"Oh, no! I may be artificially happy, but I'm still lonely. I'm glad you came. It was a good glitch. If I've got to go, I'd like to go with company. May I have a ride on your fine horse?"

Zane smiled. "Indeed you may, Tad."

"Then I guess I'm ready."

Zane pushed the b.u.t.ton on his watch, and the dread countdown resumed. In fifteen seconds a sudden seizure shook the boy, and Zane reached out and drew forth his soul before there could be more than momentary pain.

He carried the soul outside to where the horse waited. Zane had arrived in the limousine, but Mortis had somehow antic.i.p.ated his need. Zane mounted, holding the soul before him. The stallion leaped into the night sky.

At the top of the arc, Zane let the soul go. It continued to float up toward Heaven, while the horse fell back toward Earth. "Farewell, Tad," Zane murmured. "You go to a better place than that which you left."

Zane wrapped up his remaining collections, cla.s.sifying most of the souls and delivering the rest to Purgatory. Then he went to Death's mansion in the sky for a meal and some sleep. The doorbell now played light cla.s.sical music, and the scent of the house was of lilies. He might deal in death, but he was alive and had to maintain himself.

He was preoccupied with Tad's case, even after it was over. Had he done the right thing, talking to the boy while other clients waited, telling him the truth that had been denied him? Would this be another bad mark on Zane's record for the television news to announce gleefully? It seemed Death was becoming the b.u.t.t of much Purgatory humor because of his erratic ways. This time he did not turn on the TV set.

The staff of the Deathhouse seemed alive and solid to him, though Zane knew he was the only living person there. He wasn't certain whether the office of Death made him eligible to interact with the dead, or whether the dead were spelled to seem more physical than they really were. Regardless, when he shook a spirit's hand here in Purgatory, that hand was solid and warm. But he remained keenly aware that these people were not of his world. They were dead and he was alive. He did not feel comfortable in Purgatory.

Then he remembered the Magician's daughter, Luna. Luna Kaftan. He had made a date with her, and her father had been insistent that he keep it. His curiosity had been aroused and as his memory of his fleeting acquaintance with Angelica, the woman he should have romanced, the one he had sold for the worthless Wealthstone as impression faded, his image of Luna sharpened. She had been amazingly attractive in clothing! Why not get to know her better? She, at least, was living.

He drove the Deathmobile to Luna's house. But as he arrived in Kilvarough, he suffered an attack of misgiving. Was it proper to involve the office of Death in a personal matter? In fact, hadn't he intended to meet Luna as himself, rather than as Death? He decided to present himself incognito, as Zane.

He stripped away his cloak and gloves and shoes. That left him vulnerable physically, but more secure socially. There was a lot to be said for anonymity.

He rang the bell. It occurred to him, belatedly, that she might not be home. He had not set a particular date; in fact, he was not certain what day this was. A glance at his watch could tell him, of course. It was just that the things of the living worid had not been much in his awareness these past few days.

In a moment she answered. She was in a yellow housecoat, her hair bound under a net. She was neither lovely nor plain, but in a somewhat formless, in between state that was apparently the female neutral condition. Grief was evidently taking its toll; she seemed to have lost some weight, small lines were forming about her face, and her eyes were shadowed. He did not need to inquire what she had been doing for the past few days; she had been home suffering.

Luna looked askance at him, and he realized how strange he must look in shirt, worn trousers, and stocking feet. "My name's Zane," he said. "I would like to be with you this evening."

Now her glance was piercing; She did not recognize him. "I believe you have the wrong address, stranger. How did you get past the griffins?"

"It's the right address, but perhaps the wrong uniform. You have met me before in the guise of Death. The griffins gave me wide clearance when they recognized me by smell. We have a date."

She was quick to reappraise him. "Then come in." She opened the door.

Zane stepped inside and something like a heavy talon fell on his left shoulder. He craned his neck to look at his attacker, but there was nothing. Yet his nose was wrinkling with the heavy, musky odor of something animalistic or insectoid or worse.

"My invisible guardian," Luna explained. "A trained moon moth. If you had some notion of robbing this house "

Zane smiled with a certain difficulty. "I should have known you would not be defenseless. But I am who I say I am. I can summon the Deathsteed and don my cloak if necessary; then I think your invisible monster would not find me as easy to handle. But words should suffice; I came last week to take your father, the Magician Kaftan, and he told me I should, er, make your acquaintance if I would talk with him a while. I saw you nude, and then dressed up, and after I took his soul, you offered to "

"Let him go," Luna murmured, and the claw at Zane's shoulder relaxed. Just as well, for the grip had been increasingly painful.

"Thank you," Zane said. "It doesn't have to be today. I just came when it was convenient for me; I'm afraid I didn't think of your own convenience. I forgot about your grief."

"Today will do," she said, somewhat curtly. "I find I don't enjoy being alone at this time. Let me change and pick up the grief nullifying stone "

"No, please!" he cut in. "I prefer to know you exactly as you are. It is right to experience grief; I'm sure your father warrants it. Artificial abatement of a natural feeling I don't want that."

She considered him, head held slightly askew. "You don't want to be impressed?"

"You impress me as you are. Human."

She smiled quickly, and her beauty flashed into being with the expression. "I think you mean it, and that flatters me. That's almost as good as a spell. What is your pleasure, Zane?"

"Just to honor your father's wish. To talk with you, get to know you. He was most insistent, in Purgatory, when "

"Purgatory?"

"He is figuring out the balance of his soul there. It will be a tedious task."

She shrugged. "He is good at tedious tasks. He is not in pain?"

"None."

"Then I can let him rest for a while. What were you saying?"

"Just that I came to talk with you. It I don't see it going any farther than that."

"Why not?" she asked, frowning.

"Oh, it's not that you're not attractive. You showed me before! It's I don't "

"Attractive," she muttered darkly, apparently not flattered this time. "You refer to my body, of course, not to my mind or soul."

"Yes," he said, feeling awkward. "I don't know your mind, though I do know a good portion of the evil on your soul is not truly yours. But I said it wasn't that. I know you can make yourself as beautiful as you want to be. But even if you were ugly, you're you're someone, and I'm no one, so "

She laughed. "Death tells me this?"

"Death is merely the office. I'm just the man who happened to blunder into that office. I don't think I deserve it, but I'm trying to do it properly. Maybe in time I'll become a good Death, instead of making mistakes."

"Mistakes?" she inquired. "Sit down, Zane." She took his arm, guided him to the couch, and sat down beside him at an angle, so that her right knee touched his left. "How is it going?"

"You don't want to hear about that sort of thing," he demurred, though he did want to talk about it.

"Listen, Zane," she said earnestly. "My father picked you for that office. To you it may have been a blunder, but "

"Oh, I didn't mean to criticize your father! I meant "

"He believed you were the proper person for it. I don't know exactly why, but I have faith in his judgment. There must be some quality in you that makes you best for the position. So don't question your fitness for the office."

"Your father picked me for Death and for you," Zane said. "I don't see the wisdom of either choice."

She removed her net and began adjusting her rich brown hair. "I don't see it either," she admitted with a smile. "Which simply means I have more to discover. My father always, always makes sense, and he never mistreated me in any way. He's a great man! So I'll try to ascertain the meaning of his will. You show me some of your mind, and I'll show you some of mine. Then perhaps we'll both understand why my father wanted us to interact."

"I suppose he did have some reason," Zane agreed. He hardly objected to improving his acquaintance with this increasingly lovely young woman for she was growing prettier by the moment as she fixed herself up but didn't like the feeling of being accepted by her only because she had been ordered to do it, "He was a Magician, after all."

"Yes." She did not belabor the obvious, and now he felt foolish for having done so himself. This was an odd sort of date, and he was hardly easy with it.

"I can see why a man like me would be interested in a woman like you, but not why a man like him would want 1 mean, surely you are destined for better things, and he would want those things for you."

"Surely," she agreed, shaking out her glistening locks.

That did not help. Luna was not only turning beautiful again, she was becoming more poised, her gaze level.

"Well," he began. "I was just going to tell you about mistakes. Like one of my last cases, in the office of Death a boy, a teenager only no one had told him he was going to die. But he knew it when he recognized me. I don't know whether it was right to lie to him, as they did, or tell the truth, as I finally did. Either way, I think I mishandled it, so it's a mistake."

"You regard an indecision as a mistake?"

"I don't know. I guess so. How can you do what's right if you don't know what's right?"

She made a moue. "Score a point for you! I suppose you just have to leam from experience, hoping you don't do too much harm in the process."

"I never really appreciated the significance of death before," he said, troubled. "Now that I'm directly involved in it, the force of it becomes much greater, almost overwhelming. Death is no minor thing."

"How do you mean?" Luna asked gently. Her eyes were nacreous.

"I know every living creature must eventually die; otherwise the world would be intolerably crowded. Even on an individual basis, death is necessary. Who would really want to live forever on Earth? Life would be like a game grown overfamiliar and stale, and what pleasures it offered would be overwhelmed by the intolerable burden of minutiae. Only a fool would carry on regardless. But here I'm not necessarily dealing with the normal course of full lives and the terminations of old age. I'm talking to people who aren't ready to die and taking their souls out of turn. Their full lives have not been lived, their roles have not been played out. Their threads have been cut short through no fault of their own."

"No fault?" She was leading him, in effect interrogating him, but he didn't mind.

"Consider my recent clients. One was a seven yearold boy. He was having lunch at a school cafeteria, and * a valve malfunctioned and caused a water heater to explode. It brought down the ceiling, and five children and a teacher died. My client had a difficult home environment, which was why his soul was balanced between good and evil but he should have had a full life ahead to put his soul in better order. Through sheer random chance, he was denied that life. And the five others who died, not needing my personal attention maybe they all went directly to Heaven. I hope so. But this was still grossly unfair to them, for they might have gone to Heaven sixty years later, after having their full chances on Earth. The world might have benefited by their lives; certainly they deserved their chances. What possible meaning can there by in such catastrophe?"

"Fate might know," Luna said.

"And there was a giant flying carpet taking off from Washington, carrying seventy nine people south. Ice formed on its forward fringe and interfered with its levitation spell, and it grazed a bridge and crashed into the Potomac River, killing ninety percent of the pa.s.sengers. I was there for a client and saw the crash and it was so unnecessary. The simplest deicing spell would have prevented "

"I thought they always deiced large carpets in winter."

"They do. But they used a weak one this time, and the ice built up again more rapidly than expected, and no one checked. All those innocent people killed and I thought why, why? If it made any sense at all, maybe I could accept it. But this was mere caprice! All those people subjected to the indignity of meaningless termination, their families saddened I don't know whether I can continue to be a part of this."

"I would justify it if I could," Luna said. "My father believed there was a purpose in death, however untimely it might seem. He said there was always a rationale, if we could only see it."

"What possible rationale for children killed by an explosion, or families smashed in a carpet crash?" he demanded bitterly. "Can G.o.d have any hand in this?"

"I don't know. My father had a dream of a benevolent universe, wherein Heaven, Purgatory, and h.e.l.l are all necessary aspects of a Divinely functioning whole. He would have believed that there was a specific reason for every out of turn death, and that Fate had directed each person to be on that particular carpet."

"Do you believe that?"

She sighed. "My soul is burdened with evil, and my faith is weak. I don't have the information my father had."

"You are mortal, like me," he said. "You are not provided with ready answers."

"All too true. But I still think we can work out a rationale, if we try. How, exactly, did you get to be Death?"

"I shot my predecessor," Zane admitted. "I was going to suicide, because I'd been gypped out of a girl a girl tike you, beautiful and wealthy and loyal but when I saw Death, I killed him instead. Then Fate came and told me I had to be the new Death. So I was."

"A girl like me," Luna said. She had continued adjusting herself and now was verging from lovely to ravishing, approaching the physical appeal she had had on their last meeting.

"Yes. Not only pretty, but pure "

Luna choked on a fit of laughter. "How little you know about women!"

Zane shrugged. "I've known ordinary women. But "

"Death came for you personally," she cut in with a feminine non sequitur. "That means you were half evil."

"Yes. I never claimed "

"If you were to pa.s.s your definition gems near me, you would find me much the same. My outer form is as fair as nature and cosmetic magic can make it; my inner personality is suspect. Don't put me on any pedestal, Zane. I can match you evil for evil."

"Oh, I'm sure "

"No, you aren't. But you might as well find out. That should settle whatever my father had in mind." She got up and strode across the room, lithe and purposeful. Her housecoat seemed to have changed along with her att.i.tude and now looked more like a gown. Whatever magic she had wasn't all magic, he realized. "Come to the stone chamber."

Zane followed her, antic.i.p.ating some kind of crypt hewn out of bedrock, but the chamber turned out to be a bright wood paneled room arranged like a museum, with small stones of every type set out on shelves and in cabinets. "These are magic?" he asked, amazed.

"Certainly. That was my father's business enchanting stones. Some of the most intricate magic in the world is concentrated here. The stones you use to a.n.a.lyze souls may have been Grafted by my father, as he was one of perhaps only four living people capable of that precision of magic. He surely knew more about you than you knew about yourself. That's why we need to get to the bottom of this. I confess I'm not keen on any relationship with you, and your interests obviously would have preferred to focus elsewhere, but my father selected you and me for reasons we are bound to fathom before we part. We can't afford to take the risk of rejecting what he set up unless we first understand the reason for it. If we discover a continuing relationship is necessary, we can grit our teeth and use the Lovestone to facilitate "

"I doubt I need a Lovestone," Zane said. "All I need is to look at you closely."

She shrugged that off as if irrelevant. "But first we must separate reality from illusion. My father said that a person is best defined by the nature of his evil. His own evil was in dealing with Satan for the sake of increased magic power. Without demonic help, he would have been merely a world cla.s.s Magician instead of a grand master. So he is defined by his l.u.s.t for complete professionalism, and I know that d.a.m.ned him, but I also respect him for it."

"Yes," Zane agreed, impressed. He had heard that a world cla.s.s Magician could virtually demolish a city with a single fission spell. What could a grand master do? Zane didn't know and suspected no one else knew, because of the secretive nature of such Magicians.

"Now you and I will exchange evils in the presence of these stones and see what we shall see." Luna lifted several gems from their casings.

"I really don't understand "

"Hold this stone in your right hand; it glows only when you tell a lie." She handed him a dusky diamond. "And this in your left; it is a Sinstone, like the one you use to evaluate souls."

Zane held the stones, not at all certain he liked this. Luna took similar stones in her hands. "I will lead the way, so you can see how it's done," she said.

"Urn," Zane said noncommittally.

"My name is Venus," she announced. Her Truthstone flashed wamingly. "I mean Luna." The stone remained dark. "I only did that to prove it's working," she explained, and the stone did not object. "Now test yours."

"My name is Jehosephat," Zane said, and saw his own Truthstone flash. "Zane." The glow faded.

Luna took a deep breath that did things for her torso. She looked pained. "Oh, I don't like this! Why am I doing it?" she asked rhetorically.

"Let's not do it," Zane said. "I don't want to know your secrets." But his Truthstone flashed.

"I have fornicated with a demon of h.e.l.l," Luna announced.

Zane'sjaw dropped.

She faced him defiantly. "There, I did it. Note that my Truthstone did not glow but my Sinstone brightened." She gestured with her left hand, showing how the stone had come to life. "Whose Sinstone gets brightest that's the most evil one of us."