“Hmmm?” He nuzzled my shoulder.
“Why don’t you want to go back to the Coil?”
“I thought I explained. Nobody gets me up there.”
I waited. He’d either elaborate or begin the next round. I was okay with either option.
He rolled on his back and scratched his chest. “It is like this. Back in my day, when we visited someone, we stayed for many days. Sometimes weeks. And while there, your host threw lengthy parties. They would invite their friends and neighbors and serve much wine. On one occasion, a group of writers and philosophers were drinking and a challenge was issued. There may have been a bet involved. It was so long ago, I don’t remember. I do remember locking myself in my room with more than one bottle of wine and emerging three days later with my ‘epic’ poem about Hell. It was the ultimate ‘Mary Sue.’ ”
“Mary Sue?” I’d never heard the term before. Assuming it was a term and not an ex-girlfriend. One time, in the heat of passion, he called me Beatrice. I didn’t speak to him for days.
“Oh.” He shrugged. “Mary Sue, or in my case, Marty Stu, is a writing term for when an author places themselves in their story as the best and brightest character. In my case, I wrote about myself being the only person on Earth so admirable and so worthy that Lucy invited me for a tour d’Hell. And when I got there I found all my enemies being sorely punished. I regret to say, Kirsty, that it went on and on and on.”
I yawned hugely. I hadn’t realized discussing poetry could be even more boring and obscure than the poems themselves.
“So,” he continued, somehow mistaking my yawning for interest, “my poem is circulated among our group, much like those emails of today in which you are directed to forward it to five friends or dire events will befall you. All my close friends found it hilarious. But as scribes made more and more copies and it traveled outside my immediate circle, people began to take it seriously. They thought I was that arrogant. That full of myself.”
“And in conclusion . . . ?” I yawned again, making the words sound weird. Hopefully that would hurry him up so we could get back to the cuddling.
“And in conclusion . . .” He laughed, leaning over to kiss my forehead. “In conclusion, now students today are forced to study it, scholars analyze it and academics deconstruct it. And no one realizes it was supposed to be funny. It’s like telling a joke and having it fall flat—flatter than the Coil.”
“Uh, Dante. You do know the world isn’t flat, right?”
“But of course I do. Galileo drops by regularly.”
“Oh.” I yawned again. “I guess you guys were contemporaries, eh?”
“I suppose you would consider us so. What’s a few centuries between scholars?”
I chose not to answer that. My eyelids grew heavy and I figured we might as well nap while we recovered enough for round two.
Just before I drifted off, Dante mumbled, “I love you.”
“I love you, too. You can scythe me anytime.”
Chapter 17
Look Before You Reap
“C’MON, BABY.”
I don’t know how many times my hellphone played the Reaper Corps theme song as I struggled up from the deepest, darkest depths of REM sleep.
“Baby, take my ha—”
I’d been sleeping the sleep of the dead, of course. How else would I sleep? Finally I surfaced into consciousness.
“ ’Lo?” I answered, silencing Blue Öyster Cult mid-lyric.
“Kirsty? You’d better get down here right away.” Kali’s voice crackled from the tiny speaker, sounding as distressed as I’d ever heard her. I half sat up, rubbing crusty dried gunk from my eyes, the corner of my mouth and . . . never mind. Despite having no psychic abilities at all, I clearly foresaw a shower in my future.
“Down where?”
“To Hell’s Cells.”
I thumped the heel of my hand against my forehead, trying to dispel some of the got-some brain fog. I had a memory once, I just forgot where I put it.
A recent memory floated within reach. I grasped for it, almost had it . . . Ahhh. Now I remembered. Dante’s friend Monroe had told us the holding facility where he worked needed an extra pair of hands. And Kali was nothing if not handy. She had six of ’em, after all.
Obviously, she’d landed the job. Only Reapers need apply.
“So what’s up?” I asked. Dante rolled over and opened his eyes. I held a finger to his lips to keep him from speaking. He kissed my finger softly and my insides melted. No, not literally.
“What? I missed that, Kali. Say again, please.”
“I said, something weird went down with that soul you brought in. That Conrad guy. You didn’t use another Reaper’s scythe on him, did you? Because if you did, I think we’ve finally figured out what happens when you do.”
As Kali described the scene in the cells, all the blood drained from my face. My stomach flip-flopped and my heart clenched.
“Oh, skeg!”
To be continued in Book 3 of The Reluctant Reaper series, Esprit de Corpse: Hell Is Where the Heart Is.
Acknowledgments
THEY SAY WRITING is a lonely profession, but that has not been my experience. I can’t remember exactly when, why or how I decided to write a book about a Grim Reaper, but since then, I’ve had help and encouragement from so many people that I’m worried I’ll miss thanking someone. So if you aren’t named here, please know that I appreciate your help more than words can say.
Over the years, several people read, reread and helped me rewrite various versions and chapters of this book. Great big thanks to Debra Jess, Kay Lynne Simpson, Lisa Stone Hardt, Lauren Stephenson and Joan Leacott for their feedback.
Thanks to the members of the QuinceApple brainstorming group for their input on bits and pieces and marketing materials along the way. Special thanks to creative stimulators Bonnie Staring and Tina Christopher.
Thanks to my awesome agent, Rosemary Stimola and her equally awesome assistant, Allison Remchek. The amount of time and effort they put into this series speaks of their faith in my potential. And thanks to my fabulous editor at Simon & Schuster, Adam Wilson, for liking my book enough to publish it and for working with me to make it the best book it can be.
Grazie to Elisa Rolle for the speedy Italian translations.
My biggest thanks to my friend and mentor, Kate Freiman, for not just giving me feedback and encouragement, but for always being there for me, sharing her wealth of knowledge and squealing with me at each milestone of success.
Thank you all!
Check out a sneak peek of Esprit de Corpse, Book 3 in The Reluctant Reaper series!
I PUSHED OFF the doorframe and got right up into Dante’s chauvinistic (but handsome) face. “Now you listen to me, bucko.” I was mad. Really mad. I’d never called anyone “bucko” before in my life. I wasn’t even sure what it meant, although it reminded me of an interesting four-letter word. “Just because you’re seven hundred—”
The lights dimmed and flickered. I clapped my hands over my ears to shut out the terrible screeching noise, like universes being ripped apart. Suddenly, a massive, horrific demon complete with horns and forked tail appeared before us. Shannon looked up from her client call: “Callyouback,” she squeaked. She didn’t so much hang up the handset as drop it somewhere near the cradle. I could tell from her trembling jaw and brand-new lack of breathing that she could see it, too.
As Dante had done, the demon had materialized facing Shannon, who cowered behind the big oak desk. With his back to us, he hadn’t noticed Dante and me.
I could see him clearly now, his personal twister left somewhere along the slippery slope or dusty red trail. Conrad’s dark red skin stretched tight over misshapen muscles. His hooves and the spike at the end of his tail were the same articulated gray chitin as his curved and pointy horns. The horns scraped the ceiling
tiles, raining white flakes down on his shoulders like the dandruff of the damned. Pointy leathery wings sprouted from his shoulder blades. They didn’t look like they’d support his weight and might have evolved less as flighty appendages and more as extra places to stick talons.
From where I stood, I couldn’t see his face and I was very, very glad. I had enough to take in as it was. He was the most horrible creature I’d seen on the Coil or in Hell, the conservative business suit doing nothing to counter his overall ghastly appearance.
“Hello, dear.”
I nearly jumped out of my skin. His body may have grown oversize and grotesque, but his voice hadn’t changed. It was the same light, smarmy tone that had wrapped his junior account exec around his little finger, which was now scarlet, clawed and not so little.
“Dad?” Shannon whispered through chattering teeth. She leaned as far away from the scary monster as the ergonomically correct chair would allow, while at the same time, reaching out one hand toward him. Talk about your mixed messages.
“I thought you said he couldn’t teleport,” I whispered to Dante.
“Must have gone to see whoever it was that ensorcelled your stapler and got a one-time pass,” he answered, keeping his voice low and his eyes on demonic Conrad.
I ground my own teeth and leapt forward, thrusting myself between them, just as I had done a year ago with Conrad and Dante. “Conrad!” I shouted, gaining his full attention.
And I was immediately sorry I had. His eyes. Oh. His eyes were the worst part. They were soft and human, like a puppy trapped in that bloated and loathsome body.
I almost pitied him as he crouched to avoid hitting the ceiling.
Almost.
But any pity I felt was instantly displaced by an overwhelming urge to do something, anything, to hurt this man who’d stolen my life. An atavistic impulse kicked in—and when I say kicked . . . I did! Just as I’d kicked Dante in the brimstones back on the road to Hell, I kicked Conrad in his overgrown shin with all my might. And face-planted on the carpet as my coma toes, and then my entire body, passed right through him.
“You!” he cried, fear in his voice. But his eyes weren’t on me, they were on Dante.
I hauled myself up off the carpet to stand before Conrad, yelling and waving my arms at him. But just like Shannon, he wasn’t even aware of me.
But Dante he could see.
My Reaper stepped up beside me, overlong hair and sexy black robe billowing about him as if the winds of justice blew for him alone.
“I, Dante Alighieri, Reaper First Class, by the powers vested in me, hath come to collect thine soul and escort it back to Hell!”
Gosh, he was so cute when he did that. I hadn’t appreciated him the first time he’d come for Conrad’s soul and taken mine instead, but now I did. My knees grew weak and my heart pounded. Five more minutes of his manly Reaper act and I might find myself forgiving him.
He brandished his glowing scythe, holding it high and threatening.
Behind me, Shannon had finally caught enough breath to start screaming.
Oops, I’d forgotten all about my own scythe. If I’d been thinking straight, instead of fighting with my boyfriend, I could have reaped Conrad’s giant crimson ass by now.
I yanked my scythe from my waist. But before I could activate my shiny repurposed farm implement, before Dante could swing his scythe, Conrad dashed around us, his hooves gouging great holes in the carpet tiles. He banked off the big oak desk, charged ’round the front and dove beneath it, out of sight.
Shannon’s screams cut off abruptly. She ceased cowering in her dad’s chair. Instead, she sat up straight like a cheap mannequin with rebar up her, uh, back, eyes glazed, expression dazed.
I ran around—okay, through—the desk, but I didn’t see how Conrad could fit under it. And when I checked, he hadn’t. Where had he gone?
And then Shannon turned her focus my way. She had her father’s eyes and I don’t mean she’d genetically inherited his eye color. She actually had Conrad’s eyes peering out from her otherwise familiar face.
She opened her mouth, but no scream sounded. Instead Dante and I were treated to one of those classic villain bwahahaha! laughs.
Should have seen that coming, I thought, retracting my scythe.
As the laugh faded away, a small moan drew my attention. Behind the big executive chair, half hidden under the credenza, a second Shannon lay sprawled. While the one in the chair seemed solid and earthbound, the one on the floor had a hazy, ethereal quality.
“Dante,” I whispered from the corner of my mouth, turning my focus back on Conrad, who was now wearing his daughter like a bespoke suit. “He’s displaced her soul! Get him out! Get him out of her!”
Dante’s personal wind had dropped away, leaving him with nothing more than tousled hair, more tousled than usual, that is. “I don’t know if we can. Or if we’re even allowed to.”
I turned to face him, tears blurring my vision. “What do you mean ‘allowed to’? He’s stolen her body just like he stole my life! We have to get him out. I know there aren’t many laws in Hell, but surely there’s a law against this!”
Dante moved up beside me again, lowering his scythe. “I don’t know, Kirsty. After all, possession is nine-tenths of the law.”
GINA X. GRANT
Gina writes wacky fiction featuring crazy creatures. She loves the absurd, the funny and the fantastical. Despite a degree in business management, Gina has kept her quirky sense of humor, which bleeds through in everything she writes.
She lives in Toronto, Canada, just blocks from the house she grew up in. She’s married to a friendly curmudgeon from a mining town in northern Ontario. Together, they live with a miscellany of rescued pets, all named for famous jazz musicians.
Visit her online—http://www.ginaxgrant.com/
Follow her @GinaXGrant—www.Twitter.com/GinaXGrant
Visit her Facebook fan page—www.facebook.com/ginaXgrantAuthor
THE RELUCTANT REAPER SERIES
Book 1. The Reluctant Reaper
Death Is What Happens While You’re Making Other Plans
Book 2. Scythe Does Matter
Be Careful What You Wish For, It Just Might Get You
Book 3. Esprit de Corpse
Hell Is Where the Heart Is
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2013 by Gina M. Grant
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First Pocket Star Books ebook edition July 2013
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