She Who Sees Through Darkness

by Liz Ellor

  Rarely in her line of work did Katrina ever encounter a poor liar; she’d forgotten how good it felt. Like some stranger in the bar overheard and remembered the precise dates of the surgery, the type of implant, how she’d told her colleagues she was going home that weekend to read books with inner-city children. The details were too specific; the leak had been deliberate

  “I will,” Kyle said.

  “Apologies won’t cover it,” Katrina said. “You violated a contract when you leaked my client’s medical information to the press. It’s entirely within our rights to bring suit.” Why leak, though? A surgeon with Fisher’s celebrity clientele pulled down millions per year. Whatever a reporter would pay for dirt on a politician’s plastic surgery wasn’t worth the lost revenue. A political statement? People did crazy things for causes they believed in.

  She set him up. “I didn’t think Obamacare would destroy medical ethics that quickly.”

  “No,” Fisher said. “Just my income.”

  Strike on that. “Looks like your income might be in line for another hit. You’re liable for millions in damages. Not to mention what happens when your other clients realize you can’t be trusted. You could lose everything, and it would serve you right—”

  “Katrina!” Kyle glared at her, his curly brown hair tumbling into his eyes. She knew he meant well, but he’d skipped from job to job since he’d graduated college, insulated by his trust fund and family name—he didn’t get that, sometimes, force was the answer.

  She sighed. “Look, Dr. Fisher. I know you didn’t leak the information. You’re protecting an employee. There’s fifteen of them.” He’d posted a photo of the lot of them smiling on his clinic’s website. “One of them leaked my client’s medical records for cash. My client wants that employee fired, or we move forward with the lawsuit. Then all fifteen lose their jobs. And so do you.”

  “The employee in question is going through some tough times, Ms. Harris.” He lowered his voice. “Drug issues. Her father passed away last year, and—”

  “The offer stands. It is our only offer.” Her guts had twisted themselves into little knots, but none of that turmoil came across in her voice. Perverse pride flickered in the back of her mind. You can show no weakness. You can do your job.

  “I don’t get it,” Kyle said. “How could someone—anyone—hurt another human being just to fuel an addiction? How could you sink that low?”

  That time, Katrina flinched. Neither man noticed.

  Dr. Fisher called his lawyer, resulting in a heated exchange of words when the lawyer urged him to take Katrina’s offer. Then he called the employee in question: the afternoon receptionist, all of eighteen years old. Katrina waited alone for her arrival, skin itching. Kyle had decided he was too mad to confront the leaker and stormed off to wait at the nearest café.

  Katrina waited by the reception desk, fiddling with her phone to keep her memories from spinning. It didn’t work. Whenever she closed her eyes, she saw Anaïs, pulling a bottle from her hands. That had been at Thanksgiving dinner, four years ago. Katrina would have punched her sister-in-law if Anaïs hadn’t sent a gust of wind to know her over. Annie had stepped back into the living room just as Katrina had stumbled to her feet.

  Now the memory left her hands cold and trembling. Alcoholism. Around Shawn, it was easy for her to brush off his worries as the way a big brother might monitor a kid sister with a peanut allergy. Some of her law school friends knew. Hard to keep a secret when you got fired a month out from graduation and all but dragged into rehab at gunpoint. For them, she’d made it into a punchline: Man, I sure did some crazy shit in my twenties. I was such an alcoholic. For the past few months, the campaign had eaten up too much time for her to attend AA meetings or visiting her sponsor. She’d been fine. So far. But sitting here alone, remembering how she’d nearly shown the little girl she loved her despicable weakness, the word burned.

  A short brunette walked in the door, her outfit professional and put-together. Katrina hoped she’d done something fun with the money, but knew it had probably gone to her dealer.

  “Carla.” Dr. Fisher stuck his head out of his office. “We need to talk.”

  The girl was in tears a minute later. Katrina explained her legal situation—Senator Winters wouldn’t press any personal charges if the girl made a public apology—but she’d already known Carla wouldn’t appreciate the reprieve. She denied stealing the senator’s file, then screamed and cursed at both of them when Fisher said he knew she’d taken it. Katrina told her Fischer had tried to protect her, and the brunt of the snot-filled cursing was turned against her. She didn’t mind. Fisher signed the termination papers, and Katrina made photocopies.

  By the time she returned to Kyle and their car, every muscle in her body was as tense as if she’d been electrocuted. Hello. My name is Katrina Harris, and I’m an alcoholic, and wherever I go, people get hurt.

  “Do you want to go down to the range?” Kyle asked as they drove. “Shooting always helps me relax.”

  “Have to get back to the office.” The range they frequented was all the way down in Jersey. Kyle himself went down three days a week. Katrina was a competent, experienced target shooter, but Kyle lived for his guns. He’d even made the 2008 Olympic shooting team. They’d made sure his biographic paragraph on the ‘Meet Emma!’ section of the campaign websites had photos of him holding a red, white, and blue gun blown up large and ‘proud member of New York’s LGBT community’ written very small. “Feel free to drop me off and head down yourself. I don’t want your mom thinking I’m slacking off.”

  “You mean, like me?”

  The uncharacteristic bitterness in his tone made her sit straight upright in her seat. The belt tugged at her shoulder. “Kyle, I wasn’t talking about you—you’re her son, for fuck’s sake, not her employee.” Unbidden, a memory rose up of the senator telling off a staffer for being ‘lazier than my goddamn son’—but she would have cursed out Jesus for not folding his shroud on Easter Sunday.

  He sighed. Dark circles sat under his eyes. “I’m sorry. It’s just—remember when I told you about Bean Choice?”

  “That artisanal coffee shop your friend Rob started?” He’d taken her there, once, and the coffee was good, if not worth eight dollars a cup.

  “I borrowed ninety thousand dollars from my mother to fund it. And now it’s going out of business.” He ran his hands back through his curly hair and stretched out his long body. “She’d be so much better off if I’d never been born. What am I supposed to tell her?”

  “The truth,” Katrina said, knowing it was bullshit. Kyle looked at her like a lost puppy. She reached deeper, searching for some solution, some combination of words that could change the world. “I’m sorry, really sorry. Tough break. But what do you expect me to do? I’m more fucked up than you are!”

  “Fucked up? You?” He shook his head. “You’re like my mom. Strong, aggressive. You’ve got everything pulled together—you’re fine. Me, I’m thirty-one years old and still living off my mom. That’s my life. That’s all my life will be, until she dies and I go leech off my cousins.”

  Katrina Harris: everything pulled together. The thought warmed her, and she seized onto that warmth, trying to spread it through her whole body. What could she tell him? What would put-together-Katrina say?

  “Relax, Kyle. Just relax and try not to think about it.” It was bad advice, but she didn’t have much more to say. “Try and have some fun.” Fun Kyle she knew and understood. Depressed Kyle she didn’t.

  “Fun,” he repeated. “Right. Let’s have a little fun before everything ends. One of my exes is throwing a birthday party tonight. Rented out a whole club.” A sad smile flickered across his face. “We’ll go, we’ll dance, and then we can be responsible adults in the morning. Remember all that fun we had back in college? Let’s convince ourselves we’re still young.”

  She remembered those days keenly, the weekends he’d come up to visit her at NYU. They’d always spun out into crazy adventures
—the time they stole the unicorn piñata, the time they convinced Belgian tourists in Time Square to lift your middle finger to hail a cab, that time they’d snuck into the music building and filled all the trumpets with glue. She’d always felt so light on her feet afterwards, convinced she could accomplish anything, magic or not. Surely that feeling hadn’t only been the effects of the alcohol. Those hours with Kyle had meant something. Meant something more that us being assholes. She’d considered telling him about her drinking problem for years, now, but tainting those memories was the last thing she wanted to do.

  Shawn would be on his way north by now, determined to flush out the valkyrie with the suspicious questions. Anaïs would have gone with him—she was an agent as well—and Annie would be staying with friends. His top agents would be gone as well, leaving behind only the few with emergency duties. Even if it struck him to search the future for her relapsing, there was no one he could send to stop her.

  Besides, she could control herself. Indigo had trained her to resist torture. She could resist an open bar.

  “I’d love to,” she said, and meant it.

  The rest of the work day passed in a blur—surprising, considering how frequently they’d work until midnight. Katrina emailed the senator’s doctors, threatening legal action if they revealed anything, and send a similar list of threats to the New York Post, warning them to stop snooping for information on the senator’s father’s suicide. Senator Winters herself dropped in once, between a firemen’s brunch and visiting a public school. Unfortunately, it was when Kyle came in to loan Katrina a sequined vest.

  “Dress code,” he muttered. “It’s a theme party. Mardi Gras.”

  Senator Winters stepped out of Ford’s office. Her head snapped up at the sparkling sight. “Are you going to Maximum tonight?”

  Katrina’s eyebrows shot up. “Ma’am?”

  “Don’t play coy with me, Ms. Harris. I had a photo-op there this summer. For the magazine spread on promoting LGBT entrepreneurship. Kyle introduced me to the owner.” She glanced at Kyle. “An absolutely charming man. Grew up with next-to-nothing in Spanish Harlem. Now he owns three nightclubs.”

  “That’s right,” Kyle muttered. “You wish he was your son.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Senator Winters snapped.

  Katrina reached for something to say. “The magazine spread was a smart move, ma’am.”

  “It wasn’t a move. Gay people invest in businesses and pay taxes. For Pete’s sake, they want to get married and move to the suburbs! I’m not letting some religious fanatics drive off economically-conservative voters.” Her tone softened. She reached over and squeezed Kyle’s shoulder. “And besides, someone has to protect my son. Don’t do anything stupid tonight.”

  He smiled, weakly. “Come on, Mom. When was the last time I did something stupid?”

  The squeezing, familiar pressure of jealousy swelled in Katrina’s lungs. I want a mom like that. All she had of her mother were flickering memories: a warm hug, hands bandaging a scraped knee, bright lines of fire twisting around her body. She and Katrina’s father had been killed in action when she’d been nine years old. Shawn, ten years her senior, had known them well enough to tense with anger whenever their names came up. She didn’t dare push for more information. Better a few memories of unconditional love and acceptance than let whatever Shawn had observed about them rise up and taint her perspective.

  “Stay sober,” Senator Winters told Katrina. “Bring the papers. No photos, no embarrassing stunts. Bring him home when he gets too drunk. We’re one more minor scandal from a complete breakdown. Take care of my son.”

  “I always have, ma’am.”

  The or else in her boss’s voice lingered after she’d walked away.

  “Stay sober?” Kyle muttered. “Hell, how are we supposed to have any fun now?”

  Neon yellow ridges lined the club’s molded plastic façade. Inside, light from a disco ball cast shining circles over the electric purple dance floor. ‘Just Dance’ blasted from the speakers. Katrina positioned herself along the far wall, away from the bar. She wore a blue sequined vest, a white leather miniskirt, and nothing else. Kyle had gone to say hi to the host.

  “You look lonely, honey,” said a girl draped in a rainbow feather boa. “Single?”

  Shit, she’s young. When Katrina had been her age, she might have started flirting with her, but leading people on could hurt. “Sorry. I’m straight.”

  “Too bad.” She grabbed a sushi roll from the tray off a passing waiter and winked at him. “You’ve got nice legs.”

  “I’m a marathoner.” She reached out with her chopsticks and snatched a piece of salmon nigiri. A few bad stomach-aches had left her wary of raw fish, but she could trust the quality here. Kyle’s rich friends didn’t half-ass anything. She dropped down on the couch next to the girl and put her legs up on a table. “Name’s Katrina.”

  “Ruby.” The girl looked her over, frowning slightly, as if trying to reconcile Katrina’s golden skin and dark eyes with a name that belonged on a Dutch milkmaid. “You … holy cow, your legs.”

  Shit. She pressed her thighs together.

  “Did someone do that to you?” Ruby lowered her voice to a whisper. “You don’t have to put up with that shit. I know a place where—”

  “It was an accident.” She knew how obvious the lie was. Eleven peachy-red burns, some as round as Shawn’s fingertips, some imperfect licks from her lighter. Two more marked her left wrist. She’d forgotten how the old scars might look. She’d asked him to do it. Older agents said the method sometimes worked to force latent magic to manifest. He didn’t abuse me, and I’m not crazy. Of course, she’d kept it up well through her early twenties, ten years after she should have manifested. “Excuse me.”

  She jumped to her feet and crossed the room, fighting to balance on her stilettos, hating her costume. Showing skin for a party had been fun in college—when she’d had advanced notice, remembered to smear concealer over the burns—but she was thirty-two, a goddamn adult, and it all seemed stupid without a buzz. Is anything fun anymore?

  She leant up against the bar. Music pounded in her ears. Temptation bit at her. Fuck that. I’m strong. So strong that her greatest achievement in life was getting some people fired and making it to age thirty alive.

  If she’d OD’d back in 2005, would the world be any different? Shawn would have gotten over it by now. Anaïs would be glad her alcoholic sister-in-law wasn’t throwing a wrench in her marriage anymore. Annie wouldn’t even remember her. Annie would have been better off if Katrina’s life had become a family cautionary tale.

  “Hello, hello!” The speaker was the man coming up behind the DJ booth—a tall, pale Asian man wearing a thong and a hundred different necklaces. “Everyone having a good time?”

  The crowd cheered. All the noise washed past Katrina, leaving her a separate part of the assembly, like the one dim bulb on a Christmas tree.

  “I’d like to thank my good friend Kyle for coming out here tonight!” He motioned in the crowd, and Kyle jumped up behind him, his own necklaces swinging. They kissed. The crowd went wild, shouting, laughing.

  Katrina couldn’t remember the last time she’d kissed someone. She’d been born straight as a rail, and men fell in three categories for her: agents of Indigo, who knew why she’d been fired and avoided her, other Descendants who feared her ties to the agency, and normal men, who could never know the truth of what she was.

  Behind the DJ booth, Kyle met her eyes and waved. He hopped down, and the crowd mobbed him. Even he doesn’t need me as a friend. He might have claimed to be a screw-up, but everyone loved him. And he doesn’t have to worry if they’re just his friends because his mom pays them.

  “A Coke, please,” she asked the bartender. Her hands needed something to hold.

  He poured a can into a glass and handed it over. “Are you all right, miss?”

  His patronizing tone made her want to scream. You think I’m so fragile? That a woman born to
defend mankind needs to be guarded from her own feelings by you, some nobody who happens to have a dick? “You don’t know me. Fuck off.” She moved away from the bar, picking up speed as he shouted at her back, squeezing the can.

  “Katrina!” Kyle fell out of the crowd and wrapped his arms around her neck. The sweet scent of rum rose from his breath. His eyes looked even bigger with the eyeliner surrounding them; sweat glowed on his skin. “Let’s go do something!”

  “You can’t leave the club unless you’re heading home. Your mom made that clear. If you want to leave, you better offer me a new job.”

  He pouted. “I’m broke, remember? Can we at least just dance?”

  She rolled her eyes and lowered the can back onto the bar. He grabbed her wrist and tugged her towards the dance floor. That could work for fun.

  Her hand slid onto his lower back, steering him as they spun, twisting in time with the beat. In her four-inch stilettos, she towered over him. Their bodies pressed tightly together, sweat mixing. Kyle leaned backwards and she slid on top of him, her black hair sweeping out like a curtain. Energy rippled in her veins. Just a little good clean fun.

  A hand pressed on her shoulder. “Aiden!” Kyle shouted, and Katrina spun around. Their host smiled at her, holding out a hand. She took it and spun in close to him, shimmying in time to the music. His thong responded as her breasts brushed his necklaces. Bats for both teams.

  He leant forward. Even with her stilettos, he had a few inches on her. “May I?” She nodded and stuck her tongue in his mouth. Aiden moaned and sucked on it. She tasted alcohol in his mouth. It lit her neurons on fire. Too late for me, Shawn! Giddy pleasure washed over her.

  “Bad, Katrina, bad!” Laughing, Kyle shoved his face in-between theirs, flicking out his tongue as if a kiss could somehow be turned into a three-way. She nipped at it, and he reeled backwards. “Cooties! Someone call nine-one-one, I’ve got girl cooties on me!”

  She bent over. Her stomach ached from laughing. Aiden clapped, slowly, and Kyle pounded her on the back. Well, a little good dirty fun never hurt anyone.