Dying for a Living, Tome 2: Dying by the Hour

Jesse

When they describe female special agents in the movies, or in books, it’s always like this: a sleek, cat-like body that slithers in tight clothing, gorgeous exotic face and a sultry voice that can lure any target into submission.

And while I am a female agent, double agent even, I’m not sultry, exotic, cat-like, sleek or even remotely alluring. I’m an idiot wearing a clown suit. And I don’t mean clown suit figuratively.

I am wearing a clown suit at a birthday party.

I have the red nose, the floppy shoes and this horn around my neck that honks obnoxiously every time a grubby kid with sticky fingers runs up and gives it a squeeze.

The double part is more complicated. Neither my official job nor my unofficial off-the-books job requires I wear a clown suit. Yet, here I am dressed as a clown because my current client Regina Lovett begged me to.

She apparently believes a clown is less terrifying to her daughter, the person she’s hired me to protect, than just being a regular old death replacement agent. Death replacement agent is my “respectable” job—though that depends upon whom you ask. The double agent part of me is here to gather intel. This is the only reason I’m willing to jump through Regina’s obnoxious hoops in order to keep her business. Usually I hold all the cards in a death replacement because without me, they die.

I’m not even sure Julia, turning four, will agree with her mother anyway. She’s done a good job of keeping her distance from me, the red-nosed wonder, backing away slowly every time I offer her a balloon.

My floppy shoes squish against the ground saturated from six days of September rain. I rock on my heels and watch Julia twirl in her party dress, a good twenty feet away. It’s a pretty lavender color, complete with lacey ankle socks and Mary-Janes. A tiny gray peacoat protects her from the elements. She looks like any other privileged upper class kid, standing in a big beautiful yard, her thick brown locks pulled up into curling pigtails that graze the tops of her shoulders and the lacy white collar of her dress. A white painted fence establishes the boundaries around the property and along the edge of the fence stands a few large saggy trees that have seen better, dryer days.

The pool has recently been drained, a tarp stretching from one end to the other. And I can’t help but look at it and wonder if Julia will fall through and crack her head open on that poured cement or something. Or maybe the birthday candles will ignite and catch her hair on fire.

Occupational hazard, I’m afraid. I spend lots of time pondering death.