An Apple for the Creature

Callie Meet Happy AMBER BENSON

Amber Benson is an actor, filmmaker, novelist, and amateur occultist who sings in the shower. Best known for her work as Tara Maclay on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, she is the author of the Calliope Reaper-Jones series for Ace Books and the middle-grade ghost story Among the Ghosts. She is also the codirector (with Adam Busch) of the feature film Drones. She can be stalked on her blog—amberbensonwrotethis.blogspot.com—and on Twitter and Facebook.

Calliope Reaper-Jones felt like an idiot.

No, that wasn’t right. Idiot was too vague a term.

Calliope Reaper-Jones felt like . . . a dunce. Yes, that was more apropos.

A dunce. The kind that sat in the back corner of the classroom with her face to the wall, a large conical cap affixed firmly to her head, trying not to cry as all the other kids pointed fingers and laughed uproariously at her.

It was an odd feeling, one Callie hadn’t encountered in more than a dozen years primarily because it was a sensation uniquely specific to the elementary school experience, something about the amazing cruelness of small children and the amazing ability of adults to look the other way.

“Miss Reaper-Jones?”

The use of her name, out loud and in front of the whole class, made Callie jump. Eyes refocusing, she returned her attention to the problem at hand, pressing the mute button on her (really distracting) internal monologue so she could concentrate.

“I, um, well—” she stammered, feeling the imaginary dunce cap settling farther down the crown of her head.

“Yes, Miss Reaper-Jones? Spit it out.”

The blood rushed to her cheeks in a florid burst.

“I didn’t really, uh, do the reading you assigned.”

Silence from the peanut gallery.

If the proverbial pin had dropped, you would’ve heard the sound of it bouncing on the linoleum, twice, before rolling underneath one of the classroom’s desks where it would’ve stayed, unmolested, until some random day in the faraway future when a janitor came to sweep it away.

Surveying the crowd and trying not to let their hostile stares sting, Callie decided there was actually nothing peanut-y about the assortment of oddities and misfits who had somehow, over the course of their service to Death, Inc., never learned to call up a wormhole and were, thusly, stuck in the same Remedial Wormhole Calling class as Callie.

How to describe her peers?

Angry was a good descriptive word. Annoyed was another. Peeved could also be added to the list. The group fell short of the index-finger-pointing (and elementary school laughter) Callie’s brain had conjured up earlier . . . but just barely.

“I don’t understand your inability to do your homework, Miss Reaper-Jones,” the teacher said, shaking her head.

A tall, shaggy-haired Asian woman with a beaked nose and fleshy jowls that fluttered like gills whenever she spoke, Mrs. Gunwhale—as she’d asked the class to call her—was partial to bruise-colored, diaphanous muumuus that made her bloated appendages appear larger and rounder than they actually were.

“You’re a grown woman—and one in a leadership position, no less,” Mrs. Gunwhale continued, the frown she wore speaking volumes about the hostility she’d engendered toward Callie, a student she’d decidedly labeled “indolent.”

While Mrs. Gunwhale may have been sorely mistaken about most things, she wasn’t wrong about the many leadership responsibilities Callie had to shoulder in order to run Death. Since her dad had been murdered and she’d inherited the presidency of Death, Inc.—who’d have thunk Death would be run like a corporation—Callie’s world had done a one-eighty. There wasn’t time in her rigorous schedule for indolence these days. Overseeing Death, Inc., and being the de facto “Not So Grim Reaper” was running her ragged, keeping her so damn busy she was having a hard time focusing on anything that wasn’t directly work-related.

Like homework.

“Well, that’s why I didn’t do it,” Callie said, aware that the whine in her voice would make her no friends. “There was a Death board meeting and then I had to go to Hell, talk to Cerberus—”

“Everyone here is a commuter student.” Mrs. Gunwhale breathed. “They all hold full-time jobs and, yet, they still find time to do their homework.”

“That’s right,” a girlish falsetto chimed in from the front row.

Callie glared at the owner of the voice, a wispy woman with a halo of bright orange, dandruff-laden hair, and found herself wishing she could use her Death powers to give the woman—the teacher’s pet, of course—a little kick in the direction of an early grave.

Stop that right now, Callie thought as she mentally scolded herself for thinking such horrible thoughts. Bad, bad, bad, bad Death!

Part of the responsibility of possessing special powers—like the power of bestowing life and death—was learning to be judicious about how you applied them. You weren’t supposed to just lay waste to every Tom, Dick, or Harry (or teacher’s pet) that got on your nerves. You were supposed to be wise like King Solomon and split the baby in half—

She paused, realizing she’d gotten the stupid analogy wrong.

“Cutting the baby in half is never the intended outcome—” Callie mumbled to herself.

“Miss Reaper-Jones, stop mumbling. I’m trying to have a pertinent conversation with you!”

“Pertinent?”

“Yes, pertinent,” Mrs. Gunwhale said, enunciating every word. “Pertinent as to whether you continue in my class or not.”

Where there was once silence, now came a snicker from the aforementioned peanut gallery. Callie turned her head, trying to catch the culprit in the act, but only encountered a wall of stony faces, their slack jaws and dead eyes as bland as the faux wood-grain paneling that decorated the four walls of the modular classroom. The class was meeting in a “temporary” trailer that normally housed a second-grade class in a Jamaica, Queens, elementary school (it’d been on-site since 2001, so the “temporary” part was a joke), but at night it was leased out—for an undisclosed sum—to the University of Supernatural Studies Extension Program. Though it was nice to be back in the tri-borough area (it was almost Manhattan!), the gray on gray on brown—ash-colored linoleum-tiled floors, brown fake wood-grain Formica desks two sizes too small for any adult bottom to command, dirty-gray dry-erase boards lining the washed-out, smoky walls—was pretty damn depressing.

And if the decor was not conducive to teaching adults how to call up wormholes, then Callie could only imagine the adverse effect it would have on fidgety second graders attempting to learn fractions. No wonder kids hated to go to school—if Callie had been shunted into a classroom like this one (no matter how nice and kid-friendly the teacher had tried to make the temporary digs), she’d probably have come out of the system totally illiterate.

“Miss Reaper-Jones?” Mrs. Gunwhale bellowed, her aggressive baritone filling Callie’s head like the thundering boom of cannon fire.

As much as she wanted to tell Mrs. Gunwhale where she could shove her Remedial Wormhole Calling class, she knew she needed to master wormhole calling if she wanted to run Death, Inc., and not be laughed at by her employees—including the six numb nuts she was trapped in the modular trailer with for the next four nights’ worth of classes.

Steeling herself for the worst, she took a deep breath and said:

“I would like to stay in your class.”

“And . . . ?”

Mrs. Gunwhale’s dark eyes blatantly telegraphed that she would need to see a little begging from her recalcitrant pupil before she relented and let Callie stay in the class.

Callie sighed, her hands tied. It was imperative that the head of Death, Inc., be self-sufficient and capable of traveling around the Afterlife on her own, without her Executive Assistant calling up wormholes for her like she was some kind of nincompoop. If she didn’t suck it up now and somehow master the art of wormhole calling, she was giving her enemies the advantage, allowing them the opportunity to petition the Death board to recall her from her new job.

“Please, I would like to stay in your class?” Callie choked out, the obsequiousness of the word making her feel nauseous.

A look of triumph spread across Mrs. Gunwhale’s face. Exultant, she lifted her sausage arms into the sky like airborne blimps—and then the ungainly woman shocked everyone by doing a graceless twirl on the linoleum floor, causing both the gill/jowl flaps around her jaw and the muumuu she had on to flutter with happiness.

“That’s the first step, Miss Reaper-Jones,” Mrs. Gunwhale trilled. “Admit I’m the boss and that you are mine to mold and we’re getting somewhere.”

Callie gave a mirthless chuckle, trying to appear game, but like an aggressive baby kraken, the obnoxious, juvenile part of her personality had already awoken and was now itching to start planning Mrs. Gunwhale’s disemboweling.

“Why don’t you come up to the front of the class, Miss Reaper-Jones, and try opening a temporary hole in reality—”

It took Callie a moment to comprehend that, against her will, she was once again being foisted into the spotlight. Actually, she realized, looking around at the smirking faces of her fellow classmates, she’d never left said spotlight since she’d begun the class two days earlier. She didn’t want to be paranoid, but she was getting the rather distinct impression the other students didn’t like her very much . . . or rather, they didn’t like that she was in charge of Death, Inc., and, for all intents and purposes, was their boss.

And it wasn’t like she’d wanted to take the class in the first place.

Two weeks prior, Callie had discovered that her Executive Assistant, Jarvis, had enrolled her, without her permission, into the course. He’d assumed she’d attend without too much fuss because it met in New York City, one of her most favorite places in all of the world. Of course, what he’d neglected to inform her was that it took place not in Manhattan, but in Queens—which was like telling someone she’d won a trip to Hawaii, then dropping her off in Lompoc, California.

To make herself feel better, and to shake her growing paranoia, Callie imagined the tongue-lashing she would give Jarvis when she got back to Sea Verge, the familial mansion she shared with her sister, Clio, and their hellhound puppy, Runt—and, boy, was it gonna be a doozy.

“We’re waiting. . . .”

Callie looked up to find the long shadow of Mrs. Gunwhale looming over her.

“Okay,” Callie said as she eased herself out from behind the kid-sized desk and stood up, her left leg numb from being squeezed too tightly against the metal bar that connected the chair to the desktop.

Limping over to the front of the classroom, she stopped in front of the stained dry-erase board and waited for Mrs. Gunwhale to give her further instructions.

“Now, if you’d done the reading I’d assigned you,” Mrs. Gunwhale said, gathering up the fabric of her muumuu and resting her generous backside against the corner of her rectangular desk, “you’d know that there are small, subatomic particles called neutrinos that appear to travel faster than the speed of light, but in reality, they are using wormholes in order to burrow in and out of the fabric of time/space—”

Callie’s attention began to waver, her inner monologue taking over with a vengeance as Mrs. Gunwhale droned on and on about neutrinos.

How am I supposed to pay attention when the woman is doing Science Speak? Callie grumbled to herself—and then, her mind distracted: And what the hell is with that damn mole??

The mole in question belonged to Mrs. Gunwhale, and the more the teacher talked, the more the blackened growth on the tip of her nose began to take on an otherworldly presence. Large and irregularly shaped, it seemed to bend and stretch of its own accord, as if it were doing mole calisthenics in order to beef itself up, escape Mrs. Gunwhale’s elongated proboscis, and go in search of a more attractive host . . . like Calliope Reaper-Jones!

Eeeek!

Shuddering, Callie ripped her mind away from scary-mole-contemplation-land just as Mrs. Gunwhale stopped speaking.

“Neutrinos,” Callie said before Mrs. Gunwhale could quiz her. “I get it.”

Even though she didn’t have a clue what she was talking about.

“Good,” Mrs. Gunwhale replied, rubbing her hands together expectantly. “Now show us.”

Attempting to remember all the things Jarvis had imparted to her about wormhole calling over the past year—and the things she’d learned during the first two sessions of Mrs. Gunwhale’s boring class—she closed her eyes and tried to imagine a place, any place.

I just want to go someplace like here, but not here, she thought. Someplace happy!

In her imagination, she saw the modular classroom bend around her, space and time becoming as pliant as the bellows of a giant accordion while unseen hands expertly folded the gray and brown drabness of the room like a blank piece of origami paper. The hostile faces of her classmates abruptly disappeared inside the reformation, the space continuing to morph until finally even Mrs. Gunwhale’s laserlike gaze was stripped away . . . and then, for the first time ever, she felt her mind open like a lotus flower, all the free-floating strands of thought and magic and imagination coming together in a pinpoint of golden-hued light.

I’m doing it, she thought, her heart beginning to hammer excitedly. I’m calling up a goddamned wormhole!

It was as if a bantam sun had exploded around her, blinding her just as she opened her eyes to behold her creation. Only there was nothing to see once her irises had readjusted, the evanescent glare having left her eyeballs feeling dry and burnt.

All around her was cold, empty night.

The stars appeared above her, blinking into existence one at a time until the universe was once again filled with their twinkling light. Callie felt the cold wetness of snow engulfing her, her breath racing in and out of her lungs in feverish bursts as she tried to collect herself.

“Are you okay there? You hit the ground really, really hard.”

Dragging her eyes away from the night sky, Callie saw a pale-faced young woman in a bubblegum pink wool hat and scarf standing above her, cascading blond curls of hair poufing out around her face like lemon cotton candy. Her cornflower blue eyes were filled with concern, her powdery-rose lips turning down at the corners while she considered the image of Callie lying like a bag of discarded refuse in the chilly slush of a snowbank.

“I think I’m okay,” Callie said, sitting up slowly so all the blood in her head didn’t rush out in a flood, leaving her woozy. “Where am I?”

“What did she say?” another voice chimed in and Callie turned around to see its owner, a tall brunette with a turned-up nose that bore a thick spackling of freckles across its bridge. She was standing on the far side of the snowbank wearing a dark blue hoodie pulled taut over her head and tied tightly at the base of her throat in a futile attempt to keep out the cold.

The blond girl shook her head, looking up at the brunette quizzically.

“She wanted to know where she was,” she replied, wrinkling her pretty nose.

“How hard did she hit her head?” the brunette asked.

“I’m fine. My head is fine. I’m just freezing my ass off,” Callie interjected, wishing she’d had the forethought to put on a snowsuit instead of the light blue wrap dress she’d shimmied into that morning. “And when the hell did it start snowing?”

“Um, are you kidding?” the blonde said. “It’s been snow central for like three months.”

Callie tried to stand up, holding on to the blonde for support as she struggled not to slip in the slush, her very inappropriate footwear—a pair of Jimmy Choo peep-toe pumps—making it hard for her to keep her balance.

“That’s not true,” Callie said, letting the blonde’s arm go as she managed to finally right herself. “There was no snow on the ground when I got here earlier tonight.”

September had been unseasonably warm for the East Coast, with highs in the sixties and seventies, so this bit about snow being on the ground for the past three months was pure bunk. Besides, there’d been no hint of snow in the air when she’d arrived at class, let alone was it possible for that much snow to have fallen in the hour since she’d—

Callie paused mid-thought as she realized that no matter where she set her eyeballs, there were no modular classrooms anywhere in her vicinity. In fact, no classrooms or administration buildings or gyms or anything else that might evoke the grounds of an elementary school.

“Okay, where the hell am I?”

The blonde blinked.

“You’re in Queens, New York.”

The brunette nodded her agreement.

“But that’s not possible. Where is PS 181?”

“What’s a PS 181?” the blonde asked curiously.

Exasperated, Callie sighed.

“It’s an elementary school where I was taking—”

She paused, realizing she’d almost divulged more information than she’d intended to.

“—um, an adult education class.”

The two young women gave her a funny look. Then the brunette, who was proving to be far more officious than the blonde, said, “Agatha, I’m gonna go over by that tree and I want you to tell me what you sense.”

“All right, Happy, I’ll give it the old college try, but you’re gonna have to stand pretty far away,” Agatha replied, pointing to a copse of trees that was about a hundred feet from where they were standing. “Probably over there to start with.”

Happy—Callie had a hard time associating the name with the serious-looking brunette—nodded, wrapping her arms around herself as she left the confines of the sidewalk and began the slow trudge through the snow toward the trees. The blonde, Agatha, gave Callie a honey-sweet smile and reached out, taking one of Callie’s frozen hands in between her own warmer ones.

Squeezing her eyes shut, Agatha seemed to be concentrating on the physical connection between them, but it didn’t appear she was having much luck.

“Still too close,” she murmured under her breath just as Happy arrived at the predetermined spot.

“Keep going?” Happy called out from beneath the wide shadow of the tree line.

“Yep, keep going!” Agatha replied, eyes still closed, pink mouth in a firm line.

Callie watched as Happy shook her head, then turned around and started crunching through the snow again, passing the snow-topped pines and heading farther out into the woods.

Woods? What woods were there in Jamaica, New York? The place was a veritable concrete jungle—Starbucks and bodegas on every corner, houses and apartments taking up whole city blocks. Yet, as far as the eye could see, she found nothing but trees and a thin line of a freshly cleared road beside the snow-covered sidewalk they were standing on.

“What are you doing?” Callie asked after a few more seconds of protracted silence, but Agatha only shook her head.

“Just give me one more minute.”

Callie stood there, shivering in the pitch-black night, her teeth chattering in double time as she tried not to lose her patience. She wanted to know where in the heck the wormhole had taken her, but she was starting to get the horrible feeling it wasn’t so much a “where?” as it was a “what?” kind of a question.

“Um, so I’m starting to get the feeling that—”

“Shh!” Agatha shushed her, then she squeezed Callie’s fingers so tightly it felt like the meaty bits of muscle might burst through their fleshy casings like overcooked sausages.

“Anything?” Happy cried from another spot a few yards away from the original stand of pine trees.

Agatha didn’t answer, but her eyelids fluttered.

“No way!” she breathed, eyes flying open to look at Callie—to really look at her, almost as if she were some alien specimen trapped inside a bottle of formaldehyde.

“What did you say?” Happy yelled, but Agatha’s rigid stance had piqued her interest, and she was already making her way back toward them through the snow, the crunching of her boots a riot of sound in the muted hush of the wind and the flickering buzz of the streetlights.

“Who are you?” Agatha breathed, the look of wonderment on her face disconcerting.

“I’m Calliope Reaper-Jones,” Callie said to peals of Agatha’s laughter.

“No, silly,” the other girl said, playfully punching Callie in the arm. “Who are you really?”

Well, that’s a loaded question, Callie thought.

“I mean, your aura is on fire,” Agatha continued. “You have the craziest vibrations I’ve ever seen.”

No shit, Callie thought, wondering just how much Agatha was able to sense about her—and if she’d been able to pick up Callie’s connection to Death, Inc.

“And what are you really?” Callie asked, turning the mock interrogation on its head. “One of those crazy psychic ladies who goes around giving people annoying psychic readings that they don’t want?”

“Agatha’s no Cassandra.” Happy snorted, having reached them just in time to overhear Callie’s last comment. “She’s an aura reader . . . and a pretty damn effective one, too.”

“This gal’s full of psychic ability,” Agatha said, turning to Happy. “I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone whose aura was so fully charged—”

“Look, I’m not psychic, but, you know what, I am freezing,” Callie interrupted, the real fear of becoming hypothermic making her cranky. “Is there somewhere warm we can go?”

“Well, we were on our way to a very exclusive acting master class,” Agatha began, but Happy cleared her throat loudly.

“No, you were going to a master class. I was only going to watch you take it.”

Agatha pouted, her large heart-shaped lips turning down at the corners again.

“But you said you’d participate!”

“I did not,” Happy sputtered, looking put upon. “There is no way in hell I’m taking that class. No way, no how.”

“As cute as the witty banter is, ladies,” Callie said, the cold making it hard to feel her face. “I need to get somewhere warm before I turn into a Popsicle.”

The two girls gave each other an inscrutable look, then Happy nodded. “Okay, we’ll take you with us, but on one condition.”

Callie nodded.

“Okay, whatever you want. Just get me to a fire.”

“You have to tell us what you are!” Agatha chirped, unable to wait for Happy to get the words out. “You’re like Pat Boone or something, dropping out of the sky like he did in that movie The Man Who Fell to Earth.”

Pat Boone? Callie thought, shuddering on the inside. I think someone is in dire need of a pop culture tutorial.

“No, if I were David Bowie, I wouldn’t be in this situation.” Callie sighed, daring either one of them to contradict her. “But I think I’ll save any and all explanations until we’re out of the snow.”

“Then follow us,” Happy said, crawling over the snowbank so she could join them on the sidewalk. “It’s just down the street.”

—

Down the street was a relative term, especially when you were hobbling around in a pair of peep-toe pumps in the snow.

After ten minutes of walking, and freezing, they left the darkened woodland landscape behind them and stepped out into a better-lit suburban street. Only there were no tract homes here, no cookie-cutter little boxes or white-picket fences neatly arranged in a row along the curve of the street. Instead, there was a sprinkling of older Victorian homes, all decorative curlicues and clapboard siding in a myriad of pastel colors.

Interstitial bits of broken Gothic wrought-iron gating separated the lots, which were large and overgrown, and deciduous trees, denuded of their autumnal skins, giddily waved their skeletal branches back and forth in a hobgoblinlike greeting.

“Is that a cemetery?” Callie asked, her eyes resting on a lot at the top of the street where a hulking Victorian mansion sat vigilant over the rest of the neighborhood, its side yard crowded with a bevy of headstones, in various states of neglect.

“Looks like it,” Happy said, her words ripe with distaste.

“Is that where we’re going?” Agatha asked, looking to Happy for the answer as they continued their procession through the snow.

The wind and precipitation had picked up as soon as they’d started walking, dusting the sidewalk with a thin layer of wet powder that made the trek almost unbearable for Callie. Finally, Happy and Agatha had taken pity on her, each girl taking an arm and helping her navigate the quickly accumulating sludge.

“I think this is it,” Happy replied, pausing long enough to pull a piece of lined notebook paper from the back pocket of her jeans. “We’re going to 4316 East Elm Street, so, yeah, it looks like the right number.”

“You’re kidding me. You’re taking an acting class there?” Callie said in between shivers as she pointed up at the Victorian monstrosity that loomed above them.

“Oh, I know it looks scary, but it won’t be once we get inside. I promise,” Agatha said, eyes sparkling with excitement. “Count Orlov only offers this master class once every three years and he chooses a new, haunted setting each time. Believe me, it’s so exclusive, it’s . . .”

Apparently, Agatha couldn’t think of a word that was more exclusive than exclusive and let the sentence trail off. Callie looked over at Happy, who shrugged.

“So maybe this is a dumb question, but why didn’t you guys just drive here?”

“Orlov’s rule,” Agatha said, rolling her eyes. “Everyone has to park back at the Waldbaum’s grocery store parking lot, so they can then come humbly on foot to seek the count’s instruction.”

“That’s why you were walking?”

“Isn’t it a lovely gesture? All that humbleness in one place.” Happy grimaced.

“Happy, don’t be mean,” Agatha said, her blue eyes flashing. “Count Orlov is a very humble person! Besides, I don’t pay you to make jokes at my expense.”

“I’m Agatha’s personal assistant,” Happy said, answering Callie’s unspoken question.

“My untouchable personal assistant—”

“Untouchable?” Callie asked.

“Don’t be stupid,” Agatha said, looking bored. “Everyone knows an untouchable is someone who absorbs psychic power. They’re like a negative psychic. Everyone who’s anyone has one.”

Callie didn’t like being called stupid. It was a word she found highly distasteful—and it made her want to dig in her heels right there on the sidewalk and not move another inch.

“I still have no idea what you’re talking about,” Callie said, feeling frustrated by the conversation. “And it’s not stupidity. It’s a lack of local knowledge. Your world is way kookier than mine.”

“Which leads us back to our bargain—” Agatha chirped, but Callie shook her head.

“No divulging of information until I’m between four walls and a roof,” Callie said, slipping in the snow. “Which actually brings me to another question: What’s this Orlov dude gonna say when an uninvited guest shows up with you guys?”

It appeared Agatha hadn’t thought of this eventuality, but luckily, Happy was on top of things. She pulled a cell phone from her pocket and pressed On, the screen lighting up even before her finger had released the button.

“I was thinking I could call you a taxi once we got there—”

“No! You’ll get us kicked out of the master class!” Agatha shrieked, reaching for the cell phone, but only managing to knock the electronic device out of Happy’s hand, where it bounced once on the sidewalk and fell into the street.

“Agatha was asked not to bring any electronic recording devices with her,” Happy offered in explanation, stepping off the curb and out onto the snow-covered asphalt, the knees of her jeans getting wet as she bent down to collect the tiny black cell phone from the snowy gutter.

She pressed the On button again, but this time the screen—which had a new jagged crack across it—stayed black.

“You broke it,” Happy said, giving Agatha a nasty look, but the blond girl was made of Teflon, and Happy’s distress slid right off her.

“Good, now we won’t get in any trouble.”

Happy tried the On button one more time, without any luck, then she slid the unresponsive phone back into her pocket, a sour cast to her face.

“Well, I guess you’re stuck with us for a little while longer,” Happy said as she and Agatha left the safety of the sidewalk and began the long climb up the icy set of rickety wooden steps leading to the Victorian mansion.

Callie—shivering, wet, and miserable to the core—took a deep breath and exhaled slowly before setting her foot on the first step and following the girls skyward. The steep, winding stairway would eventually deposit them on the Victorian’s large wraparound porch, but the climb to the summit was treacherous. With each successive step, Callie felt her legs shake harder, the heels she wore making it necessary for her to use the stair’s splintered handrail to keep herself upright, every handhold eliciting a small yelp of pain as the wood broke off and inserted itself into the skin of her palms.

“This sucks!” Callie yelled up at the girls, who were far ahead of her, having managed the wayward stairs with the ease of two little mountain goats.

Callie realized if she wanted to reach the porch sometime in that century, she was going to have to accept the possibility of frostbite and take her shoes off. Reaching down, she released one foot from its calfskin prison, then the other, stuffing both shoes under her left arm so she could continue the climb in splinter-free bliss, her ability to balance intact again.

Why am I even doing this? Callie asked herself. Why don’t I just open up a wormhole and get the hell outta here?

The answer was very simple. No matter how many times she closed her eyes and willed a wormhole into being, she just couldn’t seem to make anything happen. For some reason her Death abilities were limited here in this strange new world she’d unwittingly come to inhabit. She wasn’t capable of creating even a spark of magic—and she didn’t know if it was because she’d bumped her head on the ground when she’d been unceremoniously deposited in this alternate version of Queens or if her new environment was the culprit. Either way, she was kinda screwed, as far as making a quick getaway was concerned.

“Hurry up!” Agatha called down to her.

Callie wanted to say something snarky in return, but she was too out of breath from the climb to do anything but clamber up the last few remaining stairs and heave her tired self onto the porch.

“I hate . . . this house . . . already,” Callie wheezed, as, barefoot, she leaned her forehead against the wooden railing.

“Are you okay?” Happy asked, touching Callie’s shoulder.

“Just. Out. Of. Breath.”

Callie continued to lean against the railing while somewhere in her unconscious awareness, she heard Agatha knock on the front door, heard it open, and then, to her utter relief, found the three of them being shepherded into the light of the house’s front foyer.

“Thank God,” Callie breathed, as warmth enfolded her like a blanket.

The room was small and cramped; red velvet Victorian print wallpaper covered the otherwise bare walls while a red shag runner bisected the polished dark-wood floor, splitting the space in two. There was only one other exit, a dark-wood door cut into the wall directly opposite the front entrance.

A tall woman in a camel pantsuit, her long blond hair piled haphazardly on top of her head, stood in front of this other door, a hand placed delicately on either hip. To her right sat two fawn-colored spindle chairs wedged between a drop-leaf side table with a dying potted plant on its top and an antique coatrack, but she didn’t offer anyone a seat. In fact, she didn’t look too happy to see them at all.

“You’re late . . . and you’ve brought an uninvited guest,” the woman said, her voice a growl.

Agatha, not one to be intimidated by anyone, mirrored the woman’s stance.

“We found this poor girl wandering in the woods. We couldn’t just leave her there, could we?” she replied, incredulous.

The woman backed down immediately.

“Well, I’m sure you couldn’t just leave her out there . . . Miss Averson, is it?”

Agatha nodded, pleased the woman had recognized her.

“I’m Fiona O’Flagnahan, Count Orlov’s associate. And my daughter, Heather, is a huge fan of your television show.”

This pleased Agatha even more.

“It’s so exciting to meet a fan of the show,” she purred, totally ignoring the fact that it was the woman’s daughter, and not the woman, herself, who liked her work.

Angelic features lit from within, she reached out and took the woman’s arm, squeezing it.

“Would you like an autograph? I can do that for you, no problem,” Agatha continued, turning to Happy and snapping her fingers.

“Can we get this woman an autographed photo?”

“I left my bag in the car. Count Orlov’s orders,” Happy said, shrugging helplessly.

Agatha turned back to the woman.

“Give my untouchable assistant your name and address and we’ll get publicity to pop one in the mail pronto.”

The woman smiled, impressed that Agatha possessed an “untouchable” assistant—whatever that meant, Callie thought—and gave Happy her address, spelling out her daughter’s name twice, so Agatha would be sure to write it correctly. When she was finally done, the woman turned her attention back to Callie.

“Why don’t we get your friend to the sitting room where we have the fire going?” the woman said. “That ought to warm her up a bit.”

“I just want to call a taxi,” Callie said, her lips beginning to fade from a garish eggplant to a healthier pale peach now that she was inside.

The woman crooked an eyebrow and shook her head.

“But that’s not possible. There are no electronic devices in this house. Not even a microwave or a computer.” She finished with a flourish of her hand as if she were Vanna White flipping a vowel.

Callie turned to glare at Happy.

“Hey,” she said, “don’t look at me. I’m just the assistant.”

After that pronouncement, it didn’t appear there was anything else left to say on the subject.

“This way,” Fiona intoned, as she opened the door behind her and led them out into a long hallway, which, at first glance, seemed to go on forever, but as they followed Fiona down its path, shortened so Callie could see the end.

“Wow, this place is huge,” Callie said, bare feet padding on the soft, crimson shag runner that had continued with them from the foyer into the hallway.

“It once belonged to the painter Edgar Allan Poe—” Fiona said as she led them deeper into the belly of the house.

“I think you’re mistaken. Edgar Allan Poe wasn’t a painter, he was a poet and writer,” Callie said, interrupting the flow of Fiona’s discourse, so that the older woman turned around to glare at her.

“Um, painter,” Agatha said, dropping a little vocal fry at the end of the word painter.

“I may have hit my head back there, but not hard enough to change the fact that Edgar Allan Poe was a writer.”

Callie looked to Happy, who was quickly becoming her touchstone in a world where she felt totally alien and out of place, but Happy merely shook her head.

Okay, Callie thought, so apparently Edgar Allan Poe is a painter now. Great.

It was beginning to feel like Callie had stumbled into a play that no one had given her a copy of the script to read beforehand—and since she wasn’t too keen on improv, she was having a really hard time keeping up. From now on, she was just gonna keep her mouth shut and work on figuring out a way to call up a wormhole so she could get home.

“Fine, whatever,” Callie said, dropping the subject.

Fiona took this as a cue to resume her monologue.

“As I was saying,” she continued, brushing a strand of blond, strawlike hair off her forehead, “Edgar Allan Poe and his child bride, Virginia, moved into this house in 1846, along with her mother and one servant. . . .”

As Fiona droned on, she led them still farther into the interior of the house. The hallway was clearly the mansion’s main artery from which doors, like capillaries, branched off into hidden rooms and other unseen spaces—and, though it was a two-story dwelling, there didn’t seem to be a stairway anywhere on the premises, which was definitely odd.

There’s way more to this house than meets the eye, Callie mused, but kept the thought to herself.

As they continued onward, it got darker, the flickering of the candlelight sconces that lined the walls—the only light source in the house—making it hard to see what might be lurking in the shadowy corners or even underfoot.

“This place is spooky,” Callie whispered to Happy while, ahead of them, Agatha happily chattered away at Fiona.

“I didn’t want Agatha to accept the count’s invitation,” Happy whispered back, “but she was adamant.”

“Are you sure this guy is on the up-and-up?” Callie asked, pausing midstride to slide her shoes back on. The darkness was giving her the creeps and she did not want to step on something crunchy or slimy in bare feet.

“I did some research—” Happy began, but was cut off when Fiona came to an abrupt stop in front of a locked door—one that looked no different from any of the other ten doors they’d passed on their way to this one.

“Here we are,” Fiona said, pulling a small bronze key from a chain around her neck and inserting it into the door’s lock. “Count Orlov is waiting for you inside.”

This she directed at Agatha, who clapped her hands together, then turned back and gave Happy and Callie a big, sloppy wink.

“Yippee! I’ll see you guys later!”

And then she was pushing past Fiona, her feet dancing with excitement as she crossed the threshold and disappeared into the darkness of the room. Happy, who didn’t look at all like her name at that moment, started to protest, but Agatha was already gone, Fiona slamming the door shut on her retreating back.

“There we go,” Fiona said, slipping the key back into the lock and turning it twice. “Now, let’s get the two of you settled.”

She gestured for Happy and Callie to follow her as she continued down the hall, and though neither of the girls wanted to go with her, neither could figure out a way to refuse the invitation.

As they walked, the darkness inside the house became as pervasive as the cold and wet outside the house, and Callie couldn’t help wishing she was lying back in the snow making snow angels or freezing to quasi-death (she was immortal, so it would be Popsicle City, not Death Town) instead of traipsing through the creepy old Victorian mansion.

“The sitting room is just beyond this door. There’s a fire already in the grate,” Fiona said, her voice sending the silence skittering away into the corners. “All you have to do is go inside.”

They had come to the end of the hallway and only one more door remained to be opened—and a narrow, sickly looking doorway it was. The whole bottom right side of the molding appeared to have been shredded into pieces, like someone, or something, had clawed unsuccessfully at it for days or weeks—or even years—until finally they, or it, had just given up and faded away.

Fiona continued to beckon them forward, her blond updo and camel-colored suit looking oddly sinister in the candlelight—and that was when Callie decided she wasn’t going to go anywhere near the door, regardless of who she offended.

She knew that there was something terribly wrong with the mansion and with Fiona and with everything else they’d experienced since they’d stepped inside the house. If she and Happy were foolish enough to open the decrepit door at the end of the hallway, then any negative outcome that occurred would be of their own doing. She didn’t know if Happy was going to appreciate where her thoughts were leading her, but she hoped so . . . because Callie had been hoodwinked too many times in her life not to recognize a setup when she saw one.

“Nope. Not gonna happen,” Callie said, holding her ground in a pair of dirty Jimmy Choos. “I think we’re gonna go back down this hall and you’re gonna use that little key of yours to open the door to the room you stashed Agatha in—”

The words had no sooner left Callie’s mouth than Fiona was scrambling for the doorknob, using the element of surprise to try to open the door before Callie and Happy realized what she was doing.

“Not in this lifetime!” Callie cried as she dove for Fiona’s waist, wrapping her arms around the older woman’s middle and toppling them both onto the red shag runner.

Fiona was a spitfire, almost bending in half in order to dig her French-manicured nails into Callie’s throat, cutting long crimson gashes into the girl’s otherwise pristine flesh. The “Girl Who Would Be Death” cried out in pain, losing her grip on her opponent as she tried to stanch the flow of blood from her wounded neck.

“Don’t you dare!” Callie heard Happy scream, then she watched as the tall brunette launched herself at the wily woman in the camel-colored suit, the two of them rolling across the floor.

The blood was flowing fast and loose from Callie’s throat, but she ignored it. Dropping her hand from her throat—it was useless there; her body would heal of its own accord without any external help—she flipped herself onto her belly, slip-sliding in the puddle of blood that’d gathered underneath her, while a few feet away from her, she saw Happy punching Fiona, hard, in the solar plexus.

“I see . . . that you . . . don’t need . . . my help,” Callie wheezed, finally managing to pull herself up alongside the brunette, who seemed to be rather enjoying the pummeling she was giving the older woman.

“I think she’s incapacitated now,” Happy said, as Fiona’s green eyes rolled up behind her eyelids and she stopped struggling.

“I think so,” Callie said, appreciating the quick work Happy had made of Count Orlov’s associate. “Let’s grab the key and get out of here.”

Happy nodded, grasping the chain around Fiona’s neck and giving it a good yank.

“The bitch tried to bite me,” Happy said, as she pocketed the key, then looked down at her hoodie, which was streaked with Callie’s blood and Fiona’s saliva.

“That’s disgusting,” Callie said, reaching into the pocket of her dress and pulling out a moist towelette. “Moist towelette?”

Happy stared at the neat white package, disbelief in her eyes.

“You gotta be kidding me.”

Callie shook her head.

“I never kid about hygiene. Here, take one.”

Happy accepted the packet, tearing it open and fishing the moist towelette from its innards.

“What about you? You’re losing a lot of blood,” Happy said, pointing at Callie’s throat.

“I’m . . .” She paused, not sure what to say—a last-minute impulse brought out the truth.

“I’m immortal and I’m pretty sure I come from an alternate universe. Just FYI.”

Happy snorted. “Of course you are and of course you do.”

“Now I’ve told you all about me so we’re even-steven,” Callie said, starting to laugh a little hysterically.

“It’s not funny,” Happy continued, helping Callie to her feet. “I think there’s a powerful telepathic illusionist running this show—someone we’ve dealt with in the past. And if that’s the case, then Agatha’s in a whole heap of trouble.”

“A telepathic what?” Callie asked as she followed Happy back down the hallway.

“Illusionist. Someone who can manipulate matter, affect people’s minds,” Happy replied. “And they can wreak all kinds of havoc if left unchallenged. Especially this guy. He’s obsessed with Agatha and has a serious bad attitude to boot.”

“That’s not good,” Callie said, shuddering.

“No, it’s not.”

When they reached what they thought was the door Agatha had disappeared through, Happy thrust the key into the lock, but it jammed, not wanting to go in.

“Wrong door,” Callie murmured. And then she slumped forward, grasping for the wall as her body went limp and rubbery.

“Callie!” Happy cried, grabbing the other girl around the waist and slowly easing her to the ground.

“I feel so . . . woozy,” Callie said, eyes fluttering as, for the second time in her life, she realized she might actually be dying.

It had almost happened once before, when she’d been poisoned with promethium—every immortal had a killing weakness, one that was totally unique to them, and Callie’s just happened to be promethium—but she’d been careful to stay far, far away from the stuff since then.

“Is there . . . promethium?” Callie choked out, fear etching her gut like acid.

“Promethia-what?” Happy cried, confused. “I thought you said you were immortal. You’re still bleeding like a stuck pig!”

With a shaky hand, Callie reached up and put her fingers to her neck. Sure enough, the wound had not closed, but, instead, was continuing to leak her lifeblood out onto the rug.

And then it dawned on her.

“It’s you, Happy,” Callie said, finally understanding why she hadn’t been able to call up a wormhole while she was in this alternate universe. “You inhibit psychic ability . . . what we call ‘magic’ in my universe. And it means that you’re blocking . . . my immortality.”

“Shit,” Happy said, backing away from Callie.

“No, no . . . come back,” Callie said. “I just need to stop the flow of blood for now. Give me . . . your hoodie.”

Happy unzipped her jacket and slid out of it, handing it to Callie.

“Pressure,” Callie breathed, lifting the hoodie to her neck. “Put pressure on the wound.”

It was obvious she was much weaker than she’d realized because Happy had to take the jacket and wrap it around the wound for her, securing the makeshift tourniquet in place by tying the sleeves into a tight bow.

“I think that should work,” Happy said, sitting back on her heels to admire her handiwork.

“Feel better . . . already.” Callie sighed, giving Happy a weak smile as the other girl helped her to her feet.

“God, I hope so,” Happy said, her face wan. “Now let’s find Agatha.”

With Callie holding on to Happy’s arm for support, the girls continued down the hallway. This time it seemed luck was on their side, because the next door they tried was the right one, the key sliding into the lock and turning with a satisfying click.

“Okay,” Happy said, grasping the doorknob with her right hand. “One, two . . . three!”

She threw the door open and Callie screamed as she realized they were teetering on the threshold of a yawning abyss.

“It’s not real,” Happy said calmly, reaching out a hand so that it hung in the empty air before them.

Suddenly the yawning abyss disappeared, almost as if it had never existed at all, and in its place, they discovered a bare octagonal room with an army cot in one corner and a chamber pot half hidden underneath it.

“Happy!” Agatha cried, jumping up from the cot and racing over to them. “I knew you’d rescue me! Count Orlov never came—I don’t even think the invitation was really from him—and then the door was locked and I couldn’t get out . . . Ew, what happened to your hoodie?”

Happy, who was used to Agatha’s one-track mind, brushed off the hoodie comment with, “Harold’s here.”

“What?” Agatha said, her blue eyes wide with disbelief.

Happy looked grim.

“I think he’s orchestrated this whole thing in order to make good on his promise to turn you into a collectible.”

All the color drained from Agatha’s face.

“Oh, no,” she said, looking ill.

“This isn’t like an ex-boyfriend thing, is it?” Callie asked.

“No!” Both Happy and Agatha shouted at the same time.

“Sorry I asked,” Callie said, glad her snarkiness was returning because it meant she wasn’t gonna be dying anytime soon.

“He’s a film producer whose career was ruined by a film that Agatha happened to star in—” Happy began.

“I told him it was a bad script,” Agatha chimed in.

“He blames her completely for the failure,” Happy continued. “And he promised to turn her into a collectible doll because he said her performance in the film was as stiff and fake as one.”

“He’s working all this stuff from a remote location so you can’t zap his psychic powers, Happy,” Agatha said angrily.

“I would expect so,” Happy agreed, and at those words, the floor beneath them started to shake, the army cot flipping onto its side as the chamber pot went flying.

“All right, time to get out of here,” Callie said, gripping Happy’s arm for support.

“But what if we’re trapped?” Agatha moaned, tears springing to her eyes.

“Agatha!” Happy said, her brow furrowed in consternation. “Stop trying to create unnecessary drama.”

Agatha’s eyes instantly cleared and she shrugged.

“Well, drama seemed appropriate for the situation, but if you’d rather I not—”

“I’d rather you not, actually,” Callie said as she followed Happy through the door that led back out into the hallway, the house beginning to disintegrate around them.

At first, Callie thought she was imagining the house’s destruction, but as they ran, she saw the ceiling and walls starting to flake into charred black bits that rained down on their heads like volcanic ash.

“The house is a telepathic illusion from Harold’s mind,” Happy said. “So it can’t hurt us.”

She was right. As soon as they reached the front foyer, the final bits of the false image dissipated and they were met with a wash of black soot that settled onto their heads in soft, delicate clumps. . . . Only when Callie brushed the stuff away from her face, she realized that it wasn’t soot covering her head. It was snow.

And then she started to shiver.

The remains of the abandoned mansion were skeletal. Curved wooden beams reminiscent of a naked rib cage exposed the rotting interior to the snowy sky, while corroded siding sloughed off its exterior in swaths like dead skin from a corpse. The red shag runner Callie had snuggled her feet into proved to be nothing more than decaying dirt and leaves, the front foyer merely an empty room without a front door.

The woman they’d called Fiona had managed to make her escape during all the craziness—and Callie wondered if there was any truth to the story she’d told about the daughter and the autograph. And if so, was the address she’d given Happy real?

Once they’d surveyed the decaying house, it hadn’t taken a genius to understand why Fiona had been so adamant that Callie and Happy leave by the back exit: If they’d followed her directions, they’d have plummeted to their deaths via the deep ravine that lay directly behind the property.

As the girls trudged back to the Waldbaum’s parking lot clearly the worse for wear, Callie realized it was just dumb luck that no one had gotten killed. Harold—or whoever the mastermind was, if Happy’s hypothesis was incorrect—had been very clever in using the house as their staging ground, luring Agatha and Happy into a trap via an invitation to a master acting class with the great acting coach Count Orlov—something Agatha’s ego couldn’t resist. It was only by the most random of coincidences—asking the wormhole to take her to a “happy place,” which the universe translated as “take me to a place where Happy lives”—that Callie had stumbled into the story and wrecked the bad guy’s plan.

When they reached the parking lot, Agatha’s red Maserati was the only car left in the lot. As Happy unlocked the doors, Agatha threw her arms around Callie’s shoulders and gave her a pythonlike squeeze.

“I’m so glad we met you. If you’re ever in New York or L.A. and need a place to crash . . .”

Agatha released her, and Callie smiled.

“Agatha, like I tried to explain before,” Happy said, exasperation thick in her voice, “Callie comes from another universe—”

“Whatever,” Agatha said, rolling her eyes as she climbed into the driver’s seat and snagged the keys from her assistant. “Like I said: My casa is your casa.”

Smiling, she jammed the keys into the ignition, the car roaring to life underneath her nimble fingers. As Agatha gunned the engine, Happy rolled down the passenger window and Callie hobbled over, trying not to let her teeth chatter as the snow settled all around her like dew.

“If you hadn’t dropped out of the sky when you did . . .” Happy said, but she didn’t need to finish the thought. They all knew Callie’s surprise arrival had stacked the cards in their favor . . . at least this night.

“It was just dumb luck,” Callie said, shrugging.

“Are you sure we can’t drop you somewhere?” Happy asked, but Callie shook her head.

“I think the sooner you get out of here, the faster I can heal myself and get where I need to go.”

“Well, thank you for everything. Seriously,” Happy said, giving Callie a warm smile. “And good luck getting ho—”

Happy didn’t get to finish her good-bye because Agatha chose that moment to jam her foot on the gas, the candy-red Maserati speeding off into the shimmering white night in a cloud of exhaust.

As the car rounded the bend and disappeared into the darkness, Callie’s wounds began to close.

Callie took a deep breath and then a blinding golden light filled her soul and she was gone. With a sigh, she wondered why it’d taken her so long to figure this whole wormhole thing out in the first place.

Oh, well, Callie thought. At least I’ve got the hang of it now.

Callie opened her eyes to find herself back in Mrs. Gunwhale’s modular classroom, her classmates staring at her, gape-mouthed. She knew she must’ve looked like a bloody mess, but she didn’t care. She’d started this Remedial Wormhole Calling class with zero hopes of ever learning anything, and now she’d found that she’d conquered the entire syllabus.

It was a thrilling feeling—and she could go back to Death, Inc., tomorrow with her head held high and her ego ten times bigger than it’d been the day before.

Mrs. Gunwhale opened her blowhole to speak, but Callie raised her hand for silence.

“I just want to say thank you, Mrs. Gunwhale, and thank you, fellow students, for absolutely nothing.”

Callie smiled, her strength returning in leaps and bounds.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me,” she said, grinning, “I’m going home. I’ve got a business to run.”

And without another word, Callie called up a wormhole and disappeared into the night, never to see the modular classroom at PS 181 again for as long as she immortally lived.