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“About that. You said something about me being an important guest. You want to explain that?”
“Try the chicken first,” Sandoval says.
“You’re a whiskey man, right?” says Burgess. He goes to one of the trucks and comes back with a couple of glasses of amber liquid. I sniff mine.
“Don’t bother,” Burgess says. “You won’t recognize it. We have our own distillery and bottle it ourselves. Just for family and friends, you understand. Let me know what you think.”
I take a sip.
Holy shit.
“How did you come up with this recipe?”
“Why do you ask?”
“This is the best thing I’ve tasted next to Aqua Regia and I’ve never met anyone up here who even knows about the stuff.”
“I suppose that means we’re not just anyone,” says Burgess.
“I suppose so.”
“Try the chicken and then ask your questions,” says Sandoval. “I suspect that you have a few.”
I take a bite of the bird.
“What do you think?”
“It’s as good as the whiskey.”
“It is, isn’t it?” she says. “Now, what’s the first thing you’d like to know?”
“What are you people? What’s Wormwood? Some kind of bank?”
Burgess nods.
“To some people. But really we’re an overall investment entity.”
“What kind of investments?”
“Money, of course. That’s what most freshman investors with us want.”
Sandoval sips her whiskey, then says, “For more discriminating clients, we handle specialized products. Physical commodities. Oil, obviously. Land too. In more exotic departments, human organs. People.”
Burgess wipes away a water ring on the table with his thumb.
“And there are our ephemeral departments. They handle items such as souls. Damnation. Salvation. Those are some of our biggest markets.”
I wipe the chicken grease off my fingers and push it away.
“I don’t understand a single thing you just said. H
ow do you invest in damnation?”
“Let me explain it to you,” Sandoval says.
“In as small words as possible.”
“Of course. When we said you were an important person, we were being quite sincere. Our investments in afterlife products were minuscule until you came along.”
