Cat's Claw

by Amber Benson

  I nodded. “That is what you asked for, isn’t it?”

  She stared at the door to the fridge, her eyes pinned on the door handle like she was afraid it was going to open of its own volition and once more assail her senses with the aroma of cupcake.

  “Yes, that is what I asked for,” she said, her voice strangely monotone as she spoke, her eyes still riveted on the refrigerator door.

  I looked at her quizzically, my aura issues on hold as I tried to figure out what the deal with the cupcakes was. This was total weirdness. The woman had insisted on not one, but two, carrot cake cupcakes and now she wasn’t even going to touch them—just sniff them while they were still in situ? Oh my God, I really hoped she wasn’t just gonna leave them in my refrigerator. I could just imagine the magnificent pig-out session I would have if she did—and I didn’t even like carrot cake. I definitely was not gonna let her leave those stupid things in my refrigerator for me to get fat on.

  “You’re not gonna eat them?” I asked, fishing around to see what the fate of the cupcakes was going to be.

  The aura specialist shook her head.

  “I love the smell,” Madame Papillon said, finally seeming to snap out of her cupcake trance. “But my immortality would be forfeit if I ever tasted a bite.”

  It seemed strange to me that this renowned aura specialist was just revealing her killing weakness to me so blithely. I would’ve kept that secret pretty close to my chest, if it were mine. Of course, she dealt with immortals’ weaknesses on a pretty constant basis, so maybe this was just old hat for her.

  She looked back at the refrigerator sadly before giving me a wan smile. Then, as if in answer to my unspoken question, she said, “I’ve shared my weakness with you, Calliope, because I want you to feel that you can trust me with yours.”

  “Trust you with my weakness?” I stammered, starting to feel woozy with worry. “But I don’t know what it is.”

  Muna rolled her eyes at me again—boy, that number was really starting to get old—before leaping off her perch on the couch and landing gracefully on Madame Papillon’s shoulder.

  “You are an incredibly dense individual,” Muna said as she crawled on to the top of her mistress’s head and curled up in a ball, her violet eyes closing as she yawned sleepily.

  “Why am I dense?” I asked the Minx, but she was asleep before the words were out of my mouth.

  Madame Papillon stroked the Minx’s arm tenderly and smiled at me.

  “Minx exert so much energy while they’re awake that they spend more than half of their lives sleeping to make up for it,” Madame Papillon said.

  She whispered a few words under her breath that I didn’t catch, then touched a finger to Muna’s near-comatose form and the little Minx instantly turned into a puffy red ball of hair.

  “Let’s get back to the ‘weakness’ thing here,” I said, not giving a rat’s ass about Muna’s sleeping habits. This weakness stuff was, like, way more important.

  Madame Papillon nodded, and I decided that she looked about ten years younger now that she had her Minx pompadour back in place.

  “As I’m sure you’ve guessed, Calliope,” the older woman said softly, “felines are your weakness.”

  Okay, so that was why Muna said I was dense. I hadn’t cottoned on to the fact that cats were my weakness. I guess it hadn’t really registered with me because I had just assumed that if cats were truly my weakness, I would’ve already been dead from my run-in with Patience’s cat, Muffins, last Christmas.

  Of course, I was the supernatural newbie, so how was I supposed to know all the inner workings of immortality?

  “But this is something that you must only share with the people that you trust the most,” Madame Papillon continued, interrupting my thoughts. “Any enemy that discovers your weakness can use it against you . . . with dire consequences.”

  I swallowed hard. I definitely did not like the words “dire” and “consequences” in connection with anything to do with my life. Feeling overwhelmed by all this new information, I decided to file away the “cat weakness” stuff for perusal at a later date . . . when I wasn’t feeling like my head was gonna explode.

  “Okay, cats are my weakness. Got it,” I said, moving on to something Muna had said that I had never gotten a straight answer about. “Now, what was Muna talking about when she said that there was something wrong with my aura?”

  Madame Papillon sighed, setting her mug of tea down on my coffee table before settling into the overstuffed softness of the couch her Minx had almost shredded while in cat mode. I noticed that she had used one of the cute little coasters my coworker and friend Geneva had given me on my last birthday, which made me smile giddily.

  You see, each coaster was a picture of a different hunk in uniform—one was a policeman; one was a fireman; one was a construction worker—only the kick with these coasters was that the material they were made out of was heat sensitive, so that when you put something really hot or really cold down on top of them, they, well . . . transformed.

  Let’s just say that I’d learned a lot about myself since I’d acquired the coasters. I mean, until they’d graced my coffee table, I’d had no way of knowing about my penchant for men in shimmering gold thongs and matching fire-retardant boots!

  Forgetting about all the bad news that had just been leveled at me, I waited on tenterhooks for Madame Papillon to pick up her mug of tea and notice her naughty coaster. It only took a minute for my patience to be aptly rewarded. As she lifted her mug, the aura specialist let out a soft hiccup, then started giggling into the palm of her hand like a little schoolgirl.

  “I see you got Mr. Fireman,” I offered, peering over her to take a quick peek at Mr. Gold Thong—he was my favorite, after all.

  “These are wonderful,” Madame Papillon said, admiring the rest of the “clothed” men in my set—especially Mr. Construction Worker. “Wherever did you find them?”

  I shrugged. “I didn’t. They were a birthday gift, actually.”

  “Good gift,” Madame Papillon said, smiling, as she poked at the construction worker with her pinky.

  I could see the gears starting to shift in the older woman’s head—I was pretty sure she was having the exact same thought I myself had had on the (more than) occasional lonely Friday night spent in front of the boob tube—so I wasn’t surprised when she set her mug down on the construction worker’s able abdomen.

  “I had a pretty bad night once, made a huge pot of coffee, then did them all at the same time,” I blurted out without thinking, then immediately started to feel embarrassed.

  I hadn’t completely forgotten that my parents had sent this woman and that she might very well be required to go back and give them an in-depth report on the meeting. I could just see my dad’s face turn pink when she told him I had quasi-naked construction workers on display on my coffee table.

  “We all have nights like that,” Madame Papillon said sadly. And I really could believe that she did understand the plight of the single, miserable female.

  “I had a man once,” she continued. “One that I thought was special, but of course, they all make you feel as though you are the only woman in the world when they are using you for your power and success.”

  Huh? I thought to myself. What kind of power and success did an aura specialist have that I didn’t know about?

  I waited for her to go on, but with only that one piece of information revealed, her lips stayed firmly shut. From the pinched look on her face, I got the distinct impression that no matter how many questions I lobbed in her direction, I was so not going to get any more information about her lost bastard-for-a-lover.

  I tried another tack.

  “So, this whole aura thing? What’s the deal? Am I really aura impaired or was Muna just screwing with me?” I asked, taking the other spot on the couch beside the aura specialist.

  From this vantage point I could see just how grubby my place had gotten in the past few weeks. The kitchen counters were covered in
crumbs, the floor needed a good sweep, and there was a layer of dust so thick on the edges of the coffee table that I really thought I might actually be breeding dust mites in it.

  I was usually not that bad of a housekeeper, but a few months earlier my father had been kidnapped and I’d had to take an unapproved leave of absence from my job to go and take over his job. All this so that my family wouldn’t lose their immortality. Seems like a pretty easy thing just filling in for Pops, right?

  Wrong.

  There is nothing easy about being the President of Death, Inc.

  First of all, I had to complete three nearly impossible tasks (like stealing one of the puppies of Cerberus, the three-headed Guardian of Hell) just to prove I could handle the job. Next, I had to figure out who had kidnapped my dad and the rest of the executives that oversaw Death, Inc. (turns out it was my extremely bitter older sister, Thalia, and her demon husband, Vritra—something I so did not see coming). Finally (and worst of all), I had to watch as the only guy who had ever really treated me like I was a beautiful, desirable woman disappeared into the depths of Hell trying to save my existence.

  All I have to say is that I thought I deserved a little hazard pay for all the shit I’d had to deal with, but of course, no way José was anyone in the human world gonna cut me any slack. I mean, they had no idea that the supernatural world even existed (and in tandem with their own world!), so as far as they were concerned, I had just gone off to Rhode Island to look after my ailing father (who didn’t even have the grace to die and give weight to my excuse) in our family mansion (too much info) in Newport because this was the stellar story (not!) my dad’s Executive Assistant, Jarvis, had come up with when he’d called the House and Yard office to explain my absence.

  Luckily, everyone at work bought his explanation, so when I finally went back, the whole office was sufficiently solicitous about my dad’s health . . . everyone, that is, but my überintelligent, überintense boss, Hyacinth Stewart.

  And boy, was she pissed.

  Apparently, the dumb girl that the temp agency had sent over to fill in for me while I was gone had e-mailed one of her friends (in the middle of a workday) to bitterly complain about the stupid, fat, ugly, bitchy woman she was working for. The poor girl hadn’t learned the most basic lesson that one must adhere to when “assisting” for a living in Corporate America: Bosses love to read your personal e-mail—seriously, it’s like an avocation for some of them—so don’t write personal e-mails at work. Period.

  Needless to say, Hy blamed me entirely for the psychological damage she had had to endure because of my absence. Not really my fault as far as I could see, but when you’re someone’s assistant, you learn very quickly to just grin and bear it. I mean, I really think someone should teach a class in college titled How to Succeed in Business by Nodding and Keeping Your Mouth Shut When Someone (Your Boss) Blames You for Something You Didn’t Do.

  I think a student’s first work experience would be a lot more pleasant after having taken that class.

  The ridiculous thing about the whole temp situation was how very wrong the substitute had been about my boss. Anyone who worked for her more than two minutes could see that Hyacinth Stewart was a devious and intelligent woman. One who was sharp as a tack and could be more manipulative than Erica Kane on a bender. She was anything but stupid.

  Yes, the bitchy part was completely true—I won’t fight you on that one—but the fat and ugly stuff? Well, if that was what the girl thought, then she was just a moron. Hy was a beautiful woman, and though she might’ve been on what one would term the plus-sized side of the scale, I don’t think anyone with a brain cell in their head would ever use the word “fat.”

  Large, maybe, but never fat.

  I mean, the woman knew exactly how to dress her larger frame so that she was ten times sexier than nine out of ten of the models running up and down Fifth Avenue, portfolios in sweating hand. Seriously, Hy knew exactly how to wrap a man around her finger and make him do whatever she wanted.

  Hy knew something was fishy about my absence, but she just couldn’t put her finger on what it was. Instead, she’d been Hell on wheels ever since I’d returned, keeping me so busy during the past few months that my life—and my apartment, by extension—was literally falling apart.

  Enough said.

  When I turned my attention back to Madame Papillon, she was looking at me oddly, almost with pity. I didn’t know if it was just because my aura had some serious issues or whether it was only a gut-level response to how completely dirty my apartment was.

  “I’m gonna clean it soon,” I said, the words just popping out of my mouth.

  Madame Papillon looked at me blankly. “Your aura?” Guess I was just being paranoid about the old apartment, I thought dryly—and happily.

  “Can you get your aura cleaned?” I asked. Maybe I really didn’t have an aura problem if I could get it dry-cleaned or something.

  “It can be cleansed,” the older woman said, her eyes drawn back to the nearly naked construction worker on the coffee table, “but when someone puts a curse on your aura, you either have to live with it or make the person take the curse off. There’s no dry-cleaning service, per se.”

  I shivered. It was like the woman had read my mind.

  “What’s wrong with my aura?” I asked, swallowing hard. “Is it cursed?”

  Curse or no curse, I hadn’t really had any problems with my aura recently (or ever) so maybe I could just ignore whatever was going on. The world of “denial” wasn’t a terrible place to live in. I mean, lots of other people did it every day from what I could see and they weren’t totally Looney Tunes, were they?

  “No, your aura isn’t cursed,” Madame Papillon said, “but there is something strange about it. If I didn’t know better, I would say that your soul was intertwined with another soul, but that’s really only something you ever see in twins. And even that only happens in extremely rare cases.”

  “A twin?” I exclaimed. I’d always wanted to be a twin! I had spent a lot of my childhood feeling incomplete, like there was something missing, but I just didn’t know what it was. Maybe I was a twin! Maybe that was what was missing?!

  “But you’re not a twin,” the older woman said, taking a sip of her tea. The pleasant smell of anise wafted in my direction, and I remembered that she had asked for licorice tea with her carrot cake cupcakes when she’d called me earlier. Seemed she’d brought her own tea bag.

  Smart lady.

  “How do you know? I could be a twin and not even know it!” I stammered. I was not going to let the idea of a secret twin be dispelled that easily.

  “A true intertwining of souls happens at conception, but your aura . . . has been tampered with recently.”

  How recently? I wondered. Like a few months ago recently—because if that was the case, then maybe I wasn’t a twin, after all.

  “Do dead people still have auras?” I almost whispered, trying not to let a misplaced sense of hope overwhelm me.

  The aura specialist raised an eyebrow, but there was no way she could know what I was thinking. You see, I had coalesced (intertwined souls) with someone sort of recently. Not that it had been my idea to do the coalescing. Even just the remembrance of the event made me blush.

  Let me preface this by saying that I’m not usually a lush, but when you’re lost in the desert outskirts of Hell with no means of escape, your sense of self-preservation gets all screwy and you’ll drink anything.

  I was trying to complete one of the stupid tasks that the Board of Death had given me so I could take over my dad’s job and save my family’s immortality. I was miserable, I was exhausted, I was lost . . . and that was when I found myself totally blindsided by a poisoned Midori Sour that magically appeared before me.

  Only the quick thinking of Daniel, the Devil’s protégé, had saved me from a fate worse than death: eternal hibernation at the hands of a poisoned girly cocktail.

  Ugh!

  Daniel had coalesced our bodies
together—something akin to sex, but even more intimate. I mean, our bodies were literally merging together in a way that words do absolutely no justice to, all so that he could absorb half of the poison for me. We had both ended up with a couple of hangover headaches from Hell, but I had noticed no other ill effects from the poison . . . until now.

  Now I find out that there was permanent damage. Our souls were intertwined! I didn’t even know if the guy was alive or dead or what—and now we were sharing an aura?

  Jeez, Louise.

  Madame Papillon shook her head.

  “No, your aura—the visible representation of your soul—leaves the body upon death and that is what passes on into the Afterlife for reassignment. So, as long as the body still lives, the aura remains.”

  “Jesus . . .” I breathed, my heart starting to hammer excitedly in my chest.

  “An exception to the rule,” Madame Papillon replied in a surprised tone.

  “Huh?” I said, my brain only half listening to the woman now.

  “Jesus was one of the few exceptions to the rule. He ascended bodily to Heaven, but that was an odd case.”

  “Excuse me?” I said, my attention slowly returning back to its senses. “Jesus what . . . ?”

  “There are always exceptions to the rule,” Madame Papillon continued, “so, I suppose that my answer to your question was incomplete, as you’ve so succinctly pointed out. A dead person can have an aura, as long as said dead person is Jesus, or someone of his ilk.”

  Now I was even more confused—and it had nothing to do with Jesus and his corporeal ascension to Heaven. What I wanted to know was if Daniel was still alive somewhere, hiding out where no one could find him. If our auras were still intertwined, then that had to be the case, right?

  Or maybe I was just being single-minded and stupidly hopeful. Maybe the coalescing had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with my superweirdo aura issues.

  God, the whole thing was totally starting to give me a major-league headache.