Cat's Claw

by Amber Benson

  Yuck!

  “The judgment is complete,” the Jackal Brothers said as one. “We shall record that the half human, Calliope Reaper-Jones, is possessed of a truthful, just heart.”

  There was a clap of thunder that shook the very ether, and as the sound faded away, I found that I had left the nothingness behind me, so that, once again, I was back in the Jackal Brothers’ medieval torture chamber.

  The man with the yellow eyes was waiting for me, unchained now, in the middle of the room. He stared at me as he rubbed his bruised wrists uncertainly.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said as I reached out and took his unwilling hand, keeping him as close as possible just in case the Jackal Brothers decided to change their minds at the last minute.

  Suddenly, from below me, I heard a voice say:

  “You’ve done well.”

  I looked down to find Bast sitting at my feet. Immediately, my nose started running and I let out an ungodly sneeze.

  “You totally ditched me—” I started to say just as another sneeze shook my sinuses, but Bast ignored me, turning to the Jackal Brothers instead.

  “Please open a wormhole home for us, sons of Nephthys,” Bast said pleasantly, and one of the brothers—don’t even ask me to tell them apart when they aren’t holding any accessories to help me—lifted his hand. Without so much as speaking a word of magic, he opened up a wormhole right there in the middle of the torture chamber.

  I watched as the other prisoners stared greedily at the wormhole, its pitch-black swirling vortex beckoning them toward it. It was probably the closest thing to the outside world most of them had seen in millennia.

  Watching the Jackal Brother call up that stupid wormhole with such ease made me feel really inadequate. It wasn’t fair that even the bad guys could work magic without breaking a sweat. I decided that I really needed to hook Senenmut back up with Cerberus, so I could go home and take that stupid wormhole-summoning lesson Madame Papillon had promised me.

  “After you,” Bast said, indicating the swirling wormhole.

  I grasped Senenmut by the hand and attempted to lead him forward, but the dumb jerk just kept trying to pry my hand off his. The poor guy had been out of commission for way longer than he realized because I was easily able to maintain my grip and keep him moving at the same time.

  “Come on!” I said, inching him bodily toward the wormhole as he continued to fight our every step.

  Seriously, I had never met a guy who had been so difficult to deal with in all my life. It was totally obvious that he did not enjoy having a girl boss him around—even though he should’ve been thanking his lucky stars that I’d come along and released him from eternal bondage—but whatever.

  “Uhm, one last question,” I said, looking back at the Jackal Brothers as I dragged my “new friend” closer to the wormhole.

  “Is this guy deaf and dumb . . . or just a prick?”

  And without waiting for an answer, I threw myself—and Senenmut—into the wormhole and disappeared.

  seventeen

  When Bast had used the word “home,” I had just assumed she really meant that we were going back to the Hall of Death. I guess you should always take things other people say at face value, because instead of finding myself face-to-face with an irate Jarvis, I found myself getting licked on the face by an unruly hellhound pup.

  Somehow, the wormhole had transported us back to Sea Verge—to the kitchen at Sea Verge, to be exact—where I found Clio, Runt at her side, in the middle of making Gruyère and spinach croquettes under the watchful eye of my mother’s chef, Declan.

  As I said earlier, Declan is a man of vast emotion and he loved to impart that emotion—whichever one he happened to be experiencing at the time—into his cooking.

  As big around as he was tall—and at five feet eight inches tall, that made him a pretty large fellow—Declan was a mainstay of the Reaper-Jones household. With his lively brown eyes, the biggest, roly-poly belly that ever existed on a human being, and a well-pruned red beard that was never farther than two inches from his face, he’d been a childhood hero of mine. Having grown up in Glasgow, he possessed an incredibly thick Scottish brogue that made it really hard to understand what he was saying when he got all worked up. Once, when I was a little kid, I had heard him call a stockpot he was using a “dunderheid,” so after that, I called everyone I met a “dunderheid.”

  Of course, my mother was just thrilled with that one.

  For as long as I could remember, Declan had worn the same outfit: chef’s whites, topped by a big, pearl-colored chef’s hat that made him look like a Scottish version of Chef Boyardee. I’m pretty sure if I ever saw the man in street clothes, I wouldn’t even recognize him—the “chef look” was that ingrained in my brain. He had been a part of my life for so long that no matter whether he was in a good mood or a crappy one, I was always glad to see him.

  And of course, since he had run a number of very famous four-star kitchens in Europe before my mother had hired him away into the private sector, he was an incredible chef. Because of him, I adored snails as a child—and I don’t mean the kind you find out in the backyard. I had very distinct memories of being the only kid I knew of who ate foie gras, shaved tuna hearts, boudain, and on very special holiday occasions when Declan got into cooking overdrive, haggis.

  In fact, it wasn’t until I was about thirteen that I realized exactly what haggis was made out of and decided that maybe it wasn’t the most well suited of dishes to accompany eggnog and fruitcake.

  “Who are you?” Clio said to Senenmut, holding up a beautifully bronzed and delectable-looking minisandwich. Before I could stop him, he had reached out his grubby hand and stolen the croquette right off Clio’s plate.

  “Hey,” I said, grabbing him by the collar and yanking him away from my sister, but not before he’d stuffed the entire croquette into his mouth.

  “Uhm, this is Senenmut, a friend of mine,” I said cagily as Declan frowned at my guest’s rudeness. “He probably hasn’t eaten in . . . oh, I don’t know . . . about five thousand years—whenever they built the pyramids give or take a millennia or two.”

  Before I could say anything else damning, Senenmut pinched my arm.

  “Ow!” I yelped as he used the distraction to escape my grasp and run and hide over in the corner, so he could presumably continue to chew his food in relative privacy.

  “He smells funny—” Clio started to say, but was interrupted when Bast hopped up onto the counter and nuzzled against her. “Hey, who’s this pretty girl?”

  I bit my lip.

  “Uhm, ‘that pretty girl’ is Dad’s spirit guide, Bast, Queen of the Cats,” I said uncomfortably as Clio stopped scratching Bast’s head.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said to Bast. “I didn’t know you weren’t a regular old cat.”

  Bast only purred in response.

  “She does talk,” I said lamely. “I mean, she can if she wants to.”

  “Ah dunnae care if she be Queen of the bloody Universe,” Declan said testily. “There’s nae supposed to be animals on my counters! Do ye understand?”

  Clio quickly scooped Bast up in her arms and moved away from the food prep counter.

  “Thank ye much,” Declan said as he picked up the dirty pan and plates. “Aye, to the washin’ up.”

  I had always loved how nonchalant Declan was about all the weird happenings in the Reaper-Jones household. Of course, he had no idea what my father actually did for a living—he only knew that my dad was the CEO of some multinational company—but he must’ve suspected that there was a lot more going on than he was privy to. I was pretty sure my dad had put some kind of glamour on Sea Verge, so that the nonmagical and non-Afterlife-bound beings wouldn’t see all the really weird stuff: like the fact that Jarvis was a faun and not just a height-challenged human being.

  Still, more than any glamour, I think the real reason Declan didn’t run out of the house screaming was because he was so well paid by my father and so devoted
to my mother. He’d probably recognized a long time ago that the “keep your mouth shut” policy was the best one to adhere to while employed at our house.

  Still, when my loose lips spilled the beans on stuff like spirit guide cats and Egyptian prisoners of war, well, I’m sure his curiosity must’ve been piqued—even if he didn’t show it.

  “Calliope-Reaper Jones!”

  Jarvis’s resounding voice filled the room as he stepped out of the hallway and into the kitchen. The glare he shot in my direction was filled with so much venom, it actually made me feel woozy.

  “Well, well, well,” Jarvis continued. “I see you made it home without too much trouble. The same cannot be said for myself, as I was attacked by a phalanx of armored knights directly upon your exit.”

  “Oh, Jarvis,” I said, feeling sick, “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to get you in trouble.”

  I started to walk over to the little faun, but he held up his hand for me to stop.

  “There’s no point in dredging up an apology, Mistress Calliope,” he said, his mustache trembling in time with his upper lip as he used his eyes to shoot daggers at Bast. “I can see that my help was . . . unnecessary.”

  And with that, he turned on his hoof and strode out of the room.

  “What did you do to Jarvis?” Clio asked, still holding Bast in her arms. “He looked like he was about to cry. Did you see his mustache trembling?”

  Duh, of course I saw his mustache trembling, I thought, but instead I said:

  “Bast made it very clear that the only way I was gonna get Senenmut was to do it myself,” I offered. “So, I had to leave Jarvis out of the game plan.”

  “That was cold,” Clio said.

  Sometimes my younger sister could be completely unhelpful.

  “Really?” I shot back. “You really think that was cold, Clio?”

  “You don’t have to be a bitch,” she said, raising an eyebrow.

  Runt, sensing my mood, sidled up to me for a pat—probably hoping to diffuse the situation—but I wasn’t in the mood to play and shooed her away. Clio was right, of course. I didn’t have to be a bitch, but I felt so bad about making Jarvis almost cry that I had to let it out somehow.

  “Okay, dirty man,” I said, transferring my gaze to Senenmut, who was still crouched in the corner licking his fingers. “It’s time for a bath and a shave . . . and then we go to Hell.”

  i had never seen a dirt ring around the inside of the tub before. I’d had some dirty—and I mean as in the kind of dirt you find on the ground—moments before, but this was ridiculous.

  At first, Senenmut had refused to get into the bathtub.

  I think he must’ve associated anything large and liquid-retaining with the big bronze oil pot I’d knocked over back in the Jackal Brothers’ torture chamber, but after I filled it up and put my own hand into the lukewarm, bubble-filled water, he seemed to accept bathing in the tub as a safe endeavor.

  The shampoo was another matter entirely.

  I had originally decided that using Clio’s bathroom upstairs made the most sense, but when she realized what I intended, my sister strictly barred me from befouling her tub. So, instead, we ended up in one of the guest baths downstairs. Which wasn’t so bad, as far as bathtubs—and bathrooms—went. The floor and walls were made out of beige tumbled marble tile and the tub was one of those giant Kohler soaking tubs you could fill to the brim and watch the water drain out over the top.

  Totally chic, but kind of intimidating when the last time you took a bath, your tub was a river.

  All the sweet-smelling Bumble and Bumble bath products crowding the edge of the tub immediately intrigued Senenmut. Shampoos, conditioners, bath bombs, and salts—you name it and my mother’d already put it in the guest bathroom. It was everything I could do to stop my charge from opening all the bottles at once and dumping them into the already soapy water.

  I had just eased my new friend into the tub—averting my eyes from his naked parts—when he sat back and slid under the water. I thought maybe he was playing with me, trying to get me to jump in and save him or something, so I didn’t do anything.

  “Not funny,” I said. “Really not funny.”

  After I’d counted to ten and still no Senenmut, I started to get worried. I stuck my hands into the bubble bath-filled tub and reached around in the muck, trying to get a good grip on my Egyptian friend. Finally, I found a hank of hair—or it could’ve been beard, for all I knew—and dredged the half-drowned man out of the water.

  It was amazing how wracked with guilt you can feel when you’ve almost let someone drown.

  Seriously, I was like some kind of errant new mother who’d almost let her infant die while giving him his first bath. I made a New Year’s resolution right then and there (even though I was quite aware of the fact that New Year’s was a number of months away) not ever to have children because I was completely unfit to be a mother. Hell, if I couldn’t even manage a five-thousand-year-old Egyptian man, what dastardly things would I do to a baby?

  I was a wreck, but Senenmut seemed unfazed by the adventure. He sat back in the tub and watched his beard float to the surface. Then he stared at his toes in exactly the same way he’d stared at them back at the Jackal Brothers’ torture chamber.

  Finally, I got bored with watching him watching his toes, so I picked up a bottle of coconut-flavored shampoo and put some in my hand. It was only then, as I began to contemplate washing the tangled rat’s nest that was Senenmut’s hair, that I realized it would’ve been much smarter if I’d cut his hair before attempting to shampoo it. Annoyed with myself, but knowing there was no point now in pulling out some scissors and probably scaring the shit out of my bathing charge, I plopped the shampoo on Senenmut’s head—totally not expecting what happened next.

  Senenmut started sniffing the air, his nostrils flaring as he grabbed my wrist and stuck his nose directly into the remains of the shampoo I had in my palm.

  “Ew,” I said, yanking my arm out of his grasp. “Stop that!”

  He stared at me, then his eyes quickly darted over to the bottle of shampoo. Before I could stop him, he had the bottle in his hand and was squeezing its contents into his open mouth.

  “Oh my God!” I screamed, wrestling the bottle away from him as he started gagging. “That’s shampoo, not food, you idiot.”

  “I’m not an idiot,” he said, his words garbled by shampoo bubbles, but still distinct. I stared, shocked that he could speak—I had only been half joking about that deaf-and-dumb thing earlier.

  “You can talk?” I said.

  Senenmut nodded.

  “Why didn’t you talk to me before?” I said, annoyed.

  “You didn’t look like you were worth talking to.”

  I sat back on my heels next to the side of the tub and pushed a few errant strands of hair out of my face.

  “Oh, okay.”

  I didn’t know quite what to say. I had saved this guy’s life, like, twice now and he didn’t think I looked like I was worth talking to?

  “Okay,” I repeated as I stood up and headed for bathroom door.

  At that moment, I didn’t care whom I owed. If Cerberus wanted the prick in the tub, he could just come and get him himself.

  “Wait!” Senenmut said.

  I was half-ready to ignore him, but something in the tone of his voice made me stop.

  “The spirit in the cat. You love him?”

  Well, that definitely froze me on the spot. I had totally forgotten that poor Daniel was still trapped inside Bast.

  “How do you know about him?” I said, turning back around.

  Senenmut shrugged.

  “He is your great love?”

  It was my turn to shrug now.

  “I don’t know.”

  But even as I said the words, I knew I was full of it. My heart got all jumpy just thinking about Daniel. If he wasn’t my great love, he was at least something close to it.

  I sat down on the lid of the bone white Toto toilet an
d sighed.

  “Okay, he might be my great love . . . and he might not. I just don’t completely know how I feel about him at the moment,” I said, resting my chin in my hands.

  “When he made love to you—”

  “Stop right there,” I said, getting all depressed. I so did not want to say what I was going to have to say next.

  “Up until this very moment, no love has been made.”

  Senenmut’s eyes went wide.

  “He has not made love to you? I don’t understand. Love is a gift from the Gods. A man must make good use of it.”

  “Yeah, well, he hasn’t.” I sighed. “At least not yet.”

  Senenmut shook his head, a look of pity crossing his gaunt face.

  “You are unloved. How sad for you.”

  “Shut up and wash your stupid hair,” I said, frustrated by the situation I now found myself in. “And by the way, I don’t need your pity. I’m not unloved. That is, I’ve been loved before.”

  Ha, I thought to myself, I can count all that loving on one hand—four fingers to be precise and one of them doesn’t even really count!

  Okay, when I was eighteen, I tried to have sex with a guy in my Introduction to Nineteenth-Century Literature class—and “tried” is definitely the operative word here.

  His name was Samuel and he was absolutely adorable. Originally, he was from England—he had this amazing British accent that I just drooled over—but he’d lived in California since he was fourteen, so he wasn’t a total foreign-exchange type.

  Thinking back, I could still see his dark brown puppy dog eyes, long eyelashes, and delicate bone structure. God, he really was a gorgeous specimen of a man. And to this day, I really don’t think I’ve ever dated anyone prettier. In fact, he actually kind of looked like a more girly/sensitive version of James McAvoy—that Scottish actor whom I think is just delicious!

  And the beauty of the whole thing was that I didn’t even have to lift a finger to make the hookup happen. I was just sitting in class, going over my notes, when he came up to me and asked me out for coffee. All I had to do was nod my head yes. It couldn’t have been any easier.