by Amber Benson
Looking at all the things he’d done since he’d taken office, it was pretty apparent that my dad was kind of an amazing guy. I wish I could say that I’d always known about all of the above, but the truth was that the first I’d heard about it any of it was from Jarvis, sitting in my dad’s library while we hashed out a plan to break into the Hall of Death and steal one very important Death Record (and get a peek at anther one!). Clio, it seemed, was well aware of my dad’s triumphs because she spent the whole time nodding her head in agreement as Jarvis explained them all to me.
I guess you could say I’d been out of the loop for a long time—and I had—but the real reason I was so in the dark about my dad’s life was because I hadn’t wanted to know anything about it. I’d spent my childhood aware of, but relatively incurious about, my heritage, and then as a teenager I’d made a concerted effort to bury that aspect of myself so far down into my subconscious that it was like it didn’t even exist at all.
Had anyone asked me why I’d chosen to disinherit myself from my family, my stock answer would’ve been that I’d seen my two best friends killed in a car accident and after that I hadn’t wanted to be immortal anymore—living forever while everyone and everything you love dies? I don’t think so—but if I really wanted to be honest with myself, I supposed the real answer lay buried deep in my psyche. The truth was that I’d been living in denial for a very long time . . . and the saddest part about the whole thing was that I had personally chosen this half existence for myself.
I’d even taken that stupid forgetting charm to help me compartmentalize the “supernatural” part of myself away from my “normal” consciousness; that was how badly I did not want to get involved with the “family” business. Of course, back then I’d had no idea that my future self would be called into service to help save my dad and that there would be absolutely nothing I could do about it. That the forgetting charm would be so easily reversed and I’d be forced to deal with reality once more.
If I’m really being honest with myself, then I should just be completely honest, right?
Well, you see, when I was nineteen years old, I did something stupid, something that scared me and made me feel totally out of control, and because of this one stupid thing, I had barred myself from the supernatural world forever.
At least at the time that was what I had hoped.
it was the Christmas break of my junior year at Sarah Lawrence. I’d had a crappy semester; a really hard-core professor in my creative writing class had hated me on sight and had made my life a living Hell. It was the first time I’d ever wanted to quit, leave school, and run away to Siberia.
The rub was I knew if I left school, my dad would use it as the open window with which to drag me kicking and screaming into the family biz. He had been determined from each of our births that my sisters and I would come and work for him. My older sister, Thalia, had acquiesced immediately. She loved the fact that our dad was Death, that the family was immortal, and that if she played her cards right, she could end up with more power than she knew what to do with. I, on the other hand, had always been certain that my destiny did not lie in the supernatural world; I was pretty sure I would end up writing for my favorite fashion magazine, Vogue.
I’d gone to school itching to get away from the future I knew was waiting in the wings for me. I knew if I didn’t get my butt in gear and change a few minds, I was gonna get railroaded into a career that I did not want. It had taken me almost three years, but I had finally gotten up enough nerve to tell my dad exactly what I had planned for myself—and if he didn’t like it, well, screw him.
In some ways, I liked to think my disinterest in what he did came directly from him. He had been very strict about my sisters and me never using magic in his house. He said that he had his reasons, but he never justified them to us. Thalia had gone underground, breaking Dad’s rules, but not flaunting it in his face. When she finally went away to school and was no longer under his thumb, she had very openly let the family see how adept she had become at magic. The interesting thing was how proud my dad seemed of her magical prowess.
Still, he made sure that Clio and I knew that the magic Thalia could do was no better than a parlor trick. He drummed it into our heads that magic was not necessary in his trade. That magic only caused more problems than it solved. I guess I believed him because I stayed away from the stuff like it was anathema.
Anyway, that Christmas break I had made the decision to confront my dad. I would tell him that he was out of luck, that I was gonna go to New York City the minute I graduated and there was absolutely nothing he could do to stop me. I had planned out the whole thing to a tee. I knew how I would get him alone, the exact words I would use . . . I had even imagined the five hundred different reactions he was going to have to my speech.
The only thing I couldn’t have planned was that Thalia would come in and steal my thunder before I’d even had a chance to get my storm going.
I’d taken the train to Sea Verge the day before Christmas Eve, sporting a miserable cold I’d gotten from one of my room-mates, so I wasn’t in the best of shape when I arrived at its front door. In fact, I’d blown my nose so much on the trip that I looked like an alcoholic, all broken capillaries and red, chapped skin. I had brought only a small valise with me because I didn’t plan on staying too much past Christmas dinner. I had a New Year’s date with a couple of friends, and I wanted to get back to school as soon as possible.
Besides, I’d only promised my mother that I’d come for Christmas—nothing more, nothing less.
The woman had called me at least five times since Thanks-giving, pleading with me to spend the Christmas holidays with my family that year. I hadn’t wanted to go, but since I needed to talk to my dad anyway, I decided that the least I could do was spend some “quality” time with the family and make my mother happy at the same time—at least for a couple of days. I was pretty sure that once I told my dad the news, the crap was really gonna hit the fan.
I’d let myself in when I got there and had gone straight to my room. All I wanted to do was to lie down on my bed and sleep, undisturbed, for the next twenty-four hours. Of course, once Clio realized I was home, she was in my room almost jumping up and down on my bed with excitement. Apparently, Thalia had arrived right after me and she was about to drop a bombshell on the family . . . the entire family, which included me, apparently.
I didn’t have the heart to be a bitch and tell Clio to get out, that I didn’t give a damn what Thalia was gonna do, that she could turn herself into a toad and I could care less. So, instead of getting the sleep I desperately needed, I followed Clio right into the eye of the storm.
The Christmas tree looked incredible.
A huge blue spruce, it stood twenty feet high, shimmering like a snowflake before me as I followed Clio down the stairs and into the large, heavily decorated winter wonderland that was our living room. My mother was an amazing interior designer, and every year she would outdo herself when it came to the Christmas decorations.
She always went all out on holidays, but Christmas was different because it was her favorite. She would spend months preparing everything down to the last detail, her good taste conjuring up the most amazing holiday spectacles imaginable.
When I was little, she and I would consult about the decorations for the year, sketching out our plans on heavy cream drawing paper, giggling as we sipped hot chocolate or spiced cider from thick Christmas mugs. I had loved this time with my mother so much that I had actually begged God to never let me grow up. I knew down deep in my soul that once I got older, the magic would disappear and our decorating parties would cease to be . . . and sadly, I hadn’t been wrong. The minute I’d hit puberty, my mother and I had started arguing and we really hadn’t stopped since.
As Clio and I made our way through the huge, crepe paper snowflakes that were exquisitely wrapped around the base of the tree, I caught sight of my parents sitting on one of the black and cream toile couches beside the firepla
ce. Thalia was standing in front of them, dressed in a black Armani suit, her Jimmy Choo heels clicking in a staccato beat as she paced across the black-and-white marble tiled floor. Her long dark hair was pulled back at the nape of her neck in a tight chignon.
She looked up when she heard Clio and me come in, and the smile on her face was full of self-satisfaction.
I had never been very close to Thalia, even when we were kids. There was something cold about her that I found difficult to deal with. Clio and I had never talked about it directly, but I knew my younger sister felt exactly the same way about Thalia that I did.
“Oh good, the prodigal daughter has returned.” Her voice was like cracked ice. “Nice of you to join us, Calliope. I was just going to tell Father all about your little secret.”
“Excuse me?” I said, pulling a tissue from my pocket and sneezing into it.
I felt like crap; I looked like crap . . . I mean, I hadn’t had a shower in two days and the comfortable sweats that had become my sickbed uniform stuck to me like mummy wrappings. I really didn’t have the mental wherewithal to deal with my sister’s screwed-up psychobabble bullshit. I wished with all my heart that I’d just crawled into my old bed and never gotten up again, I felt that cruddy.
Thalia glared at me, her eyes locked on the tissue I held like a crumpled dove in my hand. I raised an eyebrow in her direction and she took a step back like she was scared I was gonna get germs on her or something.
“What secret?” Clio asked, looking up at me, then over at Thalia, a worried frown pinching her pixie face. Neither of my parents moved a muscle. My dad just stared at me, his face drawn and pale. Even his lion’s mane of unruly hair seemed more subdued than usual.
Thalia laughed and it was not a pretty sound. For the first time in my life, I realized that I’d never heard my sister laugh unless it was at the expense of someone else. It seemed like the only thing that ever drew any mirth from her revolved around meanness and self-aggrandizement. She looked at me, her head inclined curiously. She was waiting for me to respond to her charge, but there was no way José I was gonna take the bait. I just stood there, waiting for her to play whatever trump card she had up her Armani-clad sleeve.
It was a Mexican standoff with neither one of us willing to give an inch. Finally, Thalia shook her head, losing patience with my unwillingness to sink to her level. She had always taken the lead when we were children, and I was forcing her to do it again.
“Well, if Calliope won’t tell you, then I will,” she said, her excitement barely contained beneath a veneer of frost.
I gritted my teeth, bracing myself for what I knew was coming. Somehow Thalia had found out that I wasn’t joining the family business, that I planned to go to New York City and seek my fortune there instead.
At least, that was what I thought she was going to say.
“Calliope Reaper-Jones is a liar and a cheat. She plans on selling out the family the minute she graduates from school.”
I stared at her. I had absolutely zero idea what she was talking about. Sell out my family? To whom? And why?
Thalia didn’t stop there. No, she continued on, enjoying the confusion and fear she was creating.
“I’ve been secretly working with the rest of the Executive Board to discover who’s been leaking insider information about Death, Inc., to the Devil. And we think we’ve found our source,” Thalia said, her eyes glittering as they raked across me.
“That’s bullshit,” I railed, knowing exactly where this was going. “I don’t even know anything about Dad’s job!”
Thalia shook her head, laying on the fake pity with a trowel as she went on.
“Everyone knows that you don’t want to be immortal, Calliope. It’s common knowledge. You can’t deny it.”
“So I won’t,” I shot back, sneezing again three times in quick succession. “But I don’t sell people out, Thalia. Ever.”
“I have evidence to the contrary,” Thalia said tartly, her eyes never leaving mine.
“I don’t care what you have,” I nearly screamed, anger flaming inside me.
Thalia took a step toward me, a Joker-like grin spreading across her fine-boned face.
“You are a traitor, Calliope Reaper-Jones,” she spat at me.
That was it. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I had had enough . . . even if I didn’t consciously know it. The anger that had been building inside me came to a head and I could feel its power ripping through every cell in my body as it clawed its way out. My mouth froze into an elongated frown, a weird, growling noise escaping through my compressed lips. Before I understood the extent of what was happening to me, I had a total Carrie moment and the human part of myself slipped away into unconsciousness.
When it was all over, my sister Thalia was a big, fat toad sitting underneath the Christmas tree.
I’ve only ever heard Clio’s side of how the thing went down, but I’m pretty sure it was a real doozy, because after that my dad readily accepted the idea that I would not be joining Death, Inc. Of course, Thalia really was full of crap about me being some kind of familial traitor, because when my dad returned her to her normal form, she totally admitted that she was on a fishing expedition, just trying to scare any pertinent information out of me. How could she know I would go all ballistic on her?
It was only years later, after she had engineered my dad’s kidnapping and tried to take over Death, that I realized what the whole Christmas extravaganza had been about. Thalia was looking to discover two things: what my power level was and whether I could be bullied out of her way.
She was also planting a seed of distrust deep inside the hearts of the rest of our family. One that she hoped would grow and flower, so that someday she could pick it and use it to destroy us all forever.
And sadly she almost accomplished exactly that.
eleven
As I stared up through the pea soup-like morass that seemed to envelop the Purgatorial skyline, I decided that the huge brimstone, steel, and glass skyscraper that housed Death, Inc., was kind of reminiscent of the building from the opening sequence of the film The Hudsucker Proxy.
I wasn’t 100 percent sure why that particular thought had come into my mind, but I suspected it had something to do with the feeling of “corporate desolation” that the film inspired, an ambience that Purgatory was especially notable for. After all the weird intermingling I’d seen between the mortal world and the Afterlife, I wouldn’t have been at all surprised to find out that the film’s production designer had actually stumbled his/her way into Purgatory and been unduly influenced by the place.
This “corporate desolation” ambience not only pertained to the one inhabited part of Purgatory—the gigantic brimstone keep that my dad had renovated into a retro, Americana-style skyscraper only a decade or so after he’d ascended to the Head Honcho-ship of Death—but also to the empty wastelands that made up the rest of the place. Well, I say empty wastelands—I’d always heard that the place was completely unpopulated— but Jarvis had informed me that recently there’d been rumors of creatures escaping out of Hell and disappearing into the emptiness in search of a better life for themselves and their families. Of course, there was no proof of this, other than a few rumors, but still, the wasteland was so dark and barren that I couldn’t imagine wanting to escape into it, no matter how bad my lot in Hell might’ve been.
Excrement pile, anyone?
In fact, I had spent most of my life trying to stay as far away as possible from the place as I could. As a kid, I had just never really been all that interested in what my dad did for a living. I had never asked for a tour of the Death, Inc., offices, or—like Clio—asked for an internship in any of its departments. I’d kept myself so busy in the human world that I’d had no need to explore the supernatural side of my life.
Now when I looked back at my childhood, I wondered how it was possible not to be impressed by my dad. I mean, just the building alone he’d designed was such an amazing piece of architec
ture that it should’ve attracted my artistic sensibility. Still, I had always been much more excited about spending time with my mother, finding her interests to be more in line with my own: fashion, interior design, and food.
Yes, my dad may have run a multinational corporation almost single-handedly, but my mother was a genius of design. When she biannually redecorated Sea Verge, I was there at her side, watching her work. When she went on one of her massive shopping trips to New York City—where she bought only the most fashionable of designers—I begged for her to let me tag along and watch the whole endeavor, wide-eyed.
As far as I was concerned, those were the glory days of my childhood, creating lasting memories in my young, supple mind. I had fought as hard as I could to stop the strange, fantastical world that my dad inhabited from getting any purchase inside my brain.
Thinking back, I suppose those early memories were what had initially drawn me to New York City. My mother had treated the place like it was the fashion and cultural Mecca of the world, and since fashion was the one thing that really floated my boat, it just seemed like the perfect place to live as an adult. Of course, those memories were created when I was a kid (and living off my parents’ dime), so what appeared to me then as a magical place where clothes grew on trees and luncheons at the Russian Tea Room came standard with every visit wasn’t exactly the world I encountered when I officially moved there.
Even though New York City wasn’t exactly as I remembered, I didn’t regret my choice for a minute. I loved the City and I enjoyed struggling in it. I also knew that no matter what bad stuff someone found to say about my character, they could never accuse me of not working my butt off. The City demanded that of you and I willingly gave up my pound of flesh in order to stay there.