Cat's Claw Read Online Free PDF

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.
    Now my parents slept in separate rooms (which had always seemed like a kind of depressing compromise to me ), but at least they were going to get to spend eternity together. I guess that was something .
    “And how are you involved in all this? Do you help Madame Papillon with all her important work?” I asked the little Minx.
    I didn’t mean for it to, but I guess my question came out as kind of condescending, which only seemed to piss the Minx off even more.
    “You best mind your tongue,” Muna spat at me, her violet eyes narrowed down to two malevolent slits. “I know your weakness now and it would only take a few moments to smother you with enough cat hair to—”
    “Muna, that’s enough,” Madame Papillon said sharply, cutting off the Minx before she could finish her sentence. Muna turned bright red with anger, but at least she was silent now.
    “I’m sorry about Muna. Like all Minx, she is possessed of a terrible temper,” Madame Papillon continued. “Now, as to the reason that I just magically appeared in your kitchen, well, let’s just say I was asked—”
    There was a loud ripping sound and I looked down to see Muna pulling at a loose thread that was hanging from a long tear in the fabric covering the back of the couch. She yanked at the string again, causing the fabric to rip even wider.
    “Don’t wreck my couch, please,” I said, annoyed because it was the only couch I had and I kind of liked it un-ripped-up.
    “What? You can always buy a new one, can’t you?” Muna replied snidely.
    No matter how beautiful on the outside the Minx was, I decided, she was a total megabitch on the inside. Besides which, she didn’t have a clue as to what she was talking about. I worked for a slave’s wage at House and Yard, so if I wanted to buy a new couch or a new anything , for that matter, I really had only one of two options: I could sell an egg (of the human variety) or I could sell a kidney—and neither of those options sounded worth putting my body through in order to buy a piece of