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

Jarv-meister.
    “Well, you leave me no choice. I guess I’d better go and see Jarvis, then,” I mumbled, not really wanting to but knowing that I had to.
    “Hey, don’t tell anyone that I was the one that told you,” Clio said suddenly as I stood up, my butt sore from my hard metal perch. “I wasn’t supposed to know about it.”
    “Will do, Captain,” I replied, giving Runt a pat on the head before heading for the door. “And thanks for the heads-up.”
    I was almost out the door before I remembered the real reason I’d come to Newport in the first place.
    “Uhm, could you do me a huge favor?” I asked, feeling uncharacteristically annoyed with myself for needing her help. It wasn’t like I was a complete mental reject, or anything. I mean, it was totally within the realm of possibility that I could discover Daniel’s whereabouts without having to use Clio’s phenomenal brain as some kind of human cheat sheet.
    Sometimes I wished I were a little less lazy. Maybe life would be more hospitable to me if I actually applied myself to living it properly.
    “Callie, your wish is my command.” Clio grinned, turning back around from her keyboard and giving me a sisterly wink.
    I swallowed hard, not looking forward to the bevy of questions my “favor” was going to invoke.
    “Can you tell me how I might get a look at someone’s Death Record?” I sort of mumbled, trying to sound as nonchalant as I possibly could.
    Clio stared at me, a slow grin spreading across her face.
    “And by someone , don’t you really mean you want to take a peek at your buddy Daniel’s Death Record?” she shot back at me.
    I could see the look of utter curiosity in her eyes and decided that the best defense was a good offense.
    “Look, I would love to sit here and chat about boys with you—oh, and by the way, who’s the lucky fella?” Clio turned bright red at my words, verifying without any question that she was a smitten lady.
    “I don’t—” she started to protest, but I raised my hand for silence.
    “Like I said . . . I would love to stay and hear all the gory details about your new man,” I continued, not letting her get a word in edgewise, “but, you know, I gotta go deal with being summoned and all, so just let me know when you’ve got that info I needed.”
    I turned and shut the door behind me as fast as I could, leaving a red-faced Clio unable to say another word. Yes, I thought happily, score one for Calliope Reaper-Jones!
    Little did I know then how badly I was gonna get creamed in overtime.

five

     
     
    The house that I grew up in is huge. Seriously, it’s so big that it even has its own name: Sea Verge.
    When I was a little kid, I used to worry about losing my friends and never finding them again when we were playing hide-and-seek inside it. The fear was derived strictly from the fact that my house wasn’t just a house like everyone else’s . . . No, my house was basically its own ecosystem. And since seven- and eight-year-olds aren’t the most astute creatures in the world, with fourteen bedrooms and nine bathrooms alone in the place, you can well imagine why I would be a little freaked-out.
    Just lose one Sally or Mary to the mysterious confines of Sea Verge and no other parent would ever let their kid go and play at your house again.
    As I got older, I spent more summers than not exploring the inner workings of Sea Verge, so that it ceased to be a place that was alien to me. I think my therapist would say I was just confronting my fears, but I’m pretty sure there was no psychology involved in my efforts. In the end, I was just so damn curious about the place that I wanted to know everything I could about it.
    Maybe it did offer some kind of control over my out-of-control life, just knowing the intricacies of the place I grew up in, but after a few summers of intense exploration, I got to the point where I knew every secret doorway, every hidden passage, and every dead end in the place.
    My least