How to be Death

by Amber Benson

  “Go on,” Naapi said, looking up for the first time, dark smudges of exhaustion underneath his eyes. “I, for one, would like to understand why all this has happened.”

  I remembered him asking Jarvis earlier in the night if we thought his announcement during dinner had caused any of the mayhem. The dark smudges must’ve been as much from guilt as they were from heartache.

  I glanced at Jarvis and he nodded, letting me know he remembered the same exchange.

  “Well, it’s all very simple,” Freezay began. “The book, How to Be Death: A Fully Annotated Guide, was returned to Calliope Reaper-Jones yesterday night here at the Haunted Hearts Castle. It had been in Heaven since her father’s untimely passing, but with the advent of All Hallows’ Eve, the time had come for Death to possess it again.”

  “It’s true,” Jarvis said, everyone turning to look at him now. “The book is not just legend. I was a witness to the exchange myself, here in the library more than twenty-four hours ago.”

  Having said his piece, he closed his mouth and let Freezay continue.

  “It was the coveting of this book—this rare and precious piece of Death Arcana—by a number of formidable opponents that lay the groundwork for the commission of these three murders.”

  “Don’t beat around the bush, man,” Erlik growled, glowering at Freezay. “Who did it?”

  But Freezay wasn’t going to be bullied. He was enjoying the spotlight, stretching out the explanation for as long as he could.

  “First, you have to understand that the book isn’t precisely what it’s supposed to be,” Freezay said, ignoring Erlik’s outburst. “Isn’t that right, Daniel?”

  All eyes shot over to Daniel, including my own—this was a development I hadn’t expected. I had no idea where Freezay was going with this, which meant I had now bought a ticket for the same roller-coaster ride as everyone else.

  “That’s right,” Daniel said, his face serious. “I don’t know how you guessed it, Detective, but Heaven and the Board of Death, in tandem with myself, made the decision to replace the original copy of How to Be Death with a cleverly forged reproduction after we were informed that an attempt would be made to steal the book during the Death Dinner.”

  Shock, and then suspicion, filled the room, but before anyone could comment, the door that led to the corridor burst open and Kali and Horace barreled in, a cowering Donald Ali between them.

  “Ah,” Freezay said, rubbing his palms together excitedly. “So, the guest of honor has finally arrived!”

  twenty-six

  “It was an accident!” Donald Ali bawled, his nose a bloodied, swollen mess. “A horrible, horrible accident!”

  Well, now I know who attacked me in the secret passage, I thought, staring at Donald Ali’s miserable face as he sat on the edge of the armchair Kali and Horace had deposited him in, his arms wrapped around himself as he rocked back and forth, misery exuding from every pore.

  “Please, you have to believe me,” he wailed. “My intentions were never to harm her, but then the book was gone and we argued and I just saw red. The poker was there and I … I…”

  He stopped, unable to go on, his lower lip trembling as he tried to hold back the tears threatening to escape and trickle down his cheeks.

  “We found him upstairs in his room,” Kali said, addressing Freezay and totally ignoring me. Obviously, she was still pissed at me for being such a bitch. I was going to have to apologize sooner rather than later because I did not want to be on the Hindu Goddess’s shit list any longer than necessary.

  “He was in possession of this bottle,” Horace said, holding up a replica of the gun bluing we’d found in the kitchen that had been used to poison Zinia. “But I was able to wrest it away from him before he swallowed any of its contents.”

  Freezay plucked the bottle from Horace’s hand, nodding his head in thanks.

  “And so another piece of the puzzle falls into place,” he said, holding the bottle of gun bluing up to Donald Ali’s face. “You planned on killing yourself?”

  Donald Ali swallowed hard then nodded.

  “Without the book,” he said sadly, “what was the point?”

  “So you admit it was the book you were after,” Freezay crowed.

  “Of course,” Donald Ali replied sadly.

  “And is it true, then, to say that Coy had no idea why you actually wanted the book?” Freezay badgered.

  Donald Ali took a deep, shaky breath.

  “Yes, it’s true.”

  “She thought,” Freezay continued, “that you wanted to collect the book, just like you collected so many other rare things. She had no clue how desperate you really were. Why you needed to possess it so badly.”

  Horrified by what he’d done, Donald Ali covered his mouth with his hand and nodded.

  “I have Stage Four pancreatic cancer,” he whispered. “The book would’ve saved me.”

  If Donald Ali expected any empathy from Freezay, he was sadly mistaken.

  “When Coy came to you with her plan,” Freezay continued, “you realized the book could be your saving grace. Of course, you’d let Coy use it first to exact revenge upon her brother—and then it would come to you and you would use it to make a deal with Death; you would barter the book in exchange for your own immortality.”

  I scanned the faces of the crowd as they ingested the information, trying to make sense of it all.

  “But it wasn’t there. Someone had beaten Coy to it,” Donald Ali said, his voice cracking. “I didn’t believe her. I forced her to take me back to the bedroom even though it was a terrible risk had we been discovered.”

  “The room was empty when you got there?”

  Donald Ali nodded.

  “Death and her dog hadn’t returned yet—”

  “We were walking back with Daniel,” I added.

  “What happened when you got there?” Freezay asked, waving at me to be silent.

  Donald Ali’s eyes glazed over, his mind returning to the scene of the crime.

  “We got there and the room was unoccupied,” he began, his voice soft as a small child’s. “Coy had seen God’s assistant give you the book while you were in the library. She’d expected you to take it back to your room after the ball and hide it, but no matter where she looked, it wasn’t there. I made Coy show me around the room, prove to me that the book wasn’t anywhere—I even checked the secret compartment in the bathroom, but it was empty—”

  Because Constance had already stolen it, I thought.

  “—and then I realized that I didn’t believe her. My gut told me that she’d double-crossed me and then I don’t really know what happened next, but suddenly the poker was in my hand … and then she was lying on the ground in front of me.”

  “What did you do next?” Freezay asked, encouraging the other man to go on.

  “I heard someone at the door, so I dragged Coy’s body into the secret passageway behind the fireplace. At first, I didn’t know what to do, but then an idea popped into my head. One that would give restitution to Coy for the violence I’d perpetrated against her and, at the same time, save me from discovery…”

  “You decided to frame Horace for his sister’s murder,” Freezay finished for him. “That would be Coy’s revenge—Horace accused of a sororicide he didn’t commit.”

  “It was brilliant,” Donald Ali murmured. “Coy had told me all about seeing her brother at dinner and I knew exactly how best to play the whole thing out.”

  “You ran back to the kitchen, grabbed a butcher knife, and while Calliope was in the shower, you set your plan into motion,” Freezay said.

  “I was seen,” Donald Ali said softly. “Zinia Monroe was in the kitchen and she saw me take the knife. It was only a matter of time before she put two and two together.”

  “You poisoned her,” I said, a surge of sadness at the futility of Zinia’s death. Then, I added: “But why try and shoot her, too?”

  Donald Ali frowned.

  “Shoot her? Why would I shoo
t her? I’d already poisoned her. I wouldn’t want her to suffer doubly—”

  Those words set off something explosive deep inside Fabian Lazarev, and he jumped out of his seat, rage smoldering in his eyes as he attacked the older man.

  “You son of a bitch!” Lazarev screamed as he knocked Donald Ali to the ground. “I’ll show you suffering!”

  He pummeled at the older man’s already busted face, fists slamming into bone and cartilage while blood blossomed bright and red beneath his fingers. Grasping the old man by the hair, he yanked his wobbling head up then slammed it down into the floor over and over again.

  “Stop it!” Jarvis yelled as he and Daniel attempted to pull Lazarev off Donald Ali.

  “Get away!” Lazarev screamed, a hysterical bacchanal refusing to let go even as Jarvis and Daniel grabbed him by the arms, restraining him.

  By the time they were finally able to drag Fabian Lazarev away, the other man’s face was a pulpy mess, broken dentures protruding from a slackened jaw.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” Freezay shouted at Lazarev as Daniel and Jarvis threw him back down on the love seat.

  “He killed Coy!” Lazarev shouted back at him, loosing flecks of bloody saliva from his mouth. “Then he cut off her head and burnt her heart … my God…”

  Lazarev broke down, dropping his face into his palms and sobbing loudly.

  “You told them what she was planning, didn’t you?” Freezay said softly, placing a hand on the Russian’s shoulder. Lazarev shrugged it away, gulping down air as he continued to cry. “I didn’t understand why you felt so much guilt until Daniel said someone tipped off the Board…”

  “I didn’t want anything bad to happen to her,” Lazarev cried, looking up at Freezay with the pleading eyes of a child. “If she stole the book, it would be the end for her, so I prevented it … and then she died anyway … and so horribly.”

  Freezay nodded, letting Lazarev know that he understood.

  “You loved her, but you wouldn’t be her decoy.”

  Lazarev took a shuttering breath.

  “I refused her, so she manipulated him”—he pointed at Daniel—“to get an invitation to the Death Dinner.”

  I looked over at Daniel and saw genuine sadness on his face.

  “The Board of Death had her under suspicion from the beginning. She’s been chasing me for months, trying to work her way in, but nothing ever happened between us. And then I was instructed to invite her,” Daniel said, “but that was all. I never touched her. I swear to God.”

  Lazerev appeared to relax, the notion that Coy might have been true to him throughout the whole sordid affair making him sob even harder.

  “You swear it?” he asked, his voice weak with hope.

  Daniel nodded.

  “I was supposed to keep watch over her, catch her in the act of stealing the book, but I …” Daniel paused, looking guilty now. “I failed.”

  Instead of keeping an eye on Coy when she took off in the middle of the Death Dinner, he’d stayed to look after me. When he should’ve been following Coy, he was walking Runt and me back to our room. He didn’t love Coy after all. He loved me.

  Kali had been wrong. The argument she’d heard between Lazarev and Coy had been filled with a lover’s jealousy—it didn’t mean that anything had happened between Coy and Daniel.

  I looked over at Daniel, our eyes catching, and it took every ounce of restraint I possessed not to throw my arms around him and kiss him silly. Under no circumstance was now the time for a reunion.

  While Freezay and Jarvis attended to the unconscious Donald Ali, Uriah Drood took the floor, lumbering over to the fireplace and claiming Freezay’s spot.

  “So that’s that,” he said, running his finger across the mantel. “Donald Ali killed Coy and the others for a useless book. Case closed.”

  Freezay, who was still crouched by Donald Ali’s side, glared up at Drood.

  “No, that’s not case closed. Not by a long shot.”

  Leaving Jarvis to tend to the unconscious man, Freezay rose to his feet.

  “We know how and why Coy died, but it’s only the start of this sordid mess. It’s only after her death that the story begins its ingenious twist.”

  Uriah Drood gawked at Freezay as the detective made his way back over to the fireplace, reclaiming his old spot and sending Drood scurrying back to the sideboard.

  “Actually, Mr. Drood,” Freezay said, “you played a much bigger role in the events than I’d even realized.”

  “Me?” Drood said, his eyes wide. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Freezay turned his attention away from Drood, leaving the larger man to fret over what exactly had been meant by that statement. Then, picking up the thread of the murder plot, Freezay continued the story.

  “I have to say it was a very clever plan. So clever it had me stumped until thirty minutes ago when”—he turned to wink at me—“an offhand comment from Calliope elucidated the whole plot.”

  Like a tennis match in progress, everyone turned their heads to look at me, then back again to Freezay, when he asked:

  “How many people in this room are left-handed?”

  Freezay narrowed his eyes and repeated the question.

  “Who in this room is left-handed?”

  Horace was the first to raise his hand, followed by Erlik and Oggie.

  “You’re left-handed,” Caoimhe said—and it was only after her prodding that Morrigan threw in her lot with the other lefties.

  “So that means the rest of you are right-handed,” Freezay said, pointing out the obvious. “Very interesting.”

  “What does any of this have to do with anything?” Erlik growled at Freezay. “You have your murderer. Stop wasting our time.”

  He stood up to go, but Daniel took a step forward, blocking his path.

  “No one’s going anywhere.”

  Erlik moved to bypass him, but Daniel grabbed the other man’s arm, restraining him so he couldn’t go any farther.

  “Sit down,” Daniel said, his voice even. “Before I make you sit down.”

  Erlik looked around, hoping to garner some support for his cause, but no one would catch his eye.

  “Damn it!” he spat. “You’re all cowards.”

  But he sat back down in his seat, not at all pleased about being stymied from making an early retreat.

  “A copycat killer is one who assumes the modus operandi of another murderer. In this case, it was done as a way to conceal the copycat killer’s true identity and to place blame squarely on the original murderer.”

  All eyes were riveted to Freezay. He paused, waiting for a reaction from his audience, but none came. Instead, the quiet in the room deepened and maybe that was reaction enough.

  “Once again Horace was the intended victim of this masquerade—but unbeknownst to our killer, he has an alibi for at least one of the murders.”

  Horace leaned back against the doorway that led out into the hallway, blocking any attempts at flight with his body.

  “Kali?” Freezay said, indicating that the Hindu Goddess of Death and Destruction should speak.

  Kali struck a pose similar to the one Uriah Drood had attempted earlier, putting his wannabe pageant stance to shame.

  “I know Horace by his given name: Huitzilopochtli,” she said, moving her hands languidly as she spoke. “Of course, we are not all friends, but most Gods and Goddesses know each other by sight.”

  “I had no idea who you were,” Naapi said to Horace, shaking his head. “Please accept my apologies.”

  Horace inclined his head.

  “No apology is necessary.”

  Kali glared at the two men, encouraging them to shut up. With her dark hair and flashing eyes, she was not a woman to be trifled with.

  “I was talking, but whatever,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Anyway, I decided to spy on him, to discover why he was here. I didn’t know that the reason was his sister, Coyolxauhqui, who was attending the dinner as
Daniel’s date.”

  “I thought you knew all the Gods and Goddesses on sight,” Uriah Drood said snarkily.

  “She’d had work done.” Kali glared at him, the words coming with a defensive edge, and if looks could kill, Uriah Drood would’ve been a dead man. “Plastic surgery work.”

  “She’d been hiding from me for a long time,” Horace said. “Living amongst the humans for protection.”

  “We understand,” Freezay said to Horace. “Please continue, Kali.”