How to be Death by Amber Benson

role—one more push from Coy and I’d be going all crazy attack bitch on her ass.
     
    “Well, I gotta go,” I said abruptly, turning on my heel and heading blindly in the opposite direction.
     
    “Callie!” I heard Daniel call out behind me, but I ignored him. I had absolutely zero intention of letting him see how much he’d hurt me.
     
    As soon as I was out of their line of vision, I started to run, stumbling into another one of the Castle’s many sculpture gardens as the wet, hot tears began to course down my cheeks. My lungs burned from holding my breath as I fought back the racking sobs that threatened to spill out of me if I relaxed my vigilance for even a second.
     
    I was so crushed by emotion I didn’t see the old woman until I was on top of her. We collided with a bone-crunching
thwunk
and then I was sprawled on the ground at her feet, the back of my head throbbing in time to my heartbeat. How the old woman had managed to stay upright after our run-in, I had no idea, but there she was, looking down at me like I was intentionally blocking her path with my prostrate body.
     
    “Sorry,” I mumbled, cradling the back of my head with my hand as I tried to pick myself up.
     
    The old woman reached out an emaciated mocha arm, her thin gray hair falling forward and across her weather-beaten face as she offered to help me up. I didn’t want to offend her,so I grabbed the proffered hand, surprised when she easily pulled me to my feet. I’d misjudged her strength completely; this was
not
some fragile old lady with tissue paper skin and a delicate constitution.
     
    She smiled at me, revealing two rows of solid white teeth that were all her own, though her dark skin was layered with the wrinkled folds of age and sun damage.
     
    “Best be careful where you’re going, Mistress Death,” the old woman said, her words slow as honey dripping from a spoon. “There are evil spirits loose tonight.”
     
    I swallowed hard then nodded as the creepy feeling I’d been fighting all day returned with the old woman’s words.
     
    “You know what I mean,” she continued, her Aboriginal accent giving her speech an undulating lilt. “Careful now.”
     
    She released my hand—I hadn’t even realized she was still holding it—and made a funny clicking sound in the back of her throat. In my peripheral vision I saw a flurry of brown wings as a small owlet arced across the sky and gracefully landed on the old woman’s shoulder. I took a step back and the creature’s large amber eyes blinked thoughtfully at me, as if to let me know I had nothing to fear from it.
     
    The old woman petted the top of the owlet’s head and the bird turned its neck to get into a better position for scratching. It reminded me of some of the odd pretzel poses Runt wriggled herself into in order to have just the right spot scratched.
     
    “Who are you?” I asked as the old woman cooed at the owlet, her dark eyes almost glowing in the twilight. She ignored my question, just continued ministering to her bird’s needs as if I wasn’t there. Maybe to her, I wasn’t.
     
    I tried another tack.
     
    “I’m Calliope Reaper-Jones.”
     
    At this, the old Aboriginal woman finally looked up at me, her sturdy mud brown eyes locking onto my own with a fierce intensity.
     
    “I know what you are.”
     
    The flat tone of her voice made my skin crawl. It was more than a statement. It was a pronouncement of something wicked yet to come.
     
    “Okay,” I said quietly, starting to back away. “I gotta go now.”
     
    My fear seemed to amuse the old woman and she started tocackle, the rich honey of her voice turning to tar in her throat. I took off, not bothering to find out what other words of wisdom the old woman might be looking to impart to me.
     
    But as I made my way down the mottled path, my feet speeding me away from the unsettling old woman as fast as they could carry me, I swear I heard these words drifting behind me like a malevolent