Page 29 of The Reluctant Reaper
“I know you’re trying to calm me down while also making it sound gross but it sounds pretty great.”
“You’re a good boy,” Amara’s mother said with an approving nod. “And you’re handling this quite well, considering.”
“Sorry, I’m new to all this stuff,” Gray said as the corpse began to stir. “Amara told me some of it but it’s still ohfuck!”
The corpse was sitting up. “Dak! Ack! Da—darling, I swear.” Hank coughed up a little blood and took Hilly’s proffered napkin with a nod of thanks. “She—ack!—was nothing.”
“Don’t you ‘nothing’ me,” Penny snapped while her husband blotted his blood. “You went to such lengths to gain my hand, you wooed me like you were getting paid and broke my dear mother’s heart to have me?—”
“With all respect and reverence, love, your mother overreacted. Punishing the entire planet for the actions of one?—”
“Scoundrel! One ass, one kidnapping wretch! One faithless dog! And now you’re tired of me?—”
“Never!”
“—you’ll abandon me for an ordinary skink?”
The corpse seized her ankles and pulled; Penny landed on top of him and they groaned in unison. “Aggh, my ribs... it’s ‘skank,’ dear one, and of course not.”
“And this is Penny’s husband, Hank,” Amara finished.
“There’s—there’s no way those are their real names,” Gray managed.
“They are now. But they used to go by Persephone and?—”
“Hades.” Gray nodded, trying (and failing) not to stare. “Sure. Of course. Makes perfect sense. Yep.”
“Well, it does, kind of,” Amara replied, then shoved a heaping bowl of savory oatmeal at him. Gray instinctively grabbed it, dropping his phone as he did so. Amara moved quickly; it slapped into her palm and she tucked it into his shirt pocket. “Penny, Hank, this is my friend Gray.”
Hank blinked up at them with eyes that were unrelieved black. Looking into Hank’s eyes was like staring into a couple of miniature tar pits. “Friend? Huh.”
“I have friends,” Amara mumbled, resisting the urge to scuff the tile with her toe.
Gray was still goggling down at the couple. “I’m sorry for your loss?”
“No more so than I,” Penny huffed. She was wriggling and trying to get back to her feet, but Hank wouldn’t let go. “Unhand me, you rutting cretin!”
“She was nothing,” Hank soothed. “All of them, nothing.”
Gray nudged Amara and mouthed,All of them?
Amara shrugged.
“So you keep saying. And yet inevitably I’ll catch you following the wrong pair of panties down the lane.”
“Dalliances!” Hank protested. “Fripperies! Ouch!”
Penny had somehow gotten the leverage to jam a bony elbow into his side. “I’ve had enough. You may return to your solo rule of Hades, that cold and dreadful place;Ishall return to sunlight.” She looked up and glared out the kitchen windows. “Somewhere warm. Somewhere the sun is up more than six hours a day.”
“Now, Penny, that’s an exaggeration,” Hilly soothed. “Next month the sun will be up for a good seven hours. On your feet, both of you. There’s quite a bit of food, and our other guests have arrived.”
Then: the cacophony. Shrill yapping and the brittle sound of claws on ceramic tile.
“Swell,” Amara said dourly even as Gray squeaked in alarm as the claws skittered closer. “Must Arawn always be preceded by his trio of hellhounds?”
“Hellhounds? Oh shit, oh shit, what do we d—awww!”
Amara groaned.He got rid of those magnificent blue Labs for... for...
