Amber Benson - Deaths Daughter

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Table of Contents

NICE DOGGIE...

Cerberus turned its Snarly head, and the giant, jaundiced eye unblinkingly trained itself on my frozen form. The dogs eye narrowed, and I knew without anyone saying anything out loud that I was only one slo-mo minute from getting digested.

The other two heads stopped their obsessive licking and raised themselves in line with Snarly head. They didnt look nearly as mean as Snarly, but as I watched, something much worse began to register in their eyes: excitement. The big hellhounds tail started thumping more quickly against the gate.

Then, without warning, Snarly head swooped forward, teeth bared, giant eyeball trained in one direction... mine. Frozen in shock, I could do nothing but stare as Cerberus, the guardian of the North Gate to Hell, prepared to make me its lunch...

For the two special men in my life:
Dad and Adam

Acknowledgments

There are three people integral to the creation of this book: my awesome literary manager, Brendan Deneen; my equally fantastic editor, Ginjer Buchanan; and the man who started it all, my frequent collaborator and good friend Christopher Golden. Without their encouragement and support, Calliope Reaper-Jones would never have seen the light of day. I also want to send a shout-out to the singersongwriter Angela Correa, whose album Correatown furnished the sound track for the writing of this book.

one

My name is Calliope Reaper-Jones, and I think Im losing my mind.

Okay, maybe I was being a touch melodramatic. I wasnt completely losing my mind, but things were definitely getting a little screwy in my neck of the woods.

It was like the universe couldnt help itself. It had to mess with you every once in a whileyou know, just to make sure you were paying attention. I guess it reasoned that since we were all so busy being anal little worker ants, its job was to step in occasionally and shatter whatever carefully constructed illusions of normalcy we had created for ourselves.

Just to shake things up a little... for our sakes, of course.

Because, unlike us, the universe knew that illusions were just that: illusionaryand they could be destroyed with one well-placed roundhouse kick.

my kick in the pants came last Saturday: the day of my most recent blind date.

My next-door neighbor, Patience, had decided she was sick and tired of my sad ass feeling all sorry for itselfher words, not mine, but the sentiment was definitely correct. I mean, I hadnt had a real date in, well... It was so pathetic an expanse of time that I didnt even want to talk about it.

You see, my not-so dream job job had totally precluded me from having any kind of social life. Period. I spent all week working my butt off, so that when Saturday finally did roll around, I was too dead to the world to enjoy it. Plus which, my few pathetic attempts to hook up through craigslist were just thatpathetic.

I usually ended up in zombie mode until Sunday whensomehow mildly rechargedId get up, do my laundry, run a few necessary errands, then meet some girlfriends at whatever new happening breakfast place theyd decided we were going to have brunch at that weekend. They never bothered asking for my foodie opinion, just e-mailed me the addressfor reference only, since I wouldnt know a happening place if it hit me over the head with a shovel and whispered into my ear: Im a hot spot!

Anyway, thats enough about my pathetic excuse for a social life. Lets go back to the blind date, and the day everything in my life went to hell in a handbasket.

Said blind-date guy was one of Patiences office mates at Brown, Stimple, and Brown, Esquire, a big law firm uptown. I wasnt exactly sure what she did there, but she had a really big television hanging on her wall, so it mustve been something very important and unbelievably excitingnot. The legal world was nothing if not nail-bitingly... tedious.

Anyway, the guy shed decided was my soul mate worked in a different department, but since they had mutual friends, she said it would be as easy as pieher words againto get him to take me out on the town one Saturday night in the near future, ending my fantastically long dating dry spellhurrah!

Well, it turns out the near future was only two days after shed told me about the idea in the first place. There wasnt even enough time to get freaked-out about the whole thing. All I could do was take my Friday lunch break at Saks, and pray there was something on the designer sale rack that fit.

Unfortunately, the one dress I fell in love with at first sight, a beautiful DKNY silk number that was marked down to a ridiculous forty-three bucks, was way too big. No matter how I tried to cinch the waist, it looked like I was wearing a mumu. Empty-handed, I went back to work feelingfor the first time in my lifeslightly perturbed that I wasnt twenty pounds heavier.

That night, I was stuck in the office until eight thirty collating four copies of my bosss sons book report, by which time all the stores were closed, or getting ready to close. I knew right then and there it was gonna be Saturday afternoon or nothing.

When I got home, I set my alarm for nine thirty, determined to get up, brush my teeth, and go find something slinky, sultry, and cheap to wear on the blind date. I had decided that even if the guy was a total dogwhich he probably would be, with my luckI was gonna look hot, and take somebody yummy home, even if it only turned out to be my old standby: Ben and Jerry.

That night, all tucked up in my little Battery Park City bedroom, I fell asleep with visions of department stores in my head, more excited about a Saturday than Id been in a long, long time.

Had I known what the next day was going to have in store for me, I dont think I wouldve slept a wink. Needless to say, I was completely clueless, so I slept like a baby... on Ambien.

the day did not even start well.

First, my alarm decided to not go off.

Id set that sucker, checked it twiceI can be a bit OCD when I feel like itand even made sure the alarm was set to buzzer rather than radio. I knew it was going to have to be one of those screaming alarm only mornings if I was going to make myself crawl out of bed at a quasireasonable hour, so I took, like, extra, extra precaution.

So, of course, no alarm meant no wakey-wakey on time. Which in plain English meant that when I finally did get up, it was one (!) in the afternoon.

The next thing I discovered was that all the water from every tap in my apartment was boiling hot. The scalding water made it almost impossible to brush my teeth, let alone take a shower or wash my hair, so now I was stuck stinking my way into what was supposed to be a brilliant Barneys shopping-excursion day.

Weird, but not unheard of.

In fact, only six months earlier the entire building had been without water for two days, in which time I learned the true meaning of the term Irish bath. Take it from me, not the best way to make friends on the subway.

In retrospect, I guess I should have seen all the above weirdness as a sign. But at the timeand you have to believe me hereit did not seem like a big deal, definitely not strange enough to warrant an exorcism of the old homestead.

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