Page 1 of Hot Ghoul Summer

Chapter One: Yesterday

Death takes a vacation.

No, literally, every year, I get use of the “family” beach house at Silver Shores on Lake Erie.

First person to make a joke about Death and Erie (eerie) gets a year off his life.

(I’m just kidding! Like I would do that!)

Anyway, I usually work the Scranton, PA, to Pine Ridge, NY, corridor, following the northeast Ley Line to the triple intersection in Pine Ridge. That’s a good place to live if you’re in the supernatural business, which I am.

But I’m a member of RMGA Local 17 (the Reapers, Morrigans, and Guardian Angels union), so I take my two weeks’ paid vacation every year, like clockwork. I make sure I get my zone covered by my pal Sera, the morrigan who works at the funeral home in Pine Ridge, and I head to the beach.

I don’t really tan, but I love the fishing, and for a few weeks, my life as Death is just another job.

Okay, I bet you have questions.

There are many Deaths—big D or little d. Death comes to pretty much everyone—although if you are very, very good at making deals, you might get to skip your own and take the job of a Reaper. That’s what happened to me a long, long, looong time ago. (1640. Debtors’ prison. I wasn’t so good at deals back then.)

Anyway, to make a long story short, the Death that came to collect me had just had his wife and sons die in an outbreak of plague, and he wanted to hand off the job to someone else so he could join them. He explained that it was a very demanding job, but it didn’t have to be scary. Reapers in his department—yes, even back then, they had departments —were responsible for tracking the souls of the righteous who were ready to sever from their shells, meeting them when it was time for them to depart, guiding them from this life to the immortal plane, and handing them off to one of the Guardian Angels (who weren’t in our union back then), before slipping back down to the mortal coil to start the process all over again.

So, don’t think of me as some big scary guy with a scythe. I’m sort of scrappy looking, scruffy even, and my tool of choice is a switchblade. All right, yes, I do look a little rough, and I still have a bit of a Fish and Chips accent even though it’s been almost 500 years, but I’m a sweetheart. I’m a guide dog, basically. I make sure you don’t have to go alone when you’ve gotta go. I’ve gotten outstanding rankings for empathy, efficiency, and expertise for the last forty years!

I’m only the thing in your nightmares if you mess with me or someone I care about. And I don’t have anyone I care about.

Well. Until yesterday.

See, yesterday, I was out fishing and fell asleep in the rowboat. I must have drifted a little bit, and when I woke up, confused, I was under one of the piers.

Above me, I could hear the most blasphemous language and someone getting the absolute shit kicked out of him.

I went invisible (handy) and slipped up between the worn wooden slats in time to see a man sliding his brass knuckles back into his pocket. He pulled out a gun from the other one.

“Sorry, Gary. I want something for my time and money. And since you don’t have it—”

“I—I have something better! I have something much, much better.” The bleeding, sobbing mess at the man’s feet flung his cracked phone toward his attacker—and me, as I stood behind him.

My heart doesn’t beat, but for a second, it leaped.

She looked like Molly, the girl who lived in the street next to me when I was growing up. Coppery brown and blonde curls framed her pretty heart-shaped face. Wide mouth. Freckles. Laughing, sparkling eyes.

Molly made over again, half a millennia later.

Well, obviously not, but my heart didn’t know that.

“Your phone? I don’t want your piece of shit phone.” The thug stamped on it with his boot.

“Not the phone. The picture! The girl in the picture. My stepdaughter, Martina. We call her Molly.”

“Holy switchblades.”

I slammed my invisible hand over my mouth. Yes, I said that out loud.

Both men on the pier froze.

“Did you—”

“Talk, Gary. What about this pretty little fresh-faced thing? How old is she?”

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