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way. She doesn’t even flinch. Just tracks the flying smoke’s flight with her eyes and watches it miss her by a couple of inches. Nice.
She crooks a finger at me.
“Let’s go,” she says.
“Where to?”
“The Magistrate wants to see you.”
“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.”
