How to be Death

by Amber Benson

  “Where did you find it?” I asked, ignoring the slowpoke comment.

  Freezay stood up, leaving the knife on the bed as he joined us, careful to avoid the pool of dried blood on the floor.

  “Well, after Runt discovered the hidden room, I had an epiphany,” he said, motioning us to move away from the fireplace.

  I followed Runt over to the bathroom, both of us crowding inside the doorway.

  “It wasn’t a blind passage after all, but another trick. I ran back down here and discovered that the mechanism which reveals the hidden library also opens part of this entrance, too,” he continued—then he paused unexpectedly and added: “Let’s reset the doorway so no one joins us unexpectedly. There are just too many curious people involved in this case.”

  “How do you do that?” Runt asked.

  “Easy,” Freezay said. “You see that stand there—”

  He pointed to an antique bronze fireplace tool stand sitting slightly askew on the hearth. As we watched, Freezay grasped the top of the stand—tongs, brush, and poker swinging—and pulled it toward the hearth until we heard a soft click.

  “There we go,” Freezay said, the mechanism inside the wall beginning to whirr. To my amazement, the adobe wall swung toward us as the fireplace silently descended back into its spot on top of the hearth, effectively sealing the entrance to the secret passageway.

  “That’s insane,” I said, marveling at the ingenuity of the Castle’s architect.

  “Insane, yes,” Freezay agreed. “Now where was I?”

  “You had an epiphany,” Runt said.

  “Oh, yes! My epiphany,” he said, plopping back down on my bed and making the knife bounce. “I ran back here and found the adobe wall askew and your bedroom half-exposed. To my surprise, I discovered another hidden compartment built into the brickwork of the fireplace.”

  The place is littered with the damn things, I thought.

  “At that same moment my flashlight decided to stop working, so I stuck my arm and head inside the new compartment, but that only triggered another mechanism and I was lucky enough to get my head and arm out—minus my hat, but plus the knife—before the fireplace finished its ascension into the ceiling.”

  I felt bad. I hadn’t even realized Freezay was missing his trusty bowler hat.

  “How did you know that’s where the knife would be?” Runt asked, thoroughly engaged by the bizarreness of Freezay’s story.

  He scratched his head, his eyes shooting back and forth inside their sockets.

  “I could lie to you, but what’s the point?” Freezay said, running his hands through the shock of blond hair on top of his head so that pieces of dirt and soot littered the floor. “I had a hunch the knife was close, but I had no guarantees it was in that compartment until I stuck my hand inside.”

  “Why would the murderer just leave it there for anyone to find?” I asked.

  “Coy’s murderer did not plan to kill her, so there was no premeditation.”

  “Well, the murderer came in here with the knife, so he had to be planning something—” I said, but Freezay shook his head, picking up the knife and testing its weight.

  “Oh, this knife isn’t the murder weapon.”

  He dropped the knife back down on the bed then pointed to the fireplace.

  “That poker is.”

  Runt and I both turned to look at the fireplace at the same time, our eyes locking onto the heavy bronze poker sitting benignly between the tongs and brush. It looked nothing like a murder weapon, but I supposed that was the point.

  Freezay stalked over to the fireplace and picked up the poker, holding it out so we could see the flecks of dark brown blood still clinging to its end.

  “Resembles rust and blends right in with the aged bronze patina, but I assure you that it’s blood.”

  “Cool!” Runt said, amazed by what Freezay had discovered.

  “It was right there in plain sight the whole time,” Freezay continued, speaking almost to himself. “I guess I was just really thrown by the head in the bag.”

  “But that knife is covered in blood,” I said, not understanding. “What was it for?”

  “The beheading and the removal of the heart were done to throw everyone off the scent. After the murderer hit Coy on the back of the head—an impulse killing probably perpetrated in a fit of rage—he or she ran back to the kitchen to get the knife. They wanted to make it seem as if this were a ritual killing because they knew Horace was here at the Castle and they hoped the evidence would muddy the trail, point us in her brother’s direction.”

  We were missing something—something about the murderer going back to the kitchen didn’t sit right—and then it hit me, a series of possibilities exploding in my mind.

  “What if Zinia and Constance weren’t killed because of the book?” I asked suddenly. “What if they died because they saw something they shouldn’t have seen—”

  “Like the murderer going back to the kitchen to get the knife!” Runt finished.

  “Exactly,” I said, pleased with our tag team deductive reasoning.

  “You’re definitely barking up the right tree,” Freezay said, starting to pace. “But why would any murderer in their right mind try to both poison and shoot their victim?”

  “To make sure the poison wasn’t a dud?” Runt asked, but Freezay shook his head.

  “Nope.”

  When neither of us had another possible answer to Freezay’s question, I said: “We give up. Just tell us.”

  He smiled at me and I knew instantly he wasn’t going to give us any more information for free. The jerkoid was going to make us work it out for ourselves.

  “We can reasonably assume that Horace wasn’t responsible for his sister’s death,” Freezay went on, approaching the problem from a different angle. “And we can also assume that whoever murdered Coy knew about the secret passageways.”

  “Someone who worked here?” Runt asked. “Maybe Constance and Coy fought over the book and Constance killed her.”

  “Another possibility,” Freezay agreed. “But that would mean someone else knew about the book—and they killed Constance and Zinia.”

  “Yeah, there’s no way Zinia would kill Constance,” I agreed. “They shared a common goal: trying to get Frank out of Purgatory—and if Zinia had killed her, then who killed Zinia? The woman didn’t poison herself.”

  Freezay nodded, walking over to the window and drawing back the drape so he could look out into the onyx sky.

  “Once again that leaves us with another party—and this party killed Zinia and probably Constance, too. What else do we know about Constance’s death?”

  “We know she didn’t give Uriah Drood the book,” Runt chimed in. “He wasn’t lying about that. Otherwise he would have already tried to use it to blackmail you into giving him Naapi’s job, Cal.”

  “Agreed,” Freezay said.

  “She was never going to give him that book,” I said, enjoying the way we were all working together to find the solution. “She’d only told him about her plan, period, because she knew he’d be here for the Death Dinner and he’d have recognized her.”

  “Well, what I don’t understand is why the murderer cut up Constance’s body,” Runt interjected.

  “They were furthering the Aztec ritual killing scenario—” I said then stopped as another possibility occurred to me. “That means whoever killed Coy murdered Constance, too!”

  But Freezay wasn’t so easily convinced. He pursed his lips together thoughtfully as he considered what I’d said.

  “Not necessarily.”

  “Why not?” I asked, liking the way the plot was thickening around my new theory and not wanting Freezay to tell me I was wrong.

  “The hands don’t work.”

  Runt and I looked at each other, not sure what the hell Freezay was talking about.

  “The hands?” Runt asked.

  “Whoever killed Coy was left-handed,” he said. “We noticed that when we turned her over.”

/>   I nodded, vaguely remembering Freezay pointing this out when we’d first examined Coy’s body.

  “But Constance’s wounds were different. They weren’t made by a serrated knife like the one which beheaded Coy—and they were inflicted by someone who was ambidextrous,” Freezay said. “The killing cut—the one made to the jugular—was done by someone who was left-handed, while the shallower, nonlethal ones were all done with the right hand.”

  “Horace is left-handed,” I reminded everyone. “Maybe he killed the three of them after all.”

  Freezay stared at me.

  “What?” I asked, feeling like a bug under a microscope as he continued to stare at me.

  “Of course! Horace is left-handed! You’re a genius, Calliope,” Freezay said, shaking his head in wonder. “It makes perfect sense.”

  “What makes perfect sense?” I asked, but Freezay was too wrapped up in his own thoughts to answer me. I looked over at Runt, but the hellhound pup didn’t have a clue what Freezay was going on about either.

  “Okay,” Freezay said, grinning sheepishly at the two of us. “Not my best work by far. I missed a few things here and there, but in the end, the solution to the puzzle becomes clear.”

  “You know who did it?” Runt asked.

  “I know who did it and I know why—and just thank God we’ll never have to go to trial because there isn’t a shred of evidence that isn’t purely circumstantial,” Freezay added mysteriously. “Now, we have one hour to put forth our hypothesis and catch a murderer before magic returns to our world and our window closes forever. Are you guys up for a little fun?”

  I looked at Runt and knew she was thinking exactly the same thing I was: Bring it on!

  jarvis glanced worriedly at the clock on the mantel, wringing his hands like a little old lady. I understood his nervousness: It was eleven twenty-one, and we now had less than forty minutes to solve three murders and one count of grand theft larceny before all our suspects magicked themselves out of our jurisdiction and the Death book was lost to me for the next 365 days. Add to that, we were still missing Donald Ali, Horace, and Kali—and I could empathize with Jarvis’s paranoia; it was a whole lot of pressure for one ex-faun to bear.

  Freezay was a statue, leaning against the mantel, arms crossed over his chest, eyes giving nothing away. He’d personally corralled Erlik, Fabian Lazarev, and Yum Cimil, forcing the three reluctant men into the drawing room, where they were now sitting on the love seat (Lazarev and Yum Cimil) and an armchair (Erlik).

  Lazarev still looked shell-shocked, his handsome face drawn and sallow. He kept glaring in my direction with blatant hostility, occasionally transferring the bad vibes over to Daniel, who was standing next to me by the far wall. Yum Cimil was quiet as usual, his elderly countenance and silence lending him an air of annoyed disdain. He definitely wasn’t happy about being included in this crazy circus, but Freezay and Jarvis had assured him that he didn’t have a choice.

  Erlik relaxed in his armchair, his thick legs stretched out in front of him. When he felt my eyes alighting upon him, he yawned, wanting me to know he could care less about the situation or what I thought.

  Alameda Jones and Oggie were huddled together on the couch, his arm draped protectively around her shoulder, her head butting up against his chest as he stroked her hair. Her face was streaked with dried tears, her gaze fixed on Naapi, who sat in an armchair by the fireplace, hands in his lap, eyes downcast. I wasn’t sure what her intent was, why she was staring so openly at her old lover, but it was unsettling the way her eyes never left his person.

  I wasn’t the only one aware of Alameda’s staring problem; Anjea had noticed it, too. Searching me out, Anjea raised both eyebrows, then looked in the younger woman’s direction, her gaze speaking volumes. I nodded and shrugged, feeling strange about having simpatico with the spooky woman from Australia.

  Though she’d been MIA ever since dinner, Runt and I had been given the task of finding her and inviting her back to the drawing room with us. To our surprise, we’d discovered her waiting for us out by the pool, her bare legs dangling in the chlorinated water while her owl nestled sleepily against her shoulder.

  “Took you long enough,” she’d said when we got there. “Been waiting here fifteen minutes.”

  Fifteen minutes earlier, we’d been with Freezay, making our final plans and divvying up the different guests we were going to have to strong-arm into attending the climax of our investigation. What was so crazy was that the swimming pool was the first spot we’d chosen to look for Anjea—how she could’ve known our plans literally before we did was eerily disconcerting.

  “Sorry,” I’d said, not really knowing why I was apologizing.

  She’d gotten up and sighed, the owl still nestling in the crook of her neck.

  “Death is on the loose and it won’t stop with those three,” she said, staring directly into my eyes. “I like you, so I tell you as I see it. Best beware and keep your spirit guide close.”

  As she spoke the words “spirit guide,” she looked down at Runt—and I was unexpectedly overcome with the shivers, my body going all cold and achy. My first thought was: Someone just walked over my grave. But when I reached down to scratch the sweet spot behind Runt’s ears, the shivers disappeared.

  “No more words,” the older woman had continued, taking my arm, her slender frame light as a bird skeleton as she guided me back to the main house.

  We hadn’t spoke again, Anjea fending off my conversational advances with a wave of her hand, but when we’d finally arrived in the drawing room, she’d stopped me in my tracks to whisper something into my ear.

  “Remember. It’s all yours for the taking. Just make sure it’s what you really want.”

  Not waiting for an answer, she’d squeezed my arm, then let me go, striding over to the far corner of the room and sitting down cross-legged on the floor by the sideboard, her back tall as she pressed it against the wall, the owl still sound asleep on her shoulder.

  I thought it was fascinating that she and I were the only ones curious enough about Alameda’s cuckolded relationship to watch her like a hawk. Everyone else was too busy wondering why Freezay had called him or her here, and if it meant that the murderer was about to be exposed.

  Uriah Drood was the first to question Freezay’s motives. He’d chosen not to take one of the seats, but to stand by the sideboard only a few feet from where Anjea was sitting. I think he’d picked the spot because it was as far from me as he could possibly get and still be in the same room. He was wary of even looking in my direction, probably worried I’d get trigger-happy with the soda water on the sideboard and douse him with it.

  “I hope you’ve called us all here for good reason,” Drood said, resembling a beauty pageant winner the way he was holding his hand on his hip, all his weight resting on his back leg.

  Morrigan seconded the query.

  “This is ridiculous. You should’ve had this sorted out hours ago so we could all go home—not that I’m not out of here the moment the clock chimes midnight.”

  The aggressive redhead stood behind the armchair her girlfriend was sitting in, her fingers tightly gripping the chair back, while Caoimhe leaned forward, just out of her reach. Both women looked pale and worn out and I wondered if they’d been fighting.

  Everyone in the room had been beaten down by the events of the past twenty-four hours. If, unlike me, they’d been able to get some sleep, well, it hadn’t helped. Only Uriah Drood looked rested, his blubbery body resplendent in a freshly pressed blue and white seersucker suit. I was usually a fan of the summery material, but I was afraid Drood had put me off the fabric indefinitely.

  Freezay looked like a wild man, his blond hair sticking up in a coxcomb on top of his head, his green eyes on fire with manic-y exhaustion. He reached up, as if to take a hold of his bowler hat, but when his fingers got to his head, they realized the hat was no longer there and had to settle for running themselves through his thick blond mop instead.

 
“I’ve done a thorough investigation—as thorough as I could manage without magic or the ability to quantify forensic evidence in a timely fashion—and I’ve come to the conclusion that there is a murderer among us—”

  “No shit, Sherlock,” Erlik said, leaning forward in his chair and resting an elbow on his knee. “Tell us something we don’t know.”

  Freezay paused, and I got the impression he was working very hard to hold his tongue. Finally, his anger under control, he began again.

  “Now, as I was saying,” he continued, “I think it’s best to explore exactly why these murders occurred and how they were perpetrated underneath our very noses.”