Cat's Claw by Amber Benson Read Free Book Online Page B

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.
    Ignoring the throbbing in my head, I asked the one question that I really didn’t want to ask, but that I really needed an answer to:
    “Look, I have to ask you something kind of important, Madame Papillon, but please, please, please, I would be grateful if you would just keep it to yourself—you know, not share it with my folks,” I finished, grimacing.
    She nodded, but I had no way of knowing whether she was really trustworthy or not. She could be a pathological liar and I wouldn’t know a thing about it until it was too late.
    “Ask your question and I will keep it between us,” the older woman said, patting the puff of hair that was Muna. “Even my Minx will not be told tale of this privileged conversation.”
    Boy, it was starting to feel just like a trip to my therapist’s office. Only, I wasn’t the one paying for the privilege this time.
    “I’ve done some . . . coalescing ,” I whispered, feeling strangely dirty about the whole thing. It’s not like Daniel and I had ever had sex or anything, so I don’t know why I was feeling like such a prude.
    “Oh,” the aura specialist said, then cleared her throat. “I see.”
    “It was done to save my existence, I think, and only the once.” I gave her a pitiful smile and she patted my hand in r eturn.
    “My poor little one, there’s nothing to be ashamed of,” chided the aura specialist. “There’s nothing wrong with coalescing . . . especially if it was done to help you.”
    “Could that cause my aura to get all intertwined with the guy’s aura?” I asked, feeling like a sixteen-year-old virgin in a sex ed class who hasn’t really grasped the concept of how one acquires an STD.
    “Yes, I think coalescing could cause something like this to happen,” Madame Papillon said sagely. “I’ve never seen it before, but theoretically it could happen.”
    She set her mug of tea down on top of the construction worker and sighed deeply. She took my hand in her own and squeezed it.
    “You asked me if the dead have auras. Was this in reference to the person you coalesced with?” she asked.
    I nodded. “I thought he was dead, but now I don’t know . . .” I stammered, but she shook her head, silencing me.
    “Take this to heart, my dear,” Madame Papillon said and I noticed for the first time how beautiful she must’ve been as a young woman. She had the most exquisite bone structure and truly haunting eyes, eyes that could almost hypnotize you if you weren’t careful.
    I blinked to dispel the image that I had conjured in my mind of the younger, more beautiful Madame Papillon, and that was when she hit me with it, the one thing that could turn both my heart and brain to mush:
    “I have it on good authority that your young man is anything but dead.”

four

     
     
    Alone in my messy apartment, I sat on my Pottery Barn sofa and slowly pulled on the piece of thread that Muna had excised from the upholstery, wondering what my next move was going to be.
    After the whole emotional blow of finding out that Daniel