The Golden Age of Death (A CALLIOPE REAPER-JONES NOVEL) (7 page)

“Thank you,” she said, eyes downcast with embarrassment.

Luckily, Clio cut the awkward moment short when she noticed Daniel lurking in the hallway behind Jarvis.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, confusion ripe on her face.

“Your crazy sister sent me something weird this morning, so I hightailed it up here to see what was going on.”

“Where is she?” Clio asked Daniel, as she stepped into the foyer.

Daniel shook his head.

“She’s MIA, and Jarvis is keeping his lips locked.”

Clio turned on Jarvis, raising an eyebrow in consternation. Jarvis knew he was in for the third degree because once Clio had her mind set on something she was like a pit bull, holding on until she got what she wanted.

“Why doesn’t everyone go into the kitchen,” Jarvis said, gesturing toward the back of the house where the state-of-the-art kitchen was located, “and I’ll get Jennice started. She’s going to want to look over the house immediately, I’m sure.”

Clio scowled at him, sensing some kind of subterfuge, but Jarvis only shook his head and looked over at Jennice, trying to telegraph to Clio his intention of removing Jennice from the
others, so they could talk openly and not frighten the uninitiated Realtor.

“I would love to take a look around the space,” Jennice said, pulling a tiny notebook from her pocket as she followed Jarvis over to the staircase that led to the second floor.

“Off you go,” Jarvis said, shooing Clio and the others away. “Clio, why don’t you set the kettle to boil and we can have some tea?”

Clio gave him an odd look, but finally nodded.

“Sure thing,
Jarvi
.”

She stressed the nickname he hated, and that she and Callie loved to use behind his back, knowing he would get the message:
Let’s hurry this thing up.

“I’ll be there in one moment!” he called after them, as they left him alone in the foyer with Jennice.

“You’d better be!” Clio yelled back, before disappearing down the hallway.

“I’m sure you don’t need my help,” Jarvis said, turning his attention back to Jennice. “It’s rather self-explanatory, I hope.”

Jennice smiled at him.

“I think so. I’ll do the upstairs first and then move to the lower floor.”

“Excellent!” Jarvis said, as he watched her begin to climb the stairs, excitedly making notes in the notebook she’d brought along with her.

He turned to go, but Jennice caught him before he could get too far away.

“The crown molding is just gorgeous,” she breathed, pointing to the ceiling as she turned to smile down at Jarvis. “Do you know anything about it?”

Jarvis returned the smile and nodded. He was an encyclopedia when it came to Sea Verge.

“All the molding in the house was hand carved especially for Sea Verge in Brienz, Switzerland.”

Jennice made a notation in her notebook.

“Thank you,” she said, turning back to admire the crown molding again. “You know, it’s all the little details that are so important in making a good listing.”

No one can be that excited about crown molding,
Jarvis thought, but apparently Jennice was the rare exception.

“Have fun,” Jarvis said, but Jennice was already moving up the stairs, lost in the grandiosity that was Sea Verge.

Satisfied that Jennice would be out of their hair for the duration, Jarvis turned and followed the sound of raised voices back toward the kitchen.

“Well, neither Noh nor I have spoken to her,” Clio was saying as Jarvis entered the room, catching her in the middle of filling a silver teakettle she’d pulled down from one of the cabinets.

“Yeah, she’s been incommunicado for a while now,” Noh agreed, as she watched Clio set the kettle on the stove to boil.

Even though it was the most modern room in the mansion, Jarvis still loved the huge, open-plan kitchen at Sea Verge best of all. There was just something about the space that caused him to relax as soon as he’d crossed over its threshold, stepping into the dewy, yellow warmth from the overhead lighting fixtures.

Maybe it was the large center island encircled by a quartet of comfortable wooden stools, or its pristine white-tiled walls, or the gleaming appliances soaking in the sunlight that streamed in through the large bay window overlooking the backyard, but whatever it was, it inspired instant familiarity and a feeling of togetherness.

“We’ve just both been so busy,” Daniel was saying—rather lamely, Jarvis thought—from his perch on one of the barstools.

The sound of five teacups being set down on the counter drew Jarvis’s attention away from Daniel and back to Clio, who was now pulling a bag of English Breakfast tea from the cabinet and setting it beside a pretty white and pink-flowered enamel tea pot.

Not for the first time, Jarvis noticed how much she’d begun to look less like a punk rocker and more like a normal teenage girl. The change had occurred in tandem with her starting to date the Hindu God, Indra, but Jarvis believed it wasn’t just love that made Clio change her style. She was growing up, maturing into a young woman, and the shaved head and ripped clothing just didn’t jibe with her more adult self—although she was still holding on to her chunky, black-framed Buddy Holly glasses for dear life, so she hadn’t completely changed her fashion sensibility.

Still, Jarvis thought she looked rather lovely in the pale blue kimono dress and black skinny jeans she was wearing, Buddy Holly glasses only complementing the ensemble.

“What’s going on, Jarvis?” Clio said, turning to look at Jarvis as she accepted the teapot from Noh and filled the strainer with the loose leaf tea.

Jarvis opened his mouth to reply, but Daniel beat him to it.

“Wrong question, Clio,” he said. “We already played this game and the right question to ask is: Why?”

“Why what?” Noh said, brushing away bits of loose-leaf tea that hadn’t made it into the tea strainer.

“Why did Calliope leave Sea Verge,” Jarvis said, all eyes now trained on him. “That is the correct question.”

“Something’s going on here and you better start spilling it,” Clio said, as the kettle whistled and she removed it from the stove top, pouring its contents into the teapot before setting it back on the eye.

Jarvis was prepared to be as frank as possible. Now that they were all assembled at Sea Verge, he knew he had to keep them here for the next twenty-four hours—something that would not be an easy task once they’d heard what he had to say.

“The ‘difficulty’ came to Calliope’s attention the day she met the Ender of Death for their duel,” Jarvis said. “Though the thing seems to have started long before that.”

“Okay, can you be more ominous?” Clio asked.

“I am not being dramatic,” Jarvis replied. “I am trying to be as accurate as I possibly can.”

“Just go on,” Daniel said, shooting Clio a “cease and desist” look. “No one is going to interrupt you again until you’re finished.”

Jarvis seriously doubted Daniel’s ability to control Clio when she was upset, but he decided to keep that thought to himself.

“Wait,” Noh said, suddenly. “Before you start talking, tell me one thing.”

Jarvis hesitated, not sure what the girl was going to ask of him.

“Yes?” he asked, waiting for her to continue.

She looked him dead in the eye, her gaze probing and intense, then she spoke:

“Why are you in the wrong body?”

This was the last thing he’d expected her to say.

“I, well, I—” he spluttered, but Clio swooped in to save him.

“How do you know he’s in the wrong body?” she asked Noh.

Noh shrugged.

“I can just tell.”

She left her spot at the island, walking over to Jarvis and taking both of his hands in hers—and Jarvis shivered because her fingers were so cold.

“What are you doing?” he asked when she suddenly lifted both of his arms up into the air.

“Callie never told any of you what I do, did she,” Noh said matter-of-factly.

When no one answered, she smiled.

“I’m a clairvoyant…or, if I’m feeling more whimsical, I just say that I see dead people.”

“I didn’t know that,” Clio said, picking up the teapot and pouring out tea into each of the mugs as though it were an everyday occurrence for human beings to see dead people.

Jarvis had known Clio her entire life—and he didn’t think anything ever fazed her.

“It’s how Callie and I met. We were part of the Strange Brigade at the New Newbridge Academy. There were a bunch of us odd kids, kids who didn’t quite fit in with the rest of the student body, and we just sort of found each other and became friends. Actually, less like friends and more like family, really.”

She returned her gaze to Jarvis, giving his hands a quick squeeze before letting them go.

“So because of my abilities, I can see that your soul doesn’t fit in this body. It pops out in all kinds of weird spots,” Noh added, poking at his side. “Like here.”

“That tickles,” Jarvis said, backing away.

“And here and here,” she continued, ignoring Jarvis’s skittishness as she pointed to his neck and head.

“Is that a bad thing?” Clio asked.

Noh shook her head.

“There’s absolutely nothing to worry about, but it’s just a
very, very curious phenomenon, something I haven’t really seen before.”

“Thank God,” Jarvis said, sighing with relief. He didn’t need any strange body issues cropping up in what was already proving to be an untenable situation.

“You can go on with your story now,” Noh said, her whole face lighting up as she gave him a shy smile—and Jarvis thought she was truly beautiful in that moment.

“Thank you,” he said, returning her smile. “As I was saying, it started with the duel. We all know Calliope had promised Marcel, the Ender of Death, she would meet him in one-on-one combat. The promise was given so he would back off and give her the space she needed in order to stop the Devil and Thalia from staging their coup on Death, Inc., and Heaven—”

Jarvis suddenly found his mouth was dry as a bone, and he paused here to take a mug of tea from Clio.

“And then, later, at the annual Death Dinner and Masquerade Ball, Marcel called her out on her promise. Obviously, she was scared of meeting him in battle—we all know she’s an incompetent fighter—but she knew she had to keep her promise,” Jarvis said, sipping on his tea as his mind wandered back to that fateful day. “But it was the only way to keep Marcel in his place…”

“But it’s the only way to keep Marcel in his place,” I said as I slid the body armor Jarvis had given me around my midsection and fastened it in place. “At least for a little while.”

Jarvis nodded, his gangling frame wrapped in a heavy fur parka so thick I had a hard time seeing his face because of all the fluff. I shivered in my own lightweight wool-lined Zero-Loft jumpsuit, wishing I were wearing a similar ginormous parka. But since I needed to be free to fight, a parka of any kind was not in my future. Jarvis had kindly created a special warming spell for both of us so we wouldn’t freeze—add to that the molded titanium body armor I was now fastening myself into—and I was as warm as I was gonna be, given the situation.

The situation being a battle to the death with Marcel, the Ender of Death.

Lovely.

We were meeting in a location of his choosing, but only because he’d been “kind” enough to let me push the date a little. Originally, we were supposed to do our “battle to the death” the day after the annual Death Dinner and Masquerade Ball, but Jarvis had felt this was a tad hasty and wanted me to postpone. The only way Marcel would agree to the postponement was for him to get to choose the duel’s location. Neither Jarvis,
nor I was pleased about this, but what could we do? I’d been impulsive and now I was going to pay for it.

In Antarctica.

Why the wily Frenchman had chosen this desolate spot—Ridge A, it was officially called—I had no idea, but it would definitely not have been my duel spot of choice. If I’d had
my
druthers, I’d have staged the thing at Barney’s, so at least I could die amongst the designer clothes I loved. But, alas, the choice of venue was not mine and I’d ended up in “cold town” instead of “clothes town.”

Jarvis, ever the fastidious Executive Assistant, had done his research on Ridge A and had gleefully told me the average temperature hovered around negative ninety-four degrees Fahrenheit—well below the point a normal human body could withstand without some supernatural help.

That was how I’d ended up in the crazy-ass jumpsuit, really wishing I’d peed before we’d wormholed it out of Sea Verge. Of course I would never give Jarvis the satisfaction of letting him know he’d been right (as usual) and, yes, I should’ve hit the head before we trekked out to the middle of nowhere. So, I was just going to have to be a good girl and hold it.

“Well, I believe you are as ready as you ever will be,” Jarvis said, handing me a titanium scythe that bore a razor-sharp diamond blade.

“Do I really have to use this?” I said, taking the scythe and feeling its heft. “I think this choice of weaponry is a little too on the nose, even for my taste.”

“It was Marcel’s choice,” Jarvis sighed—and I knew what he was thinking: Once again Calliope’s impetuousness had backed her into a corner.

Of course Jarvis was right. If I hadn’t let Marcel rush me into setting a date for the duel, then I’d have had a lot more leverage.

Instead, I was forced to cater to Marcel’s weird flights of fancy…like this stupid scythe. A scythe being the predominate weapon of choice in pretty much every artist’s rendering of Death.

“I know. It’s all my fault,” I said. “One more Calliope Reaper-Jones cock-up.”

Jarvis snorted, eyes bright within the fur of the parka’s hood.

“You were well-intentioned,” Jarvis conceded, trying to make me feel better.

“That I was,” I concurred, stepping away from Jarvis and giving the scythe a few practice swings. “Shall we do this thing?”

Jarvis nodded.

“Yes, I believe we shall.”

I took a deep breath—wishing I was anywhere else—then I began to march toward what was a more than probable death, Jarvis trailing behind me, acting the part of my very reluctant “second.”