begins mixing a whole new brew that this time is going to reveal that not only am I a big fat liar, but so is Traven. I wonder if I should tell the Magistrate who I am. But that would make us liars. We’re fucked either way. Better keep quiet and play this out.
When she gets her hoodoo herbs piled up nice and high, Mimir sets them on fire. A dull yellow smoke drifts from the bowl, filling the camper with a smell like boiling cabbage in scorched motor oil. I start to say something when the contents of the bowl flare up, sucking the smoke back inside. An orange flame rises from the bowl, kicking up sparks. When it’s about a foot high, the flame begins to turn until it’s a miniature tornado, twisting and writhing above the upturned skull.
I say, “If you’re trying to make fondue, you’re doing it wrong.”
Mimir waves a hand in my direction. I stare at her.
“What do you want? Applause?”
“She wants you to put your hand in the fire, asshole,” says Daja.
“Yeah. That’s not happening.”
“I am afraid you must,” says the Magistrate.
I look at Traven.
“What do you say, Father?”
“You were brought here for a reason,” he says. “Do as they say.”
I shake my head. “You people have a shitty way of treating guests. I’m never staying at this hotel again.” But I put out my left hand. The heat hits me at the edge of the bowl. I hesitate.
“Daja. If he does not put his hand into the flame, please shoot the father.”
I hear her pull back the hammer on the pistol.
I push my hand forward.
“Mr. Pitts,” says the Magistrate. “I believe that you are right-handed. Please use that hand.”
I look at him.
“Is Magistrate your real name? Why don’t we both put our hands in the fire?”
Daja grabs my shoulder.
I put out my right hand.
“At least I’m not going to die in Fresno.”
And in I shove my mitt into the tornado.
I’ve been burned before. I’ve been shot, stabbed, poisoned, beaten, chewed on, and called rude names. I want to say that because of my vast experience in getting my ass handed to me that the fire is no big deal. But that would be a lie. This fire is a big deal. A huge deal. A giant, flaming, goddamn, piece-of-shit, agonizing, I-want-to-rip-my-own-head-off deal.
I lower my head. Close my eyes and grit my teeth. I’m sweating like a hog tap-dancing in a sauna. I want to scream the paint off the fucking walls. But I don’t make a sound. If I’m going to end up Captain Hook at the end of this, at least they won’t get that little piece of satisfaction.
I open my eyes. The flames are more intense than before and have changed color from a deep orange to a pale blue.
I lock eyes with Mimir. She nods and waves her hand again. I start to pull my hand back, going slow because I’m not looking forward to the sight of my charred stump. The moment I move, the Magistrate leans across the table, grabs my wrist, and shoves my hand back into the flames.
I’m close enough that I could lunge across the table and shove his smug face into the tornado until his eyes burn out. But Daja has the gun on Traven. I really want to do something, but I don’t know what. The pain is really getting to me and I think about Candy and everything I’ve lost and left behind, and it’s all so goddamn sad it’s like a Roy Orbison song, so I do the only logical thing.
I start singing “In Dreams.”
The Magistrate’s face shifts to somewhere between pissed and puzzled. But I keep singing, staring into the fire. Mimir sees an opening and snatches the bowl off the table. She douses the fire and slams the bowl down hard. The Magistrate lets go of my wrist and sits down, staring at Mimir. Fuck ’em both. I pull back my hand and look it over. Not a scorch mark or even a blister. The Magistrate’s oracle has some good hoodoo.
Mimir slaps the table. “If you wish to keep my services, do not interfere with my work again,” she shouts at the Magistrate.
He holds up his hands.
“My apologies, Mimir. It will not happen again,” he says. “But what did the flame tell you?”
The oracle gets up and dumps everything outside again. When she sits down she looks at me.
“He is who he says he is.”
I feel Daja shift her weight. I don’t have to look to know her pistol is now pointed at me.
“He is Mr. Pitts?”
“Yes.”
That was unexpected. Leave it to lunatics like this guy to hitch himself to a third-rate seer. Still, it’s nice for me. I don’t have to start killing people right away.
“Thank you, Mimir. Again, my sincere apologies.”
I take a big breath and let it out, happy me and Traven are still in one piece.
The oracle gathers her gear, wheezing in the respirator. As she gets up, she gives me a look. I have no goddamn idea what it means or why she lied or why Traven and I are still alive. When she leaves I look from Daja to the Magistrate.
“I think your pet monkey is getting tired. Why don’t you throw it a banana and send it home?”
Daja smacks me on the side of the head with the gun barrel.
“Daja. It is over,” says the Magistrate. “Put your gun down. Mr. Pitts has passed his first test. He will be staying with us for the time being.”
I rub the side of my aching head and raise my eyebrows.
“First test? I am going to crucify you people on Yelp.”
Traven gets up.
“Pitts passed the test. May we go?”
The Magistrate shakes his head.
“No. Mr. Pitts I would like to leave. You I would like to stay,” he says. He looks up at Daja and frowns. “And I would like a word with you as well.”
Traven pulls me to my feet. I’m a little light-headed from the pain and it’s hard to stop rubbing my hand. The father gives me a little shove to the door. I look back at the Magistrate.
“What’s under the tarp, Roy Bean?”
“The future,” he says. “Ours and now possibly yours.”
“I’ve got my own future. I don’t need yours.”
The Magistrate gives me a tiny smile.
“Thank you, Mr. Pitts. We will talk again soon.”
On the way out I bump my shoulder into Daja’s like an annoyed sixth grader. She’s already in trouble with Dad, though, so she doesn’t say a word.
Outside, I have to lean against the side of the motor home for a minute. The fire test took more out of me than I was ever going to let those assholes see.
The camp is weirdly quiet. A handful of Hellions attend to cook fires. A few others move trucks and construction equipment around. But the vast majority of the havoc is gathered by a hill of burning crosses erected on the other side of whatever is under the tarp. Their heads are down as a group of robed creeps perform some kind of ceremony.
So, this really is a crusade after all. And now I’m part of it. Hallelujah.
I listen at the motor-home door, trying to hear if Traven is all right. But if the Magistrate got the answer he wanted from the oracle, he has no reason to hurt the father. Anyway, I can’t hear a damned thing.
I walk back to Traven’s camper thinking that maybe I’d’ve been better off if there had been a storm and it snuffed me back on the plains. It would be simpler than dealing with this sideshow.
THE SERMON BREAKS up a few minutes later. Hellions and damned souls straggle back to camp. They’re pretty buddy-buddy for a bunch of torturers and torture victims. I guess there have been weirder alliances Downtown.
Grating Hellion music blasts from a tricked-out Impala lowrider. When you get down to it—mysterious religious services aside—the havoc is like any camp. The cooks start filling dinner plates. Damned souls and Hellions argue, while others laugh or barter. Shooters load up on ammo from a Hellion APC. It has massive bullhorns on top and iron shark teeth welded on the front. Someone strapped broken mannequin parts in between the jaws. Cute gag, but where did they get dressing dummies way out in the Tenebrae? They must make runs into Hell itself, maybe even Pandemonium. That’s good news for me. If I have to make a run for it, I can disappear in ten seconds flat there. All I have to do is survive until then. When I get back to Hell I can start figuring out a way to get back home.
I wonder who Daja has spying on me? No way this bunch is letting an outsider stroll around without surveillance. There’s probably a rifle sighted on me right now. Or am I just being paranoid? Being dead has thrown me off my game. I need some privacy to figure out how much of me is left. I have some hoodoo and I didn’t bleed out. Good news there. But how strong am I? How fast? Is the angel part of me powerful enough to manifest a Gladius? And yet, for all those questions, the one that’s truly bugging me is this: Why the hell did it have to be Audsley Ishii who killed me?
I’ve fought Hellions, slimy monsters, armed-to-the-teeth mortals, scary little girls, and forgotten, pissed-off gods. And it was a third-rate shitbird I got fired from his lousy job who finally did me in. Maybe it was poetic justice. Maybe it was me getting soft. Every time I decide to take things easy or deal with my PTSD, something rotten happens. There won’t be any of that down here. Hell is a Zero Slack zone. No one gets a second chance from me down here. Which means I need weapons. But first I need something to eat and a little sleep. Dying is like the worst jet lag you’ve ever had.
Rubberneckers from the havoc wander by, but none of them will meet my eye. They just want to sniff the new meat. That’s okay. I’d do the same thing. I keep still and look as oblivious as I can. Today’s lesson, kids, is to not look for trouble until I have a better handle on the situation. I’m perfectly prepared to look a little dumb if that’s what it takes.
Just as I’m getting bored and cranky, Traven comes out of the Magistrate’s motor home.
He gestures and we head to his camper.
“You were in there for a while,” I say.
“These things take time.”
“Complaining that no one responded to his birthday Evite, was he?”
Traven nods to someone.
“I was taking his confession.”
