How to be Death Read online

  PRAISE FOR

  serpent’s storm

  “Delightfully charming. Calliope Reaper-Jones is hysterical. One can’t help but root for her to get the man, save the world, and get her heart’s desire in the process. This character-driven addition to the Reaper-Jones series is truly fantastic.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “Amber Benson shines through her novel and entices readers. Calliope’s personality is genuine, and readers will definitely love her.”

  —Nocturne Romance Reads

  “A thoroughly enjoyable, imaginative book, well-realized in both concept and execution.”

  —Assignment X

  “Fast-paced but filled with humor and pathos. A powerful, action-packed thriller.”

  —Genre Go Round Reviews

  “Benson has brought the series to a new, impressive height—dark, startling, and [with] plenty of shocking surprises. Urban fantasy fans should not miss this fantastic series.”

  —SciFiChick.com

  cat’s claw

  “Callie bounces from twist to twist as she explores Benson’s richly imagined world, where multiple mythologies blend and the afterlife is run as a corporation.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “An entertaining, frenzied fantasy frolic that will have the audience laughing at the chick-lit voice of the heroine, who is willing to go to heaven on a hellish cause.”

  —Genre Go Round Reviews

  “Benson is back with a second helping of her refreshing take on death and purgatory… Callie’s offbeat humor and viewpoint guarantee a madcap romp.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “A fun, snappy read to the tune of a chick-lit writing style, set in a colorful supernatural world. It’s a charming mesh of several myths with an unconventional modern-day twist that hosts a cast of quirky, likable, and diverse characters.”

  —Fantasy Dreamer’s Ramblings

  “Sustains the style and pace of Death’s Daughter but adds deepening characterization.”

  —The Monthly Aspectarian

  death’s daughter

  “Amber Benson does an excellent job of creating strong characters, as well as educating the reader on some great mythology history … a fast-paced and very entertaining story.”

  —Sacramento Book Review

  “An urban fantasy series featuring a heroine whose macabre humor fits perfectly with her circumstances. Sure to appeal to fans of Tanya Huff’s Vicki Nelson series and Charles de Lint’s urban fantasies.”

  —Library Journal

  “A beguiling blend of fantasy and horror … Calliope emerges as an authentically original creation … The humorous tone never gets in the way of the imaginative weirdness of the supernatural events.”

  —Locus

  “In Death’s Daughter, Benson provides a fun romp that defines the rules of an exciting new universe you’ll be champing at the bit to dive back into time and again. There’s action; there’s intrigue, redemption, an adorable hell puppy, and even a hot guy or two. What more could you ask for?”

  —Buffyfest

  “Amber Benson writes an amusing, action-packed, chick-lit urban fantasy loaded with more twists and curves than a twist-a-whirl … Filled with humor and wit, this is a refreshing, original thriller as double, triple, and nth crossings are the norm.”

  —Genre Go Round Reviews

  “With a creative story line as proof, Ms. Benson adds writing to her ever-growing list of talents. Set within an intriguing paranormal world, Death’s Daughter unfolds a seductive tale of power and deception. A great start to a series that will be easy for readers to get hooked on.”

  —Darque Reviews

  “Opens the door on an intriguing, fully thought-out universe, with a likable main character and the potential for mayhem around every corner. It’s a lot of fun.”

  —Fangoria

  “A lively and funny story packed with nonstop action … Benson’s flair for combining mythology and pop culture to create laugh-out-loud characters and incidents strongly reminded me of Esther Friesner’s Temping Fate.”

  —The Green Man Review

  “Callie is sarcastic, smart-mouthed, and overwhelmed. I liked her a lot! I found this to be an amusing book from start to finish. It was refreshing to have a lighthearted but still-suspenseful paranormal come on the scene. The mythology and settings were unique and creepy (my favorite) … Callie’s voice was spot-on for a twenty-four-year-old assistant living in New York who is suddenly dropped into the middle of Hell. I have a feeling this is the start of a series, so I will be eagerly awaiting more adventures of Callie, Clio, and Runt the hellhound.”

  —Night Owl Reviews

  “Amber Benson has created a brash, sassy heroine oozing attitude as she deals with family, business, an angry goddess, zombie armies, and betrayal in this imaginative blend of assorted mythologies. The snappy dialogue keeps pace with the quick pace while providing a fun touch of self-deprecating humor. It should be interesting to see where Benson takes Callie next.”

  —Monsters and Critics

  “‘Multitalented’ doesn’t begin to cover the gifts of former Buffy TV-alumna Benson. Her quirky, cranky, and humorous heroine leads readers on a wacky first-person adventure through Hell. Great supporting characters and wild antics keep the pace brisk and the humor flowing.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  Ace Books by Amber Benson

  DEATH’S DAUGHTER

  CAT’S CLAW

  SERPENT’S STORM

  HOW TO BE DEATH

  how to be

  death

  AMBER BENSON

  ACE BOOKS, NEW YORK

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

  Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand

  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196,

  South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  HOW TO BE DEATH

  An Ace Book / published by arrangement with Benson Entertainment, Inc.

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Ace mass-market edition / March 2012

  Copyright © 2012 by Benson Entertainment, Inc.

  Cover art by Spiral Studio.

  Cover design by Judith Lagerman.

  Interior text design by Tiffany Estreicher.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in vi
olation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  EISBN: 9781101560426

  ACE

  Ace Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  ACE and the “A” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  how to be

  death

  Table of Contents

  one

  two

  three

  four

  five

  six

  seven

  eight

  nine

  ten

  eleven

  twelve

  thirteen

  fourteen

  fifteen

  sixteen

  seventeen

  eighteen

  nineteen

  twenty

  twenty-one

  twenty-two

  twenty-three

  twenty-four

  twenty-five

  twenty-six

  twenty-seven

  epilogue

  one

  Call it a knack, a talent, a penchant … a proclivity. Call it what you will—my ability to inject myself into whatever nut-ball scenario crossed my path was, without a doubt, one of the most defining characteristics of my personality. If I were a wittier dame, I’d say that Trouble was my middle name, but since I’m more Clueless than femme fatale, I think I’ll leave the film noir–isms to someone with a better grasp of the material. Needless to say, for those who’ve crossed my path … to know me is to wish you’d never met me.

  The reasoning for this particular turn of phrase is two-pronged. While part of me is still a twentysomething girl who possesses a hard-core fashion obsession and a propensity for getting into ridiculous scrapes that invariably involve my friends—and even casual acquaintances—(Prong Number One), there is another, more all-encompassing aspect of my personality that’s a real stinger of a Prong Number Two: I am, for lack of a better euphemism, Death … the Grim Reaper … or, just as aptly, the Girl Who Can Wish You Dead.

  They all pretty much apply.

  And now you see why most people wish they could go an eternity without stumbling across my path. There is no human being in existence—barring suicidal depressives and doomsday cultists—who wants to get all up in Death’s business, yet to humanity’s consternation, I’m like a bad penny: I just keep turning up.

  Death and taxes—you can count on us.

  Now I haven’t always been the head gal in charge of the passage of human souls from one plane of existence to the next. No, I was once a quasinormal human being wannabe who worked in a nice little white cubicle, honey-combed inside the right-angle confines of a tall Manhattan skyscraper, doing all the grunt work for the Vice-President of Sales at a company called House and Yard—they make the majority of the house and yard crap you see the overtanned, overplasticized hucksters who populate the Home Shopping Network shilling.

  Being the assistant to a tyrannical boss who likes making your life a living Hell just for the fun of it, well, that sucks in its own right. But when your erstwhile boss turns out to be a Supernatural baddie who’s been making your life miserable in order to keep you under her Wagnerian thumb just in case she ever wants to use your family connections to try and take over Death … somehow that’s even suckier.

  Hyacinth Stewart—said Wagnerian Blonde and plus-sized ex-model extraordinaire—had done exactly that. It was only sheer luck she and her cohort, a Japanese Sea Serpent God named Watatsumi, hadn’t succeeded in doing away with me and assuming the Presidency of Death, Inc., in my stead after my father—the last Death—had been murdered by his arch-nemesis, the Ender of Death or “Marcel,” as the bloodthirsty pain in the ass liked to be called. It was also a testament to the love and help of my friends Jarvis, Runt, and Kali and my younger sister, Clio, that I was still alive and kicking to take over my dad’s job once all the fallout was over.

  Without them—and one other person, who I won’t mention because just their name dredges up an achy, hollow place in my heart—I would’ve been mincemeat. Which meant that because so many people had endured so much suffering and given so much of themselves (like their lives) to get me installed as the President of Death, Inc., I had no business disparaging the job, regardless of how badly I hadn’t wanted to take it.

  I just had to ignore the little voice in the back of my mind that liked to remind me of how unprepared I was for the job, that kept whispering: You’re just a girl—and not even an erudite one at that. True, I loved the very pedestrian triumvirate of fashion, shopping, and food, but that didn’t mean I was a total airhead, incapable of running the show—I had a college degree and I knew PowerPoint, for God’s sake.

  Still, no matter how much ammunition I gathered against its insidious undermining, the voice persisted, letting me know I had no business being in charge of Death, Inc., especially when it was run exactly like a corporation (hence the heavy-handed “President and CEO” title I now bore like a cross) and needed a boss with business acumen, smarts, and finesse. Three things I wasn’t really sure I 100 percent possessed. Sure, I’d been a damn fine assistant in my day—for as much as I hated the job—but that didn’t mean I was capable of assuming the helm of a multinational conglomerate and not running it into a sandbar.

  Yet here I was, the titular head of a giant, multinational, multidimensional conglomerate, whether I wanted the job or not.

  All these thoughts ran through my brain while I stared into the gaping interior of my Louis Vuitton overnight bag, trying to decide if the skimpy, white, rhinestone-encrusted string bikini I wanted to bring along on the trip made me look slutty or not.

  The question of bikini sluttiness aside, my real problem wasn’t what I was packing, but what I was packing it in. My obsession with high-end retail was legendary; I was a conspicuous consumer right out of the pages of Thorstein Veblen’s perennial classic, The Theory of the Leisure Class. Recently, I’d been working hard to curtail my excessive love of luxury brands in favor of a more economical shopping approach, but truth be told, I was finding it to be a very daunting task, indeed: the Louis Vuitton weekend bag was just another symptom of my luxury addiction gone out of control.

  I’d seen it sitting all by its lonesome in the window of Barneys—seriously, I wasn’t even in the store, I was standing on the sidewalk minding my own business, thankyouverymuch—and it’d just looked so darn cute and adorable I couldn’t resist saving it. Besides, I was going to the Death Dinner, arguably the most important event on the Death, Inc., calendar, and I needed to look presentable now that I was the Head Honcho in charge of everything.

  At least that was my rationale.

  Being the President of Death, Inc., had its advantages—and a very generous living stipend was one of them—but before I’d accepted the job, I’d made a resolution to myself that I would get my shopping problem under control. To that end, my Executive Assistant, Jarvis, had put me on a budget.

  A very small budget.

  In my heart, I knew keeping my mitts off the money and doing exactly as Jarvis instructed were the only ways to make my resolution a reality, but it was just too damn hard—and I was too damn weak. When I’d put my corporate card down on the counter at Barneys and rescued the Louis Vuitton weekend bag, I’d blown Jarvis’s budget for the month in one fell swoop.

  As soon as I stepped foot out of the store, th
e guilt set in.

  Hard-core.

  Using an old tactic from my shopping-whore days, I immediately ripped the tags off the bag so it would be harder to force myself to return it, but that made me feel even guiltier—and instead of being excited about my overpriced, monogrammed cowhide purchase, all I felt was ambivalence. I couldn’t really enjoy the thing because it was a verboten purchase, but I couldn’t bring myself to give it back because deep in my heart of hearts I loved owning something so deliciously extravagant.

  Feeling the kind of shame a puppy does when it pees on the carpet, I’d hidden the bag under my bed (behind a bunch of dust bunnies and an old snowboard that I’d only used once, to deleterious effect—a broken collarbone that, because of my immortality, had healed in three hours instead of three months), but since Jarvis was so familiar with my predilections to excess, the subterfuge only lasted, like, two seconds.