Madame Papillon sighed, setting her mug of tea down on my coffee table before settling into the overstuffed softness of the couch her Minx had almost shredded while in cat mode. I noticed that she had used one of the cute little coasters my coworker and friend Geneva had given me on my last birthday, which made me smile giddily.
You see, each coaster was a picture of a different hunk in uniform—one was a policeman; one was a fireman; one was a construction worker—only the kick with
these
coasters was that the material they were made out of was heat sensitive, so that when you put something really hot or really cold down on top of them, they, well . . .
transformed.
Let’s just say that I’d learned a lot about myself since I’d acquired the coasters. I mean, until they’d graced my coffee table, I’d had no way of knowing about my penchant for men in shimmering gold thongs and matching fire-retardant boots!
Forgetting about all the bad news that had just been leveled at me, I waited on tenterhooks for Madame Papillon to pick up her mug of tea and notice her naughty coaster. It only took a minute for my patience to be aptly rewarded. As she lifted her mug, the aura specialist let out a soft hiccup, then started giggling into the palm of her hand like a little schoolgirl.
“I see you got Mr. Fireman,” I offered, peering over her to take a quick peek at Mr. Gold Thong—he
was
my favorite, after all.
“These are wonderful,” Madame Papillon said, admiring the rest of the “clothed” men in my set—especially Mr. Construction Worker. “Wherever did you find them?”
I shrugged. “I didn’t. They were a birthday gift, actually.”
“Good gift,” Madame Papillon said, smiling, as she poked at the construction worker with her pinky.
I could see the gears starting to shift in the older woman’s head—I was pretty sure she was having the exact same thought I myself had had on the (more than) occasional lonely Friday night spent in front of the boob tube—so I wasn’t surprised when she set her mug down on the construction worker’s able abdomen.
“I had a pretty bad night once, made a huge pot of coffee, then did them all at the same time,” I blurted out without thinking, then immediately started to feel embarrassed.
I hadn’t
completely
forgotten that my parents had sent this woman and that she might very well be required to go back and give them an in-depth report on the meeting. I could just see my dad’s face turn pink when she told him I had quasi-naked construction workers on display on my coffee table.
“We all have nights like that,” Madame Papillon said sadly. And I really could believe that she
did
understand the plight of the single, miserable female.
“I had a man once,” she continued. “One that I thought was special, but of course, they all make you feel as though you are the only woman in the world when they are using you for your power and success.”
Huh?
I thought to myself.
What kind of power and success did an aura specialist have that I didn’t know about?
I waited for her to go on, but with only that one piece of information revealed, her lips stayed firmly shut. From the pinched look on her face, I got the distinct impression that no matter how many questions I lobbed in her direction, I was so
not
going to get any more information about her lost bastard-for-a-lover.
I tried another tack.
“So, this whole aura thing? What’s the deal? Am I really aura impaired or was Muna just screwing with me?” I asked, taking the other spot on the couch beside the aura specialist.
From this vantage point I could see
just
how grubby my place had gotten in the past few weeks. The kitchen counters were covered in crumbs, the floor needed a good sweep, and there was a layer of dust so thick on the edges of the coffee table that I really thought I might actually be breeding dust mites in it.
I was usually not
that
bad of a housekeeper, but a few months earlier my father had been kidnapped and I’d had to take an unapproved leave of absence from
my
job to go and take over
his
job. All this so that my family wouldn’t lose their immortality. Seems like a pretty easy thing just filling in for Pops, right?
Wrong.
There is
nothing
easy about being the President of Death, Inc.
First of all, I had to complete three nearly impossible tasks (
like stealing one of the puppies of Cerberus, the three-headed Guardian of Hell
) just to prove I could handle the job. Next, I had to figure out who had kidnapped my dad and the rest of the executives that oversaw Death, Inc. (
turns out it was my extremely bitter older sister, Thalia, and her demon husband, Vritra—something I so did not see coming
). Finally (
and worst of all
), I had to watch as the only guy who had ever really treated me like I was a beautiful, desirable woman disappeared into the depths of Hell trying to save my existence.
All I have to say is that
I
thought I deserved a little hazard pay for all the shit I’d had to deal with, but of course, no way José was anyone in the
human world
gonna cut me any slack. I mean, they had no idea that the supernatural world even
existed
(
and in tandem with their own world!
), so as far as they were concerned, I had just gone off to Rhode Island to look after my ailing father (
who didn’t even have the grace to die and give weight to my excuse
) in our family mansion (
too much info
) in Newport because this was the stellar story (
not!
) my dad’s Executive Assistant, Jarvis, had come up with when he’d called the House and Yard office to explain my absence.
Luckily, everyone at work bought his explanation, so when I finally went back, the whole office was sufficiently solicitous about my dad’s health . . . everyone, that is, but my überintelligent, überintense boss, Hyacinth Stewart.
And boy, was
she
pissed
.
Apparently, the dumb girl that the temp agency had sent over to fill in for me while I was gone had e-mailed one of her friends (
in the middle of a workday
) to bitterly complain about the stupid, fat, ugly, bitchy woman she was working for. The poor girl hadn’t learned the most basic lesson that one
must
adhere to when “assisting” for a living in Corporate America: Bosses
love
to read your personal e-mail—seriously, it’s like an avocation for some of them—so
don’t
write personal e-mails at work. Period.
Needless to say, Hy blamed me entirely for the psychological damage she had had to endure because of my absence. Not
really
my fault as far as I could see, but when you’re someone’s assistant, you learn very quickly to just grin and bear it. I mean, I really think someone should teach a class in college titled How to Succeed in Business by Nodding and Keeping Your Mouth Shut When Someone (Your Boss) Blames You for Something You Didn’t Do.
I think a student’s first work experience would be a lot more pleasant after having taken that class.
The ridiculous thing about the whole temp situation was how very
wrong
the substitute had been about my boss. Anyone who worked for her more than two minutes could see that Hyacinth Stewart was a devious and intelligent woman. One who was sharp as a tack and could be more manipulative than Erica Kane on a bender. She was anything but stupid.
Yes, the bitchy part was completely true—I won’t fight you on that one—but the fat and ugly stuff? Well, if that was what the girl thought, then she was just a moron. Hy was a beautiful woman, and though she might’ve been on what one would term the plus-sized side of the scale, I don’t think anyone with a brain cell in their head would ever use the word “fat.”
Large, maybe, but
never
fat.
I mean, the woman knew exactly how to dress her larger frame so that she was ten times sexier than nine out of ten of the models running up and down Fifth Avenue, portfolios in sweating hand. Seriously, Hy knew exactly how to wrap a man around her finger and make him do whatever she wanted.
Hy knew something was fishy about my absence, but she just couldn’t put her finger on what it was. Instead, she’d been Hell on wheels ever since I’d returned, keeping me so busy during the past few months that my life—and my apartment, by extension—was literally falling apart.
Enough said
.
When I turned my attention back to Madame Papillon, she was looking at me oddly, almost with pity. I didn’t know if it was just because my aura had some serious issues or whether it was only a gut-level response to how completely dirty my apartment was.
“I’m gonna clean it soon,” I said, the words just popping out of my mouth.
Madame Papillon looked at me blankly. “Your aura?”
Guess I was just being paranoid about the old apartment,
I thought dryly—and happily.
“Can you
get
your aura cleaned?” I asked. Maybe I really didn’t have an aura problem if I could get it dry-cleaned or something.
“It can be cleansed,” the older woman said, her eyes drawn back to the nearly naked construction worker on the coffee table, “but when someone puts a curse on your aura, you either have to live with it or make the person take the curse off. There’s no dry-cleaning service, per se.”
I shivered. It was like the woman had read my mind.
“What’s
wrong
with my aura?” I asked, swallowing hard. “Is it cursed?”
Curse or no curse, I hadn’t really had any problems with my aura recently (or ever) so maybe I could just ignore whatever was going on. The world of “denial” wasn’t a terrible place to live in. I mean, lots of other people did it every day from what I could see and they weren’t totally Looney Tunes, were they?
“No, your aura isn’t cursed,” Madame Papillon said, “but there is something
strange
about it. If I didn’t know better, I would say that your soul was intertwined with another soul, but that’s really only something you ever see in twins. And even that only happens in extremely rare cases.”
“A twin?” I exclaimed. I’d always wanted to be a twin! I had spent a lot of my childhood feeling incomplete, like there was something missing, but I just didn’t know what it was. Maybe I was a twin! Maybe
that
was what was missing?!
“But you’re not a twin,” the older woman said, taking a sip of her tea. The pleasant smell of anise wafted in my direction, and I remembered that she had asked for licorice tea with her carrot cake cupcakes when she’d called me earlier. Seemed she’d brought her own tea bag.
Smart lady.
“How do you know? I could be a twin and not even know it!” I stammered. I was
not
going to let the idea of a secret twin be dispelled that easily.
“A true intertwining of souls happens at conception, but your aura . . . has been tampered with recently.”
How recently?
I wondered.
Like a few months ago recently—because if that was the case, then maybe I wasn’t a twin, after all.
“Do dead people still have auras?” I almost whispered, trying not to let a misplaced sense of hope overwhelm me.
The aura specialist raised an eyebrow, but there was no way she could know what I was thinking. You see, I had
coalesced
(intertwined souls) with someone sort of recently. Not that it had been
my
idea to do the coalescing. Even just the remembrance of the event made me blush.
Let me preface this by saying that I’m not
usually
a lush, but when you’re lost in the desert outskirts of Hell with no means of escape, your sense of self-preservation gets all screwy and you’ll drink anything.
I was trying to complete one of the stupid tasks that the Board of Death had given me so I could take over my dad’s job and save my family’s immortality. I was miserable, I was exhausted, I was
lost
. . . and that was when I found myself totally blindsided by a poisoned Midori Sour that magically appeared before me.
Only the quick thinking of Daniel, the Devil’s protégé, had saved me from a fate worse than death: eternal hibernation at the hands of a poisoned girly cocktail.
Ugh!
Daniel had
coalesced
our bodies together—something akin to sex, but even more intimate. I mean, our bodies were
literally
merging together in a way that words do absolutely no justice to, all so that he could absorb half of the poison
for
me. We had both ended up with a couple of hangover headaches from Hell, but I had noticed no other ill effects from the poison . . .
until now
.
Now I find out that there was permanent damage. Our souls were intertwined! I didn’t even know if the guy was alive or dead or what—and now we were sharing an aura?
Jeez, Louise.
Madame Papillon shook her head.