Limbo City Lights (Lana Harvey, Reapers Inc.) Read online

  "Charming and hilarious... Sookie and Betsy have some competition!"

  —MaryJanice Davidson, New York Times and USA Today bestselling Author

  “The emotional energy was just amazing. Keep those books coming, Ms. Roquet!”

  —Kory M. Shrum, author of the Dying for a Living series

  “Roquet’s style is entertaining, and her fast-paced plots keep readers glued to the page.”

  —Monica La Porta, author of the Ginecean Chronicles

  "Darkly comic and wildly imaginative. Angela Roquet gives us an afterlife we've never seen before."

  —Kimberly Frost, bestselling author of The Southern Witch Series

  "Pocket Full of Posies has just enough laughs, lots of mystery, tons of action, some great romance, a cast you can't help but love, and a story that never lets you rest!"

  —Literal Addiction

  “Graveyard Shift is an impressive feat of imagination built on a broad knowledge of world religion. It's also great fun! No small accomplishment.”

  —Christine Wicker, bestselling author of Not in Kansas Anymore

  "Graveyard Shift is sacrilicious. Roquet's first book in the Reapers Inc. series will be a huge hit with fans of authors like J.K. Rowling and Neil Gaiman. I look forward to getting my hands on the rest of the series."

  —Lance Carbuncle, author of Grundish and Askew

  by Angela Roquet

  Lana Harvey, Reapers Inc.

  Graveyard Shift

  Pocket Full of Posies

  For the Birds

  Psychopomp

  Death Wish

  Ghost Market

  Hellfire and Brimstone

  Limbo City Lights (short story collection)

  The Illustrated Guide to Limbo City (coming soon)

  Spero Heights

  Blood Moon

  Death at First Sight

  other works

  Crazy Ex-Ghoulfriend

  Backwoods Armageddon

  The Coal Miner’s Demon (short story featured in Off the Beaten Path vol. 2)

  a collection of short stories from the world of

  LANA HARVEY, REAPERS INC.

  Angela Roquet

  Copyright © 2017 Angela Roquet

  “Death or Something Like It” copyright © 2017 Kory M. Shrum & Angela Roquet

  Distributed by Smashwords

  All rights reserved. No part of this book shall be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission of the publisher. Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher and author assume no responsibility for errors or omissions. Neither is any liability assumed for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  PRE-MORTEM

  Travel back in time to the 1700s during Lana’s apprenticeship.

  DEARLY DEPARTED

  Lana in the 1920s. (Previously published in the anthology “Off the Beaten Path.”)

  HAIR OF THE HELLHOUND

  Lana, Gabriel, and the hounds visit Apollo’s brewery in Summerland. (Previously published in the anthology “Badass and the Beast.”)

  SEASON’S REAPINGS

  A jolly soul in high demand sends Lana, Gabriel, and the hounds to Alaska. (Previously published as a standalone holiday short story.)

  DEATH OR SOMETHING LIKE IT

  Lana Harvey meets Jesse Sullivan from author Kory M. Shrum’s Dying for a Living series in this delightfully grim crossover.

  POST-MORTEM

  Travel forward in time to the 2300s and discover a brave new era of Death.

  SERIES READING ORDER

  GRIM HAIKU

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Q & A WITH THE AUTHOR

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PRE-MORTEM

  “The stars shall fade away, the sun himself

  Grow dim with age, and nature sink in ye

  But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth

  Unhurt amidst the wars of elements,

  The wrecks of matter, and the crush of worlds.”

  —Joseph Addison

  “Take thy time, girl. She’s not going anywhere.”

  Saul propped one foot on the edge of the bed and folded his arms over his knee, letting the blade of his sickle rest against his shin. His words were gentler than usual, as if he hoped to advance me through kindness today—a novel concept for a broody old reaper such as himself.

  The body laid out before us was a bloated, malodorous mess. It sank into the center of the stuffed mattress, framed by ornate pillows and embroidered throws. Blue indentations marred the doughy flesh of both arms where mourners had clung to the woman in her final moments, and a wrinkled night dress had been pushed up around her thighs and left there, exposing more bluish marks where a physician had been examining her a moment before. No one had seemed to consider her modesty, seeing as how she’d been the left-handed wife of some earl or another. A royal whore.

  I didn’t want to touch her. I had spent the month following Saul around London, watching him pull souls from frail bodies left in the streets to rot alongside the refuse and filth of the gritty common folk. Many had been frail, bony victims of malnutrition or infection. Saul had hardly gambled a finger on them. But the spent harlot was thick and ominous. I could taste the dark aura of her soul like molasses on my tongue. As a defective Catholic, Hell would pay a pretty coin for her, but it wouldn’t go in my pocket. Not today.

  “I can’t do it,” I said, looking away from Saul’s disappointed scowl. He sighed and stepped around me before plunging his hand through the corpse’s chest and wrenching her soul out as if weeding an ill-kept garden.

  She didn’t look any fancier in her ghostly form, raising an unsurprised eyebrow at her remains. She turned to Saul, and then to me, a grin hitching up one corner of her mouth. “Two of ye, eh?”

  Saul ignored her and tilted his sickle in my direction. “Thou can at least transfer this one to mine boat without coddling, can thee not?” My hesitation drew a disgruntled snort from him. “Thou art not the first reaper I’ve mentored, not even the first lady, so I know my guidance is not to blame for thine inadequacy.”

  “Yes—I’ll take her to thy boat,” I added, clarifying my response before he took offense.

  “Good.” He stuffed a hand in his robe and retrieved a pair of coins before tossing one to me. I fumbled as I caught it, taking a sharp breath when it almost bypassed my hand in favor of the corpse’s groin. Saul snickered and rolled the coin he’d kept for himself. That’s when panic seized me.

  “Wait!” I cried. “Whither should I meet thee after?”

  His face creased with annoyance, and I felt my heart cower in my chest. “Stay at mine boat until I return. There’s a noble harvest in Vienna that thou art clearly not ready for. T’will beest faster if I go alone.”

  With that he rolled his coin twice more and disappeared, leaving me with the tainted soul. She cocked her head and gave me a patronizing smile.

  “Come on then,” I grumbled and took her by the shoulder before rolling my coin thrice, mentally registering the desired coordinates as Saul had taught me to do. A moment later, we arrived at the harbor entrance in Limbo City.

  Nephilim dock workers paused their hammering and glanced up at us, their wings twitching as if our sudden appearance had surprised them. The jarring transition from the land of the living to the land of th
e dead wasn’t something I was quite used to either.

  There was a lot I wasn’t used to yet. Like the fact that I was not even a year old, fresh out of the Reaper Academy’s training program. I was brought into existence as a full-grown woman, never having had a childhood. Most who claim thus speak figuratively, but the literal sense of my truth never struck me as strange until my first venture into the mortal realm. My first encounter with children.

  What’s wrong with them? I’d asked Saul, marveling at the tiny humans.

  Nothing’s wrong with them, girl. They grow that way on this side. They’re born, and a short while later they die. That’s where we come in.

  But why? I questioned everything those first few days, until I’d pushed Saul to the brink of madness.

  That’s the way ‘tis. Be glad ‘tis not so for our kind. He ruffled my hair with one hand. The small bit of knowledge thou possess was placed in thy hard head free of charge. And thy pretty face will never lose its glow.

  It sounded nice enough, but there was something carefree about childhood that I couldn’t help but envy. And something about old age that looked peaceful and fulfilled. That I would never experience either struck a gloomy chord in me. I swallowed my sadness and nudged the fresh soul down the dock, past the winged workers making repairs and additions.

  The generation of reapers who had just concluded their century-long apprenticeships was more than twice the size of my own. The generation before them, even larger. And they all wanted their own vessel to transport souls across the wide River of Eternity. The dock could no longer accommodate, so modifications were being made.

  I didn’t have to worry about that just yet. As Saul’s apprentice, I would serve on his ship for the next hundred years. His Bermuda rigged schooner rested in one of the nicest slips off the pier. Saul was a first generation reaper, and only one of two who were still active in the field. His seniority was prevalent across the entire city—from a reserved booth at the local tavern to a personal stable boy at the inn he’d called home for the past few centuries.

  I should have felt honored to be Saul’s apprentice. He was a legend among the reaper community. But more than anything, I felt like a disappointment.

  I’d graduated at the top of my small class, second only to Craig Hogan, a despicable vulture who had stolen my heart and destroyed it just before our final exams. He was now serving his apprenticeship under Coreen Bendura, Grim’s second-in-command and one of Saul’s former apprentices. Coreen was a generation younger than Saul, but her ambition had superseded his rank. Craig was already positioned to move on to one of the specialty units.

  My envy was only trumped by insecure self-loathing. I should have been training under Coreen, not some cantankerous curmudgeon who could hardly stand the sight of me. The fact that I hadn’t harvested my first soul weighed heavily on me as well. I was certain all of my kin had advanced at least thus far. What was wrong with me?

  “Watch it!” Another reaper stalked down the pier with a string of souls in tow. I recognized her as one of the well-to-do harvesters from the Lost Souls Unit that Craig consorted with these days.

  My shoulders hunched instinctively, and I hurried my charge along, pushing her toward the ramp that led to Saul’s ship. I directed her down to the small room half-sunken into the underbelly of the boat where we kept the day’s catch until it was time to deliver them to the afterlives.

  I didn’t linger in the foreign crowd. I’d made that mistake once before. The newcomers asked too many questions, and I had too few answers. My time was better spent topside, my back pressed against the outer wall of the cabin facing the sea, lest any familiar passerby spot me.

  My confidence had steadily fallen since I’d been born into the underworld. Between Craig’s crushing blow to my heart, Saul’s disdain for my existence, and my inability to perform the task I’d been fashioned for, I was beginning to believe I was broken to some profound and unfixable degree. Not something many would care to meditate on, but what else was I going to do?

  After a few hours of self-pitying contemplation, a noise roused me from my hiding place. I expected to find Saul with his exquisite catch that he had feared I would thwart. Instead, an unfamiliar reaper stumbled over the lip of the schooner’s ramp with a feisty soul clinging to her back.

  “I cannot put thee back, heathen,” the reaper shouted as the soul fisted her braid one-handed.

  “Devil! Kencracker of the spirit!” The soul jerked the reaper about by her hair, and for a moment I feared she might pull her head clean off. As her chin hiked into the air, her steely eyes fell on mine.

  “Shall I fetch mine sickle?” I asked.

  “Taketh thy time,” she said through clenched teeth.

  Shame stained my cheeks as I ducked inside the cabin to collect my blade. When I returned, the soul had climbed farther up the reaper’s back. One leg was looped over the reaper’s shoulder, the other wrapped around her ribcage.

  I held my sickle up, eliciting a shriek from the soul. “What would thou hast me do?” I asked the ensnared reaper.

  “I pray thee, cut mine hair,” she hissed. Her eyes bulged when I hesitated, but I struck before she could speak again, hooking the curve of my sickle behind her neck. The blade whispered through her hair.

  The sudden release set the soul back enough that the reaper was able to pull her over one shoulder. She slammed the ghostly wagtail to the dock floor, knocking the fight from her.

  “Calm thyself ere I decide to deliver thee unto Hell’s doorstep,” the reaper snapped, her sheared locks coiling up around her head like an unruly halo.

  I blinked at her in disbelief. “Is that not whither she’s destined for as ‘tis?”

  The reaper winked at me over her shoulder before sticking out her hand. “Josie Gala, seventh generation freelance harvester. Thou must beest Saul’s new charge,” she added, glancing at the boat behind me.

  I accepted her hand and nodded. “Aye. Lana Harvey, eighth generation apprentice.”

  “Well, Miss Harvey, I thank thee for the liberating trim.” She bent over to retrieve her unraveling braid. The thick, black rope of hair was much longer than my own. I marveled at it, wondering how long it would take to grow back.

  “I don’t believe these modern styles are meant for our line of work,” she said, tucking the hair down in the pocket of her robe. She ran her hands over her head, fingering what I’d left her with. “This will do nicely.”

  A hiss of wind struck my face as our meeting was interrupted by a heavenly presence. Josie shielded her eyes with one arm and gazed up at the sky where a massive figure loomed. Gabriel’s golden curls framed his face, grazing his chiseled jaw, and his robe was so white that it had an ethereal glow to it.

  “Lana,” he greeted me. He gave Josie a dismissive nod as he landed on the dock and pulled his wings in tight against his back. “Where is Saul? Peter grows impatient.”

  Impatient was not the word I would have used. Peter wasn’t exactly the sort of man to spare the rod, but when a pricey soul wasn’t delivered on time, the guilty party was likely to have that rod broken over their head. I wasn’t even sure Saul’s seniority among Grim’s couriers would spare him from the ire of Peter.

  Josie took a step back, her wide eyes darting from the angel to me. “Fare thee well,” she said when Gabriel took notice of her again. Then she pulled the portly, defeated soul up by one arm and dragged her up the pier.

  Gabriel clicked his tongue disapprovingly. “Thou should be harvesting with Saul, not socializing at the docks.”

  “Socializing? Dost thine eyes trouble thee, fair Gabriel?” My skin boiled, but shame had nothing to do with it this time. “I am ordered to stay here. The least I can do is aid another in need of assistance.”

  Gabriel ignored my outburst and his brows rose with alarm. “Why art thou ordered to stay here?” And with that one question, my shame returned, fiercer than ever.

  “Saul wished to collect a high-risk soul in Vienna without mine int
erference,” I answered truthfully, leaving out the incriminating details of the morning harvest.

  “The monk.” Gabriel’s frown deepened. “He should have returned by now.”

  “Aye,” I agreed, glancing out at the many vessels dotting the horizon of the wide river. The sky was beginning to welcome dusk, and if Saul didn’t arrive soon, we’d be sailing to the afterlives in the dark.

  Gabriel cupped my shoulder, drawing my attention back to him. My stomach fluttered at his touch. I blinked stiffly, trying to focus on his words as my heart danced erratically in my chest.

  “We must retrieve the soul ourselves. Saul’s good name depends on it.” A shiny coin appeared in Gabriel’s hand, and before I could protest, he rolled it.

  The harbor bled out of focus, and then we were in the sanctuary of a cathedral. Gothic arches and pillars rose up into a domed ceiling. Intricate carvings wrapped around the beams and joints that framed the towering marvel, and detailed tapestries hung against the back wall of the sanctuary, illuminated by hundreds of candles lined up on the altar below.

  Nuns filled the front few pews, bent over in silent prayer. Layers of loose, dark fabric covered them from head to toe, revealing only their tear-streaked faces through snug openings. Their grief permeated the air, rosary beads grinding together in despairing hands while breathless sobs and sniffles echoed through the cave of a room.