Page 66 of The Reluctant Reaper
“Well, we have to call them something, and the Reapettes sounds like a 1950s girl group.”
“We really don’t. And I need to think about it.”
“D’you want to think about it while gobbling a fistful of Buster Bars?”
“I do not.” Some things, even Dairy Queen was no good for.
ChapterThirty-Three
“... and then we came back here. Primarily because I don’t have one fucking clue about how to proceed. Dad? I dropped an F-bomb. It’s out there. The F-bomb is out there. Better wake up and lecture me on how profanity is a sign of limited intellect, for fuck’s sake.”
“Well, it is,” Hilly said, entering Death’s sickroom with a tray. Amara was more than a little amazed the tray was laden with washcloths, not food. “But you’re an exception to the rule. Remember when you took every vocab-building exercise you could find, and memorized the seven words you can’t say on TV? In ten languages?”
“No, that doesn’t sound like me at all, youputtana marcia.”
Hilly flapped a hand at her in a ‘get out of here with that’ motion. “How are you holding up, my darling?”
“About as well as a tower made of toothpicks. You?”
“That covers my situation as well.” She set the tray on the nearby end table, grabbed a cloth, disappeared into the bathroom, returned with the washcloth dripping. “But we prevail.”
“You should cross-stitch that onto a pillow.”
“I have.”
Amara snorted as Hilly folded back Death’s bedcovers and began washing his face.
“No change, obvs.”
“‘Obvs’? Is it that much more difficult to pronounce the entire word?”
“Fair,” Amara admitted. “That’s what happens when I’m around Gray for too long.”
“Where is he? Does he want a snack?”
“If he does, he’s covered. You can’t take two steps into the kitchen without being caught in a blizzard of snacks. And if you smoke another turkey, Mother, I swear to all the gods...”
“There can always be more snacks,” her mother said, because she was sweet and clinically insane.
“He went to the library to do more reading and fell asleep in there. We—he didn’t get much sleep last night, so I left him snoozing and came to talk to Dad. Well. TalkatDad.”
“All right. To answer your question, there are no changes, but only in his case. It would seem everyonebutDeath is changing.”
“Tell me about it. Mom, this might sound like another odd question?—”
“I’ll be the judge of that, dear.”
“—but did you ever go with Dad on Reaps?”
Hilly paused in midscrub and straightened. “You were right. That was an odd question.” She tilted her head, studying Amara, and they both let several seconds go by. “And the answer is, as you must know,of course not.”
“I figured.”
“Death has his territories and responsibilities, as I have mine. What’s the saying? ‘Ne’er the twain shall meet’? Something like that.”
“Close enough.” Amara watched her mother work, and did not offer to help roll Death so she could scrub his back. Partly because, hey! She was helpingplenty. And also because Hilly could have hoisted Death out of his bed, carried him downstairs, and then jogged with him for the better part of a mile. “You have separate fiefdoms. You always have.”
“Dare I ask why you dare ask?”
