How to be Death

by Amber Benson

  Like a shark scenting blood in the water, he’d gone right to the source of my guilt, snagging the offending bag from under my bed and brandishing it above his head like Martin Luther with his ninety-five theses.

  “And what is this, pray tell?” Jarvis said in his clipped British accent—an accent that still sounded strange coming out of the mouth of the lanky, hipster body Jarvis had appropriated after I’d accidentally wished him dead.

  “It’s, uhm … a bag?” I said innocently.

  One bushy, brown eyebrow kinked in derision—and for, like, the thousandth time since Jarvis had acquired his new body, I marveled at how bizarre it was to see the old Jarvis expressions on this new, angular face.

  “Oh, really?” he rejoined, trilling the r in “really” like no one’s business, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “A bag, you say? I would never have guessed.”

  Jarvis had been an extended member of my family for as long as I could remember—growing up, he’d been my dad’s long-suffering Executive Assistant and then, when my dad was kidnapped and I was named interim head of Death, Inc., in his stead, he’d become my own Man Friday. Over the past year we’d had our ups and downs, mostly because I’d had zero interest in running Death, Inc., and my bad attitude had peeved him to no end, but I knew when push came to shove and I needed someone in my corner, Jarvis would always be there. A fact he’d proven again and again as he’d helped me extricate myself from one ridiculous scrape after another, never once complaining about my ineptitude. Okay, he might’ve complained once or twice, but that was it and he was probably more than justified.

  Anyway, it was still strange to think that the Jarvis I’d known as a child—the tiny four-foot-eleven frame, goat haunches (you read that right—Jarvis was a faun in his previous incarnation), and thick Magnum, P.I.–era Tom Selleck mustache—was gone, replaced now by the long-limbed, emaciated body standing in front of me, shaking the Louis Vuitton travel bag in my face like it was anathema.

  “And wherever did you find said bag?” he’d continued, glaring at me.

  “Uhm, wow, I have no idea how that got there …” I hedged, but this only garnered a “tut-tut” from Jarvis, whose hand-on-hip stance brooked no argument.

  Jeez, I couldn’t get anything past the guy. He knew my every trick, tell, and twitch … and he wasn’t buying even a word of my dissembling. I might as well have just finished off every sentence with “And, yes, I’m a big fat liar!” and been done with it.

  “Okay.” I sighed, feeling bad for trying and failing to pull a fast one—mostly I felt bad about the failing part, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. “I know exactly how that bag got there and it’s not pretty.”

  Jarvis nodded, gesturing for me to continue.

  “I fell off the wagon.”

  Jarvis raised the other eyebrow, making it seem as if two hairy caterpillars had overtaken his forehead.

  I sighed.

  “I didn’t even go in the store—it was in the window and I couldn’t just leave it there—so I used the corporate card—”

  Jarvis winced, a pained expression pinching his face at the mention of the “corporate card,” but I soldiered on.

  “And now I feel like a jerk, so I put it under the bed and I can’t even enjoy it. It’s terrible,” I said as I flopped onto my mattress, the fluffy purple comforter I’d bought online poofing out around me.

  The pained expression slowly melted into a wide-lipped grin as I continued:

  “I mean, I feel exactly like the dude in A Clockwork Orange—reconditioned to feel only disgust for my old, bad habits,” I added, staring ahead glumly.

  Having said my piece, I waited for the traditional Jarvis tongue-lashing to begin, but to my surprise, he circumnavigated my expectations and, with a weary sigh, sat down on the bed beside me, making the comforter poof even more.

  As I batted at the comforter, trying to unpoof it, I decided the room I’d grown up in seemed much smaller whenever the new and improved Jarvis was in it. It was as if his long, skeletal frame took up space in the fifth dimension, displacing more matter in our third-dimensional world than it was supposed to.

  “Keep it,” Jarvis said, patting my shoulder.

  Those two words were like a shot of adrenaline straight to my heart. I immediately sat up straighter, my brain wary and wanting confirmation on the validity of the words I’d just heard Jarvis utter.

  “Really?” I said, not believing him, but really, really wanting to.

  He shrugged, his shoulders encroaching on earlobe territory.

  “We’re attending the annual Death Dinner and Masquerade Ball and you’ll need a carryall. So, I suppose it wasn’t the worst of purchases.”

  It was weird to think the fake excuse I’d conjured up for myself as I stood outside the plate glass window of Barneys’ happy-shopping-funland was now the exact rationale Jarvis was using to allow me to keep the bag.

  It was like Jarvis had pawed his way into the confines of my mind and implanted a brainwashing device that scrubbed out the old Callie in favor of the more mature Callie 2.0. Or was the answer even simpler than that: Was I just embracing my new job with enough verve that I was starting to think like Jarvis?

  Creepy!

  this idea was kind of unsettling, but not as unsettling as I’d expected it to be. Over the course of the last few months, I’d found I had a bit of a knack for the whole Death thing. I mean, this was no “duck to water” scenario, or anything so instinctual, but with each new task or problem I overcame, there was the growing awareness I wasn’t a total dunce at the job. My dad had set the reins of Death, Inc., in my hands for a reason and I was determined, now that he was gone, not to let him down.

  Which meant in the future I was going to have to think a lot more like Jarvis than I wanted to—and I was also going to have to tamp down the persnickety voice in the back of my head that said I wasn’t good enough for the job. If I could do those two things, then I might actually—Heaven forbid—have a chance at making a go of the family business.

  “FYI: That thing totally makes you look slutty.”

  Startled out of my thoughts, I looked up to find my little sister, Clio, standing in the doorway to my bedroom, hands on hips, face squirming with disgust as she focused on the tiny, white rhinestone-encrusted bikini top I held in my hand. I quickly dropped the now noxious piece of fabric back onto the bed, watching as the long white ties dangled off the edge of the comforter like spandex mealworms.

  “You really think so?” I said, knowing she was right, yet still wanting to take the damn thing with me anyway. It might’ve been a slutster piece of clothing … but it was my slutster piece of clothing, and besides, it made my butt look amazing.

  “I know so,” she shot back, rolling her eyes. “But don’t let me stop you from embarrassing yourself.”

  I decided to let the potshot pass without comment. Instead, I stared down into the empty weekend bag, willing myself to get a move on. I had a wormhole-calling lesson in fifteen minutes and then Jarvis, Runt, and I were heading to the Haunted Hearts Castle, where the annual Death Dinner and Masquerade Ball were being held.

  “I wish you were going with us,” I said to Clio—and I meant it. I’d started to rely on her counsel, as far as the day-to-day running of Death was concerned, and not having her keen mind with me at the Death Dinner made me nervous.

  She may have just turned eighteen that summer, but she was the smartest person, other than Jarvis, I knew. With her techno savvy (she could hack her way into any computer) and intuitive knowledge of how people operated, I’d been more than pleased when she’d decided to eschew college for a year to work at Death, Inc., helping me put the company back in order after it was almost demolished by the Devil and our not-so-dearly departed older sister, Thalia.

  The two of them had staged a coup on Purgatory, murdered my dad—who’d been the President and CEO before me—and nearly destroyed the Hall of Death, where the Death Records for all of humanity were housed. They and thei
r cohorts had worked hard to decimate the employee pool at Death, Inc., so that now we were dangerously understaffed, a problem we were still trying to remedy. I’d met with five possible replacements for Suri, the Day Manager of the Hall of Death, but none of them had had the chutzpah and class of the young woman who’d lost her life defending the records from my older sister’s evil clutches.

  And she’d been just one of the many casualties we’d had that day.

  I’d inherited a job that was in flux, that needed my complete and utter attention—and since my old boss Hyacinth was officially MIA (she was actually spending her time jailed in Purgatory for the part she played in the Death, Inc., coup, but no one in the human world knew that), I’d gotten laid off from my assisting job at House and Yard just in time to devote myself full stop to rebuilding the company.

  Because I’d been so busy, at first I hadn’t missed my old life: the Battery Park City apartment I’d had to give up, my friends (who I never really saw anyway), and the City of New York itself. But now things had started to settle down and I was beginning to feel a burning yen for my past existence. I liked Newport, Rhode Island, where Sea Verge, the family mansion, was located, but the provincial city was not New York. There were no all-night diners, the shopping was boutique-centric, and everyone I’d ever known there had either fled or was married with a bunch of rug rats. So needless to say, the Mommy and Me crew weren’t really interested in hanging out with a cosmopolitan, single gal newly arrived from the wilds of Manhattan.

  Having Clio in my direct orbit made everything a lot easier. I could talk to her about anything, and no matter how dorky I sounded, she never judged. After my dad’s death, she’d spent a few months living with her boyfriend, Indra, a Hindu God who’d carved out a human existence for himself making Bollywood musicals—hiding in plain sight, if you will—and though I’d pretty much written him off as a narcissistic jerkoid when I’d first met him, I’d had to eat my words when he’d shown himself to be a stand-up guy, sticking to Clio like glue during the crazy emotional roller-coaster ride she’d endured in the aftermath of our dad’s death. I was a little shaky about the age difference—I’m talking millennia here—but other than that, I was all for the relationship.

  But I would’ve been a liar if I hadn’t said I wasn’t a little disappointed when Clio chose to spend the weekend helping Indra shoot his new film rather than coming with me to the Death Dinner. I knew I was in good hands—Runt, my hellhound pup, was a master at sniffing out bad guys, and Jarvis was just aces, in general—but, still, I was gonna miss having my little sister to lean on.

  “You know I’d go with you in a heartbeat, but Indra really wants me to be there for the shoot,” Clio said, ripping me out of my thoughts again and back into reality.

  “I know,” I said.

  “It’s his first nonmusical and he’s really nervous about it,” she added, the tendrils of her short pink hair framing her face like starfish arms.

  Clio and I were both part Siren, which accounted for Clio’s stunning good looks and feminine demeanor (sadly, the stunning good looks had missed me by a mile), but even I could see that the gift of beauty was a double-edged sword. Clio had spent a good chunk of her high school career hiding her features behind thick, black plastic-framed glasses and a shaved head, in hopes she could stave off the bevy of lovesick men who followed her everywhere.

  Not a chance.

  Poor Clio, all she wanted was to be taken seriously—an impossibility when your high school teachers develop inappropriate crushes on you, giving you A-pluses even when you’re purposely turning in D-minus work.

  “Well, you know you’ll be missed,” I said, trying to hide my disappointment. “But I totally get it. Mr. Sex on a Stick needs you.”

  Mr. Sex on a Stick was what I called Indra whenever I wanted to rile Clio up. I hadn’t coined the term, a magazine had that dubious honor, but it was still my favorite way to harass my sister. I don’t think she particularly enjoyed the fact that her man was an object of sexual fascination to millions of horny housewives across the world.

  “Gross!” she said, coming into the room just long enough to grab a pillow off my bed and lob it at my head.

  “I’m just saying—” I bleated as the pillow connected with the side of my face.

  “Get packed, butthead,” Clio mock-growled at me. “Jarvis wants you down in the library stat for your wormhole-calling lesson.”

  And with that piece of info imparted, she flounced back down the hallway, leaving me to finish my packing in peace. I sighed and started pulling clothes from my closet, nicely folding a trio of light summer dresses and a white linen pantsuit into my weekend bag so they wouldn’t get too wrinkled. Some PJs, socks, and underwear rounded out my wardrobe, but it wasn’t until I’d pretty much filled the bag to the brim that I had a change of heart about my slutster status. Picking up the string bikini from its resting place on my bed, I covertly slid the wanton thing between the folds of the white linen suit, where it disappeared nicely inside the similar-colored fabric.

  Slutster or not, I was gonna look fine in that bikini … and if the man-whose-very-name-made-me-nauseous-with-unrequited-love-whenever-I-thought-about-him was there and he just happened to see me looking all hot and sexy? Well, that was just an added bonus.

  Eat your heart out, Daniel, I thought as I zipped up my bag and hoisted it off the bed, ready for whatever Trouble came my way.

  I just hoped it was the kind punctuated by a capital T.

  Hee-haw!

  two

  “You do understand the concept of folding space? Correct?”

  Jarvis’s voice had that smarmy “know it all” quality to it that really rubbed me the wrong way. He acted like I was supposed to just intuitively know/understand all these advanced physics concepts like “folding space” and “string theory.” I got that all of these things were the framework upon which magic, time travel, etc., were based, but it didn’t mean my brain was up for grasping the actual science part.

  “I get that time and space are, like, ideas…”

  I trailed off as Jarvis closed his eyes, trying to calm himself.

  “Why do I have to know this stuff?” I asked again for, like, the three-thousandth time. We’d been working on the whole wormhole-calling thing for the past few months and the best I could do was set Jarvis’s hair on fire.

  I hadn’t meant to do it, I’d just gotten frustrated—I’m good at the magicky stuff only when I’m feeling emotional or am in a high-stress situation—and then before I knew what was happening, Jarvis’s hair was doing an impression of Michael Jackson at his infamous Pepsi commercial shoot. Luckily, Jarvis is way more adept at magic than me and was able to put out the fire before it did any permanent damage, but he’d watched me like a hawk ever since.

  “You have to understand why spells and wormholes work in order to fully control them,” Jarvis intoned, in an exact repeat of what he’d said the first—and last—time I’d asked him the question.

  Jarvis, his patience worn thin, sat down heavily on one of the library’s wingback chairs, his long legs splayed out in front of him like he was a gangling schoolboy. Resting his elbows on the arms of the chair, he started massaging his temples as if that would make the lesson run smoother.

  As much as I hated to admit it, I was a terrible Death student. I didn’t like magic, I didn’t like monsters, I was not a fan of the recently departed … and liking all those things kinda went hand in hand with running Death, Inc. I think my noninterest was the biggest reason why I sucked at wormhole calling—I once heard someone say emotion can’t get through a tense muscle, and I was pretty sure you could supplant “emotion” with “magic” and it would wholly apply to my problem.

  “Shall we try again?” Jarvis said finally, opening his eyes to look at me again.

  I shrugged.

  “I’m game if you are.”

  My answer did nothing to ease Jarvis’s worry.

  The key to calling up a wormhole so you c
ould travel space and time without having to get in a car, train, or plane was to envision exactly where you wanted to go and then imagine yourself there. It didn’t matter if you’d never been there before and had no clue how it looked. All that was important was holding the idea of the place in your mind. It was this link that enabled you to access the wormhole system and get where you wanted to go.

  I was inept at this task. I could think of the place, get the idea in my head, and then two seconds later my mind was spinning off into other directions, my thoughts like buckshot. I didn’t do this on purpose. I was just unfocused—a problem I’d had since I was a little kid. I guess you could say I had a touch of the old “attention deficit disorder.” Unless I was just completely obsessed with something, I tended to get distracted super easily.