Cat's Claw by Amber Benson Page A

mean, here I was thinking he’d saved my life when he took on the demon Vritra, but maybe that was all just some elaborate ruse to get away from me!
    Looking back, I had to admit that I probably hadn’t been the nicest person in the world to be around—especially when I thought Daniel and the Devil were in league to steal my dad’s job and make my family mortal again—but I didn’t think I had done anything weird enough to make Daniel want to stay out of my life forever.
    Not that I could remember, at least.
    In fact, there had even been a time when I thought that maybe Daniel and I might’ve been making a sort of love connection, or something. Now, in retrospect, it seemed like the only thing Daniel and I had been making together was bad blood.
    Okay, now I wasn’t just angry and nervous anymore. Nope, the two feelings had metamorphosed into something much, much worse. A feeling that I had never experienced until right that very moment:
    Resentment.
    I was a woman scorned and I wasn’t going to take it sitting down! I was going to find the jerkoid and make him explain to my face why he had pulled the wool over my eyes, no matter how long it took!
    This was my new mission in life and I was just going to have to accept the fact that things were not gonna be pretty until I got my hands on the man and ripped the truth out of his cowardly little mouth.
    Having accepted my new mission, I gave the piece of thread in my hand a good, hard yank, ripping off the entire side panel of the couch’s upholstery in the process.
    “Shit,” I said out loud as I stared at the piece of fabric in my hand, seething.
    Daniel, the Devil’s protégé, was going to rue the day he ever messed with me, I thought angrily as I looked down at my shredded couch.
    Now all I had to do was find the bastard.
    And thank God I knew just the person to help me do it.
     
     
    my younger sister Clio’s bedroom looked like one of those retro Japanese sneaker stores you walk by and then have to do a double take because you realize it’s a sneaker store only in retrospect.
    Of course, her room hadn’t always looked so sleek and spaceshiplike—it had actually been a much more hospitable environment up until about two weeks before, when Clio had decided to completely remodel her room from floor to ceiling.
    For someone like me, who enjoyed sitting in a chair that looked like a chair—and not a wedge of aluminum—the place looked pretty stark.
    The floor was silver industrial-grade linoleum stamped with curlicues that perfectly matched the textured, gray-fabric-covered walls like they had been made to go together. The bed was one of those Tempur-Pedic mattresses set into the floor, so that when its silver, curlicue-covered comforter was all tucked in, it looked exactly like—you guessed it—the floor.
    Something I discovered when I stepped on it and, unprepared for the floor to give way underneath my foot, fell on my face.
    Not pretty, but not too painful, either.
    There was also a large, metal modular workspace in the corner where Clio kept her myriad computer equipment. Beside it was a flat-screen television mounted on the wall, directly in line with the bed. Since I didn’t even have a TV in my bedroom, period, the idea of something so big and movie theater- like that you could watch while lying flat on your back and eating Cheetos seemed pretty novel to me.
    I wondered how hard it would be to take my own TV—one that was little more than a curio since I didn’t have cable—and mount it on the ceiling above my bed, sort of like what they did in motels and hospital rooms. That might be pretty cool, huh?
    Then I realized exactly how much I did not want my bedroom to in any way, shape, or form resemble a motel or hospital room and decided that it might be best to just leave well enough alone. My little twenty-two-inch TV was doing perfectly fine out in the living room gathering dust.
    “I can come back if you’re busy,” I said as I watched as