How to be Death

by Amber Benson

  “Shut your mouth, white girl.” She glared at me as I stared at her, openmouthed, my skin crawling at the thought of where all that blood had come from. “Because it’s not like this isn’t all your fault anyway.”

  ten

  “My fault?” I croaked.

  I may have been responsible for a lot of screwups in my own life, but I couldn’t quite fathom how Kali being drenched in blood was my doing.

  “Well, it is,” she said, running her hands through her plasma-soaked hair, which now hung freely down her back in long, curling waves. “I’m here at this Death Dinner because of you and now I smell like skunk and tomato!”

  Well, that took me a moment to process. Skunk and tomato? What about all the blood … but then my nostrils were assailed by the familiar stench of skunk spray and everything clicked into place.

  Oh, shit, I thought. Some poor, unsuspecting skunk just sprayed the bejeezus out of the Hindu Goddess of Death and Destruction.

  “Kali,” I sputtered, but she held up a warning hand.

  “Skunk,” she spat at me, her eyes full of fury. “And tomato juice that your stupid serving girl poured all over my head!”

  I looked around, realizing for the first time the serving lady with the sherry was MIA—I guess she’d slipped out while I was talking to Alameda—obviously finding herself something way more exciting to get caught up in.

  “I’m so sorry, Kali,” I said, but inside I was thinking it might’ve been better if she’d actually been covered in blood like I’d first suspected.

  “I don’t want your sorry, dipwad,” she growled at me, her lips pressed into a flat line. “I want you to make me smell like a goddamned daisy!”

  “Well, why don’t we just get Jarvis to magic the smell away …” I trailed off, realizing what an idiot I sounded like when we all knew there would be no magic making to speak of for the next twenty-four hours.

  “I don’t think that’s an option, white girl,” Kali said, adjusting her lids into two malevolent slits as she went all cat-eyed with wrath.

  I looked around the drawing room, hoping for some help from the assemblage, but none was forthcoming. Without realizing it, the rest of the class had just voted me “most likely to de-skunk a pissed-off goddess.”

  Thanks, guys.

  “Okay,” I said, slowly moving toward the stinky goddess. “Why don’t we get you into a shower and then I’ll get my phone out and do a little checking around, see if we can’t find a better option than tomato juice.”

  Kali looked skeptical.

  “Look,” I continued, “if there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s digging up info online. I mean, I wasn’t the Assistant to the Vice-President of Sales at House and Yard for nothing!”

  If I thought my fierce rallying cry—go, House and Yard!—was gonna stir things up a bit and get the peeps on my side, well, I was sadly mistaken. Nonplussed was the expression of choice from the peanut gallery. Even Kali looked uncertain, but she tried to cover it by giving me a watery smile.

  “I stink, white girl,” she wailed, her lips curling downward as she fought back tears. “What will become of me?”

  I was shocked. I’d seen the woman bathed in blood, ripping the heads off her enemies and gorging on their entrails; I was not prepared to see her felled by the likes of a little skunk spray. To calm her down, I pulled my BlackBerry wannabe out from between my cleavage and began to type “skunk,” “spray,” and “removal” into the web browser. Instantly, a bunch of possible websites popped onto the screen and I started to scroll through them.

  “All right, I think I got it,” I said—and since no one else was gonna help us out, I took Kali by the arm (damn the stench!) and led her toward the door. Runt, not wanting to be left in the drawing room alone with a bunch of strangers, took off after us. As we passed through the doorway, I inclined my head in the direction of the kitchen.

  “Tell Jarvis what’s going on and see if he can get me these supplies,” I said, reeling off the list of household materials I’d need to permanently delete the stench of skunk from Kali’s flesh.

  “Will do!” Runt said, happy to be of use. She trotted off in the other direction—apparently, even a muddled Kali was protection enough against the Ender of Death—while I guided my charge farther into Casa del Amo, hopefully in the direction of a bathtub.

  “You wanna tell me how this happened?” I asked, for lack of anything better to talk about. Kali’s face turned beet red and she shook her head vehemently.

  “Oh, come on,” I whined, “I’d tell you all the good stuff if it were me.”

  Kali shook her head again, shivering as we passed through the library and into another corridor.

  “There is no ‘good stuff,’” Kali said, her voice flat. “And it’s embarrassing, dipwad.”

  “More embarrassing than getting finger-banged in the middle of the New York City Subway?” I said.

  Kali considered this for a moment before conceding:

  “Yes, you may well have the more embarrassing story, white girl.”

  “So, dish then,” I said as we wove our way through the labyrinthine corridors, stopping every now and then to try a closed door—but all were locked.

  “I was spying,” Kali said, eyes downcast.

  I tried the next door we came to, intricately carved wood set far back into the plaster wall, and when I cranked the doorknob, it pushed right open, revealing the interior of an unoccupied guest bedroom. I didn’t wait for an invitation, since none was going to be forthcoming, but just banged the door all the way open and dragged Kali inside.

  “Go on,” I said, my eyes searching for the telltale signs of an adjoining bathroom and finding two closed doors for possibilities. “You were spying?”

  I left Kali standing in the middle of the room, dripping tomato juice and skunk stink on the Oriental carpet, as I tried the first door, which only yielded a closet stuffed to the brim with men’s clothing

  “Not it,” I said, slamming the door then stalking over to the other possibility.

  Kali watched the proceedings with growing doubt, but before she completely lost her faith in me, I hit pay dirt.

  “It,” I called as I threw open the second door to reveal a beautifully appointed, mosaic-tiled bathroom with a sunken tub and matching pedestal sink and toilet.

  “Jackpot!” I said, going back to my charge and pulling her into the pristine whiteness of the bathroom.

  Together, we unwrapped her sari, pulling out the pleated front from her skirt waistband—which was drenched in skunk spray—and letting it fall to the floor, where the polluted fabric pooled into a bunch at my feet. Using the toe of my shoe, I kicked it away from us, sending it between the toilet and the pedestal sink. Next, I helped her shrug out of her shirt and skirt, both of us wrinkling our noses at the horrible mixture of tomato and skunk.

  “Oh my God,” I gagged. “I have to open a window.”

  As Kali climbed into the bath, I ran over to the bathroom window and unlatched it, throwing both sides open to get the maximum amount of ventilation into the room.

  “So, tell me who you were spying on,” I badgered as I stood at the window, inhaling the untainted air.

  “Forget it, white girl, I don’t want—” she said, turning on the faucets full blast, the sound of running water drowning out her words.

  I didn’t get a chance to ask her to elucidate further because Jarvis and Runt chose that moment to burst into the bathroom, carrying a brown cardboard box filled with all the household chemicals I’d asked for.

  “My God, the stench,” Jarvis said, reeling at the intensity of the skunk-tomato smell.

  He set the box down on the bathroom floor, then quickly backed away, his sensitive nose keeping him sequestered in the bedroom. Runt, whose olfactory senses had to be way more acute than Jarvis’s, came right into the bathroom, unfazed.

  “Wow, that smell is pungent,” she said, settling down next to the bathtub. “But it sure made it easy to find you guys.”
>
  “Thanks, Runt,” I said, petting the pup’s head as I squatted down next to the cardboard box and started digging out the stuff I’d need to make the de-skunking concoction I’d found on the Internet. “You are officially my go-to person ‘in case of emergency.’”

  “Don’t forget Jarvis,” she said, watching me mix hydrogen peroxide and baking soda in an empty plastic two-liter soda bottle. “He got all the stuff you wanted and he didn’t even blink when Zinia yelled at him for leaving.”

  “Thanks, Jarvi,” I called out, not sure if he could hear me over the flowing water. “You’re aces!”

  “Hurry up!” Kali yelled at me, her dark hair plastered to her head like a skullcap as she sat hunched in a ball next to the flowing faucet. “And close the window. I’m naked and it’s bloody freezing in here!”

  “Jeez Louise,” I mumbled under my breath as I added the last ingredient to my de-skunking solution and watched it fizz.

  “I’m waiting, white girl!” Kali said, her teeth chattering. The Hindu Goddess had done a lot for me over the past year, but I was pretty sure this was going to make us even-steven.

  “Okay, where did you get hit?” I asked, holding up the plastic two-liter bottle.

  Kali glared at me.

  “How am I supposed to know that, Calliope Reaper-Jones? Does it look like I was taking notes for posterity?”

  Fine, be a bitch, I thought, my nose burning from the foulness of the smell wafting from the bathtub. See if I de-skunk you next time!

  “Do a sniff test, give me ballpark,” I said.

  “It’s time for the Death Dinner to begin,” Jarvis yelled from the bedroom. “Are you nearly done in there?”

  “No!” Kali, Runt, and I all screamed back at once—which Jarvis took as a sign to keep his thoughts to himself. The synchronicity of our “no” definitely made Kali relax a little, and instead of the megabitch attitude I’d been getting, she started to mellow, even allowing herself a small grin at the absurdity of the situation.

  “All right, white girl.” She sighed, shaking her head. “I guess my hands and arms got it for sure.”

  She sniffed her fingers and grimaced.

  “More than for sure, actually,” I murmured as I poured the stuff in the bottle over the afflicted area and watched it fizz.

  “Are your hair and face okay?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  “They’re fine. That’s just the tomato juice the dumb bitch poured all over my head.”

  Once again I found myself wondering how the woman got the job. Wasn’t she supposed to stay in the drawing room with her sherry tray? Not go skulking around the halls, looking for trouble. I made a mental note to ask Jarvis about the woman after we were done with the whole Kali-skunk debacle.

  Luckily for the Goddess, most of the spray was on her clothes and not her skin. I could see oily secretions on the hem of her skirt and on the sari, itself, where they lay crumpled in a ball on the floor, so I suggested dousing her feet and calves in the solution—then we sat quietly, waiting for my jerry-rigged de-skunker to do its job.

  “I think it’s working,” Runt said, her more highly developed sniffer awarding us success.

  “Why don’t you wash the tomato out of your hair and we’ll go find you something else to wear,” I said to Kali. “Maybe there’s a way to get the smell out of the sari—”

  “Burn it,” she said matter-of-factly, picking up a bottle of rose-scented shampoo from the side of the tub and squirting a dollop into her hand, massaging it into her hair.

  “Are you sure?” I asked. “I bet we could get—”

  She waved me away with her hand.

  “I have a thousand more like it.”

  I shrugged and grabbed the clothes off the floor, wadding them into a ball and shoving them into the bottom of the cardboard box alongside the empty bottles of hydrogen peroxide, dish soap, and baking soda. I picked up the box, thinking I’d carry it out to a garbage can, but the stench was so overwhelming I changed direction, walking over to the casement window and dumping the whole thing out into the shrubbery.

  “Did you just litter?” Runt asked me, eyes wide.

  I shook my head.

  “It’s not littering if I plan to pick it up later.”

  Runt looked at me curiously, trying to assess the veracity of my statement.

  “If you say so, Cal.”

  “We’ll be right back,” I called to Kali, leaving her to finish her shower in privacy as Runt and I returned to the bedroom to harass Jarvis into getting her some replacement clothing.

  Jarvis sat up when he heard the door shut, looking sheepish that we’d caught him admiring the octagonal-tiled terra-cotta floor while he perched on the edge of the bed, waiting for us to finish in the bathroom.

  “Clothes? Any extras hanging around for Kali to wear?” I asked, flopping down on the bed beside my Executive Assistant. “Or maybe the bodyguard dude could run back to our room and get something of mine?”

  “No,” Jarvis said, shaking his head. “I want him no more than thirty seconds away from you at any given time.”

  “Okay, sorry,” I mumbled, annoyed—I guess that meant the bodyguard was lurking out in the hallway somewhere.

  “I don’t understand why this couldn’t have happened earlier,” Jarvis harrumphed. “When I could still use magic.”

  I shrugged, hoping I looked sufficiently contrite, but inside I was dancing. I didn’t want to be all sour grapes, but I actually liked the fact we’d landed in a magic-free zone. I wasn’t the most adept at wormhole calling or spell making or monster defeating—okay, I wasn’t adept at all—but I was a great gal to have around when it came to traditional (i.e., nonmagical) problem solving. It’s what I did when I worked at House and Yard, and it was something I could do now when everyone else was at such a disadvantage, their magical abilities on hiatus.

  “I know it’s tough, Jarvi,” I said, patting him on the back, “but we’ll get through it. I promise.”

  Jarvis shot me a dubious look, but I just smiled back at him innocently.

  “You appear to be taking this turn of events in stride, Calliope,” Jarvis said, his eyes narrowed. “It wouldn’t have anything to do with your disregard for magic, would it?”

  “I don’t disregard magic,” I scoffed. “I just don’t love it, that’s all. And it’s not my fault I’m not good at it—”

  “Ha!” Jarvis shot back at me. “There it is! Excuses, excuses, excuses!”

  “It’s not an excuse, Jarvis, when I’m just not good at something—”

  “You’re not good at magic, Calliope,” he interrupted me, “because you have an emotional block against it. It’s a purely Freudian concept.”

  “Oh, brother,” I moaned, flopping back on the bed, the soft down comforter cradling my head and making me want to forget the stupid Death Dinner so I could just lie there all night. “No psychoanalysis, Jarvi. I can’t bear it right now.”

  “Fine,” he said, giving up entirely too easily, which made me uneasy. “Shall we find our stinking rose a new outfit for the evening then?”

  He stood up, my head bouncing twice on the comforter.

  “Yup, let’s do this thing,” I replied, using every ounce of energy I possessed to make myself get up off the way too comfortable bed.

  “Hey, Runt, stay here and make sure Kali doesn’t decide to pull a naked lady at the dinner party act,” I said, giving the pup a wink. In the bathroom, we could hear Kali singing Cee Lo Green’s “Fuck You” in time with the loudly cascading faucet.

  “Dinner has been delayed, but not indefinitely, so let’s make it snappy,” Jarvis said, walking to the bedroom door and opening it.

  I pointed at the bed, which still held the imprint of my shape, and said:

  “Hey, Jarvi, I think I gotta get me one of these beds. Très comfortable.”

  Jarvis rolled his eyes.

  “Leave it to you to fixate on the furniture.”

  “But it’s so comfortable, Jarvis,
” I snickered, glad he wasn’t harping on my lack of magical ability anymore.

  When Jarvis was in his old faun body, I’d been quite a bit taller than him and able to outwalk him without working up a sweat, but now that he was in his new, taller body, I was the one left in the dust. I had to take two giant steps to match his one, and frankly, when he was peeved with me, he walked superfast, making it very exhausting to keep up with him—especially as we maneuvered our way back through the labyrinthine corridors of Casa del Amo.