“I don’t think This One sent us back to Mittlegard so that you could die,” said Pat.

“I’m already cheating death by being here, so … if I die, I die.”

“Easy for you to say,” said Pat.

“Why do you think it’s easy?”

“Because you’re an idiot,” she said. “I was the one who was murdered, remember? I was the one who died. You just bound yourself to me and followed. You were my passenger. I’m the one who cheated death, and guess what, if I die, I think that sucks. Because I want to live a life, complete with husband, babies, grandchildren, the whole shebang. And since you got sent back here with me, I think we’re supposed to do that together. We’ve done death, so now let’s do life.”

“And when it’s over, I release these Sutahites back into the world.”

“Danny, have you noticed a sudden blossoming of kindness and goodness in the world since you gathered them in? Have wars stopped? No more terrorism? No more slaughtering people who have a different religion? No more hating?”

“It takes time for people to overcome longtime habits of thought,” said Danny.

“The Sutahites prompted people to act, but some people don’t need prompting,” said Pat. “It will take time for the decrease in bad actions to show up as some kind of statistical blip. Maybe it’ll be big. What if it cuts crime in half? There’s a shitload of crime, Danny. What’s half a shitload?”

“Not sure it’s a unit of measure.”

“It’s good to keep the Sutahites locked up. But Danny … they’re still bound to Set. They’re still his, the way your gates are still yours, even though you gave them to Loki. They don’t fight him, they obey him, but only because you commanded them to. They’re yours. And the Sutahites are Set’s.”

Danny thought about that. “Are they?” he asked.

“He commanded them, they supported him. Danny, I’m sure they got Laurette and Sin and Xena to act on their insane lust for you. That was a coordinated assault. Yes, they’re tied to Set.”

“Oh, yes, you’re right, but I’m just … thinking here. Our ba gets tied to us when our ka goes into the body and bonds with it. When we leave Duat to be born, the prets of our ba, they’re the clouds of glory that we’re trailing when we come.”

“I should never have gotten you to read Wordsworth.”

“Reread. I had already read ‘Intimations of Immortality’ during my home schooling.”

Danny quoted:

Waters on a starry night

Are beautiful and fair;

The sunshine is a glorious birth;

But yet I know, where’er I go,

That there hath pass’d away a glory from the earth.

“I thought when we read it together,” said Pat, “it was the first time.”