The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy (Hart and Mercy, #1)

by Megan Bannen

“Most people start with hello.” “Hello, Hart-ache,” she sighed. “Hello, Merciless.”

“You are aware of the fact that Roy Birdsall almost died a few months ago, right?” Hart shifted his weight, the soles of his boots grinding into the gravel of the parking lot. “No.” “Well, he did. Heart attack or something. In theory, he’s running the office, but Mercy’s the one taking care of everything at Birdsall & Son—boatmaking, body prep, all of it.”

you honestly believe that dogs don’t have souls? Have you ever met a dog who wasn’t a hundred times nicer than your average human being?” “Um, no?” “Exactly. Don’t insult dogs like that.”

“Let me ask you something. If you had to choose between saving my life or saving a dog, which would you choose?” “The dog.”

From water you came, and to water you shall return. You shall sail into the arms of the Salt Sea, and Grandfather Bones shall relieve your body of your spirit. The Warden shall open the door unto you, and the Unknown God shall welcome you into their home, where you shall know peace.

“No. What if she doesn’t like me in real life? I’m not exactly Mr. Warm and Fuzzy. Even you can’t stand me, and you’re an asshole.” Bassareus preened, slicking back his ears. “Thank you very much.”

“What if it doesn’t work out? What if we stop being friends?” “Then you can stop dicking around with letters and find a real person in real life to date.” Bassareus’s beady eyes softened. “You keep asking what if this bad thing happens or that bad thing happens? How about, what if you two hit it off? What if she’s the love of your life, dumbass? Thought about that?”

“No way!” “What?” he begged. When Duckers spun around, he had pure, unadulterated joy painted all over his face. “Haaaaaaa!” he cackled so loudly the sound echoed off the neighboring buildings. “Shh!” “Ha ha ha! This is the greatest day of my life!” crowed Duckers.

He hung the towel on its peg anyway and looked himself in the eye. There it was, a truth so evident that it may as well have been painted on his forehead in red letters. He was helplessly, boundlessly, stupidly in love with Mercy Birdsall.

Mercy’s poor skirt was going to be as wrinkled as her great-aunt Hester by the time she was through with it.

“I think I’m about to do something stupid.” “Okay.” Mercy stood on tiptoes and kissed the corner of his mouth on the exact spot where the frosting had been. She pulled away and watched him as he gawked at her and said nothing, and his silence screamed around her until she couldn’t take it anymore. “Well? Say something.” “I’m still waiting for you to do something stupid.”

He closed his eyes and inhaled the scent of her cold cream as she nestled her head into the real estate of his body she had claimed as hers, as if she didn’t already own everything he was, body and soul.

But if we are going to inform your dad that we’re dating, I’d rather it be over a nice, wholesome dinner, not when I’m leaving your place first thing in the morning because I’ve spent the night worshipping at the altar of your glorious, beautiful, intoxicating pussy.”

“How do you make the undead? With dead people. What does he have an unlimited supply of? Dead people!” Lilian slapped the desk to drive home her point. “Yeah, but every body coming out of Tanria has a punctured appendix, so it can’t be reanimated, not to mention the fact that someone would have to get all those cadavers past the checkpoint at the West Station.” “I’m telling you, Cunningham found a way. This guy hatched a nefarious plot to fill Tanria with dead bodies in order to swindle the government. That has got to be the least sexy evil plan ever.”

Drudge on the loose kills two in Herington—and tucked into the corner: Cunningham awarded patent for miracle embalming patch.

her suspicions were right, if Curtis Cunningham was filling up Tanria with drudges so that he could make more money, if Pen and Hart and all the other marshals were in greater danger because of Cunningham, Mercy was done letting him get away with it.

“Mom? You’re putting my mother’s remains in Tanria, Cunningham?” The livid employee lunged out of Nathan’s grasp and pulled Cunningham out of the autoduck.

He figured that if he could no longer love Mercy in person, he could at least love her through the pages of her favorite novel.

“Aw, no. Not him.” The rabbit stood on tiptoe to better see the body on the table. “No, no, no. You fucking asshole!” He tugged a red handkerchief from his pocket and sobbed into it.

You once told me that I had a rapier for a heart and a depressing novel lodged in my appendix, but the truth is that, if anyone bothered to scratch my brittle, craggy surface, they would find that my heart and soul belong entirely and completely to Mercy Birdsall,

“I’m your dad.” Hart continued to stare at the man before him, who, as far as he was concerned, was his mentor and the only real father he’d ever had. At last he spoke, his tone even when his feelings were not. “There’s no way Bill could have fathered me. I don’t have a dad.” “I look like Bill in your mind, but I’m not. I’m the Warden—you know, the guy who ushers souls into the House of the Unknown God. They need help sometimes, the lost and lonely ones. Hence, me.”

“So I dressed myself up in flesh and blood and tried it out for a while, and the first thing I discovered was that living hurts. There are so many aches and pains. I stubbed my toe. Do you have any idea how much it hurts when you stub your toe?”

“I kept getting hungry. I caught the flu and lay shivering in a hotel bed for three days. But there was something else that hurt more than a stubbed toe or hunger or sickness. I couldn’t put my finger on what it was, but it followed me wherever I went. And even that paled in comparison to the suffering I saw around me—people begging for food or money in the streets, people who were so ill they could barely move, people whose dreams had been crushed by time and fate and all the horrible things the Old Gods had unleashed into the world. I thought, if living is this miserable, why wouldn’t people want to leave it behind? “So I was about to give up and go home when I met your mom at Lennox’s Comics and Games in Pettisville, Arvonia. Ever been there?”

wasn’t joking, but she had a gap between her front teeth, which some people think of as a fault, but to me, it made her lovely. Perfectly imperfect. Suddenly, all I wanted to do was make this woman laugh as often and as much as I could. It wasn’t love at first sight, exactly—more like a knowing. I understood then and there that I was going to fall in love with her if I stuck around. So I stuck around. And that pain I felt, the one I couldn’t figure out, went away. Poof. Just like that.”

“Technically, you opened a door: your door to your home. Tanria was always where you were going to die the first time. That’s why it was there, and whew, the drudges didn’t like that. You’re like a bridge, you know? Half human, half god. When you opened the door from the outside, you fixed what your dad fucked up.”

“Why did the Old Gods go away?” “Probably because infinity is a terrible thing. But you already knew that, didn’t you?”

“I’m glad he had you, if only for a short while. And I’m glad he has you now.”

“When my dad died a couple of years ago, it felt like Grandfather Bones dug a chunk out of me, and I’ve been carrying around a giant hole inside me ever since. Dad was always there for me. He really listened. He taught me… not the school stuff, but the life stuff I needed to know, like how to shave and how to deal with assholes and how to talk to a guy I liked. He was the man I wanted to be someday, and then all of a sudden he was gone, and I didn’t have anyone to help me figure myself out. Until you. I thought I’d lost the only father I’d ever have, but now I’m losing you, too, and it feels like losing a dad all over again.”

“Aw, that’s sweet,” a familiar voice said behind him. Hart turned to glare at Bassareus, who was, for reasons Hart could not begin to fathom, staring at him and Mercy through the open doorway, alongside Alma, Diane, Duckers, Zeddie, and an owl, all of them grinning. “Isn’t that the cutest fucking thing you’ve ever seen?” Bassareus asked the rest. “It is,” Zeddie agreed with an obnoxious smirk. “Nice boxers, Ralston.” “This is Zeddie’s underwear, isn’t it?” Hart asked Mercy under his breath. “We were desperate.” The owl primly clapped his white wings. “Brava and bravo! What a marvelous finale. I do enjoy a happy ending.” “I want to remind you that I totally called this, sir,” Duckers chimed in. Bassareus blew his nose into his handkerchief. “Fucking beautiful,” he wept.

Ms. Sanderson is a bicth “Ms. Sanderson may be a bicth”—he pronounced the word exactly as it was spelled: bic-thuh—“but the poor woman’s got her work cut out for her if she has to teach you lot how to spell bitch right.”

He bent down to kiss her. “Hello, Merciful.” She smiled at him, dimples and all. “Hello, Sweet-Hart.”