Page 84 of The Reluctant Reaper
“Which is ironically hilarious. Time is always on Death’s side. One way or the other, everyone goes down.”
“Yes, well.” Hilly stepped to the bed and began making it, then stopped herself. “Perhaps you and Gray will have the chance to couple again later.”
“Perhaps,” Amara agreed. By midnight, she would either be dead, or straddling Gray, so. Textbook win-win.
ChapterForty-Three
“Wait,” Skye said. “I thought you were leaving.” To the group: “Did she not tell us she was leaving several hours ago?”
“Changed my mind. You know how capricious I can be. Flighty, yet dour. Easily distracted, yet glum.”
They were back in the sick room and her dad was front and center, so to speak, in a huge bed that would have made anyone look small, and made Death look still more frail. His deterioration over the long weekend was as sorrowful as it was shocking.
I never thought he’d die. And even if I did, I never thought he’d die small.
“Yes, yes, you’regoodlittle hellhoundlets. Who’s the best little hellhoundlet? You are! And also you. And you, too!”
“I do appreciate your lover, Amara,” Arawn said. He’d pulled up a chair beside the fireplace and stretched his long legs out in front of him. La Croix was also beside the fireplace, as close as he could get without actually climbing into the flames. “No one in recent memory has ever been so charmed by my beasts.”
“Lover?” Gray asked.
Arawn flapped a hand at him. “Oh, please.”
“Oh.” Gray nodded. “Death god thing.”
“You’re both still sex-flushed and sweaty,” Penny pointed out with a giggle. “Not a death god thing. It’s a ‘having eyes and not being entirely stupid’ thing.”
Gray ignored the needle. “Sensing when people have banged is another death god superpower, I guess,” he said, gazing into a hellhoundlet’s large liquid eyes. “Yes itis. Yes itis! Awww, your ears are so silky.”
“Anyway.” Amara fought the urge to kiss and kick Gray, not in that order. “I’ve got good news for all of you. Death is just fine.”
“What?” From Hank and Penny, in amazed unison.
“Good.” Chernobog.
“This is news to me.” Dr. Paeon.
“Graham Gray, donotgive my dogs whatever you’ve hidden in your pocket.”
“This is your fault.” La Croix to Hilly. “You let her read too much of that Arthur Conan Doyle pop culture dreck.”
“Have you gone completely crazy?” Skye cried. She’d been the last to arrive, and either was wearing what she’d worn the day before, or she had lugged several identical pairs of cargo pants and black sweaters with epaulets to the compound. “Aren’t any of you listening to her?”
“That’s true, Skye,” Amara said. “They’re not great listeners. But then, they don’t have to be.”
“Hush, Amara... Death is not ‘just fine.’ Oh, gods, I knew this was going to be too much for you,” Skye moaned. “Oh, you poor kid...”
“And the reason Death is fine is becausethat,” Amara continued, pointing to the body on the bed, “is no longer Death.Iam, for all my remaining days, however long they be, and retroactive to my first Reap. My parents were right; it’s time I embraced my responsibilities regardless of my father’s state of health. Or his state of death.”
Chernobog: “Good.”
Penny: “Wow!”
La Croix: “Well done. Could someone throw fifteen or twenty more logs on the fire?”
Hank: “Congratulations?”
Arawn: “It strikes me that this could have been a conference call.”
