I stared at her. I had absolutely
zero
idea what she was talking about.
Sell out my family? To whom? And why?
Thalia didn’t stop there. No, she continued on, enjoying the confusion and fear she was creating.
“I’ve been secretly working with the rest of the Executive Board to discover who’s been leaking insider information about Death, Inc., to the Devil. And we think we’ve found our source,” Thalia said, her eyes glittering as they raked across me.
“That’s bullshit,” I railed, knowing exactly where this was going. “I don’t even know anything about Dad’s job!”
Thalia shook her head, laying on the fake pity with a trowel as she went on.
“Everyone knows that you don’t want to be immortal, Calliope. It’s common knowledge. You can’t deny it.”
“So I won’t,” I shot back, sneezing again three times in quick succession. “But I don’t sell people out, Thalia.
Ever.
”
“I have evidence to the contrary,” Thalia said tartly, her eyes never leaving mine.
“I don’t care
what
you have,” I nearly screamed, anger flaming inside me.
Thalia took a step toward me, a Joker-like grin spreading across her fine-boned face.
“You are a traitor, Calliope Reaper-Jones,”
she spat at me.
That was it. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I had had enough . . . even if I didn’t consciously know it. The anger that had been building inside me came to a head and I could feel its power ripping through every cell in my body as it clawed its way out. My mouth froze into an elongated frown, a weird, growling noise escaping through my compressed lips. Before I understood the extent of what was happening to me, I had a total
Carrie
moment and the human part of myself slipped away into unconsciousness.
When it was all over, my sister Thalia was a big, fat toad sitting underneath the Christmas tree.
I’ve only ever heard Clio’s side of how the thing went down, but I’m pretty sure it was a real doozy, because after that my dad readily accepted the idea that I would
not
be joining Death, Inc. Of course, Thalia really was full of crap about me being some kind of familial traitor, because when my dad returned her to her normal form, she totally admitted that she was on a fishing expedition, just trying to scare any pertinent information out of me. How could she know I would go all ballistic on her?
It was only years later, after she had engineered my dad’s kidnapping and tried to take over Death, that I realized what the whole Christmas extravaganza had been about. Thalia was looking to discover two things: what my power level was and whether I could be bullied out of her way.
She was also planting a seed of distrust deep inside the hearts of the rest of our family. One that she hoped would grow and flower, so that someday she could pick it and use it to destroy us all forever.
And sadly she almost accomplished exactly that.
eleven
As I stared up through the pea soup-like morass that seemed to envelop the Purgatorial skyline, I decided that the huge brimstone, steel, and glass skyscraper that housed Death, Inc., was kind of reminiscent of the building from the opening sequence of the film
The Hudsucker Proxy
.
I wasn’t 100 percent sure why that particular thought had come into my mind, but I suspected it had something to do with the feeling of “corporate desolation” that the film inspired, an ambience that Purgatory was especially notable for. After all the weird intermingling I’d seen between the mortal world and the Afterlife, I wouldn’t have been at all surprised to find out that the film’s production designer had actually stumbled his/her way into Purgatory and been unduly influenced by the place.
This “corporate desolation” ambience not only pertained to the one inhabited part of Purgatory—the gigantic brimstone keep that my dad had renovated into a retro, Americana-style skyscraper only a decade or so after he’d ascended to the Head Honcho-ship of Death—but also to the empty wastelands that made up the rest of the place. Well, I say empty wastelands—I’d always heard that the place was completely unpopulated— but Jarvis had informed me that recently there’d been rumors of creatures escaping out of Hell and disappearing into the emptiness in search of a better life for themselves and their families. Of course, there was no proof of this, other than a few rumors, but still, the wasteland was so dark and barren that I couldn’t imagine wanting to escape into it, no matter how bad my lot in Hell might’ve been.
Excrement pile, anyone?
In fact, I had spent most of my life trying to stay as far away as possible from the place as I could. As a kid, I had just never really been all that interested in what my dad did for a living. I had never asked for a tour of the Death, Inc., offices, or—like Clio—asked for an internship in any of its departments. I’d kept myself so busy in the human world that I’d had no need to explore the supernatural side of my life.
Now when I looked back at my childhood, I wondered how it was possible
not
to be impressed by my dad. I mean, just the building alone he’d designed was such an amazing piece of architecture that it should’ve attracted my artistic sensibility. Still, I had always been much more excited about spending time with my mother, finding her interests to be more in line with my own: fashion, interior design, and food.
Yes, my dad may have run a multinational corporation almost single-handedly, but my mother was a genius of
design
. When she biannually redecorated Sea Verge, I was there at her side, watching her work. When she went on one of her massive shopping trips to New York City—where she bought only the most fashionable of designers—I begged for her to let me tag along and watch the whole endeavor, wide-eyed.
As far as I was concerned,
those
were the glory days of my childhood, creating lasting memories in my young, supple mind. I had fought as hard as I could to stop the strange, fantastical world that my dad inhabited from getting
any
purchase inside my brain.
Thinking back, I suppose those early memories were what had initially drawn me to New York City. My mother had treated the place like it was the fashion and cultural Mecca of the world, and since fashion was the one thing that really floated my boat, it just seemed like the perfect place to live as an adult. Of course, those memories were created when I was a kid (and living off my parents’ dime), so what appeared to me then as a magical place where clothes grew on trees and luncheons at the Russian Tea Room came standard with every visit wasn’t exactly the world I encountered when I officially moved there.
Even though New York City wasn’t
exactly
as I remembered, I didn’t regret my choice for a minute. I loved the City and I enjoyed struggling in it. I also knew that no matter what bad stuff someone found to say about my character, they could never accuse me of not working my butt off. The City demanded that of you and I willingly gave up my pound of flesh in order to stay there.
“Come on, now,” Jarvis said, whispering in my ear as he stood, watching me marvel at the looming building that housed Death, Inc. “Shake a leg.”
“I’m coming,” I said, pulling my eyes away from the gargantuan brimstone skyscraper and following Jarvis through the revolving glass front door.
Jarvis made it into the lobby without any problem, but somehow I got caught in the revolving door just as a tall cadaverous man in a too-short suit stepped in from the other side. He didn’t seem to notice that I was inside the revolving door with him because he gave his side such a hard push that he was immediately ejected out the other side, but I was caught spiraling around the circumference of the door twice. When I was finally able to escape the door’s vortex, I found that I was right back where I had started.
Outside.
I hate this door,
I thought to myself as I let out a frustrated sigh and thrust myself back into the spinning glass for another round. This time no one was trying to exit from the other side, so I was able to navigate the door without another roundabout fiasco, but as I stepped into the well-air-conditioned lobby, I was suddenly filled with a sense of déjà vu so strong that it couldn’t have been déjà vu at all.
I had been here before. I just didn’t know it was part of Purgatory at the time.
The memory snuck into my brain unbidden.
I was waiting here in this very lobby with Jarvis right before I’d gone upstairs to meet with the Board of Death and receive the three tasks I had to complete in order to save my family, my dad, and his job. In my mind’s eye, I saw Jarvis and myself sitting over in the small vestibule; me browsing through a magazine—was it
Elle
? I couldn’t remember—while Jarvis tried to explain how the Office of Death had come into being.
I vaguely remembered him explaining The Fall and the creation of Heaven and Hell and me, like a numbskull, muttering something about Adam and Eve. Thinking back, I must’ve looked like a real idiot to Jarvis. No wonder he treated me with such disdain. I hadn’t known
anything
about my family or the Afterlife, and I had
flaunted
my lack of knowledge in his face like a badge of honor.
At that moment, I was overwhelmed by the need to open my mouth right then and explain to Jarvis that I finally understood why all this stuff was so important to him. That I really needed him to forgive my ambivalence, because it just came from insecurity and fear, not a true dislike of my dad and the business he gave his life to.
“Jarvis,” I began, looking down at the little faun who had stood beside me even when he hadn’t known if I was fit to take over my dad’s job or not. “I’m—”
Before I could continue that thought, a thin woman in a fifties-style golden mohair skirt suit walked over to us and wrapped her arms around Jarvis, nearly choking him.
“Jarvis, darling,” she purred as she reluctantly released him. “It’s been forever. Still living the good life on Earth?”
Jarvis looked over at me, embarrassed for some reason.
“I suppose so, Evangeline,” he murmured before turning and beckoning me over. “By the way, this is Calliope Reaper-Jones.”
Evangeline’s mouth dropped and the cat-eyed plastic frames she was wearing slid down her nose as she stared at me.
“Jarvis, you’re kidding?” she exclaimed. “
This
is the daughter? The one that . . . you know.”
Jarvis nodded as the woman reached out to shake my hand like I was Ed McMahon offering her a million dollars. It didn’t take a mirror to know my face was turning beet red. Now
I
was the embarrassed party. I ran a hand through my disheveled hair, hoping I didn’t look as bad as I thought I did. I hadn’t had time to change out of my dog drool ensemble before we’d left, so I was feeling particularly uncomfortable in what I was wearing.
I knew I should’ve borrowed something from Clio,
I thought miserably as the nice woman continued to yank my arm up and down vigorously.
“Nice to meet you,” I said through gritted teeth.
All I wanted was to fade into the wallpaper (or in this case, steel, since the whole space was fashioned out of the stuff) and disappear. I hated being the center of attention. It just made me feel all weird and discombobulated, like I was a balloon some little kid had let go of at the fair that was sailing so high it was about to enter the stratosphere.
“You as well, darling. You as well.”
She gave me a quick once-over as she dropped my hand, appraising me with a sharp eye, but seeming to like what she saw. Even though there was no judgment behind her eyes, once again I wished I’d taken the time to change my clothes. At least I’d done a cursory wash of my face and hands in the foyer bathroom, spritzing myself with the Esteban jasmine-scented room spray my mother kept in all the bathrooms in the house. I had no idea whether it was safe to spray that kind of stuff on your bare skin, but I was willing to take the risk if it meant I wasn’t going to stink anymore.
Clio had wrinkled her nose in disgust when I’d come out of the bathroom, but hadn’t said a word. I guess she decided that me stinking of jasmine was better than me stinking of dog drool.
“Are you going upstairs?” Evangeline asked Jarvis, but I could tell that she was more curious if
I
was going upstairs.
“We’re just going to the Hall of—” I started to say before Jarvis stamped his hoof hard on my toes, instantly shutting me up.
“I’m giving Miss Calliope a little tour of the building. She’s only seen the lobby and the Board of Death’s domain,” Jarvis said, his voice smooth as butter. “Her father thought it best she acquaint herself with the rest of the building.”
“Of course,” Evangeline said as she licked her lips.
“So we must be going. We are already late for one of our meetings,” Jarvis continued, grabbing my arm and leading me toward the bank of elevators that presided over the back of the lobby.
Evangeline gave me a curious little wave as I followed Jarvis’s lead, then before I realized what was happening, I was being bodily forced into an open elevator by my faun escort. As soon as the doors shut, Jarvis let out a long sigh and slumped against the side of the elevator.