Title: Death and Coffee

Author: Lisa Acerbo

Publisher: NineStar Press

Release Date: 10/14/2025

Heat Level: 3 – Some Sex

Pairing: Female/Female

Length: 362

Genre: Fantasy, Romance, paranormal, historical, urban fantasy, bisexual, lesbian, Death, reaper, witches, Salem

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Description

The end is a new beginning for Prudence. After witnessing her mother’s wrongful conviction as a witch in 1661 and wishing for death, she gets just what she asks for when recruited. In her new job as a reaper, Prudence must learn to navigate the delicate balance between the living and the soon-to-be-deceased. However, her duties as a harbinger of souls are only the beginning of her trials as she makes her way as an immortal through the centuries. With nothing else to care about, Prudence excels on the job, even with an ill-tempered horse demon to keep fed and jealous coworkers vying for her downfall.

Love arrives for this reaper with one of her soon-to-be-dead clients. Prudence is instantly smitten with hospital doctor Daxone, defies Death to save the woman, and pursues her desires. Unfortunately, immortals shouldn’t love humans. Worse, revealing Death’s secrets gets the couple banished to purgatory. Prudence settles in only to be yanked away to Salem, Massachusetts. Once there, she is forced to deal with another of Death’s deadly problems. Thrust into a world of witches and dark magic, Prudence must harness her innate powers and confront a coven plotting to overthrow Death. With the world’s fate and her lover’s life hanging in the balance, she must find her magic and understand her past to keep the love of her life and the entire planet alive.

Death and Coffee
Lisa Acerbo © 2025
All Rights Reserved

Another yawn escapes even though I try my best to push it away. The day-to-day grind becomes taxing without any future to look forward to. It’s been hundreds of years of soul after soul after soul. Those thoughts linger as Goose gallops to my first stop—a posh residence close to Central Park. I park the demon.

“How are you?” I ask the doorman.

“Good day, Miss.” He seems unconcerned by the entrance of a girl with flaming red hair dressed in a leather jacket, black jeggings, and a black T-shirt.

“Howdy.” I step inside the refined entry. A tall chandelier dangles on a gold chain overhead and sends a warm glow along paneled walls.

A small man in a spiffy uniform doesn’t acknowledge my entrance, which works for me. I take a moment to consider my SOD. The email from this morning gave me the basics: woman, elderly, deceased husband, and three children. While helpful, not really the most important information I need.

A bright ring lights the elevator button when I press it.

Time to meet the dead. Or at least soon to be deceased.

If someone saw me on the street and stopped to chat, they’d learn I’m a twenty-eight-year-old college graduate who works as an independent contractor for a marketing firm in New York City. My few apartment-building acquaintances have no idea sending souls to heaven, nirvana, or hell is an actual job. And while most people have heard those names for the afterlife, it could easily be moksha, purgatory, Hades, Valhalla, paradise, Summerland.

As Death tells us often, don’t question them and stay in your own lane.

I’ve given up seeking answers.

The elevator rumbles on the way up.

Do souls take a similar ride? Honestly, none of my fellow reapers are sure where they go. We collect them, but what happens after the deposit is a mystery. My boss is pretty shadowy too. I’ve never met Death in person, but we’ve interacted when it comes to the job. In addition to my amulet, we communicate through email and Teams. There are regular placement changes, personnel updates, and new policies. Sometimes cell phone conversations happen to defuse those tricky situations.

With a ding, the door opens on the fifth floor. I step out into an elegant, recently painted hallway imbued with bright abstract art. Some entrances have welcome mats. A yippy dog makes its presence known. The SOD’s apartment is at the far end of the hall. The doorknob turns and clicks, opening easily. It always does.

I wipe my boots at the door. Reapers don’t leave tracks, but it’s good to be cautious. Everything inside the condominium is bright and shiny. White walls are highlighted with some mirrors and landscape paintings. My shoes submerge into the pristine white carpets on the floor of every room.

How do dying humans see me when in work-mode? Am I a scary figure in black robes holding a scythe or an angelic form bringing peace to a person’s final moments? Or do I appear human and all too average, except for long, red hair, abundant freckles, and ample rack. What can I say? The gods giveth as much as the gods taketh away.

The truth about my appearance on the job site might never be known because whenever I pass a mirror before a reaping, it’s my frowning face returning the scowl. To be clear, standing and staring into mirrors is not a common occurrence. I have little time to study myself while coercing souls into another existence.

A carelessly thrown hardcover novel has me tripping across the living room. “Hells bells,” I whisper and chuckle at my own lame joke.

Actually, there are no bells, whistles, or tunnels when a person dies. It’s only me or one of the other reapers toiling away at the job like any other white-collar worker in New York, except our benefits package is nonexistent. It’s not like we need healthcare, but there’s no overtime or vacation. Benefits include eternal enslavement to Death.

I want to turn my mind off. It’s stuck in a vicious loop and won’t stop obsessing over the topic, but it would be great to know the age of retirement if it exists. Five hundred years? One thousand?

The kitchen is to the right, and three closed doors stand at attention like soldiers. The pull guides me to the correct one. Inside the bedroom, an elderly woman lies in bed, bedspread to her chin, daughters and son by her side. Her face is too thin, flecked with age spots and blue veins. Her eyes are half shut, and pain and fear radiate off her.

No one notices me except the dying woman.

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Lisa Acerbo is the Director of General Education and Liberal Arts at Post University. Her short stories and poetry appear in Scarlet, Sagebrush Review, Moonstone Arts, Poor Yorick Literary Journal, Ripples in Space, Universe in a Bottle by Flying Ketchup Press, Whatever Happened to Hansel and Gretel? by Fathom Publishing (a finalist in the 2024 Best Books Awards in the category of Fiction: Anthology), and Birds of Vermont Museum. When not writing, you can find her walking in the woods with her rescue dogs.

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