He glared at me. “If you don’t want to hear it, just say so.”
“No, I do. I really do want to hear it.” Well, I did now that he’d roused my curiosity. I never could make much sense out of the classics. Maybe a rap version was just what I needed—just what the modern world needed.
“You’re not thinking of going back, are you?” It was out of my mouth before I thought. And with real fear in my voice. There was a pretty good chance I wouldn’t get my life back if, when the time came, I was off saving Aunt Carey’s life instead of showing up for my last-chance appeal. I really didn’t want to be stuck in Hell without Dante. He was by far the best thing that had happened to me since I got here. Or possibly ever.
“Nah. I’ll find a deserving rapper and let it leak through.”
“Leak through? I’ve heard of divine inspiration, but Hellish inspiration?”
“Just listen, okay?” He looked around. The cafeteria was nearly empty, with only a being or two remaining, chowing down on their mystery food of choice. Using his index fingers as drumsticks, Dante beat a 4/4 rhythm on the table.
Twisting up his lips, he did a fair imitation of those scratching noises DJs make by moving a record back and forth. I grabbed a couple of clean napkins, wiping half-chewed ectoplasm off the table. Keeping the beat, he began to rap:
He stopped drumming and flipped over the napkin. Would this thing never end? Wait, why could I still hear drumming? I looked around the cafeteria and saw three or four beings keeping time with their . . . appendages. Maybe Dante was on to something.
His voice went lower and lower and lower as he repeated the last word. I realized I too had been keeping the beat. It was really rather catchy. I found myself wanting to know what happened next.
“Hey, that’s pretty good. You’re not such a bad poet, after all.” I grinned to show I was kidding.
His cheeks flushed. He looked down, toying with his watch.
We grabbed our stuff and raced through the unhallowed halls.
A Pain in the Class
DANTE LEFT ME at the classroom doorway with the whispered instruction to grab a seat. I stood there a moment, panting heavily from my run, out of the breath I didn’t actually need. I watched him stride to the front of the room where Professor Schotz was writing something on the chalkboard.
Did my Reaper have to be so far away?
I threw myself into the empty seat next to Kali. Some teacher’s pet at the front of the class turned around and gifted me with a withering look. As if I weren’t nervous enough already.
The classroom reminded me of a dungeon. Although the common areas of the building were formed of concrete blocks painted institutional gray, our classroom appeared to be much older, constructed of rough-hewn stone set in crumbling mortar. Some of the bricks seemed damp and slimy. Fungus and spiderwebs adorned the room. At least there weren’t any chains or actual implements of torture hanging from the walls.
Unless you count the fact that the professor had just finished writing tonight’s readings on the board. Three chapters? In addition to all the catch-up work I had to do? Could I ask the time lords to make time for me? Could they do that?
“Welcome to ‘Reapage 101,’ Ms. d’Arc. Perhaps you could express to our friend Reaper Alighieri that next time he should get you here
“I think I can safely say, Professor, that next time I’ll be getting myself here. And I’ll make sure it’s on time. Sorry.” The further I went along with that explanation, the more I felt like a schoolgirl. One of the reasons I always hated the idea of going back to school was how powerless teachers could make me feel. Well, I was an adult now and no one could make me feel like a stupid kid again. I sat up straight and checked out my classmates.
Three young women in cowboy hats in the back row giggled. The one in the middle flicked her blond hair back over her shoulders. She snapped her gum and swung her cowboy-booted feet up on her desk.
A nearly identical girl on her left—same blond hair, same cowboy-esque fashion sense—copied the gesture, her own boots clunking onto the work surface in front of her. “Like, that’s so rad, man.” She brushed her overlong bangs out of her eyes and I realized she was Asian, which made the blond hair look very exotic.
I glanced at Kali, raising an eyebrow in question.
“Ignore the Death Valley girls. They’re not actually stupid, but they like to appear that way.”
Okay, I’d met girls before who went out of their way to play dumb; I could handle that. I wanted to check out the other students, but the professor moved on quickly. Kali held up her handout so I could figure out where we were. I listened to the lecture, taking notes and trying to stay focused. Class was harder than I remembered and I was out of practice.
I did mention I hated school, right?
It didn’t take long for me to realize that Reaper Academy was different from any other school I’d ever attended. But I had an unexpected advantage: losing my parents and being shuffled around meant that I hadn’t internalized much in the way of religion, despite my brief stay with my preacher grandfather. I wasn’t intimately familiar with the Bible—Old or New Testament—or with any other major religion, for that matter. As a child, I’d prayed not to God, but to Santa. After all, he delivered. The other students each had the religion of their time and place drilled into them and they had a lot to unlearn. I did not. Go, atheists! (Not that we’d been right, either.)
Aunt Carey was really big on ethics, though. She’d been a little smug about teaching me to follow a nonsectarian moral code. We’d believed we were morally superior since we were doing what was right
The first hour of class went pretty much as expected. The readings were interesting in some parts and dull in others. The giggly girls at the back of the room were annoying. The brown-noser at the front of the room was also annoying. And the sitting still nearly killed me, figuratively speaking. Since I’d been in Hell, I’d spent a lot of time running around, first looking to go home and then, once I’d moved in with Dante, looking for ways to earn my keep. At my old PR job, I was constantly running around the office going to meetings, seeing clients, getting coffee, making copies.
