How to be Death (4 page)

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 could 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.

“Now, close your eyes—” Jarvis began in his clipped British accent, which contrasted so nicely with the lanky, young American body he now possessed.

I did as he asked, not wanting to get snapped at for daydreaming, and closed my eyes, letting his words wash over me in waves.

“—and imagine you are in your bedroom at Sea Verge.”

Just like that, my newly decorated bedroom magically materialized within the imaginary world of my mind’s eyes. I smiled at the crème caramel carpet I’d just had installed, the polished redwood platform bed, fluffy purple down comforter, and matching redwood dresser and vanity Clio had helped me pick out. I had to admit the old bedroom was starting to look pretty tricked out, if I did say so myself.

When it had become apparent I was going to have to give up my Manhattan apartment for a full-time residency at Sea Verge, I’d decided the only way I could justify the move was to totally redo my old bedroom. I worried that returning to the wicker bedroom set of my childhood might trigger a full-scale regression, and I so did not need a new issue to add to the ones I was already dealing with. What I wanted was a clean slate—a new beginning—and trashing all my old stuff seemed like the perfect way to get the ball rolling in the right direction.

As usual, without meaning to, my brain had unintentionally left the confines of my bedroom and was on the move: An image of my old bedroom furniture sitting in the Goodwill waiting for someone to take pity on it overwhelmed my thoughts. Guilt welled up inside me. Had I made a bad decision? Was I supposed to keep all my old stuff forever and never move forward?

I’d had that stupid wicker furniture for eons. It’d been there waiting for me every summer when I came back from the New Newbridge Academy full of teenage angst and hatred at having to leave the boarding school that felt more like home than my actual home did. I’d spent hours moping around my room, writing in my journal and mooning over whatever male flavor of the week I had a crush on. That furniture and I had a lot of shared history, and what had I done? I’d just chucked it out like garbage.

I opened my eyes. Jarvis was standing above me, his foot tapping in staccato triplets that did nothing to hide his annoyance.

“You obviously were
not
thinking about your bedroom or you would be there now,” Jarvis said.

“Well, I was thinking about it for a minute,” I said.

Jarvis shook his head.

“I wish there were a way to make you focus,” he mumbled under his breath. “Perhaps a pill that worked in the same fashion as a lobotomy.”

Now, that wasn’t nice,
I thought to myself.

“A lobotomy?”

Surprised, Jarvis looked up sheepishly.

“Oh, you’re still here,” he murmured.

Was that a dig at my inability to call up a wormhole? I wondered.

“And where would I have gone in two seconds?” I said.

“To your bedroom, if you could call a bloody wormhole,” Jarvis said, shaking his head.

Yes, it was a dig.

Annoyed with myself and with the dumb wormhole-calling lesson, I flopped down on the couch, releasing some of the tension my body had collected during the course of my myriad attempts to wormhole my way out of Dodge. Jarvis wasn’t a bad teacher, but he was very demanding—which only added to my sense of failure when I was unable to do as he asked.

While I waited for Jarvis to give me another task to do or, more likely, cut our losses for the day and dismiss me, I appraised the space surrounding me. Sadly, I felt my dad’s loss most keenly when I was here or in his study.

As little kids, my sisters and I had played hide-and-seek in the dark-paneled library, losing ourselves behind the intricately carved rolling mahogany wet bar—where my dad kept his excellent stock of buttery cognac and exotic ports—and falling asleep inside the hollow body of the large grandfather clock a Pope had given my dad as a thank-you gift. It was Pope John-Paul II, if you’re curious, and he actually visited our house once when I was little, my dad making me sing my embarrassingly off-key rendition of “Fifty-Nifty United States” to entertain him.

Though the Pope’s visit hadn’t been one of them, I actually had a number of pleasant memories that revolved around
me lying stretched out on the crème and oxblood Oriental carpet, reading some pulpy kid book, while my dad did his paperwork—apparently there was a lot of paperwork involved in running Death, something I’d discovered for myself my first week on the job. As my brain dawdled over fuzzy, childhood memories, I felt a cloud of melancholia settle over me, making me want to jump out of my own skin and play dress-up with someone else’s life.

“I don’t think I have any more in me, Jarvi,” I said, resting my head on the back of the leather couch. “I’m beaten.”

Jarvis came and sat down beside me, making the leather upholstery squeak. I couldn’t help but grin—a move Jarvis did
not
appreciate.

“I think you enjoy being contrary,” Jarvis said, his eyes trained on the large plate glass window overlooking the ocean. “You’re so very eloquent at it.”

Coming from Jarvis, I took that as a compliment.

I sat up and stretched, my neck and shoulders sore from overtensing. I opened my mouth to yawn, only to have my jaw crack in two places, startling me.

“It’s not that I like being contrary,” I said, trying not to sound trite. “It’s just easier to say ‘no’ to something at first. But once I’ve let it sink in for a bit, I can usually be persuaded.”

I didn’t add that I’d said no to running Death, Inc., at first, too. Yet here I was, the acting President and CEO of that very company, happily doing a job I’d never in a million years have imagined myself doing, no matter what alternate universe I was living in.

“I suppose that makes sense on some level,” Jarvis agreed. “You
are
reminiscent of an elderly human.”

“Huh?”

Jarvis cocked his head and gave me a sly grin.

“Elderly humans are notorious for being stick-in-the-muds.”

“I resent the implication,” I parried. “For elderly people everywhere.”

Above us, the grandfather clock chimed four times in slow succession, each strike like a fading heartbeat echoing in the darkened library. I’d forgotten to turn on the lights, and as dusk settled around us, there was an eerie feeling in the air. I shivered,
gooseflesh pimpling as if someone were walking across my grave. A sense of foreboding made me reach over and turn on the green glass Tiffany lamp sitting on the nearby mahogany side table.

“Did you feel that?” I asked Jarvis, compelled by the strange knot of dread drawing tight inside my stomach.

Jarvis caught my eye, his face full of concern.

“Very odd,” he murmured. “Very odd, indeed.”

“I feel all cold and empty,” I whispered. “Like someone just sucked all the good vibes out of the room.”

Jarvis nodded, his eyes as wide as saucers of milk, each iris a pinprick orb.

“I believe out there, somewhere in the world, someone is plotting your Death.”

“Not funny!” I said, glaring at Jarvis, who grinned sheepishly at me, the spell instantly broken.

“Well, it sounded spooky at any rate.” He shrugged. “Besides, it’s All Hallows’ Eve ‘Eve,’ so someone should be enjoying themselves.”

“Not at my expense.” I glowered. “You’re just peeved with me for flunking your wormhole course—as they say, Jarvis, those who can’t
do
, teach, but I’m not sure what they say if you can’t teach either…”

If the leather couch had had pillows, I’d have gotten one to the face for my comment. Instead, I was saved from a pummeling by the entrance of my favorite hellhound, Runt, who happily trotted into the room, carrying the handle of her pink leather overnight bag daintily in her mouth.

Dropping the bag at my feet, she sat back on her haunches, her black fur shiny and mint-scented from the bath I’d given her earlier in the day.

“Are you guys ready to go?” she trilled, her rich, feminine voice a dead ringer for Cate Blanchett’s Queen in
Elizabeth
.

As cool as it was to have a talking hellhound for a friend, I did have to admit I still found it odd to hear a human voice coming out of an otherwise normal-looking dog. With her heart-shaped pink nose, shiny black coat, and doe brown eyes, Runt was more reminiscent of a black Lab crossed with a mastiff than a hellhound, but her keen intelligence, pleasant demeanor, and penchant for verbiage never let me forget she was also the
daughter of Cerberus, the three-headed “former” Guardian of the North Gate of Hell, and not just one of man’s faithful companions, the
Canis familiaris
.

Hellhounds usually started talking around their first birthday, so I’d known it was only a matter of time before Runt found her voice and started verbalizing—but, boy, did I get the shock of my life when she spoke for the first time … and out popped a reasonable facsimile of Cate Blanchett’s voice. Apparently when Runt first moved to Sea Verge, Clio had been on a historical costume drama kick and all the “Mr. Darcy/Queen of England” action she’d exposed the pup to had affected Runt’s learning curve way more than anyone had realized.

In my imagination, Runt’s human incarnation was more in line with Cindy Brady than Queen Elizabeth, but who was I to judge? Just because I imagined the hellhound pup sounding like a ten-year-old girl—replete with blond pigtails, dimples, missing baby teeth, and an entirely pink wardrobe—didn’t mean I couldn’t accept the more regal version.

“I’m packed,” I said, anticipating Jarvis’s surprise and relishing it. Jarvis never expected me to be ready for anything, so it was nice every now and then to shock him with a little Boy Scout preparedness.

“And your dress?” Jarvis said, his tone sharp. “I should hope you had enough good sense not to
stuff
such an expensive garment in the carryall with all the rest of your toiletries.”

“I’m not a lamebrain,” I said, once again enjoying the idea that Jarvis had nothing to harass me about.

The dress—if you could even call it that; it was more like a fairytale princess gown than a frock—was still wrapped in the transparent plastic sheeting the dressmaker’s assistant had delivered it in and safely packed in the black garment bag Jarvis had placed in my closet earlier that day.

I’d never had a gown made for me before. Heck, I’d never had
anything
made for me before, so it was with an ebullient skip in my step that I went to my first appointment with Mademoiselle La Rue, the seamstress to the Gods.

The day had gotten off to a shaky start when Jarvis had opened a wormhole leading directly to the Shakespeare & Company Bookstore in Paris—one of his favorite places in the whole world—and we’d emerged behind a row of books placed so
haphazardly in their rows, I thought given the least provocation they might fall on top of us. To our surprise, we found two giggling American girls, each with dirty, straw-colored hair and the strong odor of patchouli in lieu of not having bathed, camped out behind the same shelf of disordered books.

The two girls were so involved with their own conversation that, at first, they didn’t seem to notice the hulking, hipster man-child and the tinier, dark-haired Not-So-Grim-Reaper when we magically appeared beside them, but then, to my surprise, one of the girls gave us a wave.

“Want some ’shrooms, man?” she said, holding up a plastic baggie of brown, lichen-looking stuff for us to see. I’d never done mushrooms before, alcohol was more my poison of choice, but there was something very tempting about taking a break from my regularly scheduled programming to eat a few fungi and trip with these hippie chicks in the back of a famous Parisian bookstore.

“No, thank you,” Jarvis bristled. “And you shouldn’t be eating them either. They do terrible things to the human brain.”

“Jarvis!” I said, smacking him on the arm. “Why do you always have to be such a Debbie Downer?”

“I am in no way a ‘Debbie Downer,’ as you say,” he sniffed.

I rolled my eyes at the girl and she shrugged, turning back to her friend and ignoring us now that we’d identified ourselves as part of the establishment, not the counterculture.