Read Online Undead and Done by MaryJanice Davidson - Free Book Online Page B

totally up for. Because— Wait, what?)
    flew open. Bets were a
very big deal
in Hell. It was a deadly serious business with enormous stakes. Beyond life and death, even. Unlimited opportunities to crow about it if you won. Endless piles of scorn heaped on you if you didn’t.
    â€œI’ve got terms. If I’m right and we find out he’s hiding because he doesn’t want to get back out there,” Cathie said, brow furrowed as she thought of something the Ant would find sufficiently disgusting and/or unpleasant, “you have to . . .” What? Eat live snakes for every meal every day for fifty years? Sleep with Henry VIII and let him cut your head off when you break up? Shovel out the Augean stables with a salad fork? (We had those down here—the stables, I mean—and they stank like you wouldn’t believe.) “. . . say at least five nice things to Betsy every time you see her for the next hundred years.”
    â€œNo!” we both blurted, then stared at each other, appalled. Probably for different reasons. The Ant likely found the thought of being nice to me, her nemesis since I was a teenager, to be revolting and impossible. I found the idea of working with her for the next century equally revolting and impossible.
    I knew I’d formed the committee to help me run Hell, but I wasn’t thinking of it in terms of, y’know, eternity. Though maybe I should have. Yeah, I definitely should have. Anyway, I figured one or two decades in, we’d have the kinks worked out. Hell pretty much ran itself anyway. It was difficult and confusing now only because I was making so many changes.
    â€œThree nice things,” the Ant countered, and who could blame her? Even I couldn’t say three nice things about myself every time I saw myself. Two, maybe. If having great taste in footgear counted as one nice thing. “And I don’t have to say the three nice things the second I meet her. It’s per visit.” She shivered. “I’d need a minimum of several hours to come up with something. Anything. Anything at all.”
    Cathie’s triumphant grin lit up her face. “Done! And if you win . . .”
    â€œIf
you lose
,” the Ant said, eyes narrowing (pale blue eye shadow? Was it 1976 in Hell? * ), “if we find out he’s not hiding from dating, you have to give me a massage every time I ask for the next hundred years.” Hmm. Interesting! Cathie had just gotten her massage license when she was murdered, so she presumably knew what she was getting into. “Whatever you’re doing, you have to drop everything and work out my kinks.”
    To steal an
Archer
-ism, “Um . . . phrasing?” Since they both died before
Archer
was a thing, it went over both theirheads. In fact, I was pretty sure they’d forgotten all about me. “Guys? Did you hear me? Because she said kinks? Guys? See what I did there?”
    â€œDone,” Cathie said, and they shook hands so firmly, their knuckles went white.
    I sneaked a glance at my watch. The watch was incredibly important, because it was the only timepiece in Hell that told me how long I’d been away from the real world. When I first started trying (and failing) to get a handle on this job, I’d go to Hell for a couple of hours and come back and find I’d been gone three days. The havoc this wreaked on my love life was insane. I’m embarrassed to tell you how long it took me to think up (ta-da!) the newfangled invention known as a wristwatch.
    Nothing to fear—even though it felt like I’d been here a day and a half
    (“You’re gonna lose, and it’ll be terrible for you.”
    â€œ
You’re
going to lose, and I’m going to laugh my ass off whenever you have to pound my glutes.”)
    it had been only five minutes.
    â€œIf you two are done gambling the next century of your afterlives away, maybe we can get to