by Amber Benson
“I think we got it under control,” I breathed, my chest making a sucking sound as I spoke. I looked down at the gaping, bloody hole in my chest and blanched. Suddenly, Senenmut was beside me, holding me up by my waist as a complete and utter blackness threatened to consume me.
“Totally under control,” I rasped, pushing Senenmut away as I gave Kali a rakish grin. Then my eyes rolled backward inside their sockets and I pitched forward.
It was Senenmut who caught me, holding me tight so that I wouldn’t smash into the ground. But by then, I was nearly unconscious, so it didn’t really register when he whispered these final words of farewell into my ear as he held me close:
“Thank you, my friend.”
epilogue
I stood in the middle of my living room, trying to decide what to do with the nearly naked men coasters. They were strong reminders of the visit that Hatshepsut (pretending to be Madame Papillon) and her Minx had paid me, and frankly I kind of wanted them out of my apartment.
It was hard to believe that Hatshepsut and her Minx were no more. Even now, it was hard for me to think about their deaths because it reminded me of how incredibly close I had come to losing Clio and Jarvis—and that was something that I never wanted to experience ever again.
The one nice thing about your sister dying—and then not dying—is that you get the chance to do things a little differently than you did before. So, when Clio finally confessed to me that she had been seeing Indra, I didn’t freak out or get all big-sister bossy on her; I just told her that I was happy for her—and that if he hurt her, I’d cut his balls off.
Actually, I had kind of gotten over my bad first impression of Indra. In the end, he had been the one to alert Kali that something was fishy over at Sea Verge. Apparently, he’d been trying to get ahold of Clio all day, and when he finally did get her on the phone, she acted like she had no idea who he was. Needless to say, Indra had not liked that one little bit.
All I can say is that I was glad that he and Kali had gotten there when they did because it took their combined forces to finally subdue Nephthys and her brood. Once they had gotten them all corralled—and dredged out of the water—Kali had called in a team from the Psychical Bureau of Investigations to transport them over to the Purgatorial Court for arraignment.
I was out cold at the time, but I had heard about the after-math from both Clio and Jarvis, so I also knew that Kali had taken custody of Daniel and Senenmut, intending to take them before the Board of Death for evaluation.
The one thing I felt really bad about was that I didn’t get to say good-bye to Senenmut. After careful consideration, the Board of Death had sent him directly to Heaven, where he would then be expeditiously returned to the recycling pool of souls.
I had wanted to tell him thank you for all that he’d done for me; that without his influence, Bast and her cohorts might well have gotten the upper hand and I would have ended up with no body and no Clio and no Jarvis. I also wanted to tell him how sorry I was for how Hatshepsut had treated him; that I didn’t think anyone deserved to suffer the way he had—especially someone as kind and caring as he was.
But after all the crap he’d been through, I guess that maybe the best thing for him wasn’t to linger around waiting for me to say good-bye. Maybe the kindest cut had been to give his soul a rest from all the terrible things that it had endured.
I was suddenly pulled out of my maudlin thoughts by a loud knock at the front door.
Forced into action by unexpected company, I grabbed my trash can out of the kitchen and dumped all the naked man coasters into it. I was just replacing the can under the kitchen sink when I heard another knock. I raced over to the door and put my eyeball up to the peephole.
Nervousness flooded my body as I recognized my visitor.
“What’re you doing here?” I asked, opening the door wide so that Daniel could come inside.
He looked a lot better than the last time I had seen him—well, at least he was conscious this time.
“I was just in the neighborhood,” Daniel said, following me back into the living room and plopping down on my couch as I stared at him, surprised to realize that this was the first time he had ever been in my apartment before.
Even though it was nearly one o’clock in the afternoon, I was still in my floral print pajamas, my hair a rat’s nest of tangles. Luckily, I had brushed my teeth, but that was as far as my good hygiene went. I was supposed to be spending the day cleaning, but it had been a superbusy week at work and my whole body, especially the spot where the staff had pierced my rib cage, still felt kind of funny, so I had mostly been lying on the couch reading back issues of Marie Claire and Elle—hence the PJs.
“Actually, that’s not really true,” he said as I sat down on the couch beside him, my hands in my lap. “I wanted to see you . . . to tell you thanks.”
I shrugged, embarrassed.
“No one seemed to know what happened to you,” I said finally, changing the subject. “I asked Kali, but she said that your fate was top secret and to mind my own business.”
“I didn’t just come here to say thanks. There was some other stuff that I wanted to explain to you,” Daniel said, looking sheepish.
“Oh?” I said.
He nodded.
“Nice PJs, by the way,”
I rolled my eyes, embarrassed again.
“I didn’t know I was gonna have company, so you’re lucky that I even brushed my teeth.”
Suddenly, Daniel reached out and took my hand. I stared at our intertwined fingers and my heart started to beat faster.
“Callie, I want to apologize—” he began.
“For what?” I said, interrupting him. I was starting to feel pretty nervous being in such close proximity to the guy I was kind of in love with.
“For not being straight with you from the beginning.”
His ice blue eyes found mine and I struggled to catch my breath.
I shrugged.
“Don’t shrug like that,” Daniel said. “What I did to you wasn’t cool. It’s just that I didn’t want to burden you with all my troubles because . . . well, I really liked you.”
I couldn’t breathe. Seriously, my lungs stopped working.
“I didn’t know what you thought of me. I was the Devil’s protégé, and a few of the times that you thought you were spending time with me, it wasn’t, well, actually me.”
I squeezed his hand.
“I know. The Devil told me.”
Now it was Daniel’s turn to blush.
“It was really hard for me,” he said, “being stuck in my body, watching everything the Devil did, but unable to have any control over it.”
I had experienced the body-swapping stuff a few times, so I knew exactly what he was talking about.
“And then you came along and I knew the Devil was going to try and seduce you, use you to destroy your father—”
“Really?” I said. That was new information to me.
“That’s why I ran away and came after you. You see,” he said, looking down at our intertwined hands, “I liked you from the very beginning. You didn’t just crumble into a pile of mush when the Devil turned on the charm—”
Little did Daniel now how incredibly close I had actually come to succumbing to the Devil’s dubious charms.
“And you were really funny, too,” he finished. “I don’t know. I just thought you were cool, so I did everything I could to try and help you.”
I squeezed his hand.
“You don’t have to apologize for that stuff, Daniel. If anyone understands how incredibly insane the Afterlife is . . . well, it’s yours truly.”
Daniel smiled.
“Now,” I continued, “there’s one part that I don’t understand about the whole Bast thing. Why did you need her help to get your Death Record?”
Daniel sighed, letting go of my hand, so he could run his fingers through his hair in frustration.
“I needed someone to help me split my body and soul
apart. It was the only way to get in and out of the Hall of Death undetected,” he said. “The funny thing was that I didn’t know how I was gonna do it and then one day Bast just appeared and said she would help me. I would become a Shade and she would use my body to steal my Death Record.”
“I don’t understand. Why didn’t Bast just get it for you?” I said, confused. “Why did she have to use your body?”
“Unless you know the right spells, the only Death Record that you can call out is your own.”
Well, that made sense—and that was why I had seen Daniel’s body searching through the Death Records, but he hadn’t noticed me.
“You sent me up there to watch over things, didn’t you?” I said, finally getting it. “You saw me in the waiting room and you didn’t trust Bast—”
“And you and I were still connected because of the coalescing,” he finished for me. “Sorry about that, by the way—and yes, I used you to keep tabs on the cat.”
“But you didn’t know about the curse,” I added. “You had no idea that it was really Bast using you as bait to get me.”
Daniel gave me a weak smile.
“She engineered the whole thing because she knew you had to come to the Hall of Death to find Senenmut.”
It was amazing to think about all the subterfuge and manipulation that had gone into Bast’s plans. It kind of made my head hurt just thinking about it.
“So, are you still worried about burdening me with all that trouble you were talking about?” I said, teasing him.
He sighed.
“Yes and no. I see that you’re pretty good at handling the tough stuff, but what I plan on doing is serious business and I don’t want to get you mixed up in it.”
“Why don’t you let me be the judge of what’s good for me,” I said. “Please, Daniel, trust me . . .”
I could see that it was hard for him to let his guard down, to trust that another person (or God) wasn’t just using him to further their own nefarious plans.
“I’m going to Heaven, Callie, and I’m asking God to grant me the Protectorship of Hell until I can figure out away to make the Devil resign his position,” Daniel said. “He’s a bastard. I’m sure between Cerberus and some of the other denizens of Hell that you’ve met, you know what I’m talking about.”
I did.
When Runt had returned from spending time with her dad, she’d filled Clio and me in on how bad it really was down there. Needless to say, it only made me recognize that I needed to get on the stick and figure out how I was gonna stage this whole meeting thing with God that I’d promised Cerberus.
But maybe, just maybe, I had found a way to get the ball rolling on that one. It only took me a minute to make up my mind before I asked for my favor.
“Uhm, I know this is a weird request, but can I go with you?”
“You want to come to Heaven with me?” he asked, confused.
I nodded.
“Why?” he said, staring at me.
“Because I promised a friend that I would try and intervene on his behalf with God,” I said. “And I think it kind of goes hand in hand with what you’re going to see God about because . . . the friend in question is Cerberus.”
Daniel laughed.
“Really? You’re kidding?”
I shook my head.
“So, can I come?”
“It would be my pleasure to escort you to Heaven,” Daniel said, a huge grin on his face, “but first I wanna ask you . . .”
He paused, looking down nervously at his hands.
“What?” I said, touching his arm.
He looked up at me then, his eyes dark and hungry. They locked onto mine—possessing them, even—and I shivered.
“Calliope Reaper-Jones, may I kiss you?”
All I could do was nod. He leaned forward, his lips barely inches from mine and whispered:
“You’re even lovelier than I remembered.”
And then he took my mouth with his—and it was the sweetest, most intense kiss I had ever experienced.
“Again,” I moaned, my body racing with need as he pulled away to take in my bruised lips and wanton eyes. “Please don’t stop . . .”
He grinned and pulled me closer, his hands snaking underneath my PJs to touch my bare skin.
“Just kiss me,” I begged as his body pressed against mine, like we were made to fit together.
And so he did.
Again.
And again.
And again.
DON’T MISS THE FIRST CALLIOPE REAPER-JONES NOVEL FROM AMBER BENSON
death’s daughter
Calliope Reaper-Jones just wants a normal life—buying designer shoes on sale, dating guys from craigslist, Web surfing for organic dim sum for her boss...
But when her father, who happens to be Death himself, is kidnapped and the Devil’s protégé embarks on a hostile takeover of the family business, Death, Inc., Callie returns home to assume the CEO mantle—only to discover that she must complete three nearly impossible tasks in the realm of the Afterlife.
penguin.com
