Read Online Cat's Claw by Amber Benson - Free Book Online

an eyelash—just like all good Siren progeny.
    I, unlike my two sisters, wasn’t born with the gifts of beauty and/or a genius IQ. With my short brown hair and large brown eyes, I was attractive, but not beautiful—and my brain was definitely more attuned to the latest issue of Elle than to anything school oriented. Not that I was a terrible student, mind you, but I was definitely glad I would never be called on to answer another math problem in my lifetime.
    “Earth to Callie,” Clio said, bringing me back to reality. I was tempted to blurt out: “So, who’s the lucky guy?” but instead, I kept my mouth sensibly shut on the topic, choosing only to reply to Clio’s initial statement—as much as I was dying to pry into my sister’s love life.
    “What about Runt?” I asked demurely, tickling the puppy’s neck underneath the pink and silver rhinestone halter she was wearing, a place where I knew she particularly loved being scratched.
    “Dad didn’t tell you?” Clio said, surprised.
    “No, Dad didn’t tell me anything,” I replied, starting to get nervous. What had my dad decided not to tell me about now?
    “Oh,” Clio said, scrunching up her nose, a confused look on her face. “I thought he would’ve let you know.”
    “Let me know what?” I said, exasperated by all the pussy-footing around.
    “That’s why I thought you were in town,” Clio continued, ignoring my question. “Because you’d been summoned.”
    “What?!” I nearly shrieked, feeling like my world was about to tip upside down again. I so could not deal with another round of tasks from the Board of Death—no matter whose immortality was at stake.
    I guess my sister didn’t know me very well if she thought I’d gotten my ass up at the stroke of six on a Saturday morning to take the three-plus-hour train ride from Penn Station to Providence, then wait another whole hour for the pleasure of taking the ferry into Newport just so I could deal with a whole bunch of bad-news supernatural business.
    Trust me, if I had known I was in the process of being summoned , I’d have gotten on the train to Baltimore instead.
    “Oh boy,” Clio said, looking worried. “You better go see Jarvis. He has all the info.”
    “Crap,” I replied.
    As much as I had grown to like my father’s Executive Assistant during the time when he had been my Executive Assistant—and had helped me fulfill the three tasks the Board of Death had given me in order to take over my dad’s job and save my family—I still had absolutely no interest in getting a lecture from the faun right then. Literally, there was nothing Jarvis loved more than giving me a lecture—and those suckers could go on for centuries .
    It was sort of sad in a “I have no life of my own” kind of way.
    “Do I have to?” I moaned, knowing that if I had been summoned . . . then I had to. “Okay, at least fill me in a little bit, Clio. Who summoned me? Dad?”
    Clio shook her head.
    “Mother?” I asked, desperately hoping that my mother was not the person doing the summoning. The last time she’d asked for a favor, I’d ended up in Hell.
    Clio shook her head again as I continued to scratch Runt’s neck, her tail thumping contentedly on the floor in a legato rhythm that was very lulling.
    “Who?” I moaned, not liking this one bit.
    Clio looked down at Runt, then back up at me.
    “Runt’s dad.”
    Oh shit, I thought. Cerberus had summoned me?
    “Did he say why?” I asked, even though I already knew it could only be because of one of two things: He either (1) wanted his daughter back, or (2) was calling in the favor I owed him—and both options seemed incredibly unappealing to me at that moment.
    Double shit.
    Clio shook her head. “Sorry. That’s all I know. Not in the loop.” She shrugged.
    Great. Clio was as in the dark about this whole thing as I was, which meant I couldn’t pick her brain for more succulent little details before having to go and interface with the