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 one-hundred-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 oh-so-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 sparsely-settled 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.