Thursday, December 2, 2021

Life After Death (Return to Limbo City Book 1) Sneak Peek of Chapter 2

  

Chapter 2

“When I was a boy, the Dead Sea was only sick."

—George Burns

 

Even though I now resided in Tartarus with Beelzebub, it was hard not to think of Limbo as home. I’d spent three hundred years in the city, and even its flaws had a certain charm to them. The ancient, rickety dock piers that were constantly being repaired. The nosy goddess shopkeepers. The faerie-inhabited woods scattered along the coast.

These were the devils I knew, unlike the occasional raining fire and brimstone smog that rolled in off the Styx near the manor in Tartarus. The gritty, yellow aftermath stained the windows and clung to my hellhounds’ fur like tar that stank of rotten eggs. I wasn’t sure I’d ever get used to that—or the professional grooming bills that came after.

Still, it wasn’t as if I could just pick up and move back to Limbo City. Not unless I wanted to live on my ship in the harbor with my apprentices. Holly Spirit, my last landlord, would have been a terrible reference even if my hounds hadn’t left their special mark on my former condo at Holly House.

Ah, well. Thumbing my nose at that holier-than-thou twat had been worth the pricey commute. And I still enjoyed an occasional night out at Purgatory Lounge, or a shopping excursion with Ellen. Of course, it had been several months since I’d last seen Grim’s former secretary. I could accept half the blame for that.

Ellen hated harvesting souls. It was an acquired taste, and she had a millennium of experience in an entirely different occupation that she had enjoyed. I wasn’t the one who had vasectomized the Throne of Eternity and put an end to the centennial addition of new reapers, but Ellen accused me of being the catalyst for Grim going off the deep end—which was fair—and so she considered me the responsible party for her unsavory situation—which was totally not fair.

Whenever we spent time together, the conversation always found its way around to my ties with Jenni Fang. When had I last spoken to her? Did she seem overwhelmed with paperwork? Was her coffee mug full?

I didn’t have the heart to tell Ellen that Regina, the nephilim who had replaced her at the front desk, was working out just fine. I’d had my reservations about the winged newbie her first few months, but aside from a handful of docket mix-ups, she’d managed to keep things in order at Reapers Inc. for the past decade. She’d even collaborated with Warren and the Fates on a new digital docket system.

The tablet interface required serious security measures with facial recognition and duress lock-out codes. Though I was most interested in the features that allowed me to shave half an hour off the workday. The instant data transfer meant daily visits to the office were no longer necessary.

Unfortunately, Warren couldn’t fix my busted scythe without an in-person visit.

I shucked my work robe and parted ways with Kevin and Eliza at the harbor, leaving them to deliver the day’s catch without me. Coin travel was deactivated within the city. With no throne soul, there was no way of changing that. The travel booths were still operational, but I opted to save my money and walk.

I skipped the busy historic district down Morte Avenue and took Council Street instead. As I neared the park, my gaze drew up, taking in a pale crease slashed across the sky. The white lines spiderwebbed over a smear of lilac marring the deeper evening blue. It looked like crinkled paper, or maybe a wispy tangle of clouds.

For how little things had changed in Eternity since the throne had been broken, the realm where Naledi and her Apparition Agency once lived began decomposing almost immediately. The gaping hole Grim had ripped in the sky wasn’t so much healing as it was filling in.

The pocket realm was disappearing. Fading from existence. The travel booths no longer accepted it as a destination either. Gabriel and Maalik had attempted to enter from above, but there’d been nothing to see. No ground to land upon. Ten years later, this faded crease in the sky was all that remained of the throne realm.

Nostalgia stabbed at my heart as my gaze dropped to the bronze statues and marble bench in the park below. Visiting the memorials always drenched me in melancholy, but it also reminded me of how lucky I was. Not just to be alive, but to have had Saul and Josie—and even Coreen—in my life at all.

I shoved my hands into the pockets of my leather jacket and headed on down Council Street, vowing to return for a proper visit soon. Maybe I’d drag Kevin and Gabriel along, too. Or take the hounds for a run around the city to enjoy the cooler air and clear my lungs of brimstone. My Limbo City daydreaming was put on hold as I neared the entrance of Reapers Inc.

Warren still lived at Holly House, but he’d moved his workshop to the seventy-first floor of the Reapers Inc. building, one floor above the Nephilim Guard station. Which also happened to be two floors below the Afterlife Council headquarters. Run-ins with council members never seemed to go well for me, so I avoided them if at all possible. With the exception of Meng Po, whom I visited at least once a month to have tea with her, Jai Ling, and Jack.

A pair of reapers pushed through the double doors, and I jerked to a stop, my heart lurching at the thought of bumping into Holly or Cindy, Ridwan or Maalik. I wished like hell I had Morgan’s invisibility necklace on me, but that would have been a cowardly misuse of the relic. Not to mention the questions it would raise if the security footage was reviewed. I didn’t need to give the council a reason to take anything else away from me.

I sucked in a deep a breath and darted inside the building, avoiding making eye contact with anyone on my way to the elevators. I lucked out and slipped in with a pair of nephilim as the doors to their lift began sliding shut.

“Seventy-fifth floor?” the taller of the two asked, his wings shuddering as he gave me a once-over, taking in the dark hair and pale complexion that marked me as a reaper.

“Seventy-first, please.” I patted the sheath fastened to my hip, making sure it was still there.

The nephilim nodded and pressed the button for the correct floor. The button for the sixty-ninth was already lit on the panel, which could only mean they were new trainees for the Guard.

Jenni Fang’s solution to the hellcats plaguing the mortal side was to send the Nephilim Guard out to investigate and round up any strays reported on harvests. The problem had become severe enough that the latest digital docket upgrade included an automatic incident report feature, but it was spreading the Guard too thin. They’d had to up their recruiting efforts and offer sign-on bonuses.

The elevator paused to let its feathered passengers off before continuing upward, and I heaved a sigh of relief when it reached my destination without stopping to collect anyone new. Part of me resented the anxiety I managed to carry around all these years later. I feared I would always be making a conscious effort to stay out of everyone’s way in this city. No matter my accomplishments. It couldn’t be helped.

“Well, well, well,” Warren greeted me in the lobby of his armory. A blacksmith apron hung around his neck, protecting the green plaid flannel and khakis he wore beneath. “We meet again, my old foe,” he said in a playful, craggy voice. “What have you broken this time?”

“It wasn’t my fault—this hellcat was extra feisty,” I explained before unhooking the sheathed scythe. Warren heaved an annoyed sigh as he accepted it from me.

“These were supposed to be for emergencies only, to keep unruly souls in line. Their design is more for show than battle.”

“It was an emergency!” I insisted. “I could have lost a soul.”

“Lana.” He pressed his lips together. “This is like, the tenth one you’ve either broken or lost.”

“That last one was defective.” My chest puffed out defensively, and I jabbed a finger at my face. “It nearly put my eye out!”

“That’s only because you tried to fold it up with a mangled blade.”

“I’ve worked with butterknives more durable.”

Warren bristled and turned away from me. “You’re lucky I like you.” He pressed the telescoping button on the holster that doubled as the scythe’s grip once it was extended. The shaft unfolded as expected, clicking softly as each piece aligned with the last. Until it reached the very end.

The hooked blade was thin and flexible. It had to be so it would fit inside the cylindrical sheath. And though it was sharper than hell, it was flimsy. As evident by the way the blade at the end of my scythe dangled haphazardly, creaking out a pitiful tale of abuse.

“The hinge is busted,” Warren snapped. “What’d you do, step on it again?”

“No.” I flushed, recalling my first mishap with the gadget. “I told you, there was a hellcat. The blade got stuck behind the beast’s eye socket.”

“Uh huh.” Warren sighed and fingered the loose joint that required repair. “I’ll have Lindy fix this up by Friday. Can I trust you with a loaner in the meantime?”

“Of course.” I gave him a tight smile that he returned with a grimace.

“Yup,” he said, wings twitching. “You’re so lucky I like you.”

“I am, aren’t I?”

“Come on, then.” Warren waved his free arm, directing me to follow him down a side hallway off the lobby. There was no front desk or secretary, but he did have three employees to help make and repair his weapons and gadgets now.

If ever there were a rags-to-riches story among Warren’s kind, it was his. His arsenal continued to evolve in leaps and bounds, from a trunk that had served as his coffee table in a rundown basement apartment, to a spare bedroom in his condo at Holly House, and now to an entire floor in a skyscraper.

I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of pride for having played a part in his rise to fame and fortune. For all the grief I’d caused Warren since, I knew he still held me in high esteem. Clearly, if he was willing to loan me a scythe after the way mine looked.

“How’s the soul gauntlet litigation going?” I asked as we curled around a corner and paused at a locked door. Warren groaned. It was a touchy subject, but I was curious.

“The Afterlife Council declined the latest model. Now they want me to integrate it with the digital dockets so that the cuff will only accept approved souls. They’re worried about the damage a soul poacher might do if they get ahold of one.”

“Sure they are.” I scoffed. The Afterlife Council had too much time on their hands with no throne or soul matter to squabble over. So now they had to find other ways to validate their position and pay—even if that was just being a pain in everyone else’s ass. It seemed those closest to me had suffered the most. Like Warren. But he wasn’t letting it slow him down by much.

He pressed his hand to a screen beside the door we’d stopped at and leaned forward so a laser on a second panel could scan his eyes. It felt like overkill, but he was harboring quite a lethal collection.

“Passcode,” a computerized voice demanded.

“Hairy cherub,” Warren answered. A second later, the lock released, and the door popped open.

I snorted. “Some password.”

“It’s not, actually.” Warren grinned. “I can say anything I like. The computer is simply measuring the pitch and tone of my voice to determine if I’m being coerced.”

“Fancy.”

“The door will still open, mind you. For five seconds. Then it will lock again, trapping anyone inside, and the Guard will be alerted.”

I gave the threshold a cautious glance as I followed him inside the room, hoping the system hadn’t detected the anxiety my heavy-handedness surely caused Warren. I was glad he hadn’t entered his techno-security phase until after I’d helped Tasha Henry escape. I was sure they were making good use of this new skillset of his at the Nephilim Guard headquarters, too.

The overhead lights were muted by the black interior of the room. Square shelves filled with scythe sheaths and loose shaft pieces outlined blade-laden pegboards. The opposite wall held bins of hardware and tools for assembling. Only a narrow stack of shelves on the far wall held finished product.

Warren deposited my busted weapon on a stainless-steel table that stretched the length of the room and fetched a new scythe before turning back to me. “Here we go,” he said, pulling it out of my reach as I grasped for it. “Take it easy on this one, yeah?”

“Oh, for sure.” I squeaked out a nervous laugh, and he reluctantly handed over the scythe. I was extra delicate while fastening it to my belt. “See? Safe and sound.”

“Uh huh.” Warren’s shoulders sagged. Maybe he liked me, but that didn’t mean he was confident in my ability not to break his precious creations.

“It’s only for a few days, right?” I offered, trying to soothe his concern. “I probably won’t even need to use it.”

“Uh huh.” A feather shook loose from his wings. Great, he was already molting on me.

We retraced our steps to the lobby, where I thanked him again before pressing the button for an elevator. I was ready to get out of there and head back to the harbor where I could coin home and share a bottle of wine with my demon.

And I would have done just that, if Jenni Fang hadn’t been waiting for me when the elevator doors slid open.



"Life After Death" will be available December 21st, 2021.

Find it at your favorite e-bookstore today! 

https://angelaroquet.com/books_life_after_death


Monday, November 15, 2021

Sneak Peek #2 of "Life After Death" (Return to Limbo City Book One)

 

Chapter 1

“I had a friend who was a clown. 

When he died, all his friends went to the funeral in one car.”

Steven Wright

 

Time worked differently between the mortal side and Eternity. That’s how Kevin, Eliza, and I were able to coin off from the Limbo City harbor in full daylight and end up in the pitch-black night on Coney Island. Thankfully, reapers didn’t suffer from jet lag.

Eliza folded her hands behind her head and reclined on the roof of the Ferris wheel gondola. The stars sparkled in her eyes, and her breath fogged the crisp winter air. Kevin stretched out beside her, chin propped in the palm of one hand. His gaze darted from his watch to the deserted amusement park below, where our marks would be arriving any moment.

A handful of security lights lined the chain-link fence that enclosed the park, separating it from the beach to the south and Brooklyn to the north. The candy-striped rides and coasters were quiet in the off-season. There was no crowd to navigate, no potential doppelgangers to complicate our assignment. I expected this harvest to be a cakewalk despite its medium-risk status on my docket. Which was why I’d caved when Eliza had asked for a better view as we waited.

The moonless night melted into the ocean, blurring the horizon. I pulled the hood of my robe tighter around my neck and squinted, trying to find where the stars in the sky ended and their reflected twins began. They danced across the water as the waves kissed the shore.

Moments like these made the mortal realm seem almost tolerable.

I dangled my legs over the edge of the gondola roof and sighed. “Sure is a beautiful night.”

“To die,” Kevin added with a morbid, horror-film cackle.

As if on cue, a bloodcurdling scream tore through the park. My pulse quickened at the promise of death, but I held up a hand, signaling my apprentices to stay put. We already had the best seat in the house.

A second later, another scream bubbled up from the shadows, clearer this time. Then a woman stumbled across a halo cast by one of the security lights.

Usually, I would scoff at the clumsy damsels that couldn’t seem to stay on their feet while fleeing slasher film killers. But then again, none of them had been in shoes ten sizes too big. The technicolor wig and obscene amount of makeup running down the woman’s face finally pulled the full picture together.

“A clown?” Eliza hitched an eyebrow. “That’s a first.”

“Not for me. I scored a French mime in the 1840s,” I boasted.

“Didn’t you run a solo circus harvest back when we were with the Posy Unit?” Kevin asked, his eyes glued to the shadows, searching for our sad clown’s pursuer.

“Yeah, but all the clowns made it out alive. And it wasn’t supposed to be a solo harvest.” I pressed my lips together, deciding not to dig up the past. Kevin had been clean for a decade, and he hadn’t missed a single day of work in all that time.

“You said we’re picking up three here, right boss?” Eliza asked, shifting focus back to our current assignment.

“Yup.” I glanced at my watch. “One might already be dead, but he should be nearby. We’ll collect him after the show.”

“Oh, goody.” Kevin rubbed his hands together and scooted closer to the edge. Eliza rolled her eyes, though she sat upright to have a better look herself.

I was curious, too. The clown had surprised me. Of course, the profiles on my docket stuck to the basics unless a harvest was high-risk. I knew that the three souls we were picking up tonight all worked their nine-to-fives as telemarketers at the same company, selling extended warranties. But I didn’t know the specifics of their side hustles or hobbies. Apparently, clowning around was also something they had in common.

I saw the bloody knife before our killer, confirming my theory about the first victim. Then the light hit her pancake makeup, the stark white punctuated by black brows, rosy cheeks, and red geisha lips. Her lavender leotard and matching tutu were splattered with more blood, and she stalked rather elegantly after her blubbering prey, balancing on the toes of her ballet slippers.

“Please!” the crying clown begged, tripping over her floppy shoes again. “I didn’t know. He said you’d broken up!”

The killer clown slashed her knife through the air. She was too far away to do any damage, but the other woman screamed and tore off, heading for the Ferris wheel and forcing us to lean further over the edge to catch the next act.

“Should we… move?” Eliza whispered.

“There.” I nodded to the rooftop of a nearby attraction. “The spooky one with all the skeletons.”

We rolled our coins and reappeared in time to watch the clowns begin their assent up one of the support legs of the Ferris wheel, awkwardly scaling the open-lattice metalwork. Neither of them was wearing the proper shoes for such an activity, but the ballerina seemed to be having an easier go of it.

“Man! I wish we had some popcorn.” Kevin huffed and climbed up the backside of a skeletal dragon perched above the entrance of the building we’d moved to. Eliza snorted, but she craned her neck to watch as the clowns neared the center of the wheel, their limbs hooked hazardously over metal beams, panting breaths fogging between their faces.

The ballerina took another swipe with the butcher knife, this time making contact across the sad clown’s forearm, drawing an earsplitting squeal from her. It was an overzealous strike, and the ballerina wobbled on her feet from the momentum. She grasped for the nearest beam, letting the knife slip from her hand. It clattered between the rungs before freefalling to the pavement below.

“You crazy bitch!” the sad clown screamed, clutching her bleeding arm to her chest. She was suddenly braver now that the knife was out of play. “No wonder Ron was afraid to dump you!”

Not to be discouraged, the ballerina clown braced her back against a beam and reached into the sleeve of her leotard, retrieving a silk handkerchief—or twenty. They were knotted together, likely for a less nefarious purpose than strangling her cheating ex’s side piece.

She waited for her flopsy-footed quarry to begin down the metal lattice. The knife was on the ground, and I could see the hopeful glint in the sad clown’s eyes. She thought there was a chance she could reach it first and survive this.

But as soon as she was a rung below the ballerina, the colorful noose slipped over her head. Flopsy garbled out a strangled cry and clawed at her neck, releasing her hold on the Ferris wheel base. Her oversized shoes wobbled against the beam she was perched on, just barely holding her upright.

Eliza sucked in a sharp breath and covered her eyes, immediately peeking through her fingers. I stifled a smirk. There was no escaping the morbid curiosity that came with being a reaper. It was in our blood.

A hollow scraping sound drew my gaze back to the Ferris wheel. Flopsy’s giant shoes had finally failed her. She kicked at the metal beams, trying to regain her footing. But it was too late. The ballerina released the rope.

The sad clown’s skull bounced off a crossbeam on the way down, concussing her enough that she didn’t even muster a scream before her body smacked the pavement and began the telltale oozing of a violent death.

“Is the ballerina butcher our third?” Kevin whispered. “Or is there another victim hiding around here somewhere?” He was entirely too eager.

I huffed. “Do you really want me to spoil the surprise?”

Okay, so maybe I wasn’t exactly discouraging this behavior. But was loving your job such a bad thing? Besides, these extra colorful harvests were a rare treat.

“No, don’t tell us,” Eliza said, now fully invested in the final act.

Sirens echoed in the distance. A second later, red and blue lights flickered across the dark skyline of Brooklyn.

I turned back to the Ferris Wheel, waiting to see how our murderous ballerina would react. I expected surprise or panic. Maybe some nervous fumbling. But she remained calm, graceful even, as she slipped down one of the diagonal rungs. It was as if she were following the steps of a choreographed dance, performing a show for the ghosts of her victims—or us.

And then the toe of her slipper found the spot where the sad clown’s split skull had bloodied the beam, making it slick. Much too slick for her murderous victory pirouettes.

Even her swan song was elegant. It wailed in harmony with the approaching sirens, cutting off sharply as she met her end in a colorful pile of skewed limbs beside the sad clown.

“Aww,” Kevin groaned. “That was a cheap finale. Not even a shootout with the fuzz?”

I shook my head. “Clearly, I’ve been giving you too many gangster harvests.”

“I thought it was poetic justice,” Eliza said. “And I can’t wait to question their souls. This should be good.” She hitched up her robe to retrieve the retractable scythe holstered on her hip.

Warren, armorer to the Nephilim Guard, was also contracted through Reapers Inc. to design a few harvesting gadgets. Since we were personal friends, that meant my team and I got to test drive said gadgets. For better or worse.

The retractable scythe was his latest creation. And mine had been jammed since last Tuesday, after I’d gotten the business end stuck in the eye of a hellcat. In Chicago.

The creatures had been appearing more frequently on the mortal side, but no one could figure out where they were coming from. Was there a rift in the soul matter that separated one side of the grave from the other? Or perhaps a new old god with a bone to pick now that the Throne of Eternity had been dissolved and there was no longer an infinitely powerful soul lingering in the shadows like Grim’s invisible watchdog?

It wasn’t really my place anymore to seek out the answers to these questions—even if it was making my job more problematic. That was Afterlife Council business, and I was more than happy to stay off their radar these days. I just wished their problems would stay off my radar.

In the meantime, I needed a tune-up on my retractable scythe. I still preferred my battle axe when it came to most high-risk assignments, but until the hellcat issue was resolved, I required something more practical to get me through the workday in one piece.

“I’ll go track down the first soul,” Kevin offered, shouting over the nearing sirens. I nodded and pointed Eliza at the two clowns under the Ferris wheel.

“Let’s get this show on the road before they turn into chalk outlines.”



"Life After Death" will be available December 21st, 2021.

Find it at your favorite e-bookstore today! 

https://angelaroquet.com/books_life_after_death


A sneak peek of "Life After Death" (Return to Limbo City Book One)


The Gospel of Lana

A grim summary of the original Lana Harvey, Reapers Inc. series.

 

In the beginning…

Let’s be real. It was a train wreck.

A few thousand years ago, a handful of original believers willed the deities and afterlives of Eternity into existence. The gods have been at odds ever since, bickering over the fates of the deceased and the soul matter that shapes our world beyond the grave.

The boundaries of the heavens and hells shifted at the whim of believers, encouraging wrathful deities to smite one another. It was a bloody affair. The War of Eternity raged on and on, for the longest time.

But then, in the early seventh century, when my not-so-dearly departed ex-boss was out doing his thing, reaping souls and whatnot, he came across one of those original believers. Khadija.

Grim showed her the chaos and suffering beyond the grave, and she was compelled to help. As a rare original believer, Khadija had the power to stabilize the borders of the afterlives. She also forged the secret Throne of Eternity—an intangible connection to and command over the soul matter that flowed from the mortal realm to the afterlives. The lifeblood of Eternity.

Through this new bond, she created Limbo City, a neutral territory where Grim could broker peaceful negotiations between the gods. While he was at it, he also decided to take full credit for the feat and hid Khadija away in a secret pocket realm.

For her own safety, I’m sure. Such a peach, that Grim.

Anyway, the gods signed the peace treaty and agreed to end the War of Eternity, and the Afterlife Council was formed—with Grim in a neutral leadership role as their president. A yearly date was determined where the excess soul matter could be distributed in an organized and agreeable fashion, an event that came to be called the Oracle Ball.

A few centuries later, Grim convinced the council to repay his generous and mysterious efforts by allotting him a smidge of soul matter every hundred years to create extra reapers to help with his growing soul harvesting business. And thus, Reapers Inc. was founded.

It was a cushy gig for ol’ Death.

Until I came along and mucked things up.

Though I suppose that blame really belongs to Khadija. After a thousand years, she was ready to retire from the throne and turn it over to another original believer. By then, Grim didn’t go out in the field anymore, but he certainly wasn’t about to entrust such a delicate—and advantageous—task to anyone else.

Cue the feet-dragging… for a few centuries.

Khadija, being the wise and intuitive soul that she was, took matters into her own hands. While whipping up the eighth generation of reapers in 1709, she baked a little something extra into my soul matter. I wasn’t simply made in Grim’s image—I was his equal.

Like other reapers, I was immortal and had the innate ability to harvest souls. But unlike the others, I could see the potency of a soul in their aura. It was a neat little trick, helpful in identifying original believers. A skill Grim definitely didn’t want anyone else to have. And also one that made my existence a breach of the peace treaty, which stipulated that no new deities would be created with the excess soul matter.

Deity felt too strong a word for someone with a skill that barely rivaled Superman’s X-ray vision. But it made me other. Something more than the council had agreed to, which would put Grim and me both in a sticky situation if anyone found out.

It seemed like something that should have been easy enough to hide. Hell, I hadn’t even known I had this ability until three hundred years after the fact, when Khadija was good and sick of Grim’s shit and losing hers.

The soul matter was becoming harder to control. She was slipping, and a rogue island had popped up in the Sea of Eternity. An island that rebel demons were using as their base.

There was also the issue of Khadija’s husband losing patience in Jahannam. He sent the angel Maalik, the Keeper of Hellfire himself, to Limbo City to join the Afterlife Council and look into the matter. I don’t suppose breaking my heart had been on the list, but he managed that well enough, too. At least I got full custody of the pair of hellhounds he’d gifted me early in the relationship.

Back to the rebel demons and leaking soul matter.

When Grim realized he was between a headstone and a hard place, Khadija finally told him about me. I mean, he knew about me. Just not that I was special. I wasn’t there to see his reaction, but I imagine it was probably a lot like one of those Jerry Springer episodes where the guy finds out he’s the father and is not thrilled about it.

And, of course, Grim still tried to keep the truth from me when he dropped the promotion of the century in my lap with no explanation. It was made all the more jarring by the fact that I ranked somewhere near the bottom of the reaper barrel. I was a low-risk harvester with a questionable number of soul violations due to my penchant for slipping souls bound for the Sea of Eternity into more desirable afterlives.

My BFF, Gabriel—yeah, that Gabriel—says I have a savior complex. Artemis calls it stray dog syndrome. I find any spark of goodness redeemable. And why not?

Atheist and agnostics had no afterlife to claim them, so their souls were dumped into the ghostly sea that surrounded Limbo City, where they awaited being sucked up by the Three Fates Factory and reinstalled in the mortal realm. It seemed like such a waste—and an inconvenience, seeing as how reapers then had to sail across said sea to deliver the rest of their charges to the afterlives.

These less than Death-like tendencies of mine made a promotion sound more like an April Fool’s joke. Nevertheless, Grim tasked me and a small team of reapers that included my sailing partner Josie Galla, his second-in-command Coreen Bendura, and Coreen’s apprentice Kevin Kraus with harvesting an extra high-risk soul. The job went sideways when demons pushed our mark’s bus off the San Francisco Bay Bridge, and we had to take a little dip to retrieve his soul.

After that, Grim finally let Maalik introduce me to Khadija to get the explanation I deserved. It also became clear that the demon rebels were in on our little mission to find a new soul for the Throne of Eternity. And the Egyptian god Seth, a member of the Afterlife Council, was heading up the opposition.

Not everyone had been happy with the terms of the peace treaty, and the fading pantheons with shriveling territories were especially bitter. Some of the old gods handled the transition with more grace, merging lands and sharing their obligations to subjects and souls. Others resisted fiercely.

The Summerland Society had been after the Sphinx Congress for centuries to unite their subcommittees and share their seats on the Afterlife Council. Horus managed to postpone this fate in exchange for working with Grim to seek out souls of ancient Egyptian origin. The flow of spirits to Duat, the Egyptian underworld, had all but dried up. Grim agreed to turn over the unsuitable souls for the Weighing of the Hearts Ceremony, and Horus agreed not to ask any questions about the one Grim intended to keep.

To Horus’s disappointment, and Grim’s relief, it only took three harvests to find a replacement for Khadija. Unfortunately, the casualties included Coreen Bendura—gutted by hellcats during a demonic battle at sea—and Wosyet, a minor Egyptian goddess slash spy for Seth. Beheaded by me with my fancy new battle axe.

That’s what she got for trying to nab my soul. Well, not my soul. Reapers don’t have souls. The soul I was tasked with collecting. Winston, formerly known as Tutankhamun. King freakin’ Tut.

So, Khadija drank Meng Po’s special memory-erasing tea and headed off to Firdaws Pardis for her long-awaited retirement, and Winston drank a tea to peel back his past lives so he could take the reins of Eternity. Mission accomplished.

You’d think my life would go back to normal, right?

Ha.

No such luck.

Turns out, when the boss gives an undeserving peon a fancy new job description, people notice. Important people.

Before I could roll a coin, I was in over my head.

Horus did not like that Grim had one of his favorite pharaohs on a leash. And while he didn’t exactly know what had happened to Wosyet, he made an educated guess.

My giving her the literal axe was another ruh-roh regarding the peace treaty and reaper rights—or lack thereof. Not surprisingly, Grim decided to sweep this little mishap under the rug and failed to report it to the Afterlife Council.

Horus didn’t give a crap about Wosyet, but knowledge of her demise made it super easy for him to blackmail me into an illegal side job. What can I say? I like my head attached to my neck.

That two-faced son of a jackal tasked me with seeking out more original believers—on the down-low—with some banned tracking bracelets. The idea was to have a new soul ready to replace Winston in a hundred years when Horus wanted to take the kid home to Duat.

Horus also campaigned for my promotion to the Posy Unit, a specialty group of reapers that harvested mass souls from natural disasters, warzones, and epidemics. This move would put me in contact with the most souls to comb through in search of original believers. Though it wasn’t a great environment for training an apprentice—which I was in no way qualified to have. But with Coreen gone, Kevin in need of a new mentor, and Grim hating my guts, I was a prime target.

Luckily, Josie was there to pick up my slack and helped school Kevin in all sorts of things. All sorts of things.

Their canoodling was a welcome distraction. With Horus making my placement on the Posy Unit a council matter, many were eager to secure a favor for their vote. This attention did not escape the notice of the rebel demons.

Which is how my apartment ended up in flames, and I found myself recovering from a nasty burn at Meng Po’s temple along the wooded coast of Limbo. She took the opportunity to barter her favorable vote in exchange for me speaking to Grim on her behalf, to remind him of her desire to alter the Three Fates’ soul recycling process with her tea.

Soon after, another council member, Jesus’s sister Holly Spirit, extended an invitation to take up residency in one of her lush condos at Holly House. Because landlord is just a page before leverage in the dictionary.

And then there was Cindy Morningstar, Lucifer’s daughter who was also on the council and looking for good press. Which, reapers being attacked by rebel demons on the job, was most definitely not. Cindy requested that I take a two-week demon defense training course with Beelzebub, Lord of the Flies.

I’d been blowing off the prince of demons since I was already swamped with homework from the Reaper Academy. I’d let Josie talk me into Grace Adeline’s wandering souls course—that my creep of an ex Craig Hogan was also taking. Plus, there was the mentoring class that Grim had signed me up for. Still, the blistery handprint around my neck made me think it was time to give demon defense the old college try.

I hadn’t counted on falling in love with Bub. But I did. Hard.

At the same time, I was falling out of love with Maalik. The angel was a firm believer in rules, and my very existence broke too many of them. I couldn’t tell him what I was doing for Horus, nor why I was fighting for a fancy promotion I clearly did not want. And I was so beyond his patronizing damsel-in-distress treatment.

To top it off, the demon rebels weren’t done with me yet, and they’d recruited Craig.

I passed my classes with flying colors only to be attacked in the street by the fury Tisiphone and my douche of an ex. I took quite the beating before discovering another grim talent when my hands lit Craig up like a Christmas tree and pulled him straight out of existence.

Pop goes the weasel.

Nothing more than soul matter scattered into the ether.

Even more alarming, no one seemed to remember him. If only I could have forgotten Craig, too. His death—unexistence, whatever—rattled me. His face haunted my nightmares.

But I sallied forth, and when the Afterlife Council voted, I landed the Posy promotion… and was named the unit’s new captain.

Totally unheard of for an eighth-generation reaper.

Clearly a fluke.

If Josie’s roommate, Jenni Fang, hadn’t immediately been announced as Grim’s new second-in-command, I shudder to think what rumors could have grown fangs and taken a bite out of my ass.

The new gig as captain was an adjustment, but I put my scythe to the grindstone and made the most of it. Did a bang-up job too, if I do say so myself. It was an easier feat to manage without Gabriel dragging me off to Purgatory Lounge every other night.

My angelic drinking buddy was not thrilled with my new brimstone beau. Which made him a big fat hypocrite since he was dating a demon himself. Both of our hellish heartthrobs were on the Hellfire Committee, working directly under Cindy Morningstar, a detail that would later cause problems for us both.

Once again, I expected my world would return to some semblance of normal. For a minute there, it did, despite all the changes in my life—the fancier job title, swanky living situation, apprentice, lusty demon consort.

But the calm before the storm never lasts long.

The rebels sank their talons into everything, infiltrating the city, luring reapers and deities to the dark side. They abducted Jenni Fang and put the shapeshifting trickster god Loki in her place. They stole Hades’ Cap of Invisibility, Atropos’ shears, and Ammit’s crocodile headdress.

But we prevailed. We rescued Jenni from literal and figurative hell. We reclaimed the stolen goods, and we brought a mountain down on the heads of those who tried to stand in our way.

There was hardly time enough to lick our wounds before Eternity threatened to rip apart at the seams once again. The rebels took Grim’s brother Hypnos hostage. Though the boss man acted as if it were the end of the world, that one was waaay down my list of things most likely to launch the apocalypse.

Turns out, King Tut was not an original believer, after all. He’d only restored the faith after his predecessor had tried to destroy it. As a result, Winston was already slipping, losing his hold on the soul matter.

Good thing I’d finally stumbled upon a suitable soul to take his place.

Only… I really wasn’t looking forward to being terminated once Grim found out. He’d seemed perfectly content going back to pretending like he was the ringmaster of this circus and letting the peanut shells pile up on the tent floor for another millennia.

Without consulting anyone—me, Grim, or otherwise—Winston gave up the throne to the new soul, Naledi. But as luck would have it, he was smitten with her. He decided to stick around and play interference with Grim. Which meant I got to keep breathing, at least for a little while.

I liked breathing.

Though maybe a bit less so after Beelzebub ripped my heart out by joining the rebels and Josie was killed by Lorelei, a hench-siren of Eurynome. The Greek mermaid goddess had been recruited by Seth and made a general among the water-dwelling rebels.

Josie’s death and Beelzebub’s betrayal almost did me in. At least Gabriel had been there to catch my fall. But there wasn’t enough Ambrosia Ale or John Wayne in the world to erase the hurt this time.

My misery was mildly lessened by the revelation that Bub was only working undercover with the rebels, on Cindy Morningstar’s orders. That hadn’t prevented his summer home in Tartarus from being demolished, or his houseboat on the Styx from being torched. It hadn’t kept his demon butler Jack from being accosted and having to be taken to Meng Po’s with a cracked horn. Nor me from having to take over instructing his demon defense course at the Reaper Academy.

Then there was Kevin’s hellfire addiction.

My apprentice had not handled Josie’s death well. I didn’t have a lot of room to talk. I hadn’t even noticed that one of my hellhounds was pregnant until she popped out three helljack puppies—fathered by one of Anubis’s jackals.

I was lacking as a mentor, and without Josie’s help with Kevin, I couldn’t seem to find a middle ground between paralysis and tough love for my apprentice. It had seemed insignificant with demons breathing down my neck and Eternity swirling around the proverbial drain. Especially after Naledi went missing, and Winston lost his mind.

To make matters worse, the tracking bracelets Horus had given me to tag original believers with weren’t working. Anytime Naledi’s pinged on the tracking compact, I arrived in time to find a different original believer, but not her.

Soon, Winston’s hysteria drew the attention of Maalik. Because I really needed his nose in my business again. The overbearing angel threatened me into turning over the tracking compact in exchange for not telling Grim about the ol’ switcheroo with the soul on the throne. Which meant my hands were tied.

With nothing more pressing to distract me, I was finally forced to take a hard look at what my negligence with Kevin had cost. I thought I’d seen rock bottom before. I hadn’t even come close. The situation boiled to a head when the captain of the Nephilim Guard brought him home after he’d ransacked the condo and sold Jenni’s and my valuables for drugs.

I did my best to set Kevin straight and give him the attention and direction he clearly needed. Right before I ran off to make a trade with the rebels, Winston for the Lord of the Flies.

Bub’s cover had been blown, and now he was their captive. The Witch of Endor had delivered a cryptic message, just for me, revealing the rendezvous location.

I didn’t want to use Winston—and it hadn’t been my idea. He was convinced the rebels had Naledi, that they just didn’t know who or what she was. Why else would she have disappeared and not told him? This was the only way to find out for certain, and it was the only way to get my demon back. It wasn’t an opportunity I could afford to turn down.

Though I still regret what happened after.

Winston and I met with the rebels. We made the trade-off, narrowly avoiding an ambush, and I managed to get Bub to safety on one of the sacred Faerie isles in the Sea of Avalon. We were only granted sanctuary for a single night, but it was just as well.

The Oracle Ball was the next evening, and Seth and the Witch of Endor had big plans for Winston, the soul they assumed would give them absolute control of Eternity. The witch was a powerful necromancer, and with the Seal of Solomon, she could also control demons. In no time at all, the guests gathered on the rooftop of Reapers Inc. for the ball became her hostages.

That’s when Naledi finally made a reappearance and announced herself to the world. She was too late to save Winston, but she stopped the Witch of Endor’s reign of terror by ripping the heart from the woman’s chest. And as soon as Grim put the pieces together, he almost ripped the heart from my chest.

Jenni Fang saved me from a grisly fate, and Grim fled the city to escape the consequences of his secret having been exposed. The power he’d once held over Eternity now had a name and a face he didn’t recognize. It was no longer his to wield.

Gloating would have been petty. I’d love to say that’s the reason I didn’t, but the truth was, I had my own music to face.

Naledi’s debut came with lots of questions, and soon my role and unsanctioned soul vision was revealed. There were other ways to discover the potency of a soul, but none so convenient as my natural talent. Which made me a threat. Not because I had any phenomenal cosmic powers—but because I was the only one who could glance at a soul and tell if they did.

The Afterlife Council demanded that Naledi strip me of my gift. Then, to prove I was worthy of their trust, I was tasked with dismantling the ghost market. The number of CNH—Currently Not Harvestable—souls spiked after the Second War of Eternity had officially ended with Seth’s disappearance and the Witch of Endor’s death. Displaced rebels were making their living by stealing valuable souls and selling them on the ghost market. If I couldn’t stop them, the council was ready to terminate me the same way Grim had wanted to.

Bub’s solution was to take our new houseboat through a portal to the mortal side and live on the lam, at large but together. Like Bonnie and Clyde. Such a romantic. It seemed his name had been cleared just in time for mine to make Eternity’s Most Wanted list.

But I was never one to go down without a fight. Besides, one of the missing souls was Jai Ling, Meng Po’s assistant. In my many recent stays at the temple, after getting the crap kicked out of me by demons, I’d grown fond of the girl. There was also Warren, the nephilim I’d purchased my fancy battle axe from, who was dying for me to try out the new soul gauntlet he’d designed.

Even so, my face had been in the news too much lately, plastered on the cover of Limbo’s Laundry and the Daily Reaper Report. There was no way rebel demons were going to talk to me. A rebel reaper, on the other hand…

Tasha Henry, a soul harvester from my own generation, had joined the rebels early on. Now she was living on the streets of Limbo City, scavenging out of dumpsters and hunted by the Nephilim Guard. Enlisting her help was no easy feat—especially after our paths had crossed the winter before, when she’d sabotaged a holly jolly, high-profile harvest in Alaska.

The council did not approve of Tasha’s involvement, but she proved essential in taking down the ghost market and saving the missing souls. So, when the council gathered to decide her fate—right after they nearly voted off with my head, despite my success—I had no choice but to help her escape.

I got away with it too, though the powers that be had their suspicions. Things became… chilly in Limbo City.

I put in my notice at Holly House and shacked up with Bub in Tartarus. The manor had been rebuilt, and the hellhounds preferred roaming the surrounding desert to being cooped up in the condo anyway. Plus, I liked having my demon all to myself. It didn’t matter if home was where the hellfire burned, as long as I had the Lord of the Flies in my bed.

Kevin moved into the captain’s cabin of our ship, and our third roommate, Jenni Fang, now made enough to afford the condo by herself. She’d taken over as Reapers Inc.’s new president, since Grim hadn’t returned, and she was ready to make some waves. I just wished I hadn’t been in the splash zone.

Since so many reapers had joined the rebels or died in the war, there was a surplus of harvests the rest of us were working overtime to keep up with. Jenni and Naledi had petitioned the council to create a new generation earlier than scheduled, but in the meantime, Jenni had another brilliant idea.

Ellen Aries, a first-generation reaper whom Grim had made his secretary when she proved ill-suited for harvesting, was ripped from behind her desk and thrust into the field. And since the council had decided to dissolve the Special Ops Unit I’d been put in charge of for the ghost market assignment, who better to shadow Ellen during her first week on the job?

Babysitting duty was made even more tedious by Ellen’s whining and incompetence. Just when I’d resigned myself to a mind-numbing week—or three, considering how things were going—I came face to face with Vince Hare, a reaper who had reportedly been terminated a hundred years earlier. I was so shocked, I didn’t realize until it was too late that he was there to steal one of my harvests. The prick.

Relaying this information to Jenni Fang proved useless. She didn’t believe me. Or maybe, she didn’t want to believe me.

Things were peaceful. The city was rebuilding in the aftermath of the war, and the council was finally assimilating to Jenni’s and Naledi’s presence. Digging up graves was a bad idea right now, and one Jenni assumed I was suggesting just to reinvent the Special Ops Unit that came with more pay and prestige.

That didn’t stop me from digging around on my own time. Of course, everything I found only led to more questions. More heartache.

My late mentor, Saul Avelo, had been tasked with hunting down Vince Hare. Instead, he’d let him go. Shortly after, Saul had died in the line of duty. Or so the papers had claimed. The truth was much messier.

When the ghost market had been rounded up, not all the missing souls from the factory had been accounted for. It turned out, many of them had defected and hitched a ride with Vince to the mortal side where they were preparing for a rebellion against Limbo City. But before Vince, their leader had been Saul.

It hurt, realizing how little I’d known my mentor. After my apprenticeship had ended, we’d grown distant. But I would have never imagined Saul capable of this. Gabriel hadn’t known either, and they’d been friends even longer.

Like Jenni, Naledi had been making some changes of her own, gathering more original believers in the throne realm to form her Apparition Agency. The council was resisting this move, though it seemed even more necessary after learning what Vince and his army of souls had planned. But Naledi was less concerned with Vince. Grim Thanatos was paving the way for his return.

Seth had been found—or what was left of him.

Naledi feared a similar fate for the souls in Vince’s care. She begged me to find them and bring them to her in the throne realm where they could negotiate their terms without violence. And she wanted me to take Maalik as backup. Of course, that wasn’t happening after he confessed to killing my mentor. That it had been an order didn’t make me hate him any less for it.

Before I could coin off to take care of business on my own, Grim ripped open the sky to the throne realm and began slaughtering original believers, devouring their soul matter. Naledi and I barely escaped with one other—Morgan, an original believer of the Fae.

After taking them to safety, I hurried to the mortal side where Tasha Henry had made contact with one of Vince’s souls. I followed him back to Vince’s hideout where I was caught and tied up for interrogation. Before I could convince him to meet with Naledi, Grim struck again.

I was bound and gagged in a lofted office above the warehouse where Vince had gathered the souls, safe but useless as I listened to the massacre happening downstairs.

Thankfully, Bub found me after Grim had left to rain his terror elsewhere. We discovered that elsewhere when we returned to Limbo and encountered a cyclone in the city park. It spiraled above the memorial statues of Saul and Coreen, spewing forth from a rift in the sky that matched the one in the throne realm.

Grim was soon at the center of it, drunk on soul matter, crushing the life from anyone who came within his reach—Jenni, Kevin, Gabriel, my hounds, Maalik. There was nothing I could do to stop him. Until Naledi carved an opening by offering herself up to the demented god.

While she’d stripped my ability to see a soul’s aura, the other gift I shared with Grim remained. She’d said I still needed it. Now I knew why.

As Grim sucked the soul matter from her, I slipped in behind him. By the time he noticed me, it was too late. I plunged my hands into his chest. But instead of pulling him out of existence, I absorbed the soul matter he’d stolen, taking it into myself until my head was full of so many voices, I nearly forgot who I was.

With my last sliver of focus, I used the potent energy to resurrect those slain in the park. Then Naledi’s voice led me to the Sea of Eternity, directing me to surrender the soul matter into the ghostly waters, along with the throne’s spiritual bond to the mortal side.

A short distance off the coast, a series of small islands rose in response. Then several souls gained corporeal consciousness and crawled ashore, celebrating their liberation from the sea. There was finally an afterlife for the faithless do-gooders. Ironic, maybe, but it was a beautiful sight, nonetheless. One that came with an epiphany.

This was my life’s purpose. And it was complete.

Of course, the gods still bicker. There’s just less to fight over these days, now that the Throne of Eternity is broken and the excess soul matter flows into the sea.

But the Afterlife Council isn’t my problem anymore.

I’m just a freelance soul harvester with two apprentices.

Right before Grim’s last stand, the council approved that new generation of reapers Jenni was after, and Naledi whipped them up lickety-split. Good thing, too. Without the excess soul matter or a soul on the throne, there would be no new reapers created in the future.

This was it. The end of the line for our kind.

Not quite the way of the dodo or anything. I mean, we are immortal, after all.

But something about it felt so… final. Like we were hitting some collective, cosmic puberty. Or leveling up.

Either way, ten years passed without much in the way of blood or tears. Harvesting souls was a less grim ordeal with the new afterlife on the Isles of Eternity. I managed to keep my apprentices and hellhounds alive, and I savored the good life with my demon in the Greek hell.

I no longer questioned my existence, because my destiny was fulfilled.

I never considered that I might have more than one.





"Life After Death" will be available December 21st, 2021.

Find it at your favorite e-bookstore today! 

https://angelaroquet.com/books_life_after_death