Loki's house in the astral is still at the top of a hill with a nearby waterfall and stream. There's been a lot of remodeling, however. It's a big Art Deco hotel now, fifty storeys' worth of balconies and bay windows supported at each corner by a concrete pylon that could have held up the whole tower by itself. Modern skyscrapers are made to sway in the wind and roll with the earthquake but the Four Doors looked like it would hold fast through all of that. The planet it was standing on could explode and it wouldn't budge.

I pushed through the revolving doors and into one of four lobbies that converged on a vast central atrium. There was a fountain in the atrium and a skylight far above it, all the way at the top of an airshaft that showed you every floor. The fountain and the skylight were both pyramids, though one was water and light and the other was steel and glass.

Loki's, the jazz bar, was to one side of the atrium. There was a suggestion of brass fittings and plush seating but the lights were low and so was the ceiling. It was a cave, a cozy cave, a cave that served drinks.

Henry knew that I liked my rum and coke light on the rum. I took the drink in hand and swiveled to take everything in. There wasn't anyone singing at the little stage and that meant we were listening to the jukebox, which played something different for everyone. For me that was Japanese pop music from the 80s. I don't speak Japanese but that was all right. Tokyo before its Lost Decade was a mood.

Under the music there was the gentle flow of conversation. The little spotlights didn't illuminate much but you could make out faces and costumes if you concentrated. Some nights it was like all of history had come down for Happy Hour. Tonight it was mostly the dreaming and the dead.

The recently-dead, I mean. They wore contemporary clothes and didn't order anything weird. Mind you, I'd seen Henry wheel out vats of Sumerian beer and hand out the long metal straws needed to drink from underneath the barley scum.

"Not a lot of people today, huh?" I said him.

"Not a lot," the bartender said. "But enough."

"Do you think we'll see the Mongols tonight?" Loki had befriended a group of them. He'd fought against their khan but somehow they were all right. They certainly knew how to put the drinks away.

I thought there was a flash of feathers in one of the alcoves. But then I became of a large shape beside me.

He was easily seven feet tall and nearly as wide. Certainly he was a head and shoulders over me and needed to slouch to put his elbows on the bar. I looked down -- he was sitting on an oversized version of the same brass barstool everyone was using. I wondered if they changed to accommodate people or if Henry had brought this one out especially for Set.

Yes, this was the Egyptian god Set. His skin was the color of good red clay but was otherwise just skin. He had pores, scars, ginger body hair. There was dust on his sandaled feet and old stains on his leopard-skin cape.

PENNY FOR YOUR THOUGHTS? he asked.

"Er," I said. "Ah."

PERHAPS I OVERPAID. OH WELL. He fished around in the pouch at his waist, extracted a silver coin, and slid it over to me.

Many Egyptian gods have animal heads. Bastet has the head of a cat, Anubis has the head of a dog, Hathor has the head of a cow, and so on. Set has the head of a Set animal. The creature has a doglike body and its head resembles that of such appropriate beasts as the hyena, the jackal, and the fennec fox. But there's also something of the pig, the donkey, and the aardvark. It sounds ridiculous, and seeing him in person doesn't clear anything up, but he makes it work.

Henry passed him a tankard of something dark and foamy and Set dipped his snout. There was a flash of canine teeth and then he was wiping his mouth.

YOU KNOW ME, he said. I GATHER THAT YOU ARE LOKI'S NEWEST HELPER.

His mouth wasn't made for talking so he simply made the air resonate with his words.

"That's right," I said, making an effort to breathe slowly. You don't show fear to predators. "I've been tagging along on his visits to family."

Fenrir had been a wolf of gigantic but variable size. When we first spotted him ambling toward us he was in the lower kaiju range -- with paws the size of cars. But he shrank as he approached until he was merely the size of a minivan. Loki walked up and buried his face in his ruff.

"My boy," he'd said. "My boy."

Visiting Jormungandr had been a little more of a trip. We'd gone into the sea, me in a diving suit and Loki in a merman's shape. Down and down we'd gone, further and further into the dark, until finally an ancient city had opened up underneath us, its streets glittering with the treasure of a thousand sunken ships.

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Jormungandr had uncoiled part of himself from around some of the buildings and turned to greet us. Loki swam up and touched his flank, dislodging a few gold coins.

Fenrir had been friendly, and Jormungandr was too, but my mind and body recoiled. He filled the city, filled my mind's eye, and it was an effort to remain in the trance.

I SEE YOU'VE MET THE WORLD SERPENT IN HIS ELEMENT, Set said. He wasn't loud but his words seemed carved in stone.

I shook myself. "Loki said that even he gets the heebie-jeebies. He loves his middle child but nothing alive ought to be that big."

I HOPE YOU DON'T HOLD IT AGAINST JORMIE. MIND-BOGGLING SIZE IS A MAJOR PART OF HIS STORY.

"No, no," I said. "He can't help it if he was born like that. Hey, don't you know another giant snake?"

OH YES. APEP IS BIGGER BUT NOWHERE AS PERSONABLE.

I imagined an even bigger serpent out in space and was starting to panic when something brushed my leg. A little orange cat walked past and jumped onto the bar.

"Oi! No feet on the bar!" Henry said.

The cat looked at him.

The bartender pulled out a spray bottle and the animal turned to bolt. It slipped and I moved to catch it.

Set barred me with an arm. The cat flipped in midair and landed on its paws. It padded off, its tail raised, and I saw the dog that was ambling over to greet it.

Animal spirits aren't unusual. I tend to find them in most of the places I find human spirits. Dogs can go to Heaven though they usually prefer to stick close to their owners. Cats, on the other hand, sleep so much that they're already native citizens of the astral plane.

Still, though. I looked at Set. "What was that about? Why did you stop me?"

YOU WOULD HAVE BEEN CRUSHED. THOR ONLY EVER MANAGED TO LIFT ONE PAW.

I remembered an old story. "Ah. So that was the World Serpent again?"

THIS IS HIS FATHER'S HOUSE.

I looked to Fenrir and Jormungandr. Henry was bringing them a couple of bowls. To all appearances they were just a cat and dog.

I looked at Set. "You're different from what I expected."

AND WHAT DID YOU EXPECT? 'GROWL GROWL GROWL, SET SMASH'?

"I was expecting a great big bully. Didn't your people pray to you to see less of you?"

WELL.

"I only mention this because you don't seem to be that."

BUT I AM A BULLY. ALL TRICKSTERS ARE. BEING BIGGER, STRONGER, AND SMARTER THAN THE OTHER GUY IS A GOOD TRICK. DOES IT BOTHER YOU, WORKING WITH SOMEONE LIKE LOKI?

"He's not evil," I said.

BUT HE'S NOT EXACTLY GOOD EITHER.

"Mmmmmyeah," I said. "I asked him about the stabbing incident. Pretty harsh thing to do to a servant just to get his point across. Heh."

WHAT DID HE SAY?

"He said that murder hits different once one understands that it isn't the end of anything. You're just sending someone back to the beginning of the line."

DO YOU BELIEVE THAT?

"I don't know. Maybe it is a black mark against him. I can work with him without becoming a Loki apologist, right?"

I DON'T KNOW. CAN YOU?

"I'm not ashamed to associate with Loki. I'm not sorry about it at all."

GOOD FOR YOU. BUT 'APOLOGIST' IS FROM THE GREEK 'APOLOGIA', WHICH MEANS 'DEFENSE'.

"Huh?"

FOR EXAMPLE, 'THE APOLOGY OF SOCRATES' IS NOT ABOUT THE PHILOSOPHER ADMITTING HIS GUILT. RATHER IT IS HIS REBUTTAL TO THE CHARGES OF IMPIETY AND CORRUPTION.

"So by finding value in Loki . . ."

YOU ARE TACITLY RECOMMENDING HIM. ADVOCATING FOR HIM. ENGAGING IN APOLOGETICS.

". . . I am a Loki apologist."

He patted my shoulder. I'M SORRY TO BE THE ONE TO TELL YOU.

* * *

We ordered another round of drinks and a bowl of salted chocolate-dipped pretzels. The place was filling up.

A girl in a white dress walked up. "Excuse me," she said, and scooped up a big handful of pretzels.

We watched her walk away.

"What was that about?" I asked. "Some kind of pretzel tax?"

I THINK I KNOW HER. MAYBE SHE'S THE GODDESS OF BAR SNACKS.

"Is there such a thing?"

DUNNO, he said, and took a long drink. I DO KNOW THERE'S A GODDESS OF BEER. NINKASI. MESOPOTAMIAN.

"You work with other pantheons?"

ONE OF MY WIVES IS CANAANITE. BUT I SENSE THE QUESTION YOU'VE BEEN DANCING AROUND. YOU'RE WONDERING IF I AM A GOD OF EVIL.

"Are you?"

THERE'S NO SUCH THING. EVIL ISN'T ANYONE'S DEPARTMENT.

"What about Apep? Wanting to destroy all life sounds pretty evil."

APEP IS THE EMBODIMENT BUT NOT THE PERSONIFICATION OF CHAOS AND DISORDER. IT ISN'T A SPIRIT, MUCH LESS A GOD. RATHER IT IS THE URGE IN EVERY THINKING BEING TO ABANDON ONESELF TO MINDLESSNESS AND FEAR.

"How do you fight something like that?"

CONSTANTLY.

"You say evil isn't anyone's department?"

NOPE. I AM NOT CONTRACTUALLY-OBLIGATED TO BE EVIL. THERE'S NO QUOTA OR ANYTHING. WHICH ISN'T TO SAY THAT I HAVEN'T DONE EVIL THINGS.

"I remember," I said. "You killed your brother at a party. Why?"

ON ONE LEVEL, IT WAS SO THAT SOMEONE WOULD RULE IN THE LAND OF THE DEAD AND MY SISTER COULD BEGIN HER OWN HERO'S JOURNEY. ON PERSONAL LEVEL, IT WAS AN ACCIDENT.

"What?"

He shrugged his Hulk-sized shoulders. WE WERE KIDS. I TALKED HIM INTO GOING FOR A NIGHT SWIM. WE STARTED HORSING AROUND. I . . . GOT CARRIED AWAY.

He stared into his tankard. IT WAS AN ACCIDENT. I'M SURE OF IT.

He drank, and didn't stop until he could see the bottom of it.

"This isn't like any of the stories," I said.

He wiped his mouth with a hand. LIES ON THE LIPS OF A PRIEST.

I took another long drink myself. It was turning out to be another one of those nights.

Set gestured for another beer. Henry took a glass brimming with whiskey and depth-charged it into the tankard.

Set was practically hugging the bar. Sadness fell off his shoulders in waves.

"I'm really sorry, man," I said.

MY SISTER ISIS NEVER FORGAVE ME. I GAINED THE THRONE BUT I WAS FOREVER KNOWN AS A KING WHO KILLED HIS BROTHER.

He drank. THAT DID COME IN USEFUL SOMETIMES. I WON'T SAY I DIDN'T LEAN INTO THAT. I WON'T SAY I DIDN'T DO THINGS TO DESERVE THE IMAGE.

"But you're not a god of evil."

NO. THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS 'THE BALANCE BETWEEN GOOD AND EVIL.' EVIL JUST HAPPENS.

He looked up. His gaze was far away. IT HAPPENS WHEN WE GET CARELESS. WHEN WE DON'T THINK. WHEN WE LET OURSELVES SLIP.