p r o l o g u e
Gerald had many duties at the dispensary, but the one h e liked best was making deliveries.” He would come into the shop and work the register when they needed him tothat was a givenbut when they asked him to go out in the fi eld, well, that was even better. He looked forward to those days like a little kid gearing up for Christmas morning.
Luckily, he had no competition in the deliveries department because he was the only one with his own transportation: Molly, a bright red Vespa hed bought with his own money. Money hed earned from three years as a paperboy, doing a
hideously early paper route that meant getting up at the butt crack of dawn and bicycling all over his neighborhood until every last paper had been delivered. He liked the biking part and the throwingthenewspaper part, but he hated the earlymorning part.
That sucked.
It was the reason hed applied for the job at the dispensary: The place didnt open until eleven in the morning.
And sleep was something Gerald prized very highly. Especially after being deprived of it for the last three years. Not that he was out all night partying or anythinghe just liked to stay up and watch movies. And getting up early confl icted with this.
The paper route had confl icted with it, too, but he guessed hed just wanted to buy a Vespa more than he wanted to get sleep.
Oh, Molly, Queen of the Vespas.
She was the apple of his eye: cherry red with black trim and shiny chrome details. She purred like a little baby kitten and rode like a dream. He loved that machine more than anything else in the world.
Riding her around town, doing the deliveries for the store . . . he was The Man. He got to look cool and wave at the old ladies who congregated outside Mables Beauty Parlor and gun the engine when he passed the kids playing outside the elementary school.
Damn, he loved his job.
But today there was no time to tool around town and make the rounds. Today, he was traveling outside of his normal area, over to the Pacifi c Coast Highway to make a delivery to one of those fancy beach houses wealthy people lived in, but only on the weekends.
It took him twenty minutes to reach his destination, a small bungalowsmaller than hed imagined a rich person would ownbetween a stand of other mini bungalows, their identical beige stucco jobs a bland attempt at the trendy adobe style that was all the rage in town. He pulled Molly off the highway, wheeling her into a protected spot over by a row of tall hedges, then headed up the private road leading to the bungalows tiny carport.
Of course it was only after hed already rung the bell he realized hed gotten the bungalow number wrong. He waited, hoping no one was home so he could just jog over to the right bungalow and make his delivery without some irate rich lady yelling at him for disturbing her.
He counted to sixty, and when no one came to the door, he decided he was home free. He was just about to turn around and go when he felt a pinch in his lower back. This quickly turned into a burning sensation that spread across his torso and down his legs. He tried to scream, to call out for help, but a gloved hand appeared in front of his face, covering his mouth and muffl ing his cries.
He made one last attempt to escape, thrashing against his attacker like a fi sh on a line, but he was hooked fast.
After that, he didnt remember anything.
o n e
C A L L I O P E
My name is Calliope ReaperJones and if I were a dessert, I like to think Id be Death by Chocolate.” Not that Im looking to turn myself into a chewy, gooey, sugary mess anytime in the near future, but if you know me, then you also know my choice of dessert self” is not only literal, but kind of meta, too. Because even though Im still an ocean away from my late twenties, I am the sole proprietor of a bizarre business. One I can honestly say keeps me on my toes twentyfour/seven/three hundred and sixtyfi ve days a year:
I am the twentyfi rst century Grim Reaper.
Death Not by Chocolate.
Seems like a joke, right? I assure you its not.
I am the president and CEO of Death, Inc., a multinational conglomerate specializing in the collection and transportation of the recently deceased from Earth to the Afterlife. Once there, the souls are released into their own cultural and/or religious sections of Heaven and Hell, where they are rewarded or punished for their Earthly deeds before being recycled back into the soul pool for reassignment.
My dad was Death before meI inheritedslashwon the job after he was kidnapped and then murdered by the Devil and my older sister, Thalia. And though it wasnt a career path I wouldve previously seen myself pursuing, Ive actually discovered Im not too terrible at the gig.
Dont get me wrong, Im still learningbut, luckily, I have peeps in my corner who keep me from embarrassing myself on a daily basis: my brilliant, techno geek, younger sister, Clio; my Executive Assistant, Jarvis, who has an encyclopedic knowledge of the Afterlife; and my talking hellhound pup, Runt, who makes life better just by existingthough she hasnt been around nearly as much as Id like because shes been helping her dad, Cerberus, and my boyfriend, Daniel, clean up Hell.
After the Devil was deposed from offi ce for trying to take over Heaven, God installed Daniel as the acting Steward” of Hell, with Cerberus, the former Guardian of the North Gate of Hell, as Daniels secondincommand. Together, they were dismantling the old bureaucracy and setting up a new business model based on the platform my dad used to revamp Death, Inc. Their plan included a complete overhaul of Hellwhich required doing a lot of community outreach to get the populace involved.
I hadnt had a chance to go to Hell to see what theyd accomplished because Id been so busy running Death, but my Executive Assistant, Jarvis, said they were making slow progress.
The kind of reformation Daniel had planned for Hell had occurred in Purgatory decades earlier when my dad had taken over Death. Back then, the Afterlife had been a much more archaic place, and Purgatory, in particular, was a cesspool. Instead of being a way station for the recently deceased, itd been used as a penal colony of sorts, where the dead were locked away in antiquated prison cells on an indefi nite basis, with absolutely no recourse to get themselves released back into the soul pool for recycling.
My dad had changed everything, forcing the old guard out so he could then bring Death into the modern era, creating a whole new Purgatory modeled after a corporate business structure.
Thus Death, Inc., was born.
Those who chose to continue their gainful employment with Death had to change their way of thinkingbecause the new Death, Inc., had more in common with Wall Street than Rikers Island.
The last holdouts were the Harvesters and Transporters theyre the guys who do the actual collecting and shepherding of souls into the Afterlifeand they liked things the way they were. They had zero interest in changing their mindset, preferring the old, heavyhanded techniques to my dads new logicbased, corporate way of doing business.
When they got wind of what my dad was proposing, they did the only corporate thing they would ever do: They unionized.
They thought this would give them some control over my dads invasive” changes. And though it gave them more leverage than they wouldve otherwise had, it never brought them the ultimate power they were seeking.
The union did fi ght and win the right for the Harvesters and Transporters to continue to wear their Victorian ghoul garb”as my dad called iton the job. My dad thought their overthetop Victorian costumes and props made the wrong impression on the newly deceased, but hed had to cave to their demands when the union had promised to defend their rights to
free dress” by going on strike. Once they discovered this technique worked, the union used it to strongarm my dad into doing what they wanted on a regular basis.
In the little time since Id been appointed president and CEO
of Death, Inc., Uriah Drood, the allpowerful head of the Harvester and Transporters Union, had twice pulled the strike card
out and waved it in my face. Wed been at loggerheads from the moment wed met, and he was just looking for an excuse to make my life miserable. Well, at least ours was a mutual unappreciation” society: I didnt like his sneaky, underhanded way of doing business, and he just didnt like me, period.
It made me proud to think someone as abhorrent as Uriah Drood found me so nauseatingthough perhaps it wasnt the wisest choice to add him to my roster of enemies. He was the vindictive sort, and I knew our strained relations were going to come back and bite me on the ass some day.
But I kinda felt that way about a lot of the enemies Id made, including my archnemesis, the Ender of Death.
The Ender of Death was the only one of my enemies I hadnt personally cultivated. He wanted me dead purely because it was in his job description. To this end, hed offi cially challenged me to a singlecombat throw down where only one of us could come out alive. Id hedged, putting the challenge off for as long as I could, but the day of reckoning was fast
approachingand I was pretty sure the outcome was not going to be in my favor. I was a lover of fashion and food, not a fi ghter of supernatural bad guys. A fact that MarcelMarcel was the human name the Ender of Death went by in this incarnationwas well aware of.
I didnt want to die, but Id made a bargain with Marcel and
now it was time to pay up.
You see, my older sister and the Devil had staged a coup on Death, Inc., and Heaven, and Id asked Marcel to back off the kill death business” until I could stop them. To my surprise,
hed agreed to my request, so long as I promised to duke it out with him once Id set Death, Inc., back to rights.
Hed been true to his word, staying out of my business while I did what I needed to do. But now that everything had (mostly) returned to normal, my verbal promissory note had fi nally come due.
I didnt like itI mean, who liked getting killed?but this fi ght to the death was going to happen and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
Jarvis told me I was being a fatalist, but I was pretty sure this was what one would call pragmatic” thinking. I knew my chances for coming out of the duel with my life intact were pretty slim and I just wanted to get it over with. Id done some checking with my friend, Kali, who was a member of the Board of Death, and shed reassured me that upon my untimely end, at least two (or three) possible” Deaths would be called up to vie for my job.
Id worried my boyfriend, Daniel, would be up for the job
againhed been a challenger my fi rst time at batbut since Id drunk from the Cup of Jamshid and been a sitting Grim Reaper through one annual Death Dinner, Daniel was safe.
After being the Devils (now former) protégé for so many years,
Daniel was too involved with the politics of Hell to want to take over the reins of Death, Inc. At least he didnt have to worry about that now.
To reassure me even further, Kali had done something highly illegal. Something that couldve gotten her kicked off the Board of Death if anyone had discovered her transgression: Shed dipped into the Death Records and retrieved the names of two possible” Deaths. Thankfully, one of them allayed my fears and gave me the faith to fi nally accept my fate.
If I died during my battle with the Ender of Death, I would leave this Earth knowing that at least one of the next possible” Deaths was more than fi t for the job.
And how did I know so much about a random name Kali pulled from the Death Records, one might ask?
Well, because this possible” Death was anything but random.
She was my baby sister.
Clio.
Though it was almost unheard of for two siblings to be possible” Deaths within successive generations, Kali said it had happened once before. As a member of the Board of Death, privy to certain secret information, shed had her suspicions Clio was a possible” Death. But she hadnt known for sure until shed pulled Clios Death Record and read what was written inside. Shed wormholed to Sea Vergemy familial home in Newport, Rhode Islandimmediately after reading it, so she could let me know what shed discovered. I dont know why, but after she left, I decided not to tell anyone what Id learned. Not even my most trusted friend and Executive Assistant, Jarvis.
No one really believed Id be out of the job so quickly that the next generation of possible” Deaths would need to be called upand maybe the need wouldntarise. Maybe the impossible would happen and Id kill Marcel instead of him killing me. Stranger things had happened . . . but I wasnt betting on it. I was prepared to meet my endand knowing Clio would have the opportunity to battle for my job made me feel kind of okay about my (possible) impending demise.
Id never really wanted to be immortal, to live forever while my human friends slowly withered and died. Though I knew fi rsthand Death wasnt the beall and endallheck, I was the gal in charge of making sure human souls got to their preordained Afterlife destinationsit still didnt stop me from disliking the process.
On more than one occasion, Id asked Jarvis why the Afterlife worked this way. Why humans needed to die and be reborn, why each body a soul is housed in gets its own personality, and when that body dies and the soul is recycled, that personality is destroyed, never to be used again? But all he had to say on the subject was this: Thats the way things are and we shouldnt question it.
Well, screw that. I lived for questioning things. So Id done a lot of thinking about Gods system and Id come up with a few hypotheticals that might give an answer to my unanswered question.
The one I liked best went something like this: God just wanted to experience everything. Through us, his/her creations, he/she gets to do every job, be every kind of personality, try every kind of sex, be in and out of every kind of love, feel every emotion, enjoy every kind of pain or bliss. Ive decided that maybe God is just the biggest voyeur in the history of Historyand instead of chasing down meaning, we should just enjoy our lives as best we can, so that God can then enjoy them through us.
Radical, I know, and probably not right, but it was my hypothesis and I was sticking to it. There was an order to the world. One I couldnt see, but at least, as Death, I was privy to the Afterlife, so that, though I still missed the people I loved whod died, I knew their energy lived on.
That somewhere my dad, and even my older sister, would be born into other human bodies and get to restart the game of life.
And who knew, maybe Id accidentally run into them againor if I was feeling sly, I could cheat and access my dads Death Record to fi nd his next incarnation. (I was still angry with my sister for almost murdering me, so I would not be seeking out her Death Record.)
But I kept these thoughts to myself because no matter how much I wanted closure with my dad, if I found him again, well, it wouldnt be him anymore. Whatever magic it was that made him him” would be gone, and, in the end, it would just be me being selfi sh, wanting to hold on to something that didnt exist anymore.
And if Id learned anything from my time as Death, it was
this: Being selfish sucked.