The Golden Age of Death (A CALLIOPE REAPER-JONES NOVEL) Read Online Free PDF Page A

and began to look around for the eggs.
    She was glad to have an extra set of hands tonight, but she felt bad about dragging her sister’s best friend into her dinner party preparations—especially since Noh had barely stepped off a transatlantic flight two hours earlier. But she was desperate and if Noh was going to be taking up space in the kitchen anyway…?
    Over by the sink she found the eggs she and Noh had purchased at the grocery store on the way back from the airport, still in their gray crate. She moved the carton to the island and lifted the lid, studying the rounded, brown bodies before selecting ten of the dozen to crack into another, smaller, red ceramic bowl.
    “Here ya go.”
    Noh set the box of panko on the butcher-block island, pushing it forward with her fingers so Clio could reach it. Dripping egg goo everywhere, Clio grabbed the box and dumped its contents into another bowl along with two cups of crushed pistachios she’d ground to a pulp earlier in the afternoon.
    “Thanks.”
    “Any word from Callie?” Noh asked. “She knows I’m here, right?”
    “I would assume so,” Clio said, reaching toward what appearedto be a mountain, but what was really a pile of boneless, skinless chicken breasts resting on a piece of parchment paper in front of her. “Jarvis called me this morning and specifically asked me to pick you up at the airport then bring you to Sea Verge. I didn’t tell him we were going to stop by Indra’s place first, though, so I’m surprised no one’s calling to bug me about where we are.”
    “That’s odd.”
    Clio had always thought Noh was a bit odd, if they were going to talk about levels of oddness. The girl was bone thin and paler than any living person had a right to be. With her long brown hair, pixie face, and the odd moon-shaped scar that ran from the right corner of her mouth to just below her chin, she looked like a broken porcelain doll someone had tried to put back together with super glue—but there was nothing in the least bit delicate about the girl. She was as strong as an ox and whip smart, the best friend Callie had made while she was away at boarding school.
    “Well, there was the Death Dinner and then she had this, uh,
thing
with Marcel, the Ender of Death, so, you know, she’s been busy…” Clio trailed off as she dipped a raw chicken breast into each of the bowls—egg, flour, then the breadcrumb and pistachio mixture—before placing it on one of the two aluminum-foil-lined baking sheets that sat, empty, on the counter next to the stove.
    “The last time we talked,” Noh said, her eyebrows scrunched up in concern, “she seemed really distracted. Like she was only half listening to what I was saying.”
    That sounds exactly like Cal,
Clio thought, amused. She loved her older sister dearly, but Callie was not known for her ability to focus—something Noh knew well from experience.
    As if she’d read Clio’s mind, Noh added:
    “I know she can be a flake-in-the-butt sometimes, but Callie’s way more attentive on the phone than she is in person. The fact she was so distracted was odd.”
    A flake-in-the-butt?
Clio thought as she picked up another chicken breast, the raw meat almost slimy in her hand. There was a reason Noh and Callie were best friends: They both liked to make up weird combinations of words and then pretend like their made-up phrases were part of the everyday vernacular.
    “Sure…” Clio replied, letting the word hang between them.
    Noh continued to look at her expectantly, waiting for Clio to elaborate. She sighed, realizing her silence came from the fact she didn’t have an answer for her sister’s friend. Callie
had
been acting strangely and Clio was just so busy she’d ignored her sister’s flakey behavior.
    “I think she’s overwhelmed,” Clio said after a protracted pause in the conversation, where the only sound was the slap of raw meat on wood. “She’s got her hands full running Death and doing all of Dad’s