Cat's Claw Page 11

  I didn’t know what to say. My brain literally froze inside my skull so that I couldn’t think, I couldn’t talk . . . I could hardly breathe.

  “Uhm, yes, what kind of line is it?” I said loud enough for everyone else to hear even though it had been said primarily to get my brain out of “blank” mode. “It’s a new series of filing accessories!”

  Jarvis stared at me blankly, then a sly smile stretched across his lips.

  “Liar.”

  I opened my mouth, shocked.

  “I am not,” I replied defensively.

  Jarvis looked heavenward, the sly smile still turning up the corners of his mouth. “You are lying, Mistress Calliope. Through your teeth.”

  I started to protest, but Jarvis held out his hand Fran Drescher-style.

  “Talk to the hand.”

  “Jarvis,” I began, “we’ve already spoken about the Fran Drescher hand so I’m very surprised you’d still want to use it anymore.”

  I turned to Clio so that I could better explain.

  “Jarvis used ‘the hand’ on me when he told me Dad had been kidnapped. I explained to him that the gesture was very dated and should be listed as a ‘do not use,’ right along with the catchphrases ‘snap’ and ‘all that and a bag of chips.’”

  Clio looked befuddled.

  “Who’s Fran Drescher?”

  I sighed and returned my attention back to Jarvis, whose face was the color of a clown’s nose.

  “And there you have it. Out of the mouths of babes.”

  Jarvis glared at me.

  “Point taken, but that still does not mean that I accept your story.”

  “Okay, fine,” I said, throwing up my hands in frustration. “Don’t believe me.”

  “I think you are lying and I will not be a party to whatever crazy scheme the two of you have dreamed up,” Jarvis countered with a sniff.

  Clio raised her hand.

  “I’m just here for moral support.”

  “Both of you suck,” I said, plopping down into one of the wingback chairs, this time not caring one whit whether I got dog saliva on it or not.

  Clio came into the room and perched on the arm of my chair.

  “Jarvis,” Clio began, “Callie really needs your help.”

  Jarvis studied the glass in his pince-nez, looking for streaks and finding none.

  “Continue,” he said, sliding the handkerchief into his pocket and setting the pince-nez back on the bridge of his hawkish nose.

  “My dumb-butt sister made a deal with Cerberus. If she can get her hands on the Death Record of one of his errant souls, we can keep Runt out of Hell and up here with us,” Clio said, reaching out her hand. Runt was immediately on the alert, padding back to Clio for more patting.

  Jarvis took a deep breath, then slowly let it out through pursed lips.

  “That is a tall order, indeed.”

  Clio nodded.

  “So, now you see why we need your help?”

  Jarvis nodded, looking over at me with concern. I knew I was being a baby, sitting in the wingback chair and sulking, but I just didn’t have the energy to do anything more constructive.

  “Why didn’t you just ask me for my help, Mistress Calliope?” Jarvis said, the tone of his voice not hostile like I’d expected, but soft and probing as it effortlessly pulled me out of my black mood.

  “I, uh, just thought you’d say no,” I offered meekly.

  If I’d really taken the time to think about it, I would’ve realized that I always expected to have to manipulate a situation to get people to do what I wanted them to do. I didn’t know why my brain was wired that way, but it was. The truth was when it came to just being honest and asking someone for help when I needed it, I was a complete and utter coward about the whole thing.

  “Mistress Calliope, I am your friend. All you have to do is ask for my help and it is yours,” Jarvis said as he sat down in the other wingback chair and reached out, patting my shoulder.

  I couldn’t believe how great Jarvis was being about the whole thing. Instead of taking the opportunity to ridicule me, he’d been kinder to me than I had any right to. A big, wet tear slid down my face and I was so surprised that I didn’t even make a move to wipe it away.

  “Really?” I asked, another tear plopping onto my cheek.

  Jarvis nodded.

  “If you want me to take you to Purgatory, I will. But . . .”

  Of course, there was always a “but,” I thought to myself wryly.

  “Go on. Hit me,” I said, gritting my teeth.

  Jarvis looked taken aback.

  “I couldn’t! Really. No matter how impossibly you’ve behaved—” he gasped, his face blanching the color of a skinned potato.

  “No, I mean, hit me with whatever the ‘but’ is.” I snorted, stealing a peek over at Clio, who was trying hard not to laugh, her hand looped into the back of Runt’s pink rhinestone halter.

  “Oh my,” Jarvis murmured, covering his mouth with his hand, shocked as he realized what he’d just implied.

  “Nice one, Jarvi,” I said, giving him the biggest, toothiest grin I could manage. He just shook his head, chagrined. After a moment, he looked up, his face composed.

  “I suppose it’s a simple request, really,” he began hesitantly, “but one that would mean the world to me.”

  I waited, wondering exactly what kind favor would seem simple to Jarvis, but would be like pulling teeth for me.

  “I would like an introduction.”

  Well, that one caught me completely off guard.

  “An introduction?” Clio asked, apparently just as surprised by Jarvis’s request as I was.

  Jarvis nodded, looking nervously between us.

  “I want to meet the zaftig one.”

  I almost choked on my own saliva.

  “You wanna what?” I said, my voice coming out three octaves higher than normal.

  “I would like to meet your boss.”

  I shook my head.

  “No, I heard you the first time.”

  Clio tried to catch my gaze, eyes wide with shock. She had never met my boss, Hyacinth Stewart, but she had heard tale of the woman—and how badly she overworked me.

  Of course, Jarvis wouldn’t find this request petrifying, I thought miserably. He obviously had a crush on the woman, which meant that no matter how overbearing and frightening she really was, she could do no wrong as far as he was concerned.

  “I can’t believe you thought this was a small favor, Jarvis,” I said out loud, but the little faun must’ve thought I was joking because he didn’t seem the least bit bothered by my words—either that, or he just didn’t care what I thought.

  “So, you’ll do it, then?” he said, his dark eyes shining with eagerness. He was even more excited than when I’d let him explain the inner workings of Death, Inc., to me down in Hell—and I thought he’d been animated back then.

  “I don’t know what she’d say about meeting you.” I sighed. “I don’t think she has any idea that fauns even exist.”

  Jarvis nodded as if what I was saying required some serious thought.

  “Well, I could always use a spell,” he said, looking nervously between Clio and me. I think he was waiting for our approval and I didn’t have the heart not to give it to him.

  “I think we should just wait before we start messing with any magic,” I offered, resting my chin on my hand.

  “Yes, yes . . . of course, you’re completely correct,” Jarvis said, nodding his head. “We should just wait and see what the situation calls for.”

  “But there is one other thing that I think you should know before I say yes to this insanity,” I added, not liking any of this one little bit. I had a very good idea that the only thing Jarvis was heading for when it came to dealing with Hyacinth Smith was heartbreak.

  Well, on the lighter side, at least now I didn’t have to do any more guesstimating as far as Jarvis’s sexual proclivities were concerned; now I knew exactly what team my dad’s Execu
tive Assistant played for. Jarvis was a BBW lover (for the acronym-impaired, that’s: Big Beautiful Women), and more power to him for his discerning taste. Actually, to tell you the truth, it made me like the little faun even more than I already did.

  Too bad the BBW he was obsessed with would chew him up and spit him out before he’d even realized what’d happened to him.

  “She’s married . . .”

  “But recently separated!” Jarvis chimed in.

  He’s been doing his homework, I mused.

  “Then you know she has a kid.”

  Jarvis broke into a sly grin.

  “Oh, is this all you were worried about?” he said, his fingers caressing the well-oiled ends of his mustache like the villain of an old-time movie serial.

  “Yep, that’s all,” I replied.

  Isn’t that enough? I thought to myself.

  “I really don’t foresee any of that being a problem, Mistress Calliope,” Jarvis said, sitting farther back in his chair. “No, I do not foresee that being a problem at all.”

  As I watched a devious little smile overtake Jarvis’s handsome face, I actually started to rethink my whole position on the subject. Maybe it was Hy that was in for a little heartbreak.

  “Okay, then. We have a deal,” I said, resigned to the idea that something about this trade-off was bound to backfire in my face.

  I stuck out my hand to shake on it, sealing the deal, but Jarvis wouldn’t reciprocate. Instead, he held up his finger to stop me, then reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his monogrammed handkerchief, draping it over my hand like some kind of antidirt sheath. Only then would he shake my hand.

  “Yes, we have a deal,” the faun said, grinning like a school-boy at me. “Besides, the sooner we get our hands on that Death Record, the sooner I can get my hands on those lovely lady lumps.”

  As soon as those very out-of-character (or maybe they were more in character than I realized) words were out of Jarvis’s mouth, Clio and I exchanged horrified glances. I could see that she was thinking the exact same thing I was: In just one sentence, Jarvis had done the impossible. He’d embarrassed both of us more than we had ever been embarrassed in our entire lives . . . and he’d taken all the fun out of a particularly awesome Black Eyed Peas song.

  “Okay, horn dog,” I said, rolling my eyes in Jarvis’s direction. “Let’s go to Purgatory.”

  ten

  In the beginning, God looked at the universe that he/she created and saw that it was good.

  The Angels would oversee Heaven, while the Devil took care of Hell. Both sides seemed happy with this arrangement and it all looked like it was going to start off swimmingly . . . until God got to Purgatory.

  It seemed that the balance between Good and Evil that God had created by divvying out Heaven and Hell so fairly had left the stewardship of Purgatory—the way station by which the two planes were connected—open to subversion by any Tom, Dick, or Harry from both sides. If either Heaven or Hell were to overrun Purgatory and claim it as its own, the precarious balance between the two planes would shift and life as we know it would cease to exist.

  Forever.

  God, being the superintelligent creative force that he/she was, caught this flaw in his/her otherwise pretty awesomely crafted creation and decided that whatever being he/she picked to run Purgatory would have to be the ultimate in impartiality. This entity would need to possess both Good and Evil inside themselves, so that they would not judge one side with more ill will than the other. They would need to be extraordinarily fair, but also completely willing to make the hard, gut-churning decisions that any good boss has to make sometimes.

  After much trial and tribulation, God had an epiphany. He/ she couldn’t believe that the solution had been staring him/her right in the face from the very beginning. The creature most suited to run Purgatory and oversee Death was none other than the simplest of God’s creations.

  The answer to God’s problem was: humanity.

  my father was only thirty when he was tapped for the job of Death.

  Up until then he’d been an idealistic young man, born into poverty, who had managed to pull himself so far out of the muck that he’d become one of the wealthiest land developers in all of North America. The most supernatural thing anyone could’ve said about him at the time was that he had an almost magical way of creating money out of nothing. Other than that, he was completely, utterly, totally normal—or at least that was what he thought.

  There was no way for him to know that he’d never been normal, not even when he was an embryo swimming in his mother’s belly.

  You see, in every generation three individuals are born who have the propensity to become Death. This person can live an entire human existence totally oblivious to the fact that they carry this “specialness” inside them, written into their very DNA. Nevertheless, it’s there, dogging them their whole lives, waiting for the one shining moment when they might be called upon to fulfill their supernatural destiny.

  When you become Death, one of the perks of the job is that you and your family are granted immortality. So, as you can imagine, job longevity is pretty high, which means that only a few people ever get called up to vie for the job, period. Because the “old” Death has to abdicate his/her position of his/ her own free will before any of these “special” individuals get called in for a job interview, the chances of learning the truth about oneself get even slimmer. In fact, the majority of them never learn how “special” they truly are—but for those individuals who are shown the truth, it’s a pretty life-changing experience.

  Most humans aren’t even aware that the Afterlife exists at all, let alone able to grasp its inner workings in one sitting, so you can imagine how unsettling the whole situation can become.

  After they’ve terrified the crap out of the poor interviewees, the Board of Death gives the possible “new” Deaths three tasks to fulfill—there used to be thirteen, but there was so much bitching about the time it took to complete them (we’re talking years here) that the Board of Death finally eased up on the requirement. The tasks differ for each individual so that no one can cheat off anyone else—apparently, human beings can’t be trusted as far as you can throw them—and in the end, the person who completes his/her set of tasks first becomes the new head honcho in charge of Death.

  I myself (with the help of Jarvis, Runt, and my sister Clio) had experienced the tasks firsthand—and completed them—but that still didn’t mean I thought the Board of Death had the right idea about the whole thing. Of course, my dad had gone through this rigorous trial to secure his position as the head of Death, and he had ruled Purgatory for the past century or so with a mixture of fairness and firmness that garnered him the respect of all the denizens of the Afterlife, so there must’ve been some merit to the endeavor.

  Speaking of my dad, it had actually been his idea to treat Death like a corporate entity. He’d spent his human life dealing in trade and commerce and figured that the same principles could be applied to the running of Purgatory and the collecting of souls. He had instigated the creation of Death, Inc., instilling his new charges with a sense of responsibility and a healthy respect for a job well-done. He had restructured the antiquated system so that instead of a hodge-podge of different groups grudgingly working together to secure souls after Death and guide them through the Afterlife, now everyone was part of one company, one community if you like, that worked together in harmony.

  He had also completely renovated Purgatory itself. When he had inherited the place, it was nothing more than a giant fortress made of brimstone (because it’s indestructible) and held together by sheer will. There were no offices, no executive structure to the business—the sole governing body within Death was the Board of Death, but it was rarely called into session except to supervise the succession of the “old” Death to the “new” Death—and there was so much infighting that sometimes souls got lost in the shuffle.

  My dad saw all this and decided that the time was ripe for
a change. He created a new hierarchy within Purgatory, establishing a single Executive Board—with himself as President and CEO—that oversaw a much larger delegation of Vice Presidents and Managerial Executives. Each continent had its own Vice President, and below them, running each individual country, were the Managerial Executives. The Managerial Executives looked after the local Managers, who in turn liaised with the harvesters and transporters and basically made sure that the business of Death ran as smoothly as possible.

  My older sister, Thalia, had been a member of my dad’s Executive Board (she had held the title Vice President of Passage for a while), but when she realized that no matter how well she did by the company, she would never attain the highest position (President and CEO), she went kind of mental and tried to force my dad out of his job with the help of the vicious demon Vritra, whom she had married in secret when she was sent to take over the Asian offices of Death, Inc. Her plan had been foiled, but—even though it was an isolated incident—it did make me seriously wonder if my dad’s system of corporate leadership wasn’t going to open him up to more of these kinds of attacks in the future.

  As far as I could see, a democratic approach to Death was a neat idea in theory, but when those below you craved power, there was no way to stop them from just reaching out and trying to take it—regardless of how egalitarian you think you’ve made your system.

  Anyway, my dad didn’t just restrict his renovation to the inner workings of Purgatory; he also upgraded the building itself. He had the Hall of Death completely redone, added a whole wing of Executive Offices, even built a cafeteria that was so huge it could seat every employee of Death, Inc., in it at the same time. He had also restricted the use of Purgatory to corporate work only.

  Before his installation as the new Death, Purgatory had been used as a sort of prison, where souls could be held without judgment for as long as Death saw fit. There was no such thing as habeas corpus then and my dad, who had lived his human existence in America, thought this was bullshit. He knew what could happen when a soul’s rights were violated (slavery anyone?), and he refused to allow this practice to continue in Purgatory. Upon taking charge of Death, he immediately liberated all the prisoners that were being held in Purgatory unjustly, sending them out for judgment and release to Heaven or Hell. Now only very high-level political prisoners were held there—but only after they had been judged and sentenced by an outside court made up of jurors unaffiliated with Purgatory.