Cat's Claw

by Amber Benson

  This was exactly what had happened last Christmas—crazy sneezing fits, followed by wheezing and then the utter obliteration of my ability to breathe like a normal human being. I’d spent Christmas Eve on a gurney in the emergency room, my eyeballs nearly popping out of my head from lack of oxygen. Christmas Day consisted of finding a vet that was open who had the space to board Muffins (my cat-sitting charge) until Patience came back from Tahiti the day after New Year’s.

  I sneezed again and Muna finally seemed to take pity on me this time. I felt a sharp pinch near my collarbone as the cat used the paper-thin skin like a starting block to propel itself onto the arm of my couch, where it landed with a studied grace before lifting its leg and licking itself in the “you know what” area.

  “Ow,” I said post-cat leap, hoping for some kind of an apology—I didn’t care from whom, the lady or the cat; either one would do—but no apology seemed forthcoming.

  “Ow,” I said again, a little more loudly this time, rubbing the spot on my shoulder where the cat claws had ripped the skin and hoping that if I called a little attention to the injured area, it would solicit some sort of apologetic response. Instead, all the old lady did was pick up her cup of steaming hot tap water—I noticed she’d put some kind of weird greenish black tea bag into the white “INew York City” mug I’d gotten as a gift from my best friend, Noh, when I first moved to the city—and nonchalantly walked over to where the cat was now clawing happily at the arm of my Pottery Barn couch. I may’ve paid only pennies on the dollar for the thing at a floor-model sale—and there may have been a couple of rough spots on the back where the fabric had been torn during its time on the floor—but that didn’t mean the dumb cat could use it for a scratching post!

  “Stop that, cat,” I said, going for strident, but instead settling for a wheeze. I tried to take in a lungful of air, but my lungs didn’t seem interested.

  Damn it!

  The old woman gave the cat a gentle rub under the chin, and said, “That’s enough now, Muna. I think we know all that we needed to know. Let’s not asphyxiate the poor girl, shall we?”

  There was a blinding flash that nearly scorched the tear layer right off my corneas, and instantly I could breathe again, my lungs no longer feeling like they were being compressed inside an iron vise. I wrinkled my nose, testing for any latent sneezes hidden inside my sinus cavity, but thankfully I was sneeze-free.

  Satisfied that I wasn’t going to suffocate after all, I opened my eyes, prepared for the worst—and boy, was I in for a shocker.

  Muna wasn’t a cat anymore.

  On the arm of my couch—where only seconds before there’d lounged a fat, feline puffball—now crouched a skinny red-haired Minx. The fact that I instantly knew what the creature was called completely amazed me. I had never heard the term “Minx” before, let alone known that the species even existed, period. Now here was one of the little creatures sitting on the arm of my couch looking all pert and sassy . . . and very definitely female.

  “You’re a Minx,” I said, like a little kid at the zoo who points at wild animals completely secure in the fact that whatever creature he is pointing at doesn’t stand a chance in Hell of getting through the glass barrier to eat him. My index finger still wobbling happily in the air, I could feel the start of a big, dumb smile slowly spreading across my face. Apparently, there was just something about the tiny humanlike Minx that made me feel and act like a ten-year-old.

  “Can you get the stupid human to stop gawping, please?” the Minx said, her voice still strangely low and masculine for something so feminine looking.

  Well, that yanked the kidlike feeling right out of me.

  “Jeez, so sorry for even existing,” I mumbled as I instantly dropped my hand, glaring at both of them.

  “Please, don’t take offense, Calliope Reaper-Jones,” the older woman said, a slow smile stretching across her face as the skin around her eyes crinkled sweetly. “The Minx can’t help being so tart. Imagine what your life would be like if your appearance inspired such childlike wonder wherever you went.”

  I thought about that for a minute before nodding. I guess having the human populace, as a whole, moon over your every move could get annoying after a while.

  “Sure, I get it. Being cute and adorable and kind of sexy in a little tiny creature/Peter Pan sort of way could probably get frustrating for you, I guess . . .” I trailed off as the Minx stared at me.

  I wasn’t the greatest when it came to deducing someone’s height, but if I’d had to guess, I would’ve said that Muna topped out at about eighteen inches. With her violet, almond-shaped eyes, long, pitch-black hair, and high, cream-colored cheekbones, she was a stunning femme fatale in miniature.

  In fact—strange as this may sound—she eerily resembled this Hot Looks doll I’d been madly in love with as a kid. It was actually something I’d inherited from my older sister, Thalia, but I was obsessed with it, dragging it with me everywhere I went like a tiny, human-shaped security blanket. My mother finally threw the doll away when its head fell off. Apparently, it made other people uncomfortable to see a six-year-old kid carrying around a filthy, headless, plush doll the size of a small terrier.

  Yes, carting around a headless doll was kind of a weird thing to do, but I had my reasons. You see, there was something special about the Hot Looks doll. Something that I’d never told another living soul in the whole world (not even my therapist because I didn’t want to give her a heart attack) and that something was that my doll talked to me.

  Yeah, I know, a lot of kids have imaginary friends, but this was completely different. My doll (she said her name was Noodle, which seemed totally appropriate at the time because she was plushy and definitely more flexible than a plate of spaghetti) liked to do naughty things.

  Now, when I use the word “naughty,” you’re probably thinking something along the lines of, oh, let’s say, eating all the ice cream out of the freezer or not brushing your teeth and not going to bed when your parents tell you to or eating all the Halloween candy out of your sister’s jack-o’-lantern bucket . . . but sadly, that kind of stuff didn’t even rate on Noodle’s meter of naughtiness. Let’s just say that Noodle’s idea of being naughty was just a little bit more intense.

  Noodle almost made me throw my little sister, Clio, off the side of a cliff once . . . but that’s another story entirely.

  Needless to say, whoever created the Hot Looks dolls must’ve hailed from the supernatural world because the attitude and the resemblance between my doll, Noodle, and this Minx were pretty freaky.

  “Hey, that’s not what she meant at all, nitwit,” Muna said, interrupting my thoughts as she rolled her eyes heavenward in a move that I recognized right out of my own playbook. “I’m not the frustrating one; it’s you imbecilic humans who can’t stop staring at me. You’re the problem.”

  Jeez, I only hoped I wasn’t this petulant and annoying when I was meeting new peeps.

  “Muna is just being contrary,” the older woman said, the smile still intact on her face. “Of course, one can never ignore the fact that it takes two to tango.”

  “Look, I appreciate the pearl of wisdom—I really do—but I have one question that needs answering, like, right now,” I said, sounding louder and angrier than I’d meant to.

  “Please, ask your question,” the woman said, her voice a study in quiet modulation.

  “Okay,” I answered, trying to mimic her calmer tone. “Who are you and what do you want—other than to almost asphyxiate me in my own apartment? I mean, you just opened a wormhole right into my kitchen and invited yourself in,” I babbled, getting myself worked up all over again. “So, like, what the hell?”

  Instead of getting all peeved like I’d expected, the little old lady merely laughed, showing straight white teeth that looked shinier and newer than mine—even though she probably had about fifty zillion years on me. I figured it must be magic, because no matter how many Crest Whitestrips I suffered my way through, I would never have teeth
as nice as that.

  “To begin with, my name is Madame Papillon—”

  “Wait! I know this one,” I said, getting excited because I totally did know her name. “You’re an aura specialist!”

  The older woman slowly inclined her head forward in acquiescence—and for once in my life I actually had an inkling of what it must feel like to know the answer to the final Jeopardy question or the correct price of the bedroom suite on The Price Is Right.

  “You saved my mother’s life,” I continued, gazing on the older woman with a fresh set of eyes. If she was the one who had saved my mother’s life, then she was a formidable woman indeed.

  Okay, let’s pause for a second because you’re probably wondering how someone who’s supposed to be immortal can die. It’s like this: Every immortal has one weakness that can kill them. Some immortals can’t touch iron; others die when their heads are cut off . . . The list goes on and on and gets weirder and weirder as it goes. My mother’s weakness just happened to be on the more domestic side of things.

  My mother’s weakness was snoring.

  When my parents were first married, my mother wasn’t immortal yet, so my dad’s snoring hadn’t bothered her one bit. But after my older sister, Thalia, was born and my mother was granted her immortality, well, things had taken an abrupt turn for the worse.

  My father was beside himself, watching his beautiful young (and newly immortal) wife fading away into nothingness, so he had called in all kinds of experts to help discover the root of the problem. In the end, it had taken a highly gifted aura specialist—Madame Papillon, the little old lady standing in the middle of my living room drinking tea and looking all demure in a cream linen suit—to diagnose the problem and save my mother’s life.

  Now my parents slept in separate rooms (which had always seemed like a kind of depressing compromise to me), but at least they were going to get to spend eternity together. I guess that was something.

  “And how are you involved in all this? Do you help Madame Papillon with all her important work?” I asked the little Minx.

  I didn’t mean for it to, but I guess my question came out as kind of condescending, which only seemed to piss the Minx off even more.

  “You best mind your tongue,” Muna spat at me, her violet eyes narrowed down to two malevolent slits. “I know your weakness now and it would only take a few moments to smother you with enough cat hair to—”

  “Muna, that’s enough,” Madame Papillon said sharply, cutting off the Minx before she could finish her sentence. Muna turned bright red with anger, but at least she was silent now.

  “I’m sorry about Muna. Like all Minx, she is possessed of a terrible temper,” Madame Papillon continued. “Now, as to the reason that I just magically appeared in your kitchen, well, let’s just say I was asked—”

  There was a loud ripping sound and I looked down to see Muna pulling at a loose thread that was hanging from a long tear in the fabric covering the back of the couch. She yanked at the string again, causing the fabric to rip even wider.

  “Don’t wreck my couch, please,” I said, annoyed because it was the only couch I had and I kind of liked it un-ripped-up.

  “What? You can always buy a new one, can’t you?” Muna replied snidely.

  No matter how beautiful on the outside the Minx was, I decided, she was a total megabitch on the inside. Besides which, she didn’t have a clue as to what she was talking about. I worked for a slave’s wage at House and Yard, so if I wanted to buy a new couch or a new anything, for that matter, I really had only one of two options: I could sell an egg (of the human variety) or I could sell a kidney—and neither of those options sounded worth putting my body through in order to buy a piece of furniture.

  “I want you to understand something, you little snot,” I said, glaring at the Minx. “I don’t take handouts from my parents. Everything you see in this apartment—including the apartment—was paid for by me, myself, and I, so why don’t you just can it.”

  I had decided a long time ago that if I wanted to live like a real human being, then I was damned if I’d take any money from my father’s supernatural endeavors. In fact, up until very recently I’d been living under a forgetting charm so I wouldn’t even remember that my parents came from supernatural royalty. I was more than happy to believe they were just extremely wealthy jet-setters who hailed from the exclusive enclave of Newport, Rhode Island.

  Money I could handle; supernatural stuff . . . not so much.

  Muna shrugged. “Well, I guess we better go, then,” she said, looking intently at Madame Papillon. “The girl doesn’t take handouts.”

  “Muna.” There was a note of warning underneath Madame Papillon’s otherwise placid tone.

  She turned her attention back to me.

  “Whether or not your parents asked me to intercede, the fact of the matter is that you really are in desperate need of my help,” Madame Papillon said, her eyes filled with concern. “Without the proper magical training, I am afraid that you will find yourself continuing to get into situations that you cannot handle.”

  “I can handle situations,” I said defensively. “I can handle lots of different situations. I’m very independent.”

  Muna snorted.

  “Shut up,” I said to the Minx.

  “The fact remains that you must be educated, whether you like it or not.”

  I started to roll my eyes, then remembered how obnoxious it was when Muna did it and stopped.

  “Look, I appreciate all the worry, but believe me—I have no intention of ever dealing with anything magical or death-related ever again. I am perfectly happy to live my normal life and let well enough alone,” I replied.

  “It’s not really that simple,” Madame Papillon said, taking another sip of her tea. “There are creatures who will want to destroy you simply because you are one of the three—two, now that the Devil’s protégé has disappeared—in line to take over the Presidency of Death, Inc., when your father abdicates his position.”

  I sighed.

  “I don’t want to be Death. Why doesn’t anybody get that? I have absolutely zero interest in all the power and stuff that goes along with the job. I just want to be a boring, run-of-the-mill human being. Is that too much to ask for?”

  “Aiming for the stars, huh,” Muna drawled sarcastically.

  “Didn’t you just hear what I said? I don’t want to aim higher. I like my life exactly as it is.”

  Well, that wasn’t exactly the truth, but they didn’t need to know that. I was well aware of how bad my job sucked, that my apartment was too small, that I couldn’t afford to buy any clothing unless it lived on the sale rack. I didn’t need anyone else to harass me about all of the above. Besides, I really was pretty happy with my existence as a whole. I didn’t want all the pomp and circumstance that went along with Dad’s job. I could live in relative obscurity and be pretty damn happy about it, thank you very much.

  “She doesn’t want our help,” Muna said.

  “She just doesn’t understand how important this is,” Madame Papillon rejoined tersely. They were both talking about me like I wasn’t even in the room—something that totally drove me up the wall.

  “Look,” I said, interrupting their back-and-forth. “I appreciate the concern—I really do—but the Minx is right. I don’t want your help.”

  “That’s not the point,” Madame Papillon said. “You are in danger, whether you want to admit it or not. Your aura does not lie.”

  “What do you mean, ‘your aura doesn’t lie’?” I said, getting a little worried now.

  “An aura is an immutable thing, Calliope, but sometimes, in very rare circumstances, it can be changed . . .” Madame Papillon said, then stopped, her mouth set in a firm line.

  “Go on,” I said, sensing that a really big shoe was about to drop. “Lay it on me.”

  Madame Papillon looked at Muna, who nodded for her to go on.

  “Someone has . . . done something to your aura, Calliope.”


  “What the hell does that mean?” I asked testily. I absolutely hated it when people dragged out bad news. Better to just get everything out in the open as quickly as possible, as far as I was concerned.

  Muna stared at me. Her eyes were full of what I can only term as pity—and that scared me more than anything else she could’ve done.

  “Calliope—” Madame Papillon began, but Muna interrupted her.

  “My old lady doesn’t want to tell you the truth, but I have no problem doing it.”

  Madame Papillon looked down into her tea mug, verifying the truth of Muna’s words. I swallowed hard, my stomach and GI tract doing flip-flops inside my gut. This was so not going to be good news, I decided, feeling sick.

  Muna looked deeply into my eyes as if she were trying to plumb my soul, and then, in a very soft whisper, she said:

  “You don’t have an aura at all.”

  three

  “Just kidding,” Muna said, obviously relishing the look of horror that she’d just put on my face. “But there is something wrong with it.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with my aura,” I said tersely. “If there was something wrong with it, I think I would know. I mean, it is my aura, for God’s sake.”

  I looked to Madame Papillon for confirmation, only to find her rooting around in my kitchen, her otherwise dignified form buried waist deep in my refrigerator. I’d thought we were in the middle of an important conversation about me and my aura, but obviously Madame Papillon didn’t find my problems to be all that pressing.

  I watched as she took out the box of cupcakes I’d brought back from the Magnolia Bakery and lifted the lid. Her eyes closed in near ecstasy, she took a deep hit off the cupcakes, the smell seeming to transport her into another dimension.

  “Oh my, that’s good,” Madame Papillon said, her voice thick with passion as she replaced the lid and set the box back in the refrigerator, quickly closing the door behind her like it was full of poisonous insects, not cupcakes. “Carrot cake, is it?”