Welcome to my promised 'Don't Fear The Reaper' challenge response. I'm not going to bother with posting the challenge requirements that Reptilia28 set out long, long ago. It's been posted in many other fics and by now, it should be obvious what it is. If it isn't obvious, or this happens to be the first of that challenge you've read, welllll search engines exist. I've gotten to where I skip over the listing of the challenge contents when I read one, anyway and I wouldn't be surprised if others would do that here, too. There are many great works that I personally enjoy and still read, but I'm also not going to list those either. Your enjoyment may not be precisely mine, and besides there are plenty of other listings out there that those works can be found within.

I may or may not adhere precisely to the challenge itself anyway, but it is the primary inspiration. I've wanted to do one of these for a long time, as I enjoy reading other responses to this challenge. So, here it is!

The Terrible Coffee in the Afterlife

JB Steele

Chapter One

The sudden alarms rang all over the building, in an abrupt strident gonging that made papers, coffee mugs, office supplies and chairs go flying everywhere.

There were soon many employees running everywhere, some running into one another, some barking frantic orders into barely-there headsets to people who had no chance to know something was wrong, and some drinking coffee without a care. Those didn't seem to have an identifiable face, which no one seemed to be remarking on. They were simply too busy trying to prevent what seemed to be something terrible occurring in the making that had sprung up out of nowhere. The fact that there also didn't seem to be any information making itself useful by being present didn't help matters one bit.

A disinterested observer would see the last, tiny, group and maybe wonder what was going on in their cases, but it seemed to be nothing unusual. No disinterested observers existed at that moment, anyway. One of the last, tiny group drained the last of the rather terrible brew and reached out to snag one of the workers as he sprinted by. This unfortunate soul had the new problem of the snagging being accomplished by an iron grip on a frankly ugly purple and brown paisley tie with dull green stripes.

"What's going on this time?"

The worker gulped as he saw the blanked-out face. As he was trying to regain his breath thanks to the sudden cutoff of air due to the frankly ugly tie getting yanked, there wasn't much nothing to gulp. He tried anyway, as he needed the air to speak. It took longer than he wanted and the tapping foot didn't ease his panic any.

"Sir! It's a paradox inverter event!"

The first speaker, the one without a face, managed to project a dim impression of a frown. The others in his group nodded in amusement and approval of his ability.

"A simple PIE? But why all the hubbub for one of those?"

"It's got a subvariant coded PHJ-Phi-Katastrefo!"

The faceless being stiffened, the action a lot more sudden than anything previously noted. Releasing the unfortunate staffer, who stumbled and nearly fell from the suddenness of the relinquished grip, he (or possibly she – no one was ever sure) dashed to a supposed tasteful tableau representing some historical event that everyone thought was the most boring thing they'd ever seen and frankly didn't remember in history anyway. Behind the figure, two more followed, both as nondescript as the first. The general melee parted, the shouts of consternation and rising panic lessening to no appreciable degree.

Along the right side of the tableau's frame, there was a pattern of slightly raised bumps. This was poked with every bit of urgency as the chaos represented in the general area. A soft chime was heard, just barely, and the trio stepped back to allow room for the frame and tableau to split itself down the middle, swing out in a double arc, and retract itself into the wall. This revealed a corridor beyond that was lit in red light. On the walls of the corridor stood displays with readouts of various things that none of them paid any attention to. They already knew that something had happened to cause all the readouts to go crazy.

Instead, they were moving toward what seemed to be empty air at the end of the corridor. Not a blank wall or open doorway, but an area where nothing existed. It was as if the tile floor, somewhat dingy plaster walls and drop ceilings suddenly... stopped being there. The air flow in the corridor had no bearing on that part of whatever it was, and the muted alarm sounds simply failed to echo from that area. The red lights didn't reflect from anything within that area, yet it was perceptible by some inexplicable sense.

The first in the group strode through the null area without a second thought, and the other two followed. As soon as the last one cleared the null area, the tableau on the other end of the corridor swung back into position. As it settled into place, it displayed another historical event that no one could be bothered to contemplate. Even if they had, no one would have been able to guess what it was anyway.

The panic continued on.

||[-]||

Inside the Situation Room – a room that had been getting more use recently than any of the small group wanted to think about – the leader tugged down the head covering and revealed a gaunt face that had all the wear of eons of time surrounding bright burning eyes of shifting color. The other two carefully suppressed the shudder that came from seeing it. Even though by now they should be used to it, the sight never failed to evoke the response.

"Well, let's see what we have to deal with this time."

A hand danced over a keypad made of solid smoke, with the clickclickclick of rattling keys the only sound in the room. No one remarked on the observation that every click sounded like the muted screams of the damned. As with the shudder from seeing the gaunt face, eons of exposure had made the noise familiar, if perhaps not comfortable.

There was a clatter from somewhere behind the wall followed by a grinding noise, and it lit up to reveal a scene of devastation. Bodies lay in an ever-widening circle, the ripples of death flowing outward from the obvious center. Two bodies lay there, and the gaunt being focused there for a moment. An aggrieved sigh escaped, which made the others shiver. As his attention was focused on the scene below and not on them, they allowed themselves the quick reaction and hoped in some vain attempt that it hadn't been noticed.

One wasn't really a body, but it couldn't have been anything else. It was a pile of somewhat coarse ashes, with part of a wrist and a blackened hand clutching a broken and burnt stick of indeterminate origin. The ashes appeared to be soaking up some kind of viscous fluid that might or might not have been blood, but from here it was hard to tell.

The other was moving feebly within a weak glow, with strength slowly returning in an unsteady trickle. There was obvious pain coursing through the charred body judging by the shaking it was showing, but it was alive. There were no clues to the identity of either the charred body or the blackened hand and wrist that any of the watchers could get from the scene.

The woman nearby lay broken on the ground. Her sightless eyes stared up at the blue sky above her, where a few fluffy clouds calmly looked down at the devastation below. She hadn't suffered the same level of destruction that the two within the nimbus of devastation had. Her corpse was reaching toward the pair, even as she was silent in deathly repose on her back.

The scene wasn't completely silent. Here and there, some people moaned in agony and tried to move away from the horror they found themselves in. One even managed to stand before a sharp snap was heard in the heaviness around them and he tumbled back to the ground with a shriek and a muffled thump. Sobs could be heard after that.

That was the last thing that was heard in the area before the still-disturbed magic hanging in the air exploded in fierce anger at the harnessing it had chafed under for so long. Everything was wiped away as if it had never existed. It raged on, destroying everything that it came into contact with.

Death stared at the wall displaying the obliteration that had just occurred. He sighed in resignation and fumbled for a clipboard hanging beside the display. A grunt was heard as the clipboard's notes read out what was on the wall and gave a synopsis of the scene's specifics. A note was scribbled on the page, which was summarily ripped away and stuffed into a cloak pocket. A blank sheet appeared in the empty space, but this was ignored as the clipboard was tossed back on its hook without much thought and swung gently from side to side until it came to rest again. The blank sheet ruffled a bit and was soon still.

Another sigh under drawn eyebrows, followed by potent mutterings that neither companion really wanted to know any specifics about. It promised problems and stress for someone else, and both were relieved that it wouldn't be them. Or at least, they both hoped it wouldn't be them. Neither had been able to determine what the scene they'd witnessed was all about, other than it was definitely bad news.

"Well, damn. He's got more problems now." The grumbled comment was edged with building anger.

"Who, sir?"

"The chosen one. Get me his reaper. Now. My office." He stared at them, flaming eyes burning holes through them. "I want a word and I'm in no mood to wait."

The rage in his voice, although previously banked and subdued as he reviewed what he could, was in full vigor now. The other two gaped at him for a bare fraction of a second and dashed out into the melee that lay in wait. Behind the hurrying pair, Death stewed and got angrier and angrier as he flipped through different views of recorded footage.

||[-]||

Harry was confused.

One moment, he was fighting the forces of darkness as he knew them, and now?

He took off his glasses and scrubbed his face with his left hand, then stared at that hand. It was close enough to his face that he could see the cleanliness of that hand. Harry shoved the glasses back on his face and stared at his other hand. It was just as clean as the other hand.

Something wasn't right, since the last thing he could remember was the caked mud on both hands and blood on his left hand where two fingers had been ripped away by a Bombarda. Some unnamed Death Eater had cast that and he had received a piercing curse in the throat. Harry had been too busy screaming at the pain of his mangled hand to see the other man's head pop right off like the pull tab on a soft drink.

Bong!

Harry jumped at the sound and fumbled his wand out. It disappeared from his hand and nestled into his wand holster. The "What the hell?" he uttered was mixed with the sound of someone announcing in an imperfect voice, "Now serving AT12, at Station 537." It was repeated, then silence. The voice was impassive, like some robot but with a damaged speaker that lent it a crackly quality. It started to repeat again and was cut off by some unknown action mid-message.

An usher of some kind directed him to a waiting room with many, many, many people in it. He could see that the mass of faces stretched out far in all directions from the doorway he now stood it and a perpendicular blank wall that flickered at certain points along its stupendously long length. No one looked comfortable, and once he sank down on the hard plastic seat with a cushion measured in the microns he understood why immediately.

"Where the hell am I?"

||[-]||

"ARE YOU KIDDING ME? WHAT KATŌMÓCHANOS DID THIS?"

The furious cry echoed down the hallway and there was a great deal of skittering away from the voice after that. The owner of that voice didn't notice as his attention was on the inhabitant of the chair across from his desk. It would have been obvious for him to see as his office was mostly glass-walled. It was easier to see, since the alarm had been muted and they could concentrate on being nosy as unobtrusively as possible.

As he didn't notice this increased activity, everyone breathed a sigh of relief. The last time he'd gotten this upset, Helike had been lost. The time before that, Thera had been blown up. Death hadn't planned on Helike's destruction, precisely, but the discovery of missing funds that was traced to an intern with sticky fingers had really made for a bad work environment for a while. The evil mood that he'd thrown out had been the direct cause for the lost island.

There had been a few speculations that he'd still been shirty about the situation with Helike when The Incident occurred. What had happened there was still talked about in hushed whispers. There had been a company picnic with proscribed liquor under company rules, resulting in a few wanton behaviors and a few pregnancies between coworkers that shouldn't have fraternized. That report had caused him to blow up and it was manifested with the volcano. If it hadn't been for soon to be children needing parents, he would have stuck every one of them in the volcano after he lit it off again and went out to find new people to fill those posts.

Since those involved in the problems had violated the terms of their employment, according to the clauses they'd agreed to and signed there wasn't any qualms about reassigning them to different departments. Death had still been ticked off enough to send them all to different places on different shifts. Any complaints fell on deaf ears as he pointed to the expectations and penalties sections in the handbook and kicked them out of his office.

The word had gotten out after that and he hadn't had problems that bad to mess with his serenity. Until now, that was.

Others looked at the woman hustling toward his door with expressions of horrific sympathy. They watched both her and her very worried expression as she knocked very carefully at the door and was bellowed at to "come in, shut the fucking door, and sit your órrhos down!"

She did.

Through the glass walls, they watched as he threw a file down in front of her. It didn't take long to find out what was happening. There was supposed to be total silence outside to anything said in that office, but Death was so angry that the sheer volume of his bellowing overrode any presumed sound-deadening rating. If anything, it allowed them to hear most of what was going on while pretending to work.

Her voice shook as she spoke. She looked at the file and her breath caught in her throat.

"Sir, I've just returned from leave not three days ago and was almost but not quite caught up, thanks to a glut of very recent intakes. These intakes took a higher priority and had to be dealt with immediately. I was going to finish up everything today and this file was on my to-do list. Frankly sir, it's been a major mess that I've had to come back to work to find waiting for me. I didn't leave it like that, I can tell you."

This made him sit down in a huff. Time was immaterial to the souls that arrived and was processed in this building, but for those that lived and worked in the realm, time both passed and didn't pass. For convenience's sake, everyone adhered to a day/night schedule, since it made paperwork a little easier. Not liked or enjoyed, but easier to deal with.

"Okay, I didn't realize that. I apologize," he offered, gruffly.

She nodded, trying not to think about the razor-sharp blades racked behind his desk, within easy reach or the temper he still was trying to keep on a leash. She especially didn't want to think about the rumor that he had various blades hidden in his chair, desk, and tie.

"So, you didn't authorize this retread?"

"Retread? What retread? Sir, I've never applied for a retread on this account."

She leaned forward to open the file at his motion toward it. The look on her face faded from confusion, to horror, to anger. Granted, it was nowhere near what was on the face of Death. It was close enough for any of the onlookers, in their collective opinions. Luckily for them, neither of the occupants of the office could see that everyone was hanging on their every word and not actually doing their work.

"There wasn't one retread, there was a series of them!"

"What? Let me see that." He sounded confused.

She laid the file out and showed him the different details of the retreads and the dates that they had been implemented. All of the suspicious ones were done while she had been on leave, with the first one two days after she'd left. They looked at each other.

"Who filled in for you while you took your leave?"

"I was told literally two hours before I left that Otiartes had volunteered for the overtime, and there was nothing that I could do about it. I knew how important this client was and I'd been trying for Personnel to get off the stick for a week and a half and make the arrangements before I left. Several days before I left, so I could get the replacement up to speed. That never happened."

He stared at her, aghast. The rage he'd had built up was abruptly put on hold.

"You're kidding. Did you complain?"

"I spent the last two hours before I was kicked out to go on leave filing complaints. Those should be in the system."

He stared at her again before shaking himself and turning to his terminal. Death grumbled his way through hunting and pecking through the keys of his new keyboard with all the added functions that executives of his level was 'supposed' to be using. It took almost twenty minutes to find the complaints she mentioned, during which she was getting more and more nervous.

"Here they are. Logged in as accepted… time submitted… looks like a minute before quitting time. But when was it accepted, and why didn't it come to me?"

There was more silence. He looked at the file again, mumbling to himself.

"You left on leave on that date, when the client's relative age was eight months, almost nine. Hmm. Then why is he so much older? ...Wait, that's why. Those retreads. Each one applies a cronitronal leak to his temporal reading."

His eyes suddenly went wide.

"Six of the damned things? Six?"

Her gasp was unnoticed.

"He's only got two more left to him! Potter never should have needed more than the one he started out with!"

He looked at her.

"Go get us a bunch of that awful coffee. We're going to have to work late tonight to fix this fuck-up. I've got to get a list together of people to yell at and possibly kick down to crossing guard, too."

"Yes, sir."

||[-]||

Before she could get halfway down the corridor to rustle up the coffee and some snacks, and call her husband to explain why she had to work late as quickly as she could, the word had gotten out. By unspoken agreement, absolutely no one told Otiartes anything since no one really cared for him one bit. To be honest, that phrase was putting it very mildly.

Also, they wanted some new entertainment to talk about over the water cooler when the boss was out making his rounds.

||[-]||

"Now serving BB60, at Station 42." It was repeated, then silence.

Harry looked down at the slip that he'd found in his pocket. It said HP98. He thought about all the different permutations between BB60 and HP98, and sighed. He was going to be sitting here for a while. He shifted, feeling some sensation starting to leave his rear.

||[-]||

"ARE YOU…" The rest was cut off by a hiss of noise from the office. Ears strained to hear. Everyone could see that there was a small storm cloud trying to manifest over the office, and they wondered who was going to have to clean that up.

Furious mutters where heard, but no one could tell who it was.

"WHAT DID YOU SAY?"

There wasn't any doubt who said it this time. The female voice was definitely full of ire, and they could see that the clear office walls bulged outward just the tiniest bit. Death didn't look too happy either. Everyone could see that the storm cloud was starting to generate ions.

||[-]||

"Now serving CA24, at Station 26." It was repeated with a bit of feedback and a clunk, then silence.

Harry looked down at his slip again, even though he really didn't need to. It still said HP98, and still hadn't provided any clue what was going on. He felt like he could use a few clues or even a Hermione-sized book here. There were various leaflets about licensing for things he'd never heard of, maps for places he didn't know existed, and general informational handouts in all manner of languages. Some of them made his eyes cross to try to read.

||[-]||

"I'm going to disintegrate him. He took my case files and totally screwed them up."

This couldn't be heard from outside. However, she was facing the walls but not seeing anything out on the floor. She was, however, seeing within her mind various punitive measures leveled again the fool that had been assigned her work while she'd been on leave. Several of the drones watching the office drama happened to be accomplished lip readers. They came to an agreement on what she had muttered and quickly spread the word.

A betting pool was immediately set up and passed around under desks, seats, and in one case, a skirt. That was a bit awkward for passer and passee, but the owner of the skirt didn't seem to mind. In fact, he was highly amused. It wasn't the first time he pulled questionable pranks on his coworkers and he wondered what he was going to do to top this.

His wife wouldn't be too pleased to find out what her favorite skirt had been used for, but he'd deal with that as he got to it.

||[-]||

"Now serving DD81, at Station 17." It was repeated, then silence. Harry sighed. He couldn't tell if anyone in this stupendously vast waiting room had even been called up. He looked his seat neighbor, a wiry man with a grizzled beard and bright blue eyes.

"How long do people have to wait here?"

The man looked at his ticket, which said PF13.

"No telling. I've noticed that sometimes they skip letters. It's not alphabetical like I first thought."

"You mean…"

"Yeah, someone could have a 'Z' ticket and get called up before either of us."

"Wonderful."

"Cheer up. It could be worse, I'm sure."

Harry grunted at that.

"How long have you been waiting?"

The old man scratched his beard for a moment.

"Let's see, I got here in 1871. Boy, that was something to see…"

Harry moaned to himself and tuned the old man out, who didn't notice.

||[-]||

The windows grayed out and a furious pounding could be heard. A rhythmic and hard pounding, accompanied by the sound of many things breaking. When the windows cleared again, they could see that various objects were reassembling themselves. Some sprang together quickly as they weren't that complex while others took a bit. With a bit of awe, they could see that the supposedly unbreakable windows had a couple of nasty-looking cracks starting to streak through the panes.

Death was leaning back in his chair with a large mug of something steaming orange with blackened sparkles. It wasn't the terrible coffee they all drank, and they knew that whenever Death brought out that particular brew something bad was going to happen. The last time had made cause for a personnel crunch and turnover had been rough. The stories told of that day still circulated.

The other occupant of the office was seated on the rather plain sofa, which was looking the worse for wear. She was breathing hard, the fit of temper that she had just let go still holding her in its grasp a little. The color hadn't returned to her face yet. The realization that she'd obviously just trashed Death's office didn't seem to have sunk in yet, and the watchers wondered what she was going to do when it did.

The betting got a bit quieter and a bit more frenzied.

||[-]||

"Now serving FFG23, at Station 82." It was repeated, then silence.

Wait a minute, Harry thought. Three letters, not two. That means more in between me and whatever this queue is, maybe. How much longer?

||[-]||

Otiartes hummed to himself as he paid for his garlic and poppy seed bagel at the little restaurant on the ground floor. He loved the things – his coworkers, not so much. They gave him gas, but he didn't care. A few minutes rocking from side to side in his chair every ten minutes or so and he was good to go.

He strolled into the cubicle area munching away and was struck by the silence around him. This was strange.

He could see that Bob was typing away but his screen didn't look like it was in escalation mode. It looked like he was sending a message to somebody. The quick glances he was darting at… wait. The large main office that Death used was lit up, and he could see that it wasn't empty. Otiartes squinted up to see who the other person was.

He paled and decided that it would be a good idea to go home and take a personal day. A quick turn back to the door would be all it required.

"Ottie!"

"Er, hello, Michelet. It's, um, good to see you but I've got to be going. I'm feeling... contagious. Yeah, contagious and I don't want to spread it around."

"What? You're here and I've got to give you a message."

"Er, just email it to me and I'll get it when I come back."

"Ottie, are you okay? You're starting to sweat."

"Contagious, you know… um, hemorrhoids. Very virulent."

"I didn't think those did that…"

"OTIARTES! GET UP HERE, NOW!"

The voice boomed out from above and they turned to see Death standing at the top of the staircase, an ugly look on his face.

"Uh-oh. It looks like you're in for it now, Ottie."

The other man snickered into his fist and walked back to his desk. This was going to be good. He tapped the shoulder of the woman at the next cubicle. When she looked up, he motioned at the glass walls with a smirk.

"Time to find out what happened this time."

The woman grinned, several teeth gleaming and purple eyelids glittering in the light. She put her station on pause and hustled off. For his part, Michelet waited until she disappeared before he shuddered. That woman looked scary beyond all reason. The slightly yellowed eyes and curly purple headdress didn't help.

||[-]||

"Now serving HP98, at Station 786." It was repeated, then silence.

"Hey, kid, that's you. Wake up."

"Huh? Whuzzat?"

Harry had actually fallen asleep. The message repeated and it was a moment before it sunk in. He jumped up.

"That's me!"

"Yep. Good luck, kid. You're gonna need it."

"Um. Thanks. Now which way to this '786?'"

"Follow the signs."

Harry looked up. Signs that he hadn't seen had suddenly appeared out of nowhere. The effect was too disturbingly similar to a Fidelius charm, and he added that to all the other things that he had to wonder about in this place – wherever he was.

The first sign was, unsurprising to no one, number 1. He didn't see another sign with a number 2 for another forty or so feet, and a number three for another forty or so feet. There was a hallway that had more signs with more numbers.

"Better get a move on, kid. They aren't going to wait around long before they call the next one and you'll have to start all over. I know all about that happening. Back in 1916, they called a number…"

"Uh, yeah. Thanks. Good luck with your appointment."

"Yeah, you too."

The old man went back to whatever he was doing, which looked like he was marking something down in a tattered notebook. Harry scampered off, thinking to himself it would have been nice to get a station number that wasn't so high.

Sooner or later, he was going to find out what was going on.

||[-]||

"Has anyone figured out what Otiartes did yet?"

The question came as all eyes were fixed on the violence going on in the glass-walled office. Every so often, the glass would ripple as Otiartes would slam into it and slide down. Each time he did, there would be several different bloody patterns as a cheek or ear or eye – or in one case, his left butt cheek – would make contact with the glass and rearrange what was already there.

"No, not yet. Well, there's been rumors."

The first questioner paused for a moment. He'd come in a little late as he'd been called in on his day off but no one was worried about that. He obviously didn't know about the drama overhead just yet. His coworkers had somewhat demented glee in their expressions as they brought him up to speed.

"The Boss is really mad, huh?"

"What do you mean, the Boss? That's not the Boss doing it, it's Janet."

"Wait. Janet? Janet Ripperson? Stands about five feet tall, if that, weighs less than a ream of paper, sounds like a sweet little angel? She's the one doing that?"

"Well, yeah. Look in the corner – no, the other corner without all the blood – see the Boss just sitting there watching? Sipping whatever that oily stuff he likes and looking at his watch every so often?"

There was a pause. Sure enough, there was the Boss. He looked more entertained than he had in a while.

"Oh. Well, damn. What did the poor slob do?"

"He took the account linked to the Potter kid while she was on leave, remember?"

"Oh, yeah. I didn't pay much attention. I have my own to worry about."

There was the sound of tinkling glass and a scream. They looked up see Otiartes dragged back into the office over the jagged glass shards stubbornly remaining in the wall, which sprang back together in time for him to get rammed back into it. This time, it held but only just.

"That's all he did?"

"Well, no. He mismanaged the whole thing. Didn't bother reading the notes attached to the account, just started sending stuff everywhere. Bob heard that the first change went out less than thirty minutes after Janet left the building. Probably before she even got home to start her leave."

"Well, damn."

"The Potter kid got killed several times and every time Otiartes sent him back to try again. No guidance at all, I bet."

Another grimace, answered in kind.

"And she was proud of the boy. I heard she had some of the other Potters somewhere up the line before and was looking forward to this one."

"I heard that, too."

"Remind me to get her flowers. Big bouquet. Some chocolates. Something to calm her down. Her husband won't know what hit him when she finally gets to go home after this get straightened out. He doesn't deserve to pay for someone else's mistakes. In fact, someone should call him and give him a big warning."

"Good idea. I'll get everyone else in on it."

"Better get a 'Get-Well-Soon' card for Otiartes, too."

"Why? The way she's going, we won't need that for another couple of months."

||[-]||

Harry paused. He'd made it to Station 158, where a man with very pale skin, floofy and sort of greenish hair, and the oddest black and white striped suit was arguing with a woman that looked bored. He hurried on, not wanting to find out what that was all about and needing to get to his own assigned station. He didn't want to be sent back to that waiting room. Those seats were many times worse than any in the Potions laboratory at Hogwarts.

"Who needs seven hundred and eighty-six stations, anyway," he groused.

There was no answer available for him and he hurried on, trying not to think about more than seven hundred and eighty-six stations.

||[-]||

"Janet, I've got some bad news for you now."

She looked at her boss with a bit of despair in her eyes. Otiartes lay in the corner, wrapped around Death's eminently ugly coat rack. A Festivus pole from the other corner was in a new location. Both ignored his piteous moans of pain.

"No, nothing wrong for you, but you're going to have to play the bad guy a bit when Mister Potter gets here. It's the only way to get his course straight."

"What?"

"Thanks to Fuckup over there, you're going to have to take an extremely firm hand with the boy."

"But…"

"Pretend to be your mother-in-law on karaoke night."

She grimaced. There was a reason she didn't do karaoke night anymore. Also, a reason there hadn't been any karaoke outings for the last six years.

Janet sighed. She had known it already, but it didn't make the knowledge any easier.

"Okay. Okay. But I don't like it." She walked over and kicked the Festivus pole as hard as she could, making Death wince and Otiartes scream. "I'll do it, but I'll have to make it up to him somehow."

"About that…"