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Mort had a sudden rush of homesickness looking at him. It took all his energy not to regress and throw himself into the warrior king’s arms for a hug.
“Don’t worry about me,” Mort said, trying to stop his lower lip from quivering at the emotion of seeing Balthazar here on the mortal plane. He knew how B hated this place.
“Anubis said you quit.” Balthazar said the words in a tone of gentle concern.
“I did.”
“Why?”
“I don’t want to explain right now.”
“Is it because of him?” Balthazar gestured a flaming arm to the sleeping Tristan, visible through the window. “You wouldn’t be the first of us to develop a fascination with a mortal, but you cannot follow that urge. It destroys them. It robs them of what little life and choice is truly theirs. You know this.”
“I’m not robbing him of anything,” Mort argued, but even as he did, guilt was sinking through him. A deep, primal, elemental kind of guilt, the sort of feeling that came from the very origin of feelings.
“You have a purpose, Mort. If you deny that purpose, only misfortune will follow.” Balthazar reached out, ruffling Mort’s already messy hair. He had not brushed it since he quit. “You know I’ve got a soft spot for you, kid. I don’t want to see you hurt.”
“I’m not going to get hurt.”
“The longer you spend up here, the thinner your connection to the astral planes becomes,” B reminded him. “You’re always going to be of our world, but you risk forgetting that, and once you forget, you can find yourself trapped here, going through the same things they go through. Living the amnesia of the mortal.”
“I’m not going to stay that long.”
Balthazar nodded. “It is your eternity to do with as you please. But I must warn you. Eventually, your father will come. And when he does, he will not be kind. Do not be caught with a mortal you care about. Remember, he is a torturer.”
“I have not seen my father in over a thousand years,” Mort replied. “I doubt he’s going to show up any time soon. I’m far from his only son.”
Balthazar’s expression shifted slightly to something with a shade of pity.
“You've served well and long,” he said. “You deserve a vacation. Just. Please, Mort. Do not get attached.”
The kitten in Mort’s hood was purring and kneading the back of Mort’s neck, tiny little claws sinking into the first layers of his skin and pulling back to make tiny scratches.
“I won’t,” Mort promised.
“Then I will leave you be.”
“Wait.” Mort reached out before B left. “What can you tell me about this guy?”
Balthazar looked at the sleeping Tristan. “He’s just a man.”
“He’s not just a man. He can see demons. And he’s not afraid of me. And he doesn’t fall into a trance when I’m near.”
“Oh,” Balthazar said. “Then he is a broken man.”
“What?”
“An intact man cannot see these things because the shielding around him is intact. He is kept in the mortal plane in a protective sac, as it were. If that sac is broken somehow, parts of the astral can begin to leak. In those cases, a mortal might begin to perceive things outside his normal ability.”
The explanation was simpler, sadder, and less dramatic than Mort had hoped.
“I thought perhaps he was special. Maybe he had some astral blood.”
“Mortals break one another in thousands of ways,” B said. “And some of them particularly love to destroy their children before their children have any chance to discover what they might have been, or who they could have become without pain. Like trees growing in a hostile wind, these people twist and grow into strange forms, sideways instead of up, or even around in spirals. Sometimes they are beautiful, but it is not because they are a different kind of tree. It is because of what shaped them.”
Balthazar was wise, but wisdom did not always bring joy.
“I must leave now, before I am missed. We cannot have your father searching for two runaways, can we?” Balthazar smiled kindly. “Make good choices, Mort.”
With that, he was gone.
The kitten stopped kneading, but it remained purring.
“I know,” Mort said. “I like him too.”
5
Tristan woke up thirsty. He stumbled out of bed and moved through the house in the slightly uncoordinated way he always did before and, to be fair, after he drank.
It was morning. He wasn’t used to mornings. Usually, he rose sometime around one, or maybe three in the afternoon. The morning was very bright, obnoxiously cheerful.
He found Mort in the kitchen.
“Where’s the beer?”
“Why don’t you have…” Mort checked the box with the brightly colored bird on it. “Cereal.”
Tristan felt a spike of anxiety. “Where’s the fucking beer?”
“In the refrigerator,” Mort replied, deadpan.
“Oh. Right. Thanks.” Tristan bent down and went into the refrigerator, where two six packs of beer made twelve blessed cans.
