“Of course, call him, yes,” Jarvis said casually, but I could see the effort it took him to let me make my own decision, especially when it went against his better judgment.
“Thanks,” I said, pulling my phone out of my bag and unlocking it. I had one of those wannabe BlackBerry phones that looked and felt like a high-end PDA, but had half the power and even less reception than the big boys. Jarvis waited patiently as I dialed the number and waited for Daniel to pick up.
No matter what might be happening in our relationship, I knew he’d help me if I needed him.
Though I let the phone ring and ring and ring, Daniel never answered. I hated to end the call just in case he was in the shower or something and was racing to get to the phone, but after a few minutes I knew it was a lost cause and I gave up, disconnecting.
“Okay, Daniel’s a no-go,” I said, putting the phone back in my bag after double-checking I’d left the ringer on high. “I just need to let Geneva know I’m leaving, and then we can go to Sea Verge.”
“What will you tell her?” Jarvis asked.
“I guess I’ll say I’m not feeling well. I’m allowed a sick day every now and then, aren’t I?” I said defensively.
I really wanted to be doing anything but running to Sea Verge, but I knew we had to take care of the problem now before it got too big to contain.
“I’ll wait here, then,” Jarvis replied. “You’ll be brief?”
I had no idea how long it was going to take me to get things cleared up with work. It’s not like we were running on a schedule or anything, was it?
“I don’t know, Jarvis,” I said, unlocking the bathroom door and steeling myself to go lie to my cubicle mate. “I’ll be back as soon as I can, okay?”
“Take your time,” Jarvis added dryly. “Because we have nothing but time, Miss Calliope.”
He got the last words in just as the door closed behind me. Startled, I nearly walked into our office intern, Robert, who was lurking in the hallway. A totally adorable hipster with the cutest Louisiana drawl in town, I would be seriously crushing on the guy if I weren’t otherwise engaged.
“Hey, Callie,” he said. “How’s it going?”
I took a step back, blocking the door with my body.
“Good, great . . . perfect actually,” I said, a nervous grin pinned to my face. He gave me a curious look.
“Cool,” he said as he pulled at the bottom of his Pink Nasty T-shirt, but didn’t make a move to leave.
“Yep, pretty cool,” I said, leaning against the door and folding my arms across my chest, hoping he’d take the hint and move the show on the road.
But the hint was not taken. Robert continued to stand there, yanking on his shirt like a two-year-old. I took a deep breath and renewed my smile, anxiously drumming the fingers of my left hand against the fatty part of my upper arm. We stood in silence and then Robert scrunched his face up like he was getting ready to tell me something really important.
God, I hope he isn’t going to ask me out. That would be really awkward.
“Uhm, can I use the bathroom, Callie?”
Not what I was expecting, but not a complete surprise, either.
“This one’s got something wrong with it,” I imparted conspiratorially. “I was just getting ready to go call maintenance.”
“Oh, but there’s more than one stall in there—”
I didn’t let him finish.
“Yeah, but the smell is pretty fierce,” I said. “Know what I mean?”
Robert began to nod his head, but then he stopped, thinking.
“Okay, but I gotta go kinda bad, so I guess I’ll just grin and bear it,” he said, trying to push past me.
“Not a good idea,” I said, continuing to physically block his way with my body. I probably had about fifteen pounds on the guy—which I thought would give me the advantage, but I didn’t count on him being as wiry as a cheetah. He took me by the shoulders, squeezing my wussy deltoids with way more power than was absolutely necessary, and easily shifting me out of the doorway.
I lost my footing and fell, my ass hitting the floor with a loud
crunch
. Robert didn’t even look down to make sure I was okay—he just stepped over me.
“Stop!” I cried, rolling on my hip and grabbing both his legs in a bear hug. I yanked my body backward with as much force as I could muster, and the little shit went down, falling almost on top of me.
Now who’s the cheetah?
My triumph only lasted a moment before I realized I was now pinned to the ground by Robert’s body . . . and from the snarl on his face, I could tell he was pretty pissed about the change in plan. He thought he’d be through the bathroom door already. He hadn’t expected me to actually put up a fight.
“You are a pain in my ass, Calliope Reaper-Jones,”
Robert spat, his face red with anger. Then before I could stop him, he’d reached out and grabbed me by the throat, wrapping bony fingers around my neck and squeezing. I gripped his wrists, trying to rip his hands away from my fragile trachea, but he was a lot stronger than me. It wasn’t that I was worried about him doing any serious damage—
uhm, immortality?
—but I didn’t want to black out and leave Jarvis unaware that an enemy was at the gates.
“Jarvis!”
I tried to croak, but I only succeeded in making Robert put more energy into his task. I was starting to lose consciousness, my vision tunneling to a pinpoint.
This is so not happening right now,
I thought as I redoubled my effort to pry his hands from my throat.
Seriously, we’re in a place of work here!
I tried to call out again, to get someone’s attention, but I was fading fast and my body didn’t seem to want to do what my mind was directing it to do. I was really worried I was gonna pass out right there on the floor—which was so not pretty.
“Who . . . are . . . you?”
I managed to squeak out in the brief second that he relaxed his fingers before increasing the pressure again.
He leaned forward, pushing his face right into mine. I almost gagged on the stench issuing from his open mouth. It smelled exactly like rotten eggs, but with the foulness factor ratcheted up to the three-millionth degree.
“You don’t
recognize
me?” he hissed, spraying spittle in my face—which frankly was so gross that if I could’ve died then, I might’ve gone for it.
“No,”
I squeaked.
“No?”
he repeated back at me in a nasty imitation of my own strangled rasp.
“But doesn’t this give it away, Calliope?” he continued, referring to the feel of his hands on my neck. I drew a blank, which I’m sure showed in my eyes, and he only ratcheted up the throat squeezing.
Even if I knew what he was talking about, I couldn’t have responded anyway because my larynx was being crushed beneath his fingers. This time I really did start to black out, but being a cat who wasn’t ready to stop playing with his little rat (me), Robert released his hold on my neck and I began to cough, trying to draw in as much air as possible before he changed his mind and started choking me again. I was giddy that I could finally breathe, but now my throat ached so badly I wanted to cry with every inhalation.
I was too exhausted to move—though my brain was still racing a million miles a minute trying to formulate an escape plan—so I watched, transfixed, as Robert reached up and slid his hands into his hair, giving a quick aggressive tug that peeled the flesh away from his face in one cohesive chunk. I gasped (painfully) as he held the flaccid skin forward so I could see his true face grinning down at me. Then, pleased by my reaction, he let the flesh slip from his hands and flop onto his chest, where it hung like a discarded Halloween mask.
“Now do you recognize me, sweetheart?” he asked gamely.
All I could do was nod as I stared up into the victorious eyes of my dad’s archenemy . . .
the Ender of Death.
five
“You again?”
I croaked, anger very much at the top of my emotional list as I glared up at the Ender of Death.
This guy was a Class-A prick: one I’d tangled with twice before and both times had kicked his ass into tomorrow. His primary raison d’être was to get rid of Death (i.e., my dad) and free the rest of us from the Wheel of Samsara—basically he was looking to end the concept of death entirely—and he would not be satisfied until he’d accomplished said task. He had a real Javert-from-
Les Miz
quality about him, and by that I mean he was totally obsessed with taking my dad down . . . and me along with him.
“Hello, Calliope,” he said, grinning.
I felt funny calling the guy “the Ender of Death,” so I went for one of the other names I’d known him by.
“
Marcel
, you little shit,” I said, eyes narrowing to slits as I used both fists to start pummeling his chest. “I’m gonna kick your ass!”
He easily grasped both my wrists and held them tightly to my chest until my fingers started to go numb from the lack of blood flow. I got tired of being on the losing end of the struggle and gave up, letting my body relax, hoping it would encourage him to let me go. This seemed to do the trick and he released me. My hands free, I sank back against the floor, my whole body exhausted from the exertion, and then rolled over onto my side. I immediately started massaging my wrists to get the blood flowing again, and then I scowled back up at Marcel, feeling defeated and pissed off with myself for not knowing any good magic spells to levy at him. Still, with his patrician face—modeled on one of those gaudy Roman Catholic effigies of Jesus suffering up on the cross—and heavy-lidded eyes, I had to admit that Mr. “Ender of Death” Marcel was kind of a good-looking guy. That is, if you ignored the one blemish on his face—a fresh cut across his cheek—and liked assholes who had nothing against choking a girl to get her attention. I knew that while I could appreciate his good looks, I was
never
gonna love the asshole-ier aspects of his character.
“Where’s Robert?” I demanded. “What did you do to our intern?”
Marcel smiled, using a long, square-tipped finger to point down the hall toward the office kitchen. I quickly rolled away from him and used the wall to pull myself to my feet. My legs were shaky as I took the first few tentative steps, but I felt my adrenaline kicking back in with each footfall. From my vantage point, the kitchen looked completely normal; the small fridge was where it was supposed to be, the coffeepot was still burbling on its attached hot plate, and the box of mostly eaten pastries still sat on the counter where I’d left it after I’d ravaged it earlier in the morning. Maybe Marcel was just pulling my chain, making me walk all the way down the hall for absolutely nothing, but a niggling voice in the back of my mind was telling me otherwise: I had a very bad feeling about the fate of our poor office intern.
My heart was in my mouth as I rounded the kitchen counter, hoping against hope I wouldn’t find Robert sprawled on the floor, a half-eaten bear’s claw stuffed down his gullet, but thankfully, the floor was empty.
“There’s nothing here,” I said, turning around to find Marcel standing directly behind me—I hadn’t even heard him get up from his spot on the floor, let alone cross the rest of the hall.
Creepy.
He didn’t deign to answer me, just shrugged his shoulders and looked down, his long eyelashes fluttering. I followed Marcel’s gaze to the bottom cabinet, the one that usually held coffee accoutrements like filters, wooden stirrers, Sweet’N Low, etc.
“You wouldn’t—” I began, but I didn’t finish the sentence. I knelt down, my sweaty fingers fumbling to grasp the plastic handles and throw open the cabinet doors.
I found the intern crammed down inside the bottom kitchen cabinet, naked except for a pair of bright yellow boxer shorts hanging low enough on his hips to reveal the crack of his ass. His head was tilted at a very odd angle . . . one that was not natural to any living human I’d ever seen—and the niggling feeling I’d had about the intern’s fate blossomed into full-scale panic. This was entirely my fault. If I hadn’t been working at House and Yard, our poor intern would never have had any cause to run into the Ender of Death.
Shit!
I slammed the cabinet door shut, the sound reverberating in the empty hallway.
“You killed him,” I growled, guilt and rage bubbling up inside me, making me want to scream. Not wishing to draw any more attention to the situation than I already had, I worked hard to maintain my indoor voice.
“Why would you do that? You’re the
Ender
of Death, for God’s sake!” I added, staring at Marcel like he was some kind of nasty little bug under a microscope, one I would’ve happily exterminated right there on the spot.
“Calliope, you must have some idea of what is happening,” Marcel said, leaning against the bone white refrigerator. “Greater forces than you are at work and you
will
have to bend to their will sooner or later. So why not save yourself the suffering and do it now.”
“Greater forces of what?” I said, slowly inching away from him. Marcel might think I was playing dumb, but I really had no clue what the jerkoid was talking about.
“Who do you think sent the Vargr welcoming party?”
“That was you?” I said as I stepped out into the hallway, putting a little more distance between us. I did not want to be trapped in a tiny U-shaped space with Marcel.
“Me and the greater forces, babe. They’re responsible for putting your little friend in the cabinet, too. I’m just here at their behest to offer you the chance to capitulate before something even worse comes your way.”
“I don’t think so, asswipe,” I said, reaching forward with both hands and shoving the son of a bitch as hard as I could. He wasn’t prepared for my surprise attack, and the force of the blow sent him backward into the thick plastic door handle of the refrigerator. He howled in pain as the handle rammed into the soft flesh of his lower back, but I didn’t stick around to see what happened next. I turned on my heel and ran back to the bathroom, my body slamming against the solid door, knocking the wind out of me. I tried the door handle, adrenaline keeping me on my feet, but it was locked. I began to hammer on the doorframe instead.