Cat's Claw (4 page)

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Authors: Amber Benson

Tags: #Fantasy, #Contemporary, #Fiction, #General, #Fantasy fiction, #Fiction - Fantasy, #Science Fiction And Fantasy, #Fantasy - Contemporary

BOOK: Cat's Claw
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“Get this feline off me!” I said angrily, another sneeze simmering just underneath my words. How much of an idiot
was
I? I should’ve realized immediately that the hairball monster was nothing but a big, fat, orange and red
kitty cat
!
“Ask Muna nicely, then,” the old woman said as she pulled a mug down from one of my cabinets and poured the water from the teakettle into it. “She will only respond when she feels she is being genuinely respected.”
I watched the steam pool around the edges of the old woman’s mug, willing myself to calm down.
If that voice belonged to a female,
I decided,
then it must be one hell of a butch lady cat.
“You better get off before I call the Humane Society on your ass,” I wheezed, the threat half-swallowed by another sneeze.
I could feel claw digging into bone, which only made me feel crankier. Obviously, I wasn’t showing the proper amount of respect toward
her
. My shoulder was probably gonna be scarred for life the rate this whole thing was going. Well, I guessed it was just one more thing I could add to the tally of emotional and physical wounds I’d suffered since I’d allowed myself to become re-embroiled in the family business.
Once upon a time I’d prided myself on being a normal girl with nothing strange lurking in the shadows of my present-tense life—okay, I
did
have a past that I couldn’t shake, but it was definitely within my prerogative to ignore it if I wanted to, so there! Now it was all I could do
just
to maintain a quasinormal life
and
clean up the mess that was inevitably left behind when some weird, supernatural entity broke through the “normalcy” barrier I’d carefully constructed around myself. Seriously, I mean, try explaining to your coworkers that the last “vacation” you took was a Devil-guided tour of the bowels of Hell and just see what kind of reaction
that
gets you at the watercooler.
“Would you mind chilling on the couch, or something?” I asked the cat in as polite a tone as I could muster, seeing that there was now a band of cat-induced tightness restricting the flow of breath in and out of my chest.
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 “I
New 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.

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