God's Eye

by Scudiere, A. J.

  If her friend was right, then Katharine had to ask a very different question.

  What had she just slept with?

  • • •

  Allistair waited in human form. He was in the office he was supposed to share with Katharine, in the role that had ultimately not afforded him the level of interaction with her that he’d planned on.

  No, he was stuck here waiting for her. Trapped in his human body. Weakened by the expenditure of energy just to get like this. A victim of his own design.

  Again, Katharine was late.

  Through his human eyes the veil was virtually impenetrable, the solidity of objects nearly absolute. Even though he knew it was as much illusion as reality, he couldn’t see further than the walls of his office the way he was.

  Finally, he decided it didn’t matter what Lisa thought of him. Maybe if he closed the door now, when Katharine wasn’t around, it wouldn’t look so suspicious when they closed it while they were in the office together.

  As he felt the latch catch, he moved his thumb and locked the door, too. With his back to the door, in case someone had a key, he breathed deeply of the air around him, then shifted slightly and allowed some of the change to come.

  As usual, it would cost him. Always in the growing there was a time where you weren’t strong enough, where you had to invest more than you really had to move beyond your level. Allistair wasn’t strong enough to shift without loss. Not yet.

  Opening wide and bottomless eyes, he looked around at the world as it truly was. The walls were ephemeral, as were the desks and floors. The people beyond them had reach far beyond their arms as peals of color and light and darkness curled out and licked at the world around them. They didn’t even know they did it.

  Still, he didn’t see Katharine.

  He looked further, pushing down the irritation he felt at being denied. There was something about her. She held him in a thrall, even though it was supposed to be the other way around. He watched the yellow tendril unfold before him and knew that it was his. In his human form, he gave off human signals. And he was blessedly grateful that humans never saw it.

  The yellow was a beacon to all the others like him, to anyone who saw. A changing signal of his fear and his frustration and his failure. For the moment he ignored it. Humans were blind to it, and the others that did see it … well, they had likely seen it long before he did.

  His human overlay breathed again, and his eyes looked further.

  He could see Katharine’s room as clearly as if he stood in it. The covers on her bed were rumpled, mussed by two human bodies rather than one, and Allistair felt his human stomach turn at the thought. But he pushed the feeling aside, told himself it was merely the by-product of the form he was partially in, a vestige of a lesser being.

  Katharine was not in her room.

  The smell of her was strong; she had been here recently. The smell of Zachary was also strong in the room, though Zachary, being what he was, would create far more charged tracers of himself than any mortal could. Allistair ignored the anger that he saw bloom in front of him and tried to be logical.

  The scents of both Katharine and Zachary in human form were equally strong. That meant that Katharine had been there very recently and Zachary had left a while ago.

  Perhaps …

  A quick scan for the other told him that his opponent was not near, not on either side of the veil. It was of lesser consequence to know where he was than to find Katharine.

  Though he used his real eyes, he was shackled by his still-human form. It was plenty strong, something that caused equal measure of love and loathing in him. He shook his head, a physical manifestation of his desire to rid himself of a thought process that wasn’t working.

  Just looking for Katharine in the places he expected her to be wasn’t working. Instead, he pulled back, deep inside himself, wondering if he would be able to find her so easily in this halfway form he was in.

  A scratching noise in the hallway startled him.

  He turned toward the door, then quickly turned away. That had been stupid in the extreme. Had he faced someone coming through the door, what would he have done? He didn’t know if the person’s brain would even comprehend his face. Katharine was starting to be able to see. But, then again, she’d been through hell in the learning of it.

  Luckily, the door didn’t open. And though he was grateful for the luck, Allistair hated his need for it.

  He searched faster now; he needed to finish this, to find her, to know what to do next.

  Closing his eyes, he stopped trying to guess where she was and simply searched for her.

  And that was it. So easy. With just the thought of her, there she was.

  And he would not have thought to look for her there.

  Katharine climbed a set of weathered, wooden steps up the outside of a three-story building. For a moment she hovered in front of the red front door, waiting for a heartbeat before she knocked. Then she stepped back, looked around, and leaned against the railing. After a moment she knocked again.

  A small smile played at his lips. She wouldn’t like knowing that he was watching her. But he enjoyed it. He liked the way she wore her new confidence, incomplete as it was. He liked watching the new Katharine peek out from behind the façade of the old. She was unburying herself from years of propriety and dogma.

  She knocked one last time before giving up and turning quickly to head back down the stairs.

  That she was disappointed was clear. What she was hoping would happen at the door was not.

  Unable to look away, he followed her progress back along the street to her pretty, shiny car that was a bit out of place among the others on the street. They looked like they belonged to people who lived in proximity to seawater, like the owners didn’t have the money to keep them pristine or had decided to spend it elsewhere.

  She was easy to keep track of, now that he had attached himself to her in a way rather than looking frantically in the places he would guess she might be. Why he hadn’t thought of that before was a mystery to him.

  Her car turned on Lincoln, then headed toward Marina del Rey.

  She was coming straight toward him. Perhaps it wouldn’t be a wasted day, after all.

  And the closer he could physically get to her, the more he hoped to loop the two of them together. Maybe he could track her all the time.

  And tonight, he would keep his eyes open for Zachary.

  • • •

  The hair on the back of her neck stood up.

  Something was wrong.

  Katharine ignored it. It seemed lately something was always wrong.

  Zachary walked with a limp; his shoulder hurt; he had bruises.

  Allistair had seemed to know she was coming even though he couldn’t see her. He had called as she turned into the drive for Light & Geryon and said something about “in a minute, when you get here” as though he knew exactly where she was.

  And the hair had stood up on the back of her neck this morning even before he’d said that. It seemed she’d spent the entire day feeling as though someone or something were watching her.

  So she discounted the feeling as portending doom. She had plenty else telling her that. Hell, she practically had “Something wicked this way comes” written over her front door.

  She turned the key in the lock to her condo and the door opened with a click. A part of her was waiting for the day when the key didn’t fit and her family and coworkers didn’t recognize her. But it seemed that wouldn’t be tonight.

  A quick survey showed her that the carpet appeared clear of soot; no burning smelled lingered in the air. And she looked no further, just took the bag of cheap Chinese food to her table and sat down to eat.

  She broke the chopsticks apart and spent a minute picking at the strings. When they were finally not likely to cause splinters on her tongue, she pulled out the food and realized that she’d have to give in and get a spoon for the hot and sour soup.

  She’d eaten alone a
t this table any number of times. Not like this though. Never cheap, carryout Chinese. Never with disposable utensils. And though she’d always been alone, she had never felt it so keenly as she did tonight.

  When Margot hadn’t been home at lunchtime, Katharine had texted her. She’d already tried the library and hadn’t found her friend at any of the usual haunts. Some part of her had wanted to just bump into Margot. Maybe because she didn’t want to believe she was running screaming to her friend about what she’d seen last night. And about what she’d done.

  But no. Her friend was out of town until tomorrow, visiting family in Las Vegas.

  She could no longer turn to Zachary, not to the new and far-too-perfect boyfriend she was glad to have. That too had been a mistake.

  Even Allistair seemed like he would have been good to turn to. But she didn’t trust him now. That, though, was just a general distrust.

  It was Zachary she needed to be wary of; she knew that now.

  The wonton got stuck in her throat when she thought about what she’d seen. Her stomach turned and she set the spoon down.

  She’d had sex with him. And if Margot was on the right track, then he was something she couldn’t even recognize. Maybe not even human.

  Just a short while ago, none of this thinking would have made any sense. Katharine hadn’t been one to believe in what she couldn’t touch or smell or see. But that had been changing rapidly. First, the animals, then the messages. Then the things she was seeing in reflections … that had been too much–like a glimpse into a world that was beyond anything she could fathom.

  Her appetite had fled, but she picked up the chopsticks and started eating again. She wouldn’t let all the things around her change this. She wouldn’t let it stop her from eating. She needed sustenance. She had fainted recently, likely more than once. She needed to be as strong as she could be. And if that meant eating when she didn’t really feel like it, then she would suck it up.

  Katharine wasn’t going to hand any part of her life over easily. Not her sanity, not her job, not her home, and not even her dinner.

  She picked up a piece of orange chicken and bit in. Her appetite had returned with her determination, and the bite was sweet and heavenly.

  She ate another and another, not sure when to stop. It seemed her determination was possibly as out of control as the rest of it.

  Eventually, she stopped eating. She cleaned up the lonely meal and didn’t save any of it. With just a brief thought to the starving children around the world, she scraped the rest of it down the sink. Her brain flashed with an image of a landfill as she stuffed the trash into the bin. She wasn’t even recycling. Like it mattered–half of it was Styrofoam. She was an environmental hazard on top of everything else.

  She needed sleep. That was for sure.

  Tomorrow she would go into work. She would get more comfortable with Allistair. She’d see where that relationship was going. And she’d avoid talk of Mary Wayne, if at all possible.

  Though he lived next door and was still in her life, and though she was still afraid, there was something comforting in having found out. She would avoid Zachary. If she could.

  She could arm herself with Allistair. Maybe another man would be enough to change things.

  But that was enough decision making for one night. She took herself off to bed and pulled down the blinds, shutting out the very last bit of light filtering in from across the Pacific.

  She slept soundly, until the pressure on the side of the bed woke her.

  When she woke, it was to see a spotted leopard sitting beside her legs. It did nothing but look at her, its green eyes blinking.

  Katharine hoped she was hallucinating, but too much time with Margot dispelled that notion. When she reached out and touched the creature’s leg, it felt real too. Her friend had informed her that it was highly unlikely she would hallucinate in three senses at once. So she probably wasn’t hallucinating the leopard as she could see it and feel it and hear it breathing.

  In fact, she could smell it, too. It smelled far away, loamy and slightly fetid, just a little off.

  The leopard looked at where her hand touched its leg. Then, with no warning, it leapt out the window, seamlessly flying through the glass.

  It was Katharine who was bound by earthly science. Her hands flew to the pane, but as she had been certain would be the case, they did not go through.

  She was just convincing herself it was a dream when she turned and saw the mess of the covers, the crumpled spot where it had leapt, pushing off with its powerful back legs. She could still feel the jolt as it had propelled itself.

  No, it had not been a dream.

  Somewhere in the back of her senses, the smell tickled her memory.

  CHAPTER 17

  When she walked into the office the next morning, Katharine discovered that though her night had been interrupted yet again, she had actually slept well.

  That was almost disconcerting in and of itself. She shouldn’t sleep well, not with the things she had seen. But at least she had one thing she could grab onto. No, two. Margot would be back today. Katharine would be able to meet with her friend and tell her what she’d figured out. Second, she could see what was going on with Allistair.

  He stood up to greet her as she came in the door.

  “You look good today.” His words were tinged with shyness, and Katharine wasn’t surprised when she thought about it. She had rolled on the floor with him and followed him to the beach, then she had done nothing. So she didn’t know what to say. But he did. “You look like something is different. I can’t put my finger on it, but … maybe just the way you were walking.”

  She smiled. He was right. “Actually, I can put my finger on it. I … realized something.” Katharine struggled for a way to say what had occurred, because, even though he had seen Mary Wayne’s shredded body, he hadn’t truly seen what was going on. She needed human terms for him, but then she latched onto something. “I broke up with my boyfriend.”

  “You did?” He sounded surprised.

  Well, so would Zachary when she actually said it to his face. And she had to pray that it would stick. She’d drunk too much the other night and wound up with him anyway, when she was supposedly working at not being with either of them. But she told Allistair the semi-fib anyway. “Yes, I did. He wasn’t right for me. I’m starting to see him for what he is.”

  Allistair looked amazed, as though he had known all along and was stunned that Katharine had figured it out. Of course that would mean that he had thought from the start that Zachary was a cheater or an ass or … well, probably not something that would sneak into her condo and leave messages in Latin on the mirror. Maybe Allistair had sensed a general “bad egg” thing all along. Maybe that was why they’d had that staredown in the hallway on one of the very few occasions they had been close to each other.

  “Katharine, wow.”

  Before he could go further, she shut the door and started talking. Never mind that the whole embezzled funds investigation was over, meaning there was no legitimate excuse for closing the door. She did it anyway. “I’m really sorry about the way I treated you.”

  “Don’t worry about–”

  “I don’t know what I was doing with Zachary. He messed with my head. I thought everything was perfect and I …” She shrugged. There was no way to tell him what she suspected. Not Allistair.

  He cocked his head to one side and looked at her with disbelief. “You really thought everything was perfect? You thought that, even though you were with me on the side? How did that even factor in with the perfect boyfriend?”

  There was no good answer for that, and she told him so. But then she said what she’d been driving at from the beginning of the conversation. “I was out of line with you. And I don’t know how you feel about me now. Maybe, if you wanted, we could …” It was hard to say. Hard to apologize and offer herself up to someone she had really liked in the space of several breaths. In the end, she chickened out. “Whatever
you want, I’m open.”

  Then she ducked around behind her desk, offering a small half smile, half apology before she stared at the monitor and got to work. Allistair simply nodded as though he were confused and wandered slowly back to his chair. Since she didn’t know what to make of his response, Katharine chickened out again and did nothing.

  Two full hours passed with Katharine training her gaze at her computer. She didn’t want to glance over at him, didn’t want to be disappointed by what she might see. But finally Allistair came around behind her desk and leaned over her, his hands on either side of hers, caging her in.

  Katharine’s heart beat faster, knowing what it wanted, but not knowing what he wanted from her. His head came down, his mouth near her ear. And all she could do was wait.

  His voice was low, “What did you mean when you said you were open? Did you mean like the way we were before?”

  She could feel the heat of him, he was so close. Fighting not to swallow, not to take a deep breath, not to give herself away, though she feared she already had, she managed one word: “Yes.”

  He straightened, and the loss of his presence from her personal space was like a blast of cold air, or maybe of reality. She had tossed him aside with no explanation before, and here she was wanting to pick up where she had cut him off. She knew his cold response was perfectly warranted.

  In slow, sure steps, Allistair made his way back to his desk and sat down. He said nothing, simply began typing. He shifted folders. Made a call. And let her sit there and feel supremely foolish.

  But it wasn’t long before he spoke. “Could I bring dinner to your place tonight?”

  The tight bands around her chest loosened. “Yes. That would be great.”

  She would have deserved it if he hadn’t asked. But she was more than glad that he had.

  When he asked for the rest of the afternoon off, she granted it immediately, only asking when she could expect him.

  Katharine spent the next several hours of her day feeling normal for the first time in a long while. She ate yogurt at her desk for lunch, then topped it off with a granola bar. She worked in the office by herself. And since she wasn’t tense, waiting to see what Allistair would say or do, she got a lot of work done.