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This is a work of fiction. All characters, organisations and events are the author’s creation, or are used fictitiously.

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Print ISBN: 978-1-922434-03-6

eBook ISBN: 9781393919186

www.inkprintpress.com

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National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Brooks, Liana 1982—

All I Want For Christmas Is A Reaper (Kickstarter Edition)

242 p. cm.

ISBN: 978-1-922434-04-3

Inkprint Press, Canberra, Australia

1. Fiction—Romance—Paranormal—General 2. Fiction—Fantasy—Paranormal 3. Fiction—Romance—Workplace 4. Fiction—Holidays

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Summary: Merri Kriesmas, Grim Reaper of Chicago, comes to Cozy Studies to audit their accounts and finds the love of her life.

First Edition: December 2020

Cover design © Inkprint Press.

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^[1] Technically this is a lie. Dulcie Waterhouse ruined her own life by embezzling from her firm and taking too many long lunch breaks buying macarons across town. The only tears were the tears of joy in her co-workers’ eyes when they realized she was leaving for good. And there wasn’t a pink slip. I convinced her to resign. I’m good like that.

^[2] A paranormal-horror series from the mid 20s that centered around a hidden werewolf population and their unrivaled basketball team. I’m 90% certain that the ratings were due to the regular shower scenes.

^[3] Or, let’s be honest, a stopwatch to keep track of the betting on the Dulcie Waterhouse situation.

^[4] Named for Amara Enyia and Rosa Parks, obviously.

^[5] Ha ha, I’m so funny!

^[6] Yes, I did text my sister as soon as I saw the address. She teaches high school French and needs something other than eighty “un ouef” jokes to giggle over. Besides, there’s a French connection between eighty and weed.

^[7] And clothing line of the same name.

^[8] Much to the entire office’s surprise, this was about animals and not the Whole Sum porno department.

With that name though...

^[9] The kind that replaced solar panels in most of Chicago several decades ago.

^[10] Home of the Mistletoe Kisses series that made Cozy so popular.

^[11] With only one bed! Oh my!

^[12] So bright. So imperfect. So obviously not filtered to make skin look poreless.

^[13] Ellen dragged me to watch it in the outdoor theater sixteen times during the opening week. Six. Teen. I had seventy-three mosquito bites before Patrick’s first on-screen kiss.

^[14] Her birth certificate says Carol Danvers Kriesmas but no one has called her that since the incident in Kindergarten that ended in five black eyes, a two-week suspension, and everyone agreeing that her name was Lucky. She plays rugby and does roller derby under the name Luck O’ The Irish at night, and teaches French at a private school in the suburbs during the day.

^[15] I’ll give you this as a freebie: Cerberus is Greek for Spot.

^[16] Did you want zombie spiders? This is how you get zombie spiders.

^[17] I hadn’t been mad about it as a baby, but in fifth grade when we learned about the privacy wars of the twenties and thirties, I was absolutely furious anyone had been stupid enough to attach an uncontrolled camera to their infant’s crib. Ellen had fond memories of her personal Big Brother spy-eye. I’d taken a baseball bat to my family’s doorbell camera. We all coped with life differently.

^[18] Um, hello? Internet? Of course I looked up the stats on the hot guy I bumped into at work. You would too.

^[19] Now complete with real movie monsters, thanks to their relationship with Slasher.

^[20] Oretega Mineral Exchange, not a single company, but a co-op of jewelers, vendors, metalworkers, artisans. It’s the best place in northern Illinois for anything involving gemstones or previous metals. They handle over sixty percent of the state’s mineral sales and get away with it because it is, technically, a co-op.

^[21] My mom was going through what she called a Modern Vintage stage where she wanted to show us all the life skills people had used during the plague years of the early 21st century to create art at home, but she hated embroidery and knitting, so she spent an afternoon gluing rhinestones to my pants before she gave up in boredom and went back to churning butter.

^[22] I looked it up. Morana means death in Slavic. Ha ha. The CEO of Slasher Studios is named Seth Death. His sense of humor slays me some times.

^[23] That’s not my opinion, it’s Zagat’s.

^[24] No, seriously. You should have seen her eat after wrestling practice. Ellen is tiny but mighty, and she has the appetite to match.

^[25] Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating. Going to a charity gala in Chicago is way better than what those people would come back as if they reincarnated. I bet they would come back as maggots.

^[26] The dress had been hot gossip for weeks.

^[27] My gem expert. Rafael Kane was the reason I knew a fake opal when I spotted one. We’d met years ago while stuck in the Atlanta Airport under a tornado watch and bonded over reruns of Timberwolf Town, spotting fake gems on first class passengers, and drinking tiny bottles of rum.

^[28] And avoiding cartels. But that’s another story.

^[29] I’m still not sure how.

^[30] Guess who did some work for Chicago fashion week and kinda got hooked on shoes? Did you guess me? It was me.

^[31] Much.

^[32] I realize that conversation gives off the impression that I have an unlimited dress supply hidden in the closet like some sort of magic superpower, but this isn’t true. I have twenty-seven dresses total, and at any given time Chel has guardianship of eight of them for cleaning and repairs.

Dulcie Waterhouse might have been content with merely threatening payback, but plenty of other people thought throwing coffee, tea, wine, and—occasionally—trashcans at me was the way to go. Chel was the divine angel who made my dresses wearable again.

^[33] I said Seth didn’t talk about his projects much with me. I didn’t say I didn’t do my own research or shamelessly eavesdrop while wandering a movie studio for the past few days.

^[34] Turns out on-set accidents are common enough that they use safety glass. I wouldn’t have been able to break it if I’d tried.

^[35] Also? An accelerant. Because you never know when you’ll need a tiny Molotov cocktail.

^[36] Yeah, I know. Now I’m Meredith Morana, Merri Death. Mare-o’-death Death. Seth is already working on a script called Night Mares about horses of death. He is so weird. And I love him. The end.

^[37] She still dances under the name Cotton Candy every other Friday down at the Sugar Strip on 4^th, if you’re wondering.