How to be Death (18 page)

I didn’t get a chance to ask her to elucidate further because Jarvis and Runt chose that moment to burst into the bathroom, carrying a brown cardboard box filled with all the household chemicals I’d asked for.

“My God, the stench,” Jarvis said, reeling at the intensity of the skunk-tomato smell.

He set the box down on the bathroom floor, then quickly
backed away, his sensitive nose keeping him sequestered in the bedroom. Runt, whose olfactory senses had to be way more acute than Jarvis’s, came right into the bathroom, unfazed.

“Wow, that smell is pungent,” she said, settling down next to the bathtub. “But it sure made it easy to find you guys.”

“Thanks, Runt,” I said, petting the pup’s head as I squatted down next to the cardboard box and started digging out the stuff I’d need to make the de-skunking concoction I’d found on the Internet. “You are officially my go-to person ‘in case of emergency.’”

“Don’t forget Jarvis,” she said, watching me mix hydrogen peroxide and baking soda in an empty plastic two-liter soda bottle. “He got all the stuff you wanted and he didn’t even blink when Zinia yelled at him for leaving.”

“Thanks, Jarvi,” I called out, not sure if he could hear me over the flowing water. “You’re aces!”

“Hurry up!” Kali yelled at me, her dark hair plastered to her head like a skullcap as she sat hunched in a ball next to the flowing faucet. “And close the window. I’m naked and it’s bloody freezing in here!”

“Jeez Louise,” I mumbled under my breath as I added the last ingredient to my de-skunking solution and watched it fizz.

“I’m waiting, white girl!” Kali said, her teeth chattering. The Hindu Goddess had done a lot for me over the past year, but I was pretty sure this was going to make us even-steven.

“Okay, where did you get hit?” I asked, holding up the plastic two-liter bottle.

Kali glared at me.

“How am I supposed to know that, Calliope Reaper-Jones? Does it look like I was taking notes for posterity?”

Fine, be a bitch,
I thought, my nose burning from the foulness of the smell wafting from the bathtub.
See if I de-skunk you next time!

“Do a sniff test, give me ballpark,” I said.

“It’s time for the Death Dinner to begin,” Jarvis yelled from the bedroom. “Are you nearly done in there?”

“No!” Kali, Runt, and I all screamed back at once—which Jarvis took as a sign to keep his thoughts to himself. The synchronicity of our “no” definitely made Kali relax a little, and
instead of the megabitch attitude I’d been getting, she started to mellow, even allowing herself a small grin at the absurdity of the situation.

“All right, white girl.” She sighed, shaking her head. “I guess my hands and arms got it for sure.”

She sniffed her fingers and grimaced.

“More than for sure, actually,” I murmured as I poured the stuff in the bottle over the afflicted area and watched it fizz.

“Are your hair and face okay?” I asked.

She nodded.

“They’re fine. That’s just the tomato juice the dumb bitch poured all over my head.”

Once again I found myself wondering how the woman got the job. Wasn’t she supposed to stay in the drawing room with her sherry tray? Not go skulking around the halls, looking for trouble. I made a mental note to ask Jarvis about the woman after we were done with the whole Kali-skunk debacle.

Luckily for the Goddess, most of the spray was on her clothes and not her skin. I could see oily secretions on the hem of her skirt and on the sari, itself, where they lay crumpled in a ball on the floor, so I suggested dousing her feet and calves in the solution—then we sat quietly, waiting for my jerry-rigged de-skunker to do its job.

“I think it’s working,” Runt said, her more highly developed sniffer awarding us success.

“Why don’t you wash the tomato out of your hair and we’ll go find you something else to wear,” I said to Kali. “Maybe there’s a way to get the smell out of the sari—”

“Burn it,” she said matter-of-factly, picking up a bottle of rose-scented shampoo from the side of the tub and squirting a dollop into her hand, massaging it into her hair.

“Are you sure?” I asked. “I bet we could get—”

She waved me away with her hand.

“I have a thousand more like it.”

I shrugged and grabbed the clothes off the floor, wadding them into a ball and shoving them into the bottom of the cardboard box alongside the empty bottles of hydrogen peroxide, dish soap, and baking soda. I picked up the box, thinking I’d carry it out to a garbage can, but the stench was so overwhelming
I changed direction, walking over to the casement window and dumping the whole thing out into the shrubbery.

“Did you just litter?” Runt asked me, eyes wide.

I shook my head.

“It’s not littering if I plan to pick it up later.”

Runt looked at me curiously, trying to assess the veracity of my statement.

“If you say so, Cal.”

“We’ll be right back,” I called to Kali, leaving her to finish her shower in privacy as Runt and I returned to the bedroom to harass Jarvis into getting her some replacement clothing.

Jarvis sat up when he heard the door shut, looking sheepish that we’d caught him admiring the octagonal-tiled terra-cotta floor while he perched on the edge of the bed, waiting for us to finish in the bathroom.

“Clothes? Any extras hanging around for Kali to wear?” I asked, flopping down on the bed beside my Executive Assistant. “Or maybe the bodyguard dude could run back to our room and get something of mine?”

“No,” Jarvis said, shaking his head. “I want him no more than thirty seconds away from you at any given time.”

“Okay, sorry,” I mumbled, annoyed—I guess that meant the bodyguard was lurking out in the hallway somewhere.

“I don’t understand why this couldn’t have happened earlier,” Jarvis harrumphed. “When I could still use magic.”

I shrugged, hoping I looked sufficiently contrite, but inside I was dancing. I didn’t want to be all sour grapes, but I actually liked the fact we’d landed in a magic-free zone. I wasn’t the most adept at wormhole calling or spell making or monster defeating—okay, I wasn’t adept at all—but I
was
a great gal to have around when it came to traditional (i.e., nonmagical) problem solving. It’s what I did when I worked at House and Yard, and it was something I could do now when everyone else was at such a disadvantage, their magical abilities on hiatus.

“I know it’s tough, Jarvi,” I said, patting him on the back, “but we’ll get through it. I promise.”

Jarvis shot me a dubious look, but I just smiled back at him innocently.

“You appear to be taking this turn of events in stride,
Calliope,” Jarvis said, his eyes narrowed. “It wouldn’t have anything to do with your disregard for magic, would it?”

“I don’t disregard magic,” I scoffed. “I just don’t love it, that’s all. And it’s not my fault I’m not good at it—”

“Ha!” Jarvis shot back at me. “There it is! Excuses, excuses, excuses!”

“It’s not an excuse, Jarvis, when I’m just not good at something—”

“You’re not good at magic, Calliope,” he interrupted me, “because you have an emotional block against it. It’s a purely Freudian concept.”

“Oh, brother,” I moaned, flopping back on the bed, the soft down comforter cradling my head and making me want to forget the stupid Death Dinner so I could just lie there all night. “No psychoanalysis, Jarvi. I can’t bear it right now.”

“Fine,” he said, giving up entirely too easily, which made me uneasy. “Shall we find our stinking rose a new outfit for the evening then?”

He stood up, my head bouncing twice on the comforter.

“Yup, let’s do this thing,” I replied, using every ounce of energy I possessed to make myself get up off the way too comfortable bed.

“Hey, Runt, stay here and make sure Kali doesn’t decide to pull a naked lady at the dinner party act,” I said, giving the pup a wink. In the bathroom, we could hear Kali singing Cee Lo Green’s “Fuck You” in time with the loudly cascading faucet.

“Dinner has been delayed, but not indefinitely, so let’s make it snappy,” Jarvis said, walking to the bedroom door and opening it.

I pointed at the bed, which still held the imprint of my shape, and said:

“Hey, Jarvi, I think I gotta get me one of these beds. Très comfortable.”

Jarvis rolled his eyes.

“Leave it to you to fixate on the furniture.”

“But it’s so comfortable, Jarvis,” I snickered, glad he wasn’t harping on my lack of magical ability anymore.

When Jarvis was in his old faun body, I’d been quite a bit taller than him and able to outwalk him without working up a sweat, but now that he was in his new, taller body, I was the one
left in the dust. I had to take two giant steps to match his one, and frankly, when he was peeved with me, he walked superfast, making it very exhausting to keep up with him—especially as we maneuvered our way back through the labyrinthine corridors of Casa del Amo.

“Can you slow down?” I moaned, my high heels click-clacking like buckshot on the tile floor as I tried to keep pace. “I’m doing this backwards and in heels.”

Jarvis shook his head, bewildered.

“I don’t know where you come up with these things. Ginger Rogers, you are not.”

“I know,” I said, out of breath as I tried to catch up to him, “but it’s such a good quote I had to use it. Besides, the ‘heels’ part was true.”

Jarvis clucked his tongue, still shaking his head.

“Here we are,” he said, stopping abruptly in front of a doorway half-concealed behind a cornflower blue woven tapestry. If Jarvis hadn’t pointed it out, I would never have noticed it.

“What’s in there?” I asked curiously.

Jarvis grasped the hammered tin knob and turned, pulling the door open to reveal a closet stuffed with maids’ uniforms. I snorted, covering my mouth with my hand, the giggles rolling out of me as I imagined Kali wearing one of these cotton monstrosities to the Death Dinner.

“Uhm, Jarvis,” I said, clearing my throat to stifle my laughter. “You do know who this is for, don’t you? Kali? The Goddess of Death and Destruction who bites men’s heads off with her teeth?”

Jarvis ignored me and began to pick through the clothing, disregarding all the peach pastel and royal blue dresses with their preattached white aprons and lacy collars. I didn’t know what he thought he was going to find by digging around in that closet, but I stood back, letting him do his thing.

“Wait!” I said when he flipped past a mustard yellow one with a black Peter Pan collar and a cute little black tie encircling the waist. “Pull that one.”

I pointed to the yellow dress and Jarvis lifted it off the closet rail, holding it up so I could get a better look at it. I inspected the fabric (polished cotton, not my favorite, but not too terrible), making sure there were no stains or other flaws.

“This is it,” I said, nodding. “It’ll work fine for the dinner and then she can borrow something of mine after.”

Having found a reasonably presentable dress for Kali to wear, we followed the same circuitous path back to the bedroom. When we got there, the door was still open and Runt was pacing back and forth in front of the bathroom door, waiting for Kali to come out.

“She takes forever,” Runt said, padding over to me so I could rub her ears.

“She’s high maintenance,” I commiserated, knocking on the bathroom door to get Kali’s attention. “But she’s worth it.”

The door opened and Kali, her head wrapped in a fluffy white towel and another draped over her body, stepped out of the bathroom. She scowled at me then held out her hand.

“How do I smell?” she asked.

I took one for the team and sniffed at her wrist. To my surprise, it smelled faintly of roses, the skunk stench almost completely gone.

“You smell great,” I said, thrusting the mustard yellow dress at her. “And here’s your dress.”

Kali stared at the dress in my hand, pursing her lips, but wouldn’t take it.

“No way.”

“It’s just temporary,” Jarvis chimed in, but I glared at him, willing him telepathically to shut the hell up and let me handle the situation.

“It’s a new designer, very hot right now in New York City, totally hip—”

Kali wasn’t buying it one bit. She continued to gape at the dress, her nose upturned.

“If it’s so hip, white girl, why don’t you wear it?” she said tartly, raising an eyebrow at me.

“Well—” I started to say, but she just stood there, shaking her head.

“No, no, no, NO!” she shrieked, ripping the dress out of my hands and throwing it on the floor. “I will go nude or will not go at all.”

She dropped her towel, revealing a very toned, very sexy example of the feminine form, her large breasts swinging like
pendulums as she huffed and puffed, a close approximation of an angry bull about to go into the ring.