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

Grim Reaper duties…”
    She paused again, the grief she felt at her father’s loss still so raw it made her catch her breath.
    “I hear that,” Noh agreed. “She’s in intense-land, but still…”
    Noh was right. Clio hadn’t actually seen her older sister in the flesh, or even talked to her on the phone except once or twice. Everything had been via e-mail or text. The most impersonal way of communicating that existed.
    “You know,” Clio began, resting her elbows on the butcher-block island, her gaze thoughtful. “I feel like I haven’t talked to Cal in ages. When did you talk to her last?”
    Noh’s lips thinned as she scrolled through the past few weeks, trying to remember when she’d last spoken to her best friend.
    “Was that the last time?” she murmured under her breath, shaking her head as if to jog some memory loose. “Nope, that’s not it either…we spoke right before the Death Dinner and she was trying to decide if she should take this swimsuit—a bikini, actually—or if it was too slutty to wear to an official Death thingamabob—”
    “And that’s the last time you talked to her?” Clio interrupted, unconsciously smearing a streak of flour across her cheek as she reached up to scratch the tip of her nose with a magenta fingernail.
    “Yes…no! No, it was after that. I called to tell her I was coming to town to visit, gave her the flight info and that was that. She seemed happy I was coming.”
    “That must’ve been before Marcel,” Clio murmured, her brain spinning.
    “Oh,” Noh said thoughtfully, then added, in what was a total non sequitur: “I told her to take the bikini. That slutty wasn’t necessarily a bad thing for a business trip.”
    And I wonder if she took your advice,
Clio mused, but instead of exploring this sidebar, she returned to the matter at hand.
    “I think we should go over there now. Check in.”
    Noh nodded, thoughtfully.
    “I’m game. I don’t think it’s a bad idea. It’s almost like we’re supposed to, actually.”
    Clio couldn’t have agreed more.
    “Then let’s go,” she said, plunking the last of the chicken breasts on the aluminum-covered baking sheet before shoving it into the refrigerator.
    Wiping the excess flour and egg on her apron, Clio ran the tap and washed her hands, the last vestiges of the raw chicken circling down the drain.
    It was time to pay Sea Verge a visit—dinner party be damned.

three
    Bernadette hated roller coasters.
    Hated them with a passion. In the entirety of her life she’d only ever ridden on one of the horrid things and the experience had been painful enough to make her swear off the hulking machines for the rest of her days. But now the promise she’d made to herself never to climb aboard another rickety, wooden roller coaster had been rescinded, all self-imposed restrictions lifted because the person she loved more than anyone else in the world had asked the impossible of her.
    Bart, her nine-year-old grandson, wanted his maw-maw to ride on the Big Bellower with him.
    Bernadette knew
impossible
was a big word, probably best not used by a doting grandmother from Ohio who was no more than a malleable hunk of clay where her grandson was concerned, but if anyone other than her grandson had asked her to ride on a roller coaster, “impossible” would’ve been the answer she’d have given.
    Anyone else would’ve known better than to ask her.
    But Bart was all wide-eyed wonder and excitement, his childish curiosity so catching, Bernadette could only grin like an idiot whenever she was in his company—and because ofthis she’d found herself agreeing to the impossible. Against her better judgment.
    She wasn’t a small woman. Getting on the darned ride had not been easy. Thank God Bart was no bigger than a cattail, so they’d been able to squeeze in together, her much larger bulk taking up the vast majority of the cold fiberglass seat. She knew she was in trouble when she heard the quiet
swoosh
of the