“It’s my nature.”
“Who is more powerful, Death or God?”
“All gods die. I do too when each universe dies and I resurrect with the birth of each new universe. But there’s no guarantee it will happen. Who knows what the next universe will bring? Maybe there will be no death there. Can you imagine?”
I sit down on a box of old Mannix VHS tapes. How the hell do we still have these?
“You’ve seen other universes before this one?”
“Dozens. But this one is my favorite. I’ve touched parts of human lives—each soul leaves a tiny echo of itself with me—but I’ve never been flesh before. All these senses are interesting. Except for the pain.”
“That pretty much sums up what we like to call the human condition.”
“How do you live with it?”
I hold out the bottle.
“This helps.”
“I’m not sure I believe that.”
“Well, we like to think it does.”
“Wishful thinking is also part of the human condition,” Vidocq says.
I sip some Jack, say, “What’s the last thing you remember before you woke up here? When you were still yourself.”
“I was gathering souls to the Tenebrae.”
“See anyone unusual? Did anything funny happen?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“Nothing.”
“It just went blank?”
“Yes. It was like I was sucked out of myself. Like a seed from a husk.”
I feel the Colt against my back.
“You’re one unhelpful dead man.”
Death looks at Vidocq and then back to me.
“I’m sorry.”
I stare up at the ceiling, thinking.
“Maybe we’re looking at this thing all wrong, making it more complicated than it really is.”
“What do you mean?” says Vidocq.
“What I mean is, Death is stuck in a human body, right?”
“Right,” says Death.