by Amber Benson
six
They’d arrived in droves, milling about the Castle’s gardens and courtyards in their black-tie best, giddy at first, but now starting to get restless. I could hear the complaints and rowdy catcalls as I tried my darndest to follow Jarvis’s retreating back. Somehow in the confusion of bodies outside the library, he and Minnie had gotten ahead of us, so that Runt and I were now forced to play catch-up.
Well-dressed men and women—mostly humanoid, but there were other creatures, too—swarmed around us like ants. I felt goose bumps rise on my arms as the night began to cool, making me wish I’d brought a wrap even though once we got where we were going, I knew I wouldn’t be cold anymore. The sounds of the waves below us and the chatter of five hundred impatient revelers waiting to be led to their destination were brighter than anything I could see with my eyes, save the moon, which was a pat of butter high above us, cold and full as it floated in a pitch-black sky.
We were headed for the far end of the property, where there was a large flat piece of land overlooking the sea. It was here that Jarvis and I would meet up with the six Continental Vice-Presidents—one each for Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, and one for South America and Antarctica—and together with Kali, the representative from the Board of Death, we would open a semipermanent wormhole into another historical period in time.
Everyone was forced to meet in one spot, the Haunted Hearts Castle, which was the only access point to the event. Here, all comers with the proper invitation would be marked with a magical sigil that expired at 11:30 p.m. sharp—that’s when the wormhole closed and everyone was magically returned to their own homes. It was done this way so no one got stranded at midnight when all magic ceased for the following twenty-four hours.
The Death Dinner and access point were always at the Haunted Hearts Castle, but every year a new spot was chosen to host the Masquerade Ball itself. Last year, it had been in a tent at the New Orleans, Louisiana, 1884 World’s Fair—I hadn’t gone, but Jarvis said it was eerily beautiful. I couldn’t see anything too weird about New Orleans as a locale, but this year, the Executive Board of Death, Inc., had decided to hold the Masquerade Ball in a place I thought was a very strange choice, indeed. We were going back some 30,000 years in time to Southern France, where in the Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc Cave, which was playing host to our Masquerade Ball, some of the earliest known cave paintings ever discovered on Earth had just been freshly painted.
It was a neat idea, but I had my reservations about five hundred plus partygoers being stuffed into one cave like a bunch of sausages. Still, the Masquerade Ball was one of the highlights of the supernatural calendar. A time for all the creatures/beings who’d worked with/for Death, Inc., to come together for an evening of good-hearted debauchery. I’d never been invited before, but my older sister, Thalia, had been a fixture, notorious for her racy costumes and diva behavior. I’d learned this tidbit of gossip from Kali, who’d never cared much for Thalia—though she had admired my sister’s apparent single-mindedness when it came to seducing the opposite sex.
Thalia and I had been as opposite as two human beings could possibly be. She was a vain, type A personality with enough ambition to take over the Afterlife—something she’d almost succeeded in doing until I’d gotten in her way. While I, on the other hand, was an average-looking, average-achieving, and pretty much average everything else, too, gal with zero ambition to take over the Afterlife. She was blond and beautiful; I was mousy brown. I loved food and she only drank protein shakes. The only thing we actually had a similar interest in was clothing, but we diverged there, as well: I loved window-shopping for designer duds, while she actually had the cash to buy them.
After she’d finished her MBA at Rutgers, Thalia had joined the family business, slowly working her way up to Vice-President in Charge of Passage—a subset of the Harvesting and Transporting Department—and though the job had been cushy and respected, it hadn’t been enough for my sister. She’d been too ambitious, had seen herself rising to the very top of the corporate ladder, becoming the President and CEO of Death, Inc., and running the company when our dad stepped down.
It wasn’t until she was promoted to the Vice-Presidency of Asia and met the nefarious demon Vritra—who would shortly thereafter become her husband—that she discovered the truth: Her younger sister (me) was actually the one with the birthright to become the next Grim Reaper. Until then she’d had no idea her dreams were unattainable—that no matter how much flesh she pressed or how hard she worked, she would never attain the job she so desperately wanted … at least, not through any traditional means. So in her desperation to succeed, she’d done the unthinkable. She and Vritra had kidnapped our dad … and that’s how I’d gotten dragged into the whole mess.
In every generation there are two (sometimes three) beings born with the propensity to become Death. Most of them never know their true nature because the reigning Grim Reaper is granted immortality, and someone who gets that kind of perk usually tends to stick with the job for a long, long time. But sometimes there’s a cock-up (or a kidnapping), and the two (or three) “potential Deaths” are called up to vie for the newly available position.
Trying to become Death is a real pain in the ass, with tasks to complete, magic to learn, and monsters to slay—not something I’d ever have seen myself pursuing as a career choice, but somehow Jarvis and Clio had talked me into it. While I was out trying to save my family’s immortality, Thalia was busily working to set me up as the fall guy for our dad’s kidnapping.
And she’d almost succeeded.
If it weren’t for Daniel (who was another potential Death), Jarvis, Clio, and Runt, my older sister would’ve thrown me under the bus, stolen Death, Inc., and destroyed the Afterlife. Instead, the shoe got put on the other foot: We killed Vritra, found Dad, and dive-bombed Thalia’s nasty little plan before it even got started. I like to think if fate had been different, if Thalia had been the true heir and not me, she would’ve been satisfied with waiting for our dad to step down of his own accord—and none of the horrible things that happened later would’ve ever been set into motion.
I said, I like to think that … but I know it’s not reality. Fate is fate and people are people—and there’s no changing either one of them. Thalia would’ve found a way to get rid of my dad one way or another.
So here I was, stepping into my dad’s job and running the business my older sister had so fiendishly plotted to steal away from me—
“Hey, watch where you’re going!”
The rude voice knocked me out of my thoughts one second before the rude voice’s owner knocked me off my feet. I went down hard, throwing my hands out to keep my chin from slamming into the blue mosaic tiles I’d been walking on only a moment before. I heard Runt barking in my left ear, her furry black form rushing in to separate me from the person I’d run into. I laid a hand on her flank to calm her, but she continued to bark, the sound dry and throaty and full of menace.
“It’s okay, Runt,” I said, “I’m all right.”
I looked up to see who or what I’d run into, but the man was already on his feet, his back to me as he quickly began to walk off into the crowd. I felt a pair of strong hands grab me under the armpits, easily lifting me back up on to my feet.
“Thank you—” I started to say, but stopped when I saw my savior was wearing a golden lion mask, the mane and whiskers made from real, curling lion hair. To complement his choice of mask, he’d chosen an elegant black tuxedo with a black cummerbund.
My heart started to beat faster as I tried to get a look at the flesh beneath the mask. I wondered who he was—he was obviously a flash dresser and he’d stopped to help a damsel in distress, so he was chivalrous, too.
Hmmm.
“Uhm, thank you,” I said again, trying to look into his eyes, but my new friend was shy and kept looking away.
I leaned forward to give him a chaste kiss on the exposed flesh of his cheek, but he moved and I got the crook of his neck instead. Th
en, before I could say anything else, he bowed and melted back into the crowd. I opened my mouth to protest and that’s when I realized Runt was gone. I whirled around looking for the hellhound pup, but she’d taken off, probably trying to catch the guy who’d knocked me over.
“Runt!” I called. “Come back!”
But it was no good. Runt was gone.
“Mistress Calliope, are you okay?”
Jarvis and Minnie were suddenly at my side, having doubled back once they’d realized we were missing. Jarvis kept glancing around us, his eyes scanning the crowd for suspicious characters.
“Some jerk knocked me over and Runt took off after him,” I said in a rush, starting to get really worried about the hellhound.
There were just so many people running around the gardens and I didn’t know who or what 99 percent of them were. Anyone could just snatch up a little pup—well, she wasn’t that little anymore, actually—and haul her off to God knew where. There were so many wormholes popping in and out of existence around us, the bad guy had a thousand choices for his escape.
“We have to find Runt,” I said, feeling frantic.
“She’s a big girl,” Minnie said, putting a hand on my bare shoulder, but I shrugged her off.
“I don’t care. She’s a puppy and anyone could take—”
Off in the distance we heard loud, persistent barking and then Runt, her tongue hanging out of her mouth as she panted, slalomed her way through the crowd.
“Runt!” I yelled, squatting down to hug the pup as she stopped not two inches from my face. I pulled her to my chest, nuzzling the back of her neck.
“I tried to … get him,” Runt panted, “but he was … too fast for me.”
Jarvis knelt down to dog eye level.
“Did you see what he looked like?” he asked. “Was it—”
He didn’t finish the sentence because Runt was shaking her head.
“It wasn’t the Ender of Death. I know what he smells like and this guy wasn’t him.”
Jarvis relaxed visibly after that, but this time, as we continued on, he kept a firm hand on my elbow. Minnie stayed on my other side, physically blocking me from view with her voluptuous body. Her green eyes scanned the crowd with a feline insouciance, but I could feel the tension thrumming through her body.
“Maybe we need to issue this challenge sooner rather than later.” I sighed, raising an eyebrow in Jarvis’s direction as we headed toward the meeting point. “You’re a nervous wreck, Jarvi.”
Jarvis shook his head, his dark eyes serious.
“I’d rather work for you than for the Devil’s protégé … or God forbid, your friend, Frank, so you can see my dilemma.”
I knew exactly what Jarvis’s “dilemma” was: He had no interest in kowtowing to someone he didn’t respect. He’d given me the benefit of the doubt and had been open to helping me develop my talent only out of respect for my father. In the end, I’d like to think I’d earned Jarvis’s loyalty through my own actions, but it’d been touch and go a few times. I knew if I hadn’t been willing to work on my bad attitude and selfishness, Jarvis wouldn’t have stayed with me. He was too smart and too surly for that.
I’d learned so much from my dad’s former Executive Assistant, was really in Jarvis’s debt for all he’d taught me, that it was hard to be objective where he was concerned. Part of me didn’t want to stop being a perpetual student; was all for sitting back and letting Jarvis do the heavy lifting while I rested on my laurels and “learned.” With his take-charge personality, Jarvis would relish “helping” me run the show. He wouldn’t even realize he was being manipulated if I played my cards right … but I would know and that just wasn’t gonna happen.
At some point, Jarvis was going to have to let me go and I would have to help him with the transition, not the other way around. I needed to show him I could stand on my own two feet and make smart decisions about the fate of Death, Inc., become the kind of leader I knew my dad had been. Not that I discounted any of the help and support I’d gotten from Jarvis. He’d been integral in helping me discover my true destiny and I knew I was a better, stronger person because of him, but I couldn’t let him become my crutch. Whether I liked it or not, Death, Inc., was only as strong and capable as I was.
It was time to get my butt in gear.
The crowd had bunched together near the access point—a large, white rented tent staked into the dirt by a series of heavy wooden spikes—and they were making it almost impossible to get where we needed to go. Weaving our way through the throng of overeager partygoers, the trip took two minutes when it only should’ve taken twenty seconds.
As we reached the tent, Minnie gave my hand a reassuring squeeze.
“You’ll be great,” she whispered—then she gave Jarvis a wink before melting into the restless masked crowd.
Minnie’s thoughtful gesture took me by surprise. My last experience with the woman would not have led me to believe she possessed an ounce of empathy within her overlarge bosom, but as usual, I was learning (the hard way, of course) not to judge a book by its cover; until push came to shove, you just never knew who was gonna have your back.
To my surprise, Runt gave my hand a lick then followed Minnie out into the masses, leaving me in Jarvis’s more than capable hands. I swallowed hard and followed my Executive Assistant as he made his way over to the small band of men and women who were obviously waiting for us to arrive as they huddled under the safety of the rented tent.
Upon our arrival, Jarvis immediately started introducing me to the four Continental Vice-Presidents I didn’t know. I’d had my superweird run-in with Anjea, the Vice-President in Charge of Australia, earlier in the night, but Jarvis had either forgotten or didn’t care because he went right ahead and introduced me to the Aboriginal woman as if we’d never laid eyes on one another before.
With her long, unkempt hair and wizened face, Anjea was still as creepy as I remembered from our last encounter, but at least she’d changed into a nice silk robe that matched the silvery strands in her hair. She nodded her head as Jarvis introduced us, her unearthly eyes boring into mine with so much intensity I thought she might attack me. To my relief, she stayed aloof, only her eyes telegraphing her interest in me.
“Calliope, you look so glamorous,” a tall Native American man in a navy tuxedo said as he stepped up to greet me, holding a crow’s beak mask at his side, the string pinched between the fingers of his right hand.
His deep-set brown eyes—eyes that had seen more than their share of suffering—crinkled at the edges as he smiled down at me, his tiny chin coming to a beardless point below a wide-lipped mouth.
“Naapi,” I replied, letting the tall man embrace me, careful not to smush his mask against the folds of my dress.
The Vice-President in Charge of North America had been a friend of my father’s for as long as I could remember, and when I was a little girl, he’d been a frequent visitor to Sea Verge, staying for days at a time to confer with my dad and Jarvis about Death, Inc., business. His trips might originally have been intended as just “business,” but this changed once Clio and I discovered he was a master storyteller, one who could keep us entertained for hours on end with all the thrilling tales he knew about the American Old West. Clio and I’d harassed him unmercifully, begging him to tell us story after story—not realizing until much later that they all came from firsthand experience.
He had a myriad of tall tales, but our favorites included ghostly Buffalo Men who roamed the desert plains, scalping any white man who dared cross their path; young braves who went on vision quests but got lost in the land of the spirits, unable to return to their grieving families; a young woman who married an Indian brave from another tribe only to discover her new husband was actually an evil spirit. Naapi bewitched our impressionable young minds, weaving his tales with deft hands until we looked upon those stories as if they were a part of the tangled skein of our own memories.
Not long after my dad’s death, Naapi had come to Sea V
erge offering his condolences and his services should the need ever arise. I knew Jarvis and my dad had considered him an ally, and I bore only positive memories from the time I’d spent with him as a child, so I’d accepted his offer graciously. In truth, he was one of the few people I was actually looking forward to seeing here at the Death Dinner.
After Naapi and I’d dispensed with the pleasantries, Jarvis had introduced me to the rest of the Vice-Presidents.
There was Yum Cimil, the Vice-President in Charge of South America and Antarctica, a small, tight-lipped old man with dark orange skin and the kind of gravity-defying back comb-over you could only marvel at for its sheer aerodynamic ingenuity. When Jarvis introduced us, he wouldn’t speak to me, just glared at me like I’d said something rude.
“He doesn’t speak to women,” a tall, good-looking man standing beside him said, taking my hand and pressing the smooth skin of my knuckles to his mouth, the dark bristles of his mustache tickling my sensitive flesh. “I’m Fabian Lazarev, Mr. Cimil’s second in command, and I, on the other hand, have a healthy appreciation for the beauty of a young, vulnerable woman.”