The Golden Age of Death (A CALLIOPE REAPER-JONES NOVEL)

by Amber Benson

  This was the original copy of How to Be Death: A Fully Annotated Guide, written in the tongue of the Angels. It was a death sentence to any mortal who dared touch it, and it’d almost fallen into the wrong hands five times over when Jarvis had attended the annual Death Dinner at the Haunted Hearts Castle with his boss, Calliope Reaper-Jones.

  It gave him the willies to think of anyone other than the rightful Death (that being his boss) having the book in their possession. But if Edgar Freezay, the ex-detective for the Psychical Bureau of Investigations, hadn’t stepped in and helped Calliope solve the mystery of the book’s disappearance, well, that would’ve most likely been the outcome.

  A book that could jump-start the End of Days lost to the hands of someone who would use it for their own gain. Jarvis shuddered at the thought.

  Though it’d only been hours, it felt like forever since Calliope had gone, leaving the tiny book in his possession. He didn’t like being the keeper of the book, but he would do it until Calliope came back to collect it, or—

  The doorbell rang for a second time, interrupting his thoughts.

  Jarvis made sure to drape the white sheet back over the bookcase that held the original How to Be Death before leaving the confines of the study behind him.

  “That should do it,” he said as he studied his handiwork, satisfied no one would realize the book was hidden in plain sight.

  He wiped his hands on his pants then turned and left the room, the doorbell ringing again, more insistently now, as he traversed the empty hallway, the loud chimes cutting through the hollow echo his wingtips made on the polished surface of the floor.

  “I’m moving as fast as I can,” Jarvis murmured under his breath, though he did pick up his pace a little.

  He was sure the Realtor was the culprit. All the obsessive bell ringing stunk of over-excitement. He looked down at his watch—yes, just as he’d expected, the woman was fifteen minutes early. She must’ve already tallied the commission check she would receive if she successfully sold Sea Verge, and the ridiculously large number had her chomping at the bit to get the show on the road.

  The woman had no idea she was never going to get to sell anything.

  “Coming!” Jarvis called, as he neared the front entrance to the house. He couldn’t ever remember feeling this unsettled when he’d been in the service of Calliope’s father, the previous Death. True, her father’s Reign was nowhere near as fraught as the one Calliope had inherited, but still, it’d had its rough patches, too.

  But Calliope? Calliope was another story altogether. Jarvis was certain she’d been created just to thrust his well-structured existence into utter turmoil.

  Not that he didn’t love the girl like a daughter—which was an odd statement given the body he now possessed was that of a twentysomething hipster, clearly closer to Calliope’s age than to her father’s. He’d been born a faun, the progeny of an anonymous coupling at a Bacchanal, but during his time as Calliope’s Executive Assistant, he’d been killed and brought back to life, losing his older body and acquiring this newer, younger model in its place.

  It was an “almost” adequate exchange—the large, emaciated hipster frame for the tiny faun haunches and humanoid upper body—though he did miss his Tom Selleck–inspired mustache. To his extreme consternation, the body he now inhabited did not seem capable of growing anything but scruff.

  The doorbell chimed again and again, insisting that someone, somewhere acknowledge its existence.

  Jarvis turned the doorknob just as the last chime died away, throwing the wooden door wide open. To his surprise, the visitor on the other side was not the one he’d been expecting.

  Well, he’d anticipated this guest’s appearance, but he’d just assumed he would be the last to arrive because he was traveling the farthest.

  “Jarvis, where in God’s name is my girlfriend?” Daniel, the former Devil’s protégé and newly minted acting Steward of Hell, said as he stood on the front doorstep, looking anything but happy.

  He didn’t wait for an answer, just pushed past Jarvis and strode into the foyer.

  “She’s not here and I have no idea where she went,” Jarvis said, jogging behind Daniel, as the Steward of Hell made for the stairs, taking them two at a time in his haste to reach the second floor.

  “I don’t believe you. I think she told you to say that.”

  Jarvis shrugged, not that Daniel was paying any attention to him.

  “But I’m going to check her room just to make sure—”

  Daniel didn’t bother knocking, just pushed the door open and stepped inside.

  Then he got quiet.

  The room had been cleared out. No sheet-covered furniture like the rest of the house. Absolutely nothing had been left inside.

  Daniel turned around slowly, his brow furrowed, eyes demanding an answer to his unspoken question: What the Hell?

  Jarvis sighed, leaning his bony shoulder against the wooden doorframe.

  “She’s gone—”

  “I see she’s gone,” Daniel interrupted, his ice blue eyes chilling. “Where?”

  Jarvis was prepared for this eventuality. He and Calliope had spoken about what he would say when Daniel and Clio and Noh arrived—and they would all be here soon enough.

  “Calliope has departed”—Daniel started to protest, but Jarvis held up his hand for silence, so he could finish. “And I don’t know where she intended to go, so it’s no good interrogating me. But she’s asked that you remain here until she returns.”

  Jarvis could almost hear Daniel grinding his teeth in frustration and he empathized with the other man’s situation—not knowing where someone you loved had gone could be frightening.

  “You don’t know where she is or you won’t tell me where she is?” Daniel pressed.

  Jarvis shook his head, his caterpillar eyebrows bunching together as Daniel paced back and forth in front of the bedroom door like a caged tiger.

  “I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t.”

  Jarvis felt sorry for Daniel and he felt sorry for himself, too. He hated being the gatekeeper when he didn’t agree with what Calliope was doing—but he was still her Executive Assistant and that meant he had to do her bidding, regardless of how he personally felt about her orders.

  “This morning I opened my mail to see that Callie had iTunes gifted me this very, I assume, prescient Dolly Parton song called, ‘I Will Always Love You,’” Daniel said, roughly dragging his hands through his dark hair so that a few pieces stood up like a cockscomb. “Now I show up here—knowing something’s wrong if she’s sending me that song—only to find the place empty. It’s extremely confusing.”

  Jarvis wished Daniel would stop expressing his anger and take a moment to calm down. The right question asked, would set all explanations into motion. Though Jarvis had been truthful when he’d said he didn’t know where Calliope had gone, he was chock-full of lots of other extraneous information…including why Calliope had seen fit to go in the first place. And many, many important things could be gleaned from understanding Calliope’s reasons for leaving. But until Daniel was ready to listen to him, there was nothing Jarvis could do to ameliorate the other man’s worry.

  Daniel strode past Jarvis and sped down the hallway. Jarvis knew there was nothing for Daniel to find at Sea Verge, so he kept his pace to a trot, already feeling exhausted by what was ahead of him.

  “I’m checking the study—” Daniel called back to Jarvis as the two men hit the circular stairway.

  “Be my guest,” Jarvis replied, shaking his head. There was nothing in the study, but the last of the sheet-covered furniture.

  And the book.

  He decided there was no need to chase after Daniel, so he slowed his pace, letting the other man get ahead of him. He took the stairs one at a time and kept a leisurely pace as he moved down the hallway, so that when he finally arrived at the study, Daniel was already there, leaning against the massive sheet-covered desk Calliope had inherited from her father.

&n
bsp; “I don’t understand,” Daniel said, his voice strained. “Where’s Callie?”

  “As I said before, Calliope is gone and I have no idea where she is—”

  Jarvis saw Daniel’s mouth open, as if he were going to argue, but then he closed it, starting to pace in front of the desk, instead. Finally, he stopped and turned to face Jarvis.

  “Okay, you don’t know where she is. Got it,” Daniel began. “But if you don’t know where she is, then do you maybe know why she left?”

  “That was the very question I’d hoped you would calm down enough to ask—”

  Jarvis was interrupted by the peal of the doorbell. He knew who would be at the door this time.

  The damned Realtor.

  He took a deep breath and gave Daniel an encouraging smile.

  “I need to answer the door, but you can come with me,” Jarvis said.

  Daniel didn’t need to be asked twice.

  * * *

  jennice kicked the wheel of her tiny Ford Aspire and cursed the day she’d bought it. A friend said it “aspired to be a car” and she’d laughed, but it wasn’t far from the truth.

  She’d bought it used. It’d looked good in its pictures on craigslist, but the reality wasn’t nearly as pretty. It’d driven fine the first two months and then it’d just begun to sputter and shudder its way into falling apart. She took it to a mechanic who’d openly laughed at her, pointed to the odometer, and told her someone had reset it. Which meant the car had seen way more than the thirty thousand miles the seller had claimed.

  Then the mechanic had given her the estimate for fixing everything on the clunker, and the figure on the piece of paper was so exorbitant all she could do was try not to cry. It far exceeded the amount of money she had in her bank account.

  Head swimming, she’d asked him how much to get it running, no bells and whistles. He’d quoted her another number—still high, but a little more manageable—and she’d pulled out her checkbook.

  Six months later and here she stood, on the side of the road, the Aspire’s prospects looking very uncertain.

  Jennice pulled out her cell phone, remembered she’d let her AAA membership lapse and that there was no one to call, then dropped the phone back into her bag. She was just gonna have to hoof it the rest of the way to Sea Verge and hope the police didn’t impound the Aspire. That would cost her even more money she didn’t have in her bank account.

  Maybe after she’d sold Sea Verge she could buy herself a new car. Nothing expensive, just something that ran well and didn’t break down every time she drove it. That thought gave her something positive to hold on to and she used it to begin the long slog to Bellevue Avenue.

  She hadn’t gotten ten steps when a little green Honda Element swooped past then slowed down and pulled onto the shoulder in front of her. A woman with long, dark hair and the palest buttercream skin Jennice had ever seen jumped out of the passenger seat and jogged toward her, the woman’s brown boots making crunching noises as they churned up the dirt.

  “Your car break down?” the woman asked—and as she got closer, Jennice realized she wasn’t much older than she was. Twenty-five, at the oldest.

  “Yeah, it’s been on borrowed time for a while now,” Jennice said, hands on hips. “I guess it was finally time to pay the piper.”

  The woman laughed and extended her hand.

  “I’m Noh. My friend, Clio, and I can drop you off somewhere if you need us to.”

  Jennice took Noh’s proffered hand, it was cold as ice and there were hard calluses on the ridge of the palm.

  “Actually, I’m just going to Bellevue Avenue,” Jennice replied. “If you guys wouldn’t mind dropping me there, it would be much appreciated.”

  Noh wrinkled her brow.

  “That’s odd. We’re going to Bellevue Avenue ourselves.”

  Jennice smiled. It must be her lucky day after all.

  “Well, that works out, then,” Jennice said, pleased not to put Noh and her friend too much out of their way.

  “Come on,” Noh said. “I’ll let you have shotgun.”

  As she followed the strange young woman back to the Element, she couldn’t help wondering what Noh’s story was. Jennice loved to make up imaginary lives for the people she met. She didn’t really have any friends, mostly because she’d spent her teenage years looking after her mom, but she liked to pretend the people she made up stories about—who they really were and the fascinating secret lives they led—were actually characters in a giant tapestry she was weaving…and there was something about Noh that inspired a fairytale-sized addition to her project.

  “By the way,” Noh asked as she climbed into the backseat of the car, her face turned away so Jennice couldn’t read her expression. “You don’t happen to be going to Sea Verge, do you?”

  All Jennice could do was nod, strangely frightened by Noh’s question.

  Maybe this wasn’t her lucky day, after all.

  four

  The name? What was the name of the card game they were playing?

  The old man had a terrible memory, but that hadn’t always been the case. When he was young and spry, he could recite whole passages from the King James Bible like he was reading out a grocery list. But these days he was lucky if he could remember to put his own pants on.

  The thought made him look down at his legs just to make sure he’d actually put his pants on. Yep, they were on. At least, he’d remembered to do that this morning.

  Ever since his wife, Flora, had died six months ago, he’d been getting steadily worse. He had moments of lucidity—like right now—but those didn’t last and they were always followed by long stretches of lost time.

  Lost time. He wondered where it went? He knew it had to go somewhere…he just couldn’t put his finger on where that might be.

  He looked around the room, his brain trying to remember how he’d gotten to the recess room, but for the life of him he couldn’t fathom how. He knew he was safe, that the other denizens of the Shady Glen Row Home For The Aged were all around him, enjoying the extracurricular activities and supplies that abounded in the recess room: cards, board games, books, painting supplies, clay to mold…even a television set for the lazy ones. There was a wealth of things to do if you wanted to participate—and he wanted to participate.

  He looked down at his gnarled old hands, the skin coated with liver spots the size of silver dollars, and was disgusted. When had he gotten so old?

  It was a question he asked himself on a daily basis.

  He sighed, wishing he were anywhere but in the old, worn down body he was in—and that’s when he noticed the lightness. It was in his fingers and toes, inching its way up his arms and legs toward his core. He’d never experienced anything like it before. He tried to speak, to let the woman sitting beside him (he had no idea what her name was) know there was something wrong with him, but words just wouldn’t come.

  A stroke? Was he having a stroke?

  Not long before Flora died, they’d watched an old woman having a stroke at lunch. It’d been awful, the woman’s face going slack as her body shook, then she was pitching forward into her plate of oatmeal. The aides had run over as quickly as their crepe-soled shoes could carry them, but the woman was already dead. He’d known it, Flora had known it, all the other old people around them had known it…because being so elderly themselves, when Death came to cull one of the herd, it tipped its hat to all of them.

  He tried to get a word out, any word, but his vocal chords weren’t working. He looked around, eyes fluttering in their sockets, trying to catch someone’s gaze, let them know he was in trouble, but no one seemed to be paying him any attention.

  The lightness quickly overtook his body and he knew there was no coming back from it. Whatever had ahold of him wasn’t going to let him go.

  Liddy had noticed Howard nod off, but she hadn’t thought much of it. He usually fell asleep halfway through gin rummy, leaving the others to finish the hand without him. But the game had ended now and Ho
ward was still asleep, his chin resting against his concave chest.

  “Howard…?” Liddy said, reaching out a stick-thin arm, the skin hanging off the bone like a flesh drape.

  She poked Howard in the fatty part of his upper arm, but instead of a startled, sleepy response, Howard remained inert, his chin continuing to rest against his chest. Liddy didn’t need to poke him again. She had a pretty good idea Howard wasn’t going to be playing gin rummy with them anymore.

  “It’s all right, Liddy,” Howard said as he stood above her, the sight of his own, lifeless body a bit hard to take.

  He reached out a hand and placed it on Liddy’s shoulder, but it just went right through her like a shadow. He lifted up his hand, surprised to see that the skin was still old and liver spotted. He’d hoped his ghost would be in the image of his younger self.

  “Oh, well,” he murmured, just glad the pain from the rheumatoid arthritis he’d been battling these past five years was finally gone.

  He waited patiently for Liddy to collect herself. It took her a few moments of deep breathing before she was calm enough to sound the alarm. Her voice came out in a tight, nervous curl, but the two on-duty orderlies heard her and ran toward the table, their dark eyes sad with the foreknowledge that their efforts would be futile—and then, as the two men in their crisp white orderly uniforms began to probe his dead body, looking for his nonexistent heartbeat, Howard slowly backed out of the room.

  * * *

  freezay and his charge didn’t make it to the car. They were attacked the moment they set foot outside—well, the moment Freezay set foot outside; the kid was a ghost, whether he knew it or not, and didn’t have a corporeal form.

  The assailants moved so quickly Freezay didn’t have time to prepare for the onslaught, instead, all the years he’d spent as a human policeman, and then as a detective for the Psychical Bureau of Investigations, kicked in. Slamming his fist into the face of the first man who’d dared to step into his personal space, he watched the man’s nose explode into a Rorschach of blood. The man dropped to his knees, cupping his ruined nose in his hands as if this would stop the blood from flowing out.