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'How do you get all those coins?' asked Mort

IN PAIRS

An all-night barber sheared Mort's hair into the latest fashion a bloods while Death relaxed in the next chair, huood humour

In fact after a while he pushed his hood back and glanced up at the barber's apprentice, who tied a towel around his neck in that unseeing, hypnotised way that Mort was conise, and said, A SPLASH OF TOILET WATER AND A POLISH, MY GOOD MAN

An elderly wizard having a beard-trim on the other side stiffened when he heard those so around He blanched and muttered a few protective incantations after Death turned, very slowly for rin

A fewrather self-conscious and chilly around the ears, Mort was heading back towards the stables where Death had lodged his horse He tried an experier; he felt his new suit and haircut rather demanded it It didn't quite work

Mort awoke

He lay looking at the ceiling while his memory did a fast-rewind and the events of the previous day crystallised in his mind like little ice cubes

He couldn't have met Death He couldn't have eaten ablue eyes It had to be a weird dreareat white horse that had cantered up into the sky and then went

where?

The answer flowed into his mind with all the inevitability of a tax de hands reached up to his cropped hair, and down to sheets of some smooth slippery material It was much finer than the wool he was used to at home, which was coarse and always smelled of sheep; it felt like war out of the bed hastily and stared around the rooer than the entire house back home, and dry, dry as old toh it had been cooked for hours and then allowed to cool The carpet under his feet was deep enough to hide a tribe of pygh it And everything had been designed in shades of purple and black

He looked down at his own body, which earing a long white nightshirt His clothes had been neatly folded on a chair by the bed; the chair, he couldn't help noticing, was delicately carved with a skull-and-bones e of the bed and began to dress, his

He eased open the heavy oak door, and felt oddly disappointed when it failed to creak ominously

There was a bare wooden corridor outside, with big yellow candles set in holders on the far wall Mort crept out and sidled along the boards until he reached a staircase He negotiated that successfully without anything ghastly happening, arriving in what looked like an entrance hall full of doors There were a lot of funereal drapes here, and a grandfather clock with a tick like the heartbeat of a mountain There was an umbrella stand beside it

It had a scythe in it

Mort looked around at the doors They looked important Their arches were carved in the now-familiar bones motif He went to try the nearest one, and a voice behind hio in there, boy'

It took him a moment to realise that this wasn't a voice in his head, but real human words that had been formed by a mouth and transferred to his ears by a convenient systeone to a lot of trouble for six words with a slightly petulant tone to theirl there, about his own height and perhaps a few years older than him She had silver hair, and eyes with a pearly sheen to the dress that tends to be worn by tragic heroines who clasp single roses to their boso soulfully at the moon Mort had never heard the phrase 'Pre-Raphaelite', which was a pity because it would have been alirls tend to be on the translucent, consuestion of too many chocolates

She stared at hi irritably on the floor Then she reached out quickly and pinched him sharply on the arm

'Ow!'

'Hmm So you're really real,' she said 'What's your name, boy?'

'Morti his elbow 'What did you do that for?'

'I shall call you Boy,' she said 'And I don't really have to explain ht you were dead You look dead'

Mort said nothing

'Lost your tongue?'

Mort was, in fact, counting to ten

'I'm not dead,' he said eventually 'At least, I don't think so It's a little hard to tell Who are you?'

'You htily 'Father toldto eat Follow me'

She swept away towards one of the other doors Mort trailed behind her at just the right distance to have it swing back and hit his other elbow

There was a kitchen on the other side of the door – long, low and war and a vast black iron stove occupying the whole of one long wall An old s and bacon and whistling between his teeth

The s that if they got together they could really enjoy the forithout even consulting his legs

'Albert,' snapped Ysabell, 'another one for breakfast'

Thea word She turned back to Mort

'I must say,' she said, 'that with the whole Disc to choose from, I should think Father could have done rather better than you I suppose you'll just have to do'

She swept out of the roo the door behind her

'Have to do what?' said Mort, to no-one in particular

The roo pan and the cru of coals in the molten heart of the stove Mort saw that it had the words 'The Little Moloch (Ptntd)' embossed on its oven door

The cook didn't seem to notice him, so Mort pulled up a chair and sat down at the white scrubbed table

'Mushroo around

'Hmm? What?'

'I said, do you want mushrooms?'

'Oh Sorry No, thank you,' said Mort