Death spared my life once. She’s never told me why, and I’ve never asked. We’ve always skirted around the subject.

She lights up my waiting cigarette with a flash of her celestial eyes. “Smoking kills, you know,” she teases. An old joke. The whole back-from-the-cusp-of-death stuff, it’s a one way deal. Ever since she restarted my heart I’ve been as immortal as she is, minus all the transcendent magic. Wounds and illness and age haven’t bothered me for three centuries. 

“Busy day?” I ask. 

“Business as usual,” Death says, sipping her drink. “Big earthquake in Tangshan due in a couple of hours, but it’s nothing on Shansi back in ‘56. Now that, that was a busy day.” 

“Which ’56 was this?”

“1556. You should brush up on your Chinese history. Deadliest earthquake in a long time, certainly since Sandals was doing his thing in Nazareth. Probably my busiest quake before him, too, now that I think about it.”

Death had nicknames for all our flimsy human gods and prophets, but Sandals was the one that came up most. If I had to guess, she still had a bit of a chip on her shoulder about the Lazarus thing. Last time I brought the incident up she didn’t speak to me for two decades. ‘Amateur hour’ was a phrase I remember her using before she disappeared in a moody howl of wind. 

We sip our beers and watch the passing London evening crowds as they mill through the streets of Clapham. To them, I drink alone. 

“I swear, every time I think I’ve tasted the shittest mead humanity has to offer, you guys manage to raise the bar even higher,” Death says, smirking.

“We aim to disappoint,” I say. “Also, we call it Budweiser these days. You’re showing your age.”

Death rolls her pale finger around the rim of the bottle. “Budweiser, mead, wusa, ambrosia, it all seems the same to me. Just another way for people to escape. Sometimes all the way back to me. You know Dylan Thomas?”

“The poet?”

“Yes, the poet. And Death Shall Have No Dominion - you should read it sometime, after you’ve educated yourself on Chinese natural disasters. Old Dylan had me pretty figured out, you know,” Death says. “Anyway, eighteen whiskey shots. Bang. Dead. Crying shame. Brilliant conversationalist, we chatted for a bit before I had to take him to the next world. Four days, I had him in a coma for. Four days. Most folks bore me in five minutes.”

“Why didn’t you spare him then?”

“I can’t spare everyone.”

“But you spared me.”

She smiles, saying nothing, like she always does.

 I think she just likes the company.