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  It seemed that while I was otherwise engaged, the armored knights I’d shooed out of the room earlier had decided to surround me, their battle-axes and swords at the ready. I cringed, waiting for the blow that I knew would separate my head from my body, making the whole immortality thing an even more thrilling adventure.

  Not!

  But when no blow was immediately forthcoming, I slowly opened my eyes. Still expecting the worst—I had no idea what might be worse than spending immortality trying to reattach your head to your body—I peeked out at the armored knights through half-lowered eyelashes.

  Yup, still armed and ready to destroy.

  This totally bites, I thought disgustedly.

  I realized that the more time I spent in Purgatory, the more I came to appreciate what a jerk Cerberus was and how reprehensible the whole stupid deal I’d made with him had been. I hadn’t bargained for all this crap when I’d signed up for the job. I mean, decapitation was pretty high on my list of “not so much fun things to do with your weekend”—yet here I was, actually having to deal with a possible decapitation scenario on what should have been a day of rest and recuperation from a very hectic workweek.

  No, this doesn’t totally bite, I thought sarcastically.

  “This sucks,” I said out loud.

  At the sound of my voice, I noticed a few of the knights surrounding me nervously fidgeting in their places—which seemed totally odd. I mean, if these guys were so itching to destroy, why hadn’t they just bitten the bullet and chopped me up into little bits already?

  That was when it hit me.

  I wasn’t the object of their bloodthirstiness.

  My mind, which had been so busy floating around unhinged from my body all day, clicked into gear, putting all the contextual pieces of information I had gleaned together. From their aggressive stance, I’d just assumed that the knights were in attack mode, but when I really took the time to study their formation, I discovered that my little buddies were actually in some kind of defensive stance, the intent to kill radiating away from me, not toward me.

  Oh my God, I thought to myself. They’re protecting me!

  “Miss Calliope?” I heard Jarvis say behind me. I turned to find Suri and my dad’s Executive Assistant standing in the archway, looking utterly confused by this turn of events.

  “Uh-huh?” I replied tentatively. I was afraid any sudden moves on my part might destroy the tenuous arrangement the knights and I had unconsciously come to—and I had absolutely no interest in getting my armored retinue all hot and bothered again.

  “They won’t let us in,” Jarvis said. “They seem to be defending you for some reason.”

  I gave him a tight smile.

  “Yeah, they’re probably just smitten with my gorgeous face and tight ass,” I joked glibly, which garnered only a return roll of the eyes from Jarvis.

  “Uhm, well, anyone have any ideas?” I continued, since no one seemed amused by my little joke.

  Jarvis shook his head, but Suri’s eyes nervously darted around the room, lost in thought. When they finally settled on me, I could tell that she was pretty annoyed about not being able to control her knights, but since she was no longer the master of the “Hall of Death” universe, she was just gonna have to go with the flow like the rest of us.

  “I know why they’re not listening to me,” she said, indicating the defensive line the knights had created.

  “Well, you wanna let us in on the secret, then?” I asked, really hoping that whatever she was gonna say, it had nothing to do with body swapping, body sharing, or anything else of that particular nature.

  “It’s because of your lineage. You are one of the chosen,” Suri said. “You might be their boss one day, so maybe it’s, like, they’re kissing up to you?”

  Well, I thought to myself, at least they’re only brownnosing, not chopping me up into little bite-sized pieces.

  “Besides, the knights have always been partial to the witch doctors we employ to deal with the noncorporeal clients we work with,” Suri continued. “I guess you banished the Shade, so they’re rather impressed with you at the moment.”

  “Great,” I said. “Nice to see a little appreciation for a job well-done.”

  “The knights killed the last witch doctor we had here in the Hall of Death,” Suri said suddenly. “But he was pilfering Death Records, so I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

  I gulped, not liking where this was going at all.

  Up until that moment, I hadn’t felt Daniel’s presence inside me, but suddenly I was filled with the urge to hit the bathroom so badly that I nearly started doing the pee-pee dance right there on the floor.

  Leave it to Daniel’s Shade to take up residence in my urinary tract, I mused.

  “Are you all right?” Jarvis said, his talent for observation quickly discerning my need for the toilet.

  “Bathroom,” I replied through clenched teeth. I didn’t think I really had to pee or anything, but I didn’t want to take the chance. Whether it was a real need for release, or just Daniel trying to be cute, I decided that I needed to find the bathroom, wherever in the Hall of Death it might reside.

  Jarvis turned to Suri, who merely shrugged.

  “We don’t usually get that kind of request . . .” she began, but I wasn’t having any of it.

  “I don’t care if no other living soul in the whole history of Purgatory ever answered the call of nature while visiting the Hall of Death,” I said. “I need to pee.”

  Suri stared at me for a moment, then nodded.

  “Okay, fine. There’s an employee bathroom behind the entrance to the Death Records.”

  “Thank you,” I said exasperatedly.

  I started to take a step forward, the need to be alone becoming extremely necessary, but then I stopped, remembering just in time that a ring of very lethally armed knights was still surrounding me.

  “Uhm, hey, guys,” I said tentatively. “What do you think about me maybe just slipping right by that battle-ax and going—”

  I was interrupted by said battle-ax dropping down in front of my face, blocking any thoughts of exit I might’ve had.

  “Okay, I guess that answers that question,” I surmised. The guard, its helmet blocking any view I might’ve had of its face, lifted the battle-ax away from my head, its point well made.

  “Now what?” I asked Jarvis.

  “I believe they say that the best offense is a good defense,” the faun replied.

  I glared at him.

  “Who says that? Stop being obtuse, Jarvis!” I blurted out, my words infused with more acid than I’d intended. I didn’t want to alienate the only person that was in my corner—especially when I was surrounded on all sides by weapon-wielding Death acolytes—so I apologized.

  “Sorry. Didn’t mean to be such a bitch.”

  Jarvis seemed thoroughly suspicious of my apology but, like the friend he was, grudgingly accepted it before elucidating upon the “good offense” statement.

  “I believe it’s a football term—”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “If you don’t want me to continue,” Jarvis said, interrupting himself.

  “No, no, no,” I said. “Please, I really want to know how you’re gonna spin this.”

  Suri stared at Jarvis, then at me. The look on her face implied that we were both nutso—which was probably closer to the truth than I cared to admit.

  “As I was saying,” Jarvis began again, “I believe that if you do as you wish, rather than ask for permission, the knights will be forced to follow you.”

  “Maybe,” I said, trying to appear doubtful of his suggestion even though I had a feeling it was on the money.

  Usually, I would do anything not to give Jarvis the satisfaction of being right—he just loved to gloat, which made it really difficult to deal with him for days afterward—but in this scenario, I saw only one option: his.

  “Here goes nothing,” I said and took a step forward.

  There was a moment of
confusion when the knights didn’t know if they should try to stop me or move with me, but ultimately they decided to just follow my lead. Each step I took, they were right there with me, weapons at the ready, armor clanking like the collar bells old ladies sometimes put on their critter-murdering cats to thwart them from their misdeeds.

  Jarvis and Suri quickly moved out of sword’s reach as my retinue and I crossed the threshold of the archway and stepped into the hall. I felt a little stupid as I looked down the length of the hall and saw that every person or creature who’d been working quietly inside one of the study rooms was now standing in the hallway, watching my progress. It really was like being in one of those dreams where you show up at work, or school, buck naked and everyone stares at you and you feel like a complete and total idiot—only that was a dream and this was reality.

  “Okay, everyone,” I said loudly, “move along. There’s nothing to see here.”

  Of course, there was lots to see, so no one moved an inch.

  Since they weren’t going to listen to me anyway, I just decided to ignore them and let them enjoy the show. I’m sure nothing as interesting as a twentysomething immortal and her band of merry armor-clad men slowly clanking their way to the bathroom had ever happened in the Hall of Death before.

  We moved slowly, the knights not really wanting to come with me, but doing it anyway. As we continued down the hall, we came upon a couple of brown-robed men in their late sixties standing inside one of the arched doorways watching us. I was pretty sure they were Christian monks, but I received no Christian charity from them as we went past. They gave us a wide berth, almost stepping back into their study room, then made the sign of the cross, insinuating I was some kind of Hell spawn or something invading their turf.

  “Sorry about the interruption, boys,” I murmured snarkily. “Hope we didn’t scare you into wetting your vestments or anything.”

  The two monks weren’t the only bad apples we encountered on our search for the bathroom. No, we were pretty much treated like pariahs by everyone and everything we passed on our march to the toilet.

  At the end of the hall, not far from the tapestry of the knight, the cat, and the unicorn that I had encountered in my astral wanderings, I spied a small Abyssinian cat sitting in one of the rooms, its hind legs perched on a chair, its front paws delicately balanced on one of the long reading-table tops, a large calfskin-bound book opened before it. As I passed by, my knights still flanking me, the cat looked up from its book, its amber eyes locking onto mine. I took a step back, nearly knocking into one of my new guards, but I could not tear my gaze away from the cat.

  The cat seemed just as interested in me as I was in it. It jumped off its chair and slowly started to weave toward me, its long tail trailing rakishly behind its body. Terrified, I took another step back, this time managing to poke myself in the shoulder with one of my guards’ broadswords.

  “Ow!” I yelped, taking a step back toward the cat—totally not the direction I wanted to be going, but since I didn’t want to get poked again, I was kind of out of options.

  “Please,” I cried, “please stay away from me.”

  The cat didn’t seem at all swayed by my entreaties; instead it continued to glide steadily closer, its body a sleek, fur missile heading unwaveringly toward my destruction.

  “Do something!” I yelled at the knights. If they were really going to protect me, then now was the time to get their butts in gear. The closer that cat got to my person, the less chance I had of getting out of Purgatory with my life intact.

  “Please!” I implored the cat. “You don’t understand . . .”

  The cat stopped just outside the line of scrimmage, and still my knights made no move to stop it. The cat sat back on its haunches and started licking its pale gold coat.

  “Look,” I said, “I’m sure you’re a very nice kitty—”

  And that was when I sneezed.

  This was not an ordinary sneeze. This was the monster of all sneezes, or at least the monster of all sneezes that I had ever endured. It was so intense, so full of energy, it rocked me bodily forward, making me stumble onto my knees in front of the cat. I felt a tiny pop inside my brain and then watched, horrified, as a thin stream of translucent ether slipped out of my nose. I reached out, trying to contain what I knew was Daniel’s Shade, but I wasn’t fast enough. Before I realized what was happening, the cat had pounced, drawing the fragile Shade substance into its own nostrils.

  Being in such close proximity to the feline made me sneeze again, but this time there was nothing surreal about it—or the other three sneezes that followed. I stared at the cat, my breath coming in ragged, wheezing fits. My chest felt so heavy I thought it was going to collapse and crush every internal organ I owned into mushy offal.

  I realized with abject certainty that I was gonna die right here in the Hall of Death, only fifty feet from where my own Death Record was probably sitting, waiting to record all the intimate details of my fast-approaching demise. I wondered if I could hold out long enough to find my own Death Record and stop it from documenting my death.

  I was beginning to die. I could feel the power of the cat bleeding into my soul, as it became harder and harder to breathe. A drape of all-consuming blackness slipped across my eyes and I fell forward onto my stomach, the scratchy warmth of the Oriental carpet biting into my cheek as I wheezed my final breath and—

  “Miss Calliope?”

  I heard Jarvis, but still in my death throes, I could not answer him.

  “Mistress Calliope, stop being a drama queen and get up.”

  Has Jarvis no respect for the recently deceased? I thought angrily. Here I am lying dead on the floor and all he can do is call me names?

  I felt something cold and metal prod my hip, but I didn’t move. I had just exerted a lot of energy dying, and frankly, I just wanted to be left in peace for a few minutes.

  Since I had no memory of my past deaths, I wasn’t sure if this was how the whole thing usually went down, but I really, really hoped that they just let you molder in your body for a few hours before the harvesters came along to collect you for the Afterlife.

  Suddenly, I felt something warm and scratchy lick the side of my check and I instantly opened my eyes.

  “What the hell—” I started to say, but was interrupted by another giant sneeze that sent the cat, who up until that moment had been pressed up against my face, backtracking. It sat hard on its haunches, but didn’t move again as I was assailed by two sneezes in quick succession.

  “They should outlaw sneezing when you’re dead,” I said to no one in particular. I was dead, after all, so no one I knew could see me anymore—well, at least not the soul part of myself.

  “And who said you were dead?” Jarvis answered.

  Obviously he missed the memo about me dying.

  I looked up and saw the faun standing beside Suri, still a few feet away from the knights, but well within talking distance.

  “Cats are my weakness . . .” I began, but stopped when I heard Jarvis tut-tutting. “They are! Madame Papillon told me so.”

  Jarvis merely shook his head.

  “I know all your family’s weaknesses—even yours,” Jarvis replied, switching his weight from one hip to the other. “And felines ain’t it, my dear.”

  “How can you be so sure?” I said, sitting up so that I could get a better look at him and keep my eye on the cat at the same time.

  “When an immortal is born—not made, mind you—their weakness is foretold at birth,” Jarvis countered. “That’s how.”

  “But I thought I was dead—”

  This time the cat answered me, its pale gold eyes full of amusement.

  “You thought wrong,” the cat said, its voice smooth as silk. It blinked as it stood up and lazily slipped between the ranks of my armored guard. The knights didn’t move a muscle as the cat sat down beside me.

  “Tell them to go,” the cat said before bending its head forward to lick one of its paws.


  Without hesitation, I said: “Go away, knights.”

  They did as I asked, breaking rank as they fell in step behind each other and marched back down the hall, eager to return to their individual posts. Now that I wasn’t in possession of the Shade anymore, I wasn’t so interesting to the knights.

  “Well, that was easy,” I said to the cat before my body was overtaken by another sneezing fit.

  “You’re just allergic,” the cat said softly. “It’s not fatal. I swear it.”

  Once the knights had completely disappeared, Jarvis came over and kneeled down before the cat.

  “Miss Calliope,” Jarvis said, his voice low. “I want you to meet someone very special.”

  He inclined his head toward the cat, who began to purr greedily.

  “This is Bast, ex-Egyptian Goddess and Queen of the Cats.”

  I gave her a quick smile.

  “Hey, as long as you’re not out to kill me, it’s very nice to meet you,” I said, trying to decide if it was appropriate to extend my hand for a shake or not.

  “You don’t understand,” Jarvis said, agitated. “This is not just some arbitrary creature that you are meeting, Miss Calliope.”

  “Okay?” I said, not really understanding what Jarvis was getting at. He sighed and tried another tack.

  “This,” Jarvis intoned, “is your father’s spirit guide.”

  fifteen

  “Spirit guide?” I repeated after I had sneezed one last time. “How namby-pamby can you get?”

  Now, as far as spirit guides go . . . Okay, I know that the Afterlife is full of all kinds of strange and unique creatures, but did they have to get so clichéd about it? I mean, come on. I could handle Executive Assistants and Devil’s protégés galore, but an anthropomorphic cat that guided you through the spirit world was so New Agey it was ridiculous.

  “Spirit guides are an integral part of the Afterlife and the supernatural world,” Jarvis said, his voice coming out all snippy.