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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