SUBSTITUTIONS Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Kristine Kathryn Rusch is a best-selling awardwinning writer. Her work has won awards in a variety of languages. Most recently, her novella, ‘‘Diving into the Wreck’’ won the prestigious UPC award given in Spain. Her latest novel is Paloma: A Retrieval Artist Novel

S

ILAS SAT AT the blackjack table, a plastic glass of whiskey in his left hand, and a small pile of hundred dollar chips in his right. His banjo rested against his boot, the embroidered strap wrapped around his calf. He had a pair of aces to the dealer’s six, so he split them—a thousand dollars riding on each—and watched as she covered them with the expected tens.

He couldn’t lose. He’d been trying to all night. 231

The casino was empty except for five gambling addicts hunkered over the blackjack table, one old woman playing slots with the rhythm of an assembly worker, and one young man in black leather who was getting drunk at the casino’s sorry excuse for a bar. The employees showed no sign of holiday cheer: no happy holiday pins, no little Santa hats, only the stark black and white of their uniforms against the casino’s fading glitter.

He had chosen the Paradise because it was one of the few remaining fifties-style casinos in Nevada, still thick with flocked wallpaper and cigarette smoke, craps tables worn by dice and elbows, and the roulette wheel creaking with age. It was also only a few hours from Reno, and in thirty hours, he would have to make the tortuous drive up there. Along the way, he would visit an old man who had a bad heart; a young girl who would cross the road at the wrong time and meet an oncoming semi; and a baby boy who was born with his lungs not yet fully formed. Silas also suspected a few surprises along the way; nothing was ever as it seemed any longer. Life was moving too fast, even for him.

But he had Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off, the two days he had chosen when he had been picked to work Nevada 150 years before. In those days, he would go home for Christmas, see his friends, spend time with his family. His parents welcomed him, even though they didn’t see him for most of the year. He felt like a boy again, like someone cherished and loved, instead of the drifter he had become.

All of that stopped in 1878. December 26, 1878. He wasn’t yet sophisticated enough to know that the day was a holiday in England. Boxing Day. Not quite appropriate, but close.

He had to take his father that day. The old man had looked pale and tired throughout the holiday, but no one thought it serious. When he took to his bed Christmas night, everyone had simply thought him tired from the festivities.

It was only after midnight, when Silas got his orders, that he knew what was coming next. He begged off—something he had never tried before (he wasn’t even sure who he had been begging with)—but had received the feeling (that was all he ever got: a firm feeling, so strong he couldn’t avoid it) that if he didn’t do it, death would come another way—from Idaho or California or New Mexico. It would come another way, his father would be in agony for days, and the end, when it came, would be uglier than it had to be.

Silas had taken his banjo to the old man’s room. His mother slept on her side, like she always had, her back to his father. His father’s eyes had opened, and he knew. Somehow he knew.

They always did.

Silas couldn’t remember what he said. Something—a bit of an apology, maybe, or just an explanation: You always wanted to know what I did. And then, the moment. First he touched his father’s forehead, clammy with the illness that would claim him, and then Silas said, ‘‘You wanted to know why I carry the banjo,’’ and strummed.

But the sound did not soothe his father like it had so many before him. As his spirit rose, his body struggled to hold it, and he looked at Silas with such a mix of fear and betrayal that Silas still saw it whenever he thought of his father.

The old man died, but not quickly and not easily, and Silas tried to resign, only to get sent to the place that passed for headquarters, a small shack that resembled an out-of-the-way railroad terminal. There, a man who looked no more than thirty but who had to be three hundred or more, told him that the more he complained, the longer his service would last.

Silas never complained again, and he had been on the job for 150 years. Almost 55,000 days spent in the service of Death, with only Christmas Eve and Christmas off, tainted holidays for a man in a tainted position.

He scooped up his winnings, piled them on his already-high stack of chips, and then placed his next bet. The dealer had just given him a queen and a jack when a boy sat down beside him.

‘‘Boy’’ wasn’t entirely accurate. He was old enough to get into the casino. But he had rain on his cheap jacket, and hair that hadn’t been cut in a long time. IPod headphones stuck out of his breast pocket, and he had a cell phone against his hip the way that old sheriffs used to wear their guns.

His hands were callused and the nails had dirt beneath them. He looked tired, and a little frightened.

He watched as the dealer busted, then set chips in front of Silas and the four remaining players. Silas swept the chips into his stack, grabbed five of the hundred dollar chips, and placed the bet.

The dealer swept her hand along the semicircle, silently asking the players to place their bets.

‘‘You Silas?’’ the boy asked. He hadn’t put any money on the table or placed any chips before him.

Silas sighed. Only once before had someone interrupted his Christmas festivities—if festivities was what the last century plus could be called.

The dealer peered at the boy. ‘‘You gonna play?’’

The boy looked at her, startled. He didn’t seem to know what to say.

‘‘I got it.’’ Silas put twenty dollars in chips in front of the boy.

‘‘I don’t know...’’

‘‘Just do what I tell you,’’ Silas said.

The woman dealt, face-up. Silas got an ace. The boy, an eight. The woman dealt herself a ten. Then she went around again. Silas got his twenty-one— his weird holiday luck holding—but the boy got another eight.

‘‘Split them,’’ Silas said.

The boy looked at him, his fear almost palpable.

Silas sighed again, then grabbed another twenty in chips, and placed it next to the boy’s first twenty.

‘‘Jeez, mister, that’s a lot of money,’’ the boy whispered.

‘‘Splitting,’’ Silas said to the dealer.

She separated the cards and placed the bets behind them. Then she dealt the boy two cards—a ten and another eight.

The boy looked at Silas. Looked like the boy had peculiar luck as well.

‘‘Split again,’’ Silas said, more to the dealer than to the boy. He added the bet, let her separate the cards, and watched as she dealt the boy two more tens. Three eighteens. Not quite as good as Silas’ twenties to twenty-ones, but just as statistically uncomfortable.

The dealer finished her round, then dealt herself a three, then a nine, busting again. She paid in order. When she reached the boy, she set sixty dollars in chips before him, each in its own twenty-dollar pile.

‘‘Take it,’’ Silas said.

‘‘It’s yours,’’ the boy said, barely speaking above a whisper.

‘‘I gave it to you.’’

‘‘I don’t gamble,’’ the boy said.

‘‘Well, for someone who doesn’t gamble, you did pretty well. Take your winnings.’’

The boy looked at them as if they’d bite him. ‘‘I . . .’’

‘‘Are you leaving them for the next round?’’ the dealer asked.

The boy’s eyes widened. He was clearly horrified at the very thought. With shaking fingers, he collected the chips, then leaned into Silas. The boy smelled of sweat and wet wool.

‘‘Can I talk to you?’’ he whispered.

Silas nodded, then cashed in his chips. He’d racked up ten thousand dollars in three hours. He wasn’t even having fun at it anymore. He liked losing, felt that it was appropriate—part of the game, part of his life—but the losses had become fewer and farther between the more he played.

The more he lived. A hundred years ago, there were women and a few adopted children. But watching them grow old, helping three of them die, had taken the desire out of that, too.

‘‘Mr. Silas,’’ the boy whispered.

‘‘If you’re not going to bet,’’ the dealer said, ‘‘please move so someone can have your seats.’’

People had gathered behind Silas, and he hadn’t even noticed. He really didn’t care tonight. Normally, he would have noticed anyone around him—noticed who they were, how and when they would die.

‘‘Come on,’’ he said, gathering the bills the dealer had given him. The boy’s eyes went to the money like a hungry man’s went to food. His onehundred-and-twenty dollars remained on the table, and Silas had to remind him to pick it up.

The boy used a forefinger and a thumb to carry it, as if it would burn him.

‘‘At least put it in your pocket,’’ Silas snapped. ‘‘But it’s yours,’’ the boy said.

‘‘It’s a damn gift. Appreciate it.’’

The boy blinked, then stuffed the money into the front of his unwashed jeans. Silas led him around banks and banks of slot machines, all pinging and ponging and making little musical come-ons, to the steakhouse in the back.

The steakhouse was the reason Silas came back year after year. The place opened at five, closed at three AM, and served the best steaks in Vegas. They weren’t arty or too small. One big slab of meat, expensive cut, charred on the outside and red as Christmas on the inside. Beside the steak they served french-fried onions, and sides that no self-respecting Strip restaurant would prepare— creamed corn, au gratin potatoes, popovers—the kind of stuff that Silas always associated with the modern Las Vegas—modern, to him, meaning 1950s–1960s Vegas. Sin city. A place for grownups to gamble and smoke and drink and have affairs. The Vegas of Sinatra and the mob, not the Vegas of Steve Wynn and his ilk, who prettified everything and made it all seem upscale and ohso-right.

Silas still worked Vegas a lot more than any other Nevada city, which made sense, considering how many millions of people lived there now, but millions of people lived all over. Even sparselysettled Nevada, one of the least populated states in the Union, had ten full-time Death employees. They tried to unionize a few years ago, but Silas, with the most seniority, refused to join. Then they tried to limit the routes—one would get Reno, another Sparks, another Elko and that region, and a few would split Vegas—but Silas wouldn’t agree to that either.

He loved the travel part of the job. It was the only part he still liked, the ability to go from place to place to place, see the changes, understand how time affected everything.

Everything except him.

The maitre d’ sat them in the back, probably because of the boy. Even in this modern era, where people wore blue jeans to funerals, this steakhouse preferred its customers in a suit and tie.

The booth was made of wood and rose so high that Silas couldn’t see anything but the boy and the table across from them. A single lamp reflected against the wall, revealing cloth napkins and real silver utensils.

The boy stared at them with the same kind of fear he had shown at the blackjack table. ‘‘I can’t.’’

The maitre d’ gave them leather-bound menus, said something about a special, and then handed Silas a wine list. Silas ordered a bottle of burgundy. He didn’t know a lot about wines, just that the more expensive ones tasted a lot better than the rest of them. So he ordered the most expensive burgundy on the menu.

The maitre d’ nodded crisply, almost militarily, and then left. The boy leaned forward.

‘‘I can’t stay. I’m your substitute.’’

Silas smiled. A waiter came by with a bread basket—hard rolls, still warm—and relish trays filled with sliced carrots, celery, and radishes, and candied beets, things people now would call old-fashioned.

Modern, to him. Just as modern as always.

The boy squirmed, his jeans squeaking on the leather booth.

‘‘I know,’’ Silas said. ‘‘You’ll be fine.’’

‘‘I got—

‘‘A big one, probably,’’ Silas said. ‘‘It’s Christmas Eve. Traffic, right? A shooting in a church? Too many suicides?’’

‘‘No,’’ the boy said, distressed. ‘‘Not like that.’’

‘‘When’s it scheduled for?’’ Silas asked. He really wanted his dinner, and he didn’t mind sharing it. The boy looked like he needed a good meal.

‘‘Tonight,’’ the boy said. ‘‘No specific time. See?’’

He put a crumpled piece of paper between them, but Silas didn’t pick it up.

‘‘Means you have until midnight,’’ Silas said. ‘‘It’s only seven. You can eat.’’

‘‘They said at orientation—

Silas had forgotten; they all got orientation now. The expectations of generations. He’d been thrown into the pool feet first, fumbling his way for six months before someone told him that he could actually ask questions.

‘‘—the longer you wait, the more they suffer.’’

Silas glanced at the paper. ‘‘If it’s big, it’s a surprise. They won’t suffer. They’ll just finish when you get there. That’s all.’’

The boy bit his lip. ‘‘How do you know?’’

Because he’d had big. He’d had grisly. He’d had disgusting. He’d overseen more deaths than the boy could imagine.

The head waiter arrived, took Silas’s order, and then turned to the boy.

‘‘I don’t got money,’’ the boy said.

‘‘You have one hundred and twenty dollars,’’ Silas said. ‘‘But I’m buying, so don’t worry.’’

The boy opened the menu, saw the prices, and closed it again. He shook his head.

The waiter started to leave when Silas stopped him. ‘‘Give him what I’m having. Medium well.’’

Since the kid didn’t look like he ate many steaks, he wouldn’t like his rare. Rare was an acquired taste, just like burgundy wine and the cigar that Silas wished he could light up. Not everything in the modern era was an improvement.

‘‘You don’t have to keep paying for me,’’ the kid said.

Silas waved the waiter away, then leaned back. The back of the booth, made of wood, was rigid against his spine. ‘‘After a while in this business,’’ he said, ‘‘money is all you have.’’

The kid bit his lower lip. ‘‘Look at the paper. Make sure I’m not screwing up. Please.’’

But Silas didn’t look.

‘‘You’re supposed to handle all of this on your own,’’ Silas said gently.

‘‘I know,’’ the boy said. ‘‘I know. But this one, he’s scary. And I don’t think anything I do will make it right.’’

After he finished his steak and had his first sip of coffee, about the time he would have lit up his cigar, Silas picked up the paper. The boy had devoured the steak like he hadn’t eaten in weeks. He ate all the bread and everything from his relish tray.

He was very, very new.

Silas wondered how someone that young had gotten into the death business, but he was determined not to ask. It would be some variation on his own story. Silas had begged for the life of his wife who should have died in the delivery of their second child. Begged, and begged, and begged, and somehow, in his befogged state, he actually saw the woman whom he then called the Angel of Death.

Now he knew better—none of them were angels, just working stiffs waiting for retirement— but then, she had seemed perfect and terrifying, all at the same time.

He’d asked for his wife, saying he didn’t want to raise his daughters alone.

The angel had tilted her head. ‘‘Would you die for her?’’

‘‘Of course,’’ Silas said.

‘‘Leaving her to raise the children alone?’’ the angel asked.

His breath caught. ‘‘Is that my only choice?’’

She shrugged, as if she didn’t care. Later, when he reflected, he realized she didn’t know.

‘‘Yes,’’ he said into her silence. ‘‘She would raise better people than I will. She’s good. I’m . . . not.’’

He wasn’t bad, he later realized, just lost, as so many were. His wife had been a God-fearing woman with strict ideas about morality. She had raised two marvelous girls, who became two strong women, mothers of large broods who all went on to do good works.

In that, he hadn’t been wrong.

But his wife hadn’t remarried either, and she had cried for him for the rest of her days.

They had lived in Texas. He had made his bargain, got assigned Nevada, and had to swear never to head east, not while his wife and children lived. His parents saw him, but they couldn’t tell anyone. They thought he ran out on his wife and children, and oddly, they had supported him in it.

Remnants of his family still lived. Greatgrandchildren generations removed. He still couldn’t head east, and he no longer wanted to.

Silas touched the paper, and it burned his fingers. A sign, a warning, a remembrance that he wasn’t supposed to work these two days.

Two days out of an entire year.

He slid the paper back to the boy. ‘‘I can’t open it. I’m not allowed. You tell me.’’

So the boy did.

And Silas, in wonderment that they had sent a rookie into a situation a veteran might not be able to handle, settled his tab, took the boy by the arm, and led him into the night.

Every city has pockets of evil. Vegas had fewer than most, despite the things the television lied about. So many people worked in law enforcement or security, so many others were bonded so that they could work in casinos or high-end jewelry stores or banks that Vegas’ serious crime was lower than most comparable cities of its size.

Silas appreciated that. Most of the time, it meant that the deaths he attended in Vegas were natural or easy or just plain silly. He got a lot of silly deaths in that city. Some he even found time to laugh over.

But not this one.

As they drove from the very edge of town, past the rows and rows of similar houses, past the stink and desperation of complete poverty, he finally asked, ‘‘How long’ve you been doing this?’’

‘‘Six months,’’ the boy said softly, as if that were forever.

Silas looked at him, looked at the young face reflecting the Christmas lights that filled the neighborhood, and shook his head. ‘‘All substitutes?’’

The boy shrugged. ‘‘They didn’t have any open routes.’’

‘‘What about the guy you replaced?’’

‘‘He’d been subbing, waiting to retire. They say you could retire, too, but you show no signs of it. Working too hard, even for a younger man.’’

He wasn’t older. He was the same age he had been when his wife struggled with her labor—a breech birth that would be no problem in 2006, but had been deadly if not handled right in 1856. The midwife’s hands hadn’t been clean—not that anyone knew better in those days—and the infection had started even before the baby got turned.

He shuddered, that night alive in him. The night he’d made his bargain.

‘‘I don’t work hard,’’ he said. ‘‘I work less than I did when I started.’’

The boy looked at him, surprised. ‘‘Why don’t you retire?’’

‘‘And do what?’’ Silas asked. He hadn’t planned to speak up. He normally shrugged off that question.

‘‘I dunno,’’ the boy said. ‘‘Relax. Live off your savings. Have a family again.’’

They could all have families again when they retired. Families and a good, rich life, albeit short. Silas would age when he retired. He would age and have no special powers. He would watch a new wife die in childbirth and not be able to see his former colleague sitting beside the bed. He would watch his children squirm after a car accident, blood on their faces, knowing that they would live poorly if they lived at all, and not be able to find out the future from the death dealer hovering near the scene.

Better to continue. Better to keep this half-life, this half-future, time without end.

‘‘Families are overrated,’’ Silas said. They look at you with betrayal and loss when you do what was right.

But the boy didn’t know that yet. He didn’t know a lot.

‘‘You ever get scared?’’ the boy asked.

‘‘Of what?’’ Silas asked. Then gave the standard answer. ‘‘They can’t kill you. They can’t harm you. You just move from place to place, doing your job. There’s nothing to be scared of.’’

The boy grunted, sighed, and looked out the window.

Silas knew what he had asked, and hadn’t answered it. Of course he got scared. All the time. And not of dying—even though he still wasn’t sure what happened to the souls he freed. He wasn’t scared of that, or of the people he occasionally faced down, the drug addicts with their knives, the gangsters with their guns, the wannabe outlaws with blood all over their hands.

No, the boy had asked about the one thing to be afraid of, the one thing they couldn’t change.

Was he scared of being alone? Of remaining alone, for the rest of his days? Was he scared of being unknown and nearly invisible, having no ties and no dreams?

It was too late to be scared of that.

He’d lived it. He lived it every single day.

The house was one of those square adobe things that filled Vegas. It was probably pink in the sunlight. In the half-light that passed for nighttime in this perpetually alive city, it looked gray and foreboding.

The bars on the windows—standard in this neighborhood—didn’t help.

Places like this always astounded him. They seemed so normal, so incorruptible, just another building on another street, like all the other buildings on all the other streets. Sometimes he got to go into those buildings. Very few of them were different

changed

from what he expected. Oh, the art or the furniture. The smells differed— sometimes unwashed diapers, sometimes perfume, sometimes the heavy scent of meals eaten long ago—but the rest remained the same: the television in the main room, the kitchen with its square table (sometimes decorated with flowers, sometimes nothing but trash), the double bed in the second bedroom down the hall, the one with its own shower and toilet. The room across from the main bathroom was sometimes an office, sometimes a den, sometimes a child’s bedroom. If it was a child’s bedroom, there were pictures on the wall, studio portraits from the local mall, done up in cheap frames, showing the passing years. The pictures were never straight, and always dusty, except for the most recent, hung with pride in the only remaining empty space.

He had a hunch this house would have none of those things. If anything, it would have an overly neat interior. The television would be in the kitchen or the bedroom or both. The front room would have a sofa set designed for looks, not for comfort. And one of the rooms would be blocked off, maybe even marked private, and in it, he would find (if he looked) trophies of a kind that made even his cast-iron stomach turn.

These houses had no attic. Most didn’t have a basement. So the scene would be the garage. The car would be parked outside of it, blocking the door, and the neighbors would assume that the garage was simply a workspace—not that far off, if the truth be told.

He’d been to places like this before. More times than he wanted to think about, especially in the smaller communities out in the desert, the communities that had no names, or once had a name and did no longer. The communities sometimes made up of cheap trailers and empty storefronts, with a whorehouse a few miles off the main highway, and a casino in the center of town, a casino so old it made the one that the boy found him in look like it had been built just the week before.

He hated these jobs. He wasn’t sure what made him come with the boy. A moment of compassion? The prospect of yet another long Christmas Eve with nothing to punctuate it except the bongbong of nearby slots?

He couldn’t go to church anymore. It didn’t feel right, with as many lives as he had taken. He couldn’t go to church or listen to the singing or look at the families and wonder which of them he’d be standing beside in thirty years.

Maybe he belonged here more than the boy did. Maybe he belonged here more than anyone else.

They parked a block away, not because anyone would see their car—if asked, hours later, the neighbors would deny seeing anything to do with Silas or the boy. Maybe they never saw, maybe their memories vanished. Silas had never been clear on that either.

As they got out, Silas asked, ‘‘What do you use?’’

The boy reached into the breast pocket. For a moment, Silas thought he’d remove the IPod, and Silas wasn’t sure how a device that used headphones would work. Then the boy removed a harmonica—expensive, the kind sold at high-end music stores.

‘‘You play that before all this?’’ Silas asked.

The boy nodded. ‘‘They got me a better one, though.’’

Silas’ banjo had been all his own. They’d let him take it, and nothing else. The banjo, the clothes he wore that night, his hat.

He had different clothes now. He never wore a hat. But his banjo was the same as it had always been—new and pure with a sound that he still loved.

It was in the trunk. He doubted it could get stolen, but he took precautions just in case.

He couldn’t bring it on this job. This wasn’t his job. He’d learned the hard way that the banjo didn’t work except in assigned cases. When he’d wanted to help, to put someone out of their misery, to step in where another death dealer had failed, he couldn’t. He could only watch, like normal people did, and hope that things got better, even though he knew it wouldn’t.

The boy clutched the harmonica in his right hand. The dry desert air was cold. Silas could see his breath. The tourists down on the Strip, with their short skirts and short sleeves, probably felt betrayed by the normal winter chill. He wished he were there with them, instead of walking through this quiet neighborhood, filled with dark houses, dirt-ridden yards, and silence.

So much silence. You’d think there’d be at least one barking dog.

When they reached the house, the boy headed to the garage, just like Silas expected. A car was parked on the road—a 1980s sedan that looked like it had seen better days. In the driveway, a brand-new van with tinted windows, custommade for bad deeds.

In spite of himself, Silas shuddered.

The boy stopped outside and steeled himself, then he looked at Silas with sadness in his eyes. Silas nodded. The boy extended a

couldn’t get in without the boy’s

hand—Silas momentary magic—and then they were inside, near the stench of old gasoline, urine, and fear.

The kids sat in a dimly lit corner, chained together like the slaves on ships in the nineteenth century. The windows were covered with dirty cardboard, the concrete floor was empty except for stains as old as time. It felt bad in here, a recognizable bad, one Silas had encountered before.

The boy was shaking. He wasn’t out of place here, his old wool jacket and his dirty jeans making him a cousin to the kids on the floor. Silas had a momentary flash: they were homeless. Runaways, lost, children without borders, without someone looking for them.

‘‘You’ve been here before,’’ Silas whispered to the boy, and the boy’s eyes filled with tears.

Been here, negotiated here, moved on here— didn’t quite die, but no longer quite lived—and for who? A group of kids like this one? A group that had somehow escaped, but hadn’t reported what had happened?

Then he felt the chill grow worse. Of course they hadn’t reported it. Who would believe them? A neat homeowner kidnaps a group of homeless kids for his own personal playthings, and the cops believe the kids? Kids who steal and sell drugs and themselves just for survival.

People like the one who owned this house were cautious. They were smart. They rarely got caught unless they went public with letters or phone calls or both.

They had to prepare for contingencies like losing a plaything now and then. They probably had all the answers planned.

A side door opened. It was attached to the house. The man who came in was everything Silas had expected—white, thin, balding, a bit too intense.

What surprised Silas was the look the man gave him. Measuring, calculating.

Pleased.

The man wasn’t supposed to see Silas or the boy. Not until the last moment.

Not until the end.

Silas had heard that some of these creatures could see the death dealers. A few of Silas’ colleagues speculated that these men continued to kill so that they could continue to see death in all its forms, collecting images the way they collected trophies.

After seeing the momentary victory in that man’s eyes, Silas believed it.

The man picked up the kid at the end of the chain. Too weak to stand, the kid staggered a bit, then had to lean into the man.

‘‘You have to beat me,’’ the man said to Silas. ‘‘I slice her first, and you have to leave.’’

The boy was still shivering. The man hadn’t noticed him. The man thought Silas was here for him, not the boy. Silas had no powers, except the ones that humans normally had—not on this night, and not in this way.

If he were here alone, he’d start playing, and praying he’d get the right one. If there was a right one. He couldn’t tell. They all seemed to have the mark of death over them.

No wonder the boy needed him.

It was a fluid situation, one that could go in any direction.

‘‘Start playing,’’ Silas said under his breath.

But the man heard him, not the boy. The man pulled the kid’s head back, exposing a smooth white throat with the heartbeat visible in a vein.

‘‘Play!’’ Silas shouted, and ran forward, shoving the man aside, hoping that would be enough.

It saved the girl’s neck, for a moment anyway. She fell, and landed on the other kid next to her. The kid moved away, as if proximity to her would cause the kid to die.

The boy started blowing on his harmonica. The notes were faint, barely notes, more like bleats of terror.

The man laughed. He saw the boy now. ‘‘So you’re back to rob me again,’’ he said.

The boy’s playing grew wispier.

‘‘Ignore him,’’ Silas said to the boy.

‘‘Who’re you? His coach?’’ The man approached him. ‘‘I know your rules. I destroy you, I get to take your place.’’

The steak rolled in Silas’ stomach. The man was half right. He destroyed Silas, and he would get a chance to take the job. He destroyed both of them, and he would get the job, by old magic not new. Silas had forgotten this danger. No wonder these creatures liked to see death—what better for them than to be the facilitator for the hundreds of people who died in Nevada every day.

The man brandished his knife. ‘‘Lessee,’’ he said. ‘‘What do I do? Destroy the instrument, deface the man. Right? And send him to hell.’’

Get him fired, Silas fought. It wasn’t really hell, although it seemed like it. He became a ghost, existing forever, but not allowed to interact with anything. He was fired. He lost the right to die.

The man reached for the harmonica. Silas shoved again.

‘‘Play!’’ Silas shouted.

And miraculously, the boy played. ‘‘Home on the Range,’’ a silly song for these circumstances, but probably the first tune the boy had ever learned. He played it with spirit as he backed away from the fight.

But the kids weren’t rebelling. They sat on the cold concrete floor, already half dead, probably tortured into submission. If they didn’t rise up and kill this monster, no one would.

Silas looked at the boy. Tears streamed down his face, and he nodded toward the kids. Souls hovered above them, as if they couldn’t decide whether or not to leave.

Damn the ones in charge: they’d sent the kid here as his final test. Could he take the kind of lives he had given his life for? Was he that strong?

The man reached for the harmonica again, and this time Silas grabbed his knife. It was heavier than Silas expected. He had never wielded a real instrument of death. His banjo eased people into forever. It didn’t force them out of their lives a moment too early.

The boy kept playing and the man—the creature—laughed. One of the kids looked up, and Silas thought the kid was staring straight at the boy.

Only a moment, then. Only a moment to decide.

Silas shoved the knife into the man’s belly. It went in deep, and the man let out an oof of pain. He stumbled, reached for the knife, and then glared at Silas.

Silas hadn’t killed him, maybe hadn’t even mortally wounded him. No soul appeared above him, and even these creatures had souls—dark and tainted as they were.

The boy’s playing broke in places as if he were trying to catch his breath. The kid at the end of the chain, the girl, managed to get up. She looked at the knife, then at the man, then around the room. She couldn’t see Silas or the boy.

Which was good.

The man was pulling on the knife. He would get it free in a moment. He would use it, would destroy these children, the ones no one cared about except the boy who was here to take their souls.

The girl kicked the kid beside her. ‘‘Stand up,’’ she said.

The kid looked at her, bleary. Silas couldn’t tell if these kids were male or female. He wasn’t sure it mattered.

‘‘Stand up,’’ the girl said again.

In a rattle of chains, the kid did. The man didn’t notice. He was working the knife, grunting as he tried to dislodge it. Silas stepped back, wondering if he had already interfered too much.

The music got louder, more intense, almost violent. The girl stood beside the man and stared at him for a moment.

He raised his head, saw her, and grinned.

Then she reached down with that chain, wrapped it around his neck, and pulled. ‘‘Help me,’’ she said to the others. ‘‘Help me.’’

The music became a live thing, wrapping them all, filling the smelly garage, and reaching deep, deep into the darkness. The soul did rise up—half a soul, broken and burned. It looked at Silas, then flared at the boy, who—bless him—didn’t stop playing.

Then the soul floated toward the growing darkness in the corner, a blackness Silas had seen only a handful of times before, a blackness that felt as cold and dark as any empty desert night, and somehow much more permanent.

The music faded. The girl kept pulling, until another kid, farther down the line, convinced her to let go.

‘‘We have to find the key,’’ the other kid—a boy—said.

‘‘On the wall,’’ a third kid said. ‘‘Behind the electric box.’’

They shuffled as a group toward the box. They walked through Silas, and he felt them, alive and vibrant. For a moment, he worried that he had been fired, but he knew he had too many years for that. Too many years of perfect service—and he hadn’t killed the man. He had just injured him, took away the threat to the boy.

That was allowed, just barely.

No wonder the boy had brought him. No wonder the boy had asked him if he was scared. Not of being alone or being lonely. But of certain jobs, of the things now asked of them as the no-longerquite-human beings that they were.

Silas turned to the boy. His face was shiny with tears, but his eyes were clear. He stuffed the harmonica back into his breast pocket.

‘‘You knew he’d beat you without me,’’ Silas said.

The boy nodded.

‘‘You knew this wasn’t a substitution. You would have had this job, even without me.’’

‘‘It’s not cheating to bring in help,’’ the boy said.

‘‘But it’s nearly impossible to find it,’’ Silas said. ‘‘How did you find me?’’

‘‘It’s Christmas Eve,’’ the boy said. ‘‘Everyone knows where you’d be.’’

Everyone. His colleagues. People on the job. The only folks who even knew his name anymore.

Silas sighed. The boy reached out with his stubby dirty hand. Silas took it, and then, suddenly, they were out of that fetid garage. They stood next to the van and watched as the cardboard came off one of the windows, as glass shattered outward.

Kids, homeless kids, injured and alone, poured out of that window like water.

‘‘Thanks,’’ the boy said. ‘‘I can’t tell you how much it means.’’

But Silas knew. The boy didn’t yet, but Silas did. When he retired—no longer if. When—this boy would see him again. This boy would take him, gently and with some kind of majestic harmonica music, to a beyond Silas could not imagine.

The boy waved at him, and joined the kids, heading into the dark Vegas night. Those kids couldn’t see him, but they had to know he was there, like a guardian angel, saving them from horrors that would haunt their dreams for the rest of their lives.

Silas watched them go. Then he headed in the opposite direction, toward his car. What had those kids seen? The man—the creature—with his knife out, raving at nothing. Then stumbling backward, once, twice, the second time with a knife in his belly. They’d think that he tripped, that he stabbed himself. None of them had seen Silas or the boy.

They wouldn’t for another sixty years.

If they were lucky.

The neighborhood remained dark, although a dog barked in the distance. His car was cold. Cold and empty.

He let himself in, started it, warmed his fingers against the still-hot air blowing out of the vents. Only a few minutes gone. A few minutes to take away a nasty, horrible lifetime. He wondered what was in the rest of these houses, and hoped he’d never have to find out.

The clock on the dash read 10:45. As he drove out of the neighborhood, he passed a small adobe church. Outside, candles burned in candleholders made of baked sand. Almost like the churches of his childhood.

Almost, but not quite.

He watched the people thread inside. They wore fancy clothing—dresses on the women, suits on the men, the children dressing like their parents, faces alive with anticipation.

They believed in something.

They had hope.

He wondered if hope was something a man could recapture, if it came with time, relaxation, and the slow inevitable march toward death.

He wondered, if he retired, whether he could spend his Christmas Eves inside, smelling the mix of incense and candlewax, the evergreen bows, and the light dusting of ladies’ perfume.

He wondered...

Then shook his head.

And drove back to the casino, to spend the rest of his time off in peace.