On a Pale Horse (24 page)

“How can you save the world from Satan in twenty years if you are doomed to die within a month?” Zane asked, remembering something the ghost had said.

“Maybe I can influence Satan in Hell,” she suggested.

“I don’t want you in Hell!” he protested. “I don’t want you dead at all.”

“We must all die,” Molly said. “What hurts is dying out of turn.” She was, of course, in a position to know.

Zane pondered that, as Luna snuggled most pleasantly close. Those were the clients he had trouble with, intellectually and emotionally—the ones who were dying early because of accident or misunderstanding or plain bad luck. A game that played itself out and was finished was one thing; its score was known. But one that was interrupted before its course was run was a tragedy. Maybe he was abusing his office by talking a potential suicide out of it, or rescuing a drowning man, while facilitating the demise of an old and worn-out person, yet that was the way he had to play it. He had precious little of a worthwhile nature to distinguish himself, but it was important to care about people.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Luna murmured as they cruised through a medieval Chinese city. Zane was sure each setting on this tour was a highly significant historical event, and Molly was happily describing it all, but somehow he wasn’t interested at the moment.

“I don’t want you dying out of turn,” he whispered. “You’re a lot better woman than I deserve, and if—”

“Despite my affair with the demon?” she asked.

Why did she have to remind him of that? “To Hell with the demon!” he exploded.

“Which is exactly where he went,” she agreed. “I had to tell you, or any relationship we might have would be a lie. I am unclean, Death, and I will never be clean again, and you must know—”

“We’ve been over this before!” he cried. “You did something horrible to help your father—as I did to help my mother. How can I condemn you for that?” Yet of course he
had
condemned her, emotionally; he had not been able to avoid it. The notion of some gross demon from Hell sating himself upon her body—

“What did you two do that was so horrible?” Molly asked.

“She gave her body to a demon, to learn the magic that might help her father,” Zane said.

“And he used a penny curse to make the machinery that was keeping his mother alive against her will malfunction,” Luna said.

“I guess those were sins,” Molly agreed doubtfully. “I think sometimes you just have to sin in order to do the right thing.”

“If I could have helped my father with a penny curse, I’d have done it,” Luna said.

“And if I had to romance a demoness to spare my mother her pain, I’d have done it,” Zane said.

“Some of those demonesses are mighty sexy,” Molly said. “They say there’s no sex like succubus-sex. Of course, I wouldn’t know.”

“That does sound interesting,” Zane said.

Luna reached up, caught hold of one of his ears, and drew his face down to meet hers. “Try this first,” she said.

The kiss was electrifying. She had forgiven him his prior reaction and was giving him her emotion. It was a wonderful gift.

“And this is Tours,” Molly said, gesturing to a new scene beyond the cart. Zane had no idea how many important historical scenes he had missed. “Where the French halted the advance of the Moors, and Europe was saved for the Europeans.”

“Good for the Europeans,” Luna said, resting her head against Zane’s neck. Her topaz joystones affected him as they touched his skin, suffusing him with rare joy. Or maybe it was just Luna’s touch that did it.

Still he cursed inwardly. He had foolishly lost an ideal romance and now had another developing in its place—but this one would end within a month. That might be the reason the first Lovestone had not pointed him at Luna, who in certain respects was a better woman than Angelica. He had never gotten to know Angelica, but was judging her on the basis of his expectations. Luna was a poorer match because she would not live long. The Lovestone did not care about details; it merely matched up the greatest good for the longest period. That was the trouble with inanimate magic; it left so much untold.

Yet he realized that this misfortune had a perverse
enchantment. He had been somewhat diffident about approaching Luna, for he wasn’t sure whether Death should date a mortal woman, or whether a Magician’s daughter would have anything to do with the likes of him when not compelled by magic, or how he felt about a person who had been used by a minion of Hell. Now, with the awareness of her mortality, he knew such diffidence could not be afforded. Whatever she could be to him, she had to be now—for there would be no tomorrow.

“But you could disassociate immediately, sparing yourself sorrow,” she pointed out.

“No, that would be like a rat leaving a sinking ship.” Then he did a mental double take. “How did you know what I was thinking?”

“I inherited more than Truthstones and Lovestones and Deathstones,” she said teasingly. “The right spellstones can enable a person to do anything, even read minds.”

“But you aren’t using black magic now, because it—”

“Brings me closer to the demon,” she finished for him. “You’re right—I’m not using magic. I merely have a pretty good notion of the nature of your thinking.”

“How? You don’t know me that well yet.”

“Did you desert your mother when she needed your help?”

“That’s different—” He paused, reconsidering. “No, I guess it isn’t. I have much evil on my soul, but I don’t desert sinking ships.”

“So you are a mixed person, with good as well as evil, as I am. I am selfish to come to you in this fashion, when I did not do so before.”

“Yes, you did. You offered—”

“My body. The least valuable aspect of me. Now I offer more.”

“I’ll take it.”

“This self-serving manner of coming to you will further burden my soul. But since my father left, there has been a void in my life that even the most potent equilibrium magic does not entirely abate. I had thought I was prepared, for I knew he was destined to die, but the shock
of the actuality was worse than I anticipated.” She paused, examining her feeling. “There was a presence that perhaps I took somewhat for granted. Now there is not. I feel unbalanced, falling into the gap that was the support my father provided. How does one counter the emptiness?”

“Maybe some other support—”

“And you are the closest man for me to lean on. I want to enjoy my remaining time in life before it is gone forever. Before I must go to the demon.”

“The demon still lurks for you?” Zane asked, dismayed. He had thought that was over.

“Yes. But he can’t reach me in life unless I summon him, and that I will never again do. But when I go to Hell, I will be in his power forever.”

“You must not go to Hell!” he protested. “You must improve your balance so you will go to Heaven!”

“In less than a month?” She shook her head sadly. “I have stones that measure good and evil, even as you do, and some of them operate by white magic, so I can use them as I wish, though they do not work well for me. I know my score. I am too deep in debt to Satan to escape at this point.”

“There has to be a way! You can do a lot of good, contribute to worthy charities, think angelic thoughts—”

She shook her head. “You know better, Death. Good deeds done for such a purely selfish reason do not count. I had to redress my evil before I learned I was about to die. Now it is too late.”

“What—what is to be the cause of your death?” Zane asked, fearing the answer.

“I don’t know. I’m not ill, and I’m not accident-prone. Maybe someone is going to murder me.”

“Not if I can help it,” Zane muttered grimly. He resolved, as soon as this date with Luna was over, to go to Purgatory and look up the relevant records. If he could find out what was slated to kill her, he might arrange to block it. He already knew that a scheduled demise was not necessarily immutable; he had changed several such schedules himself. Meanwhile, if she stayed at home, her invisible moon moth should protect her well.

“Pearl Harbor!” Molly said. “See the airplanes! They
caught the defenders with their spells down. That launched the United States of America into World War Two.”

Zane wasn’t sure how the cart had traveled all the way across the great Pacific Ocean to this island, but remembered it was a ghost vehicle not subject to the normal laws of physics.

Already the cart was moving on to the next display. “The preemptive nuclear strike that launches World War Three,” Molly said with a certain zest. “This one generates a lot of ghosts, believe me!” And it was as if they trundled through the heart of the sun, with blinding light everywhere.

“World War Three?” Luna asked. “That hasn’t happened yet!”

“We ghosts aren’t limited by time the way living folk are,” Molly explained. “We see everything.”

“When is World War Three happening?” Zane asked somewhat nervously.

“You’d have to ask Mars that; he’s been working on it for a long time, his crowning achievement. I think the time is not precisely fixed, because the Eternals can’t agree. Satan wants it when the balance of evil favors him; God is holding out for His own side. Right now the balance is so close they can’t be certain where the majority of now-living folk would go if all their souls were released today. So neither side dares provoke the final war. But if any significant shift occurs, either way—”

“The world is in balance, like an individual human soul?” Zane asked. “That’s some situation!”

“Is that all God or Satan cares about the world?” Luna demanded. “Which one gets the most souls when it ends?”

“That’s the way it seems to us,” Molly said. “Of course, we’re only ghosts, who aren’t privy to the motives of the Eternals. But it does stand to reason that whoever gets the most souls has the most power. Souls are wealth in the region where gold can’t go.”

“It can’t be that way,” Zane said, troubled. “Maybe Satan is soul-grubbing, but God has to want the genuine welfare of man.”

“Then how come God never helps man directly?” Molly demanded. “Satan has minions all over, sowing dissension,
making mischief, publishing commercials for Hell. God remains aloof.”

“God is honoring the Covenant,” Luna said. “Satan is cheating. There should not be any supernatural interference. Man is supposed to make his own destiny, by the type of life he lives when given free will.”

“If you believe that,” Molly said, the accent of the gutter where she had been raised in life coming through more strongly, “you must also believe the Tooth Fairy is queer.”

Luna was startled. “That’s a serious charge.”

The ghost laughed. “See? You argue the case!”

The cart passed through an invisible curtain and emerged at the carnival grounds. “That was quite a tour,” Zane said politely, though he had not paid it much attention.

“That’s just the beginning!” Molly said, hauling them off to the ghostly, ghastly Horror House. The experience was, of course, awful, for the ghosts really knew how to horrify mortal people, but Luna took advantage of the darkness to sneak in a passionate kiss that horrified the ghosts. At least Zane thought it was Luna.

They had ghostly cotton candy and visited the Dinosaur Petting Zoo—the larger carnivores were muzzled, which annoyed them visibly—and tried to win a valuable invisible doll by catching a smoke ring on a glass lance. It didn’t work; the ring shattered and the lance puffed away as vapor. They concluded with the Tunnel of Love—and here Molly had to let them go alone, for the boat held only two.

By this time Zane was quite satisfied to be alone with Luna. Maybe it was the hypnotic effect of the constant noise and color of the carnival, or the knowledge of her brief time remaining, or that she was soft and pretty—for whatever reason, he found himself dizzy with delight at her propinquity, and as close to love as he had ever been. They drifted down the calm channel of water; as the quiet darkness closed in, they held hands and kissed again, and that was more pleasant than anything else he might have contemplated with any other woman. Then, it seemed like
only half a moment later, they were emerging from the long tunnel, the journey over.

It was enough. They unloaded Molly Malone’s wheelbarrow from the car and got in for the drive back to Kilvarough. It had been a good date.

–
8
–

A light was flashing on the dash. That meant Mortis had something to tell Death. “Brace yourself,” Zane told Luna. “We’re about to be on the Deathhorse.”

“I love horses,” she said. “I’m a girl at heart.”

He pressed the button, and they were on the stallion, Luna sitting behind him. “What is it?” Zane asked. “My countdown is turned off; I’m pretty well caught up on my backlist, and I don’t begrudge my upcoming clients a few more hours of life.”

The horse neighed urgently and swished his tail.

“Idiot—turn on your translator,” Luna murmured.

Zane hastily set the language gem in his left ear. It was uncomfortable to wear continuously, as he had never gotten his ear pierced so he could use it as an earring, and he normally removed it during off hours. He hadn’t realized it could be used to talk to Mortis!