His face softened. He sighed and took a drink from the now almost totally melted mocha. “I can’t do anything to you, Katharine. No one can.”
He might as well have stabbed her. This was worse. It left her hanging. Had he transformed into his real self and shredded her, she might have felt better. She thought she would end up sliced by those wicked talons after that last comment. In fact, she had almost counted on it. Instead, he didn’t give her anything.
He spoke again, softer this time. “The only way is for you to agree, Katharine. To join. It’s really up to you.”
Her chin snapped up. “What about Mary Wayne? Are you saying she agreed to what happened to her?” “In a word, yes.”
Katharine’s gasp elicited another long stare from the woman at the far table. She would have to tone it down or she’d be remembered. She knew she didn’t want to be remembered. Or was that just some old buried part of her that had been trained to be part of the wallpaper? Maybe it would be okay if this woman remembered her face, and that of the almost too-handsome man across the table.
And Margot would remember. But Margot couldn’t hear what he’d said.
And Katharine had no idea how to respond to the statement that Mary Wayne had said yes to what happened to her. Finally, she figured out what she needed to ask.
“And if I say no?”
He leaned forward, looking around her and slightly in front of her again. She was distracted by it, wondering what he was looking at. “You can say no. But when you say no to one thing, you say yes to another. The question is, what will you agree to?”
Something about the way he said it sent cold chills down her spine.
CHAPTER 18
This time Katharine told Margot everything. About the slut she had been, about how she had felt, and, finally, about what she had accused Allistair of at the coffee shop.
Margot nearly sloshed wine on her couch. They had the sliding door to Margot’s balcony wide open, and they were listening to late-evening traffic with a slight overlay of the tide coming in. “He said that? He virtually admitted to slaying that woman the two of you found?”
Margot shuddered, while Katharine took another drink. Before she could talk, her friend jumped in again and asked, “Was it creepy?”
Katharine thought for a moment. “Surprisingly not. I was afraid some, but mostly I felt strong telling him what I knew. And he never really seemed threatening. I mean, we were in a public place and all, so he couldn’t really do anything. But then again, who could stop him if he did? That creature is huge.” Now as she sat here and thought about it she was creeped out by it. But she was grateful it seemed to occur only after the fact.
With a nod, Margot changed the topic. “While I was in Vegas, I did a little research at the local library.”
“While you were visiting your family?” Katharine was shocked. Not so much that Margot would visit a library–clearly, they were like magnets to her–but that she would leave her family during a visit.
With a smile and a shake of her head, Margot asked, “Don’t you get tired of your family when you are there with them day in, day out?” Then her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh! I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”
“No, it’s okay.” She thought back to the visits when her mother was alive, and how much the woman could act the part of the smothering mom. “I did feel that way, but I didn’t leave. I guess I didn’t know I could.”
“Well, I just make sure I get out when I can. It really cuts down on the number of fights I see, and the number I’m involved in.” Standing suddenly, Margot walked while she talked and grabbed the wine bottle from the kitchen counter before heading back to the living room and topping off both their glasses. “So at the library, I checked out all the mythology of demons I could find. It was pretty interesting.”
Katharine settled back. “So, educate me.”
“Well, there’s a darn lot. A lot of the Judeo-Christian ideas believe that demons are fallen angels. Therefore, they have the same powers as angels do. Almost all religions have some kind of demon creature in them, though not all consider them malevolent. But most do think they are bad, if not evil. I avoided the idea of the ‘mischievous spirit’ because that clearly isn’t what we are dealing with here. And I tried to find anything I could using the description you gave, though it does seem to change a bit.”
Margot took another sip of wine. “If what you told me about Allistair is true, then change is the name of the game. According to a lot of the demon legends, he can change into whatever he wants, even become human, so the rest is no surprise. In the end there was just a lot of the standard evil, burn in hell, freeze in hell kind of stuff. A lot of it traces back to Dante’s Inferno. But it wasn’t helpful. I guess the only thing that did seem to help was one thing I came across on the web.”
She stood and looked at her wine glass, as if wondering how it had gotten so low, then grabbed a second chair and placed it beside the first at the computer desk tucked into the far corner of the room. In a moment, she had pulled up a link she had emailed herself and had Katharine standing over her shoulder, sifting through the information. “Look at this.”
It took a while for her to read the whole page, but she could see why Margot had liked it.
There were hand drawings of beasts similar to the things she had seen, and Katharine pointed that out.
“Yeah,” Margot said, “but a good number of sites had depictions or at least descriptions that were pretty close to those. I’m sorry, but your demon doesn’t seem to have many distinguishing characteristics.”
“You mean I just have a garden-variety demon?” That made her laugh. That for all the trouble she was having, she was just dealing with a pest? Maybe she’d had too much wine. Allistair’s statement that Mary Wayne had agreed to what happened to her was well out of Katharine’s scope. If her demon was just a small one, then she should be glad.
She read further, then looked up. “So, this is what? An anarchy theory of hell?”
Shrugging and nodding at the same time, Margot answered, “I guess. The idea being that hell is just a landfill for the unwanted. I don’t know if they are heaven’s unwanted or not. But the attached article also seems to say that those the demon gets to are also sent there. He travels in and out at will, unlike the poor souls who got left there.”
Of course Margot had read the attached article. She’d probably cross-checked its references, too.
"In the end it describes hell as a lawless, conscience- and moral-free zone. It seems to be a land of boredom run by the mightiest. I think it’s an interesting concept, that hell isn’t really for the bad, just that heaven is only for the good.
“One of the references is really thorough, though–why are you laughing?”
Katharine almost couldn’t stop. “I was just sitting here … thinking that you had … likely checked the references to see if they were reputable.” Margot laughed too, but took both their wineglasses to the sink and offered up ginger ale instead. She kept talking while she poured. “Okay, so the reference was about crossing over, and that’s what I thought was really interesting.”
Katharine sat up straight, listening while Margot reached into the big purse Katharine had given her.
“I printed a copy for each of us.”
“That good?”
“You should read it for yourself. I’m going to reread it.” Katharine didn’t balk when Margot handed her a highlighter. There was going to be test on this material, and if she didn’t pass … She started reading.
• • •
Katharine hid out at the library the next day. She had called Lisa and flat-out lied–said she was ill and took a sick day. The first one she had actually declared as a sick day. Previously, she’d just said she wasn’t coming in. She hadn’t paid any attention to the need to log the time. And why should she? She was the boss’s daughter.
Lisa had made a hmmm noise when Katharine called in and told her. It wasn’t clear whether it was a so
und of acceptance or disbelief or if she just thought Katharine would suffer no repercussions.
And she hadn’t. So far. But if she did … if her father decided to get upset about it … well, then, it would be far worse than any pink slip Lisa could imagine. The disappointment alone would be great. If it weren’t for something so huge, she never would have done it.
At least she was unlikely to run into any of her coworkers at the public library. She had Margot to help her, even if it was only sporadically. The librarian actually had to work, and it wasn’t like she could call in sick, then show up at her job to do research for a friend. So Katharine mostly winged it with a little guidance here and there.
By lunchtime she was ready to report in, and she did so after practically inhaling a sub sandwich as they sat at an outdoor table at a mom-and-pop place around the corner. Margot ate steadily while Katharine talked.
After confessing that she’d spent over an hour looking up demon mythology only to find the same things Margot had found, she switched tacks. “I looked up transforming, specifically transmogrification.”
The librarian raised her eyebrows.
“Yeah, I found it in the thesaurus. I knew what it meant, but it isn’t one of those terms that readily springs to my mind–though it sure will now.” She played with a pickle slice that had escaped out the back of her sandwich, but she didn’t eat it. “A lot was about werewolves and witches’ spells, but there were a few things that seemed important.”
“That’s what all the photocopying was about, huh?”
“Yeah. Okay, one of the pieces dealt with alternate dimensions. Not like 2-D or 3-D, but like overlaid realities coexisting in the same place. The higher-order dimensions can see into the lower ones. Naturally we are about the lowest. Time is different there, gravity, all of it. But some of the papers claimed there are ways to see through to the other levels, and–get this–one is to look into a mirror or a crystal. There was a mention that this is the real idea behind the crystal ball.”
“That offers something at least about the reflections you’ve seen. In the shop windows.”
Katharine nodded. “I thought of that, too. Given that it seemed to match what I’d seen, I kept reading. It basically said that things can come through the levels, and mentioned that colors are indicative of where the creature came from. Like they change as they change level, but it isn’t really like passing down or up. More passing through, one overlay into another, and they change shade as they go. But, get this: when they pass through, they have to rip the barrier. That causes sparks, and burning.”
Katharine didn’t have long to wait.
Margot’s head popped up. “And you have strange animals leaving soot on your carpet.”
“Yeah. I think I’m on to something.”
They sat there, thinking for just a moment, crumpled sandwich papers in front of them, a gorgeous L.A. day all around them. Cars honked as they went down Santa Monica Boulevard. People waited for parking spots.
It was Margot who voiced the fears they shared. “We are on the right track, but do we know what to do?”
Katharine shook her head. All she knew was that she wasn’t completely and totally crazy. She’d read a few accounts of people who had encountered similar things. Most of them had gotten locked up–in the psych ward or a prison. Some of them disappeared. But none had a “I fought my demon and won” story. Still, the fact that she wasn’t bonkers was a huge relief. “That’s what I’m onto this afternoon.”
“I won’t be around much to help.” Margot slung her purse over her shoulder as they began the one-block walk back to the large modern building. “It’s the third Friday of the month, and that means a docent tour.”
Katharine trailed behind. “Am I stupid if I don’t know what a docent is? And why it’s getting a tour?”
Margot laughed. “You aren’t stupid. It’s a word from academia, and I’m the docent. I give the tour. A docent is kind of a keeper of knowledge. Universities and museums and libraries have docents.”
“Of course.” Katharine added that into her brain next to transmogrification and wondered what the hell she was doing here.
Two hours later, Katharine left her friend a note and drove herself home. She’d gotten nowhere since before lunch, and there was something else she had to do today.
She tried to keep her brain quiet on the drive home, and was relatively successful. As she turned the key in her lock, she looked down the hallway, disappointed that she had again missed Zachary.
Not that she thought he’d be home at this time of day, but it would have been nice to see him. While part of her was disappointed at missing him, she was also glad to have a moment to get ready.
After her now-standard apartment check in all the closets and corners, she took a shower and dried her hair. Next, she threw on a blouse and jeans, ran downstairs and around the corner to the small takeout spot, and grabbed a salad and pasta with pesto. She took the folded brown bags back to her unit, where she grabbed a bottle of white wine and headed over to Zachary’s door. She owed him a big apology. And for a moment she was grateful she had been too chicken to confront him when she thought he’d been …
He didn’t answer when she knocked, but that was okay. She needed a moment to think up a better apology. How did you say, I’m really sorry, I thought you were a demon. But then I found the real demon, and I’m glad it’s not you? That was not the way to keep the boyfriend who blew her mind. There wasn’t much she could say. She didn’t want to tell him about Allistair, not about what she suspected, nor what he had said when confronted. More than that, she didn’t want to admit that she’d been sleeping with the man she now suspected while she’d been with Zachary. Not that he’d asked her to be exclusive.
The old Katharine would have said that was okay. He hadn’t asked, she hadn’t promised. But the new Katharine knew she was responsible for what happened regardless of what had been asked of her. She didn’t think it was wise to name names, but she would admit she’d been seeing someone else, and now she wasn’t. Maybe they could move things to the next level.
She knocked again, then turned and slid down the door. She’d be here when he came home, and she’d gotten food that would keep, since he wasn’t expecting her. Her thoughts ran away with her for a while, but she worked to gather them back into the semblance of something logical. She thought about the artwork that Margot had found her, the paintings and sketches that, if nothing else, told her she wasn’t the only one to see these things. Then there was the article about passing through the layers and leaving ash.
She and Margot didn’t have anything more to go on. There was nothing that they had found yet that told them what to do. Nothing that even hinted at whether she’d survive all this. Nevertheless, she felt so much better. After confronting Allistair and learning more, she was ready. She had faith in Margot. It seemed Margot could find anything.
A noise behind her caused Katharine to start. Jerking around, she listened from her seat at the door. Was he in there? Had he not heard her knocking? Or was he avoiding her on purpose, waiting for her to go away?
A sheepish thought entered her mind. Maybe he had someone else in there. She couldn’t fault him if he did. It wasn’t like they had said they were exclusive or anything. She’d had someone on the side. And the way she’d been acting lately would have driven any man to get a new girlfriend.
But instead of grabbing her bags and heading back to her own condo, she turned around where she sat and put her ear to his door.
There was no feminine laughter, no voices. It sounded like he was alone. She frowned as she heard a motor come on. A few minutes later it went off. Still, she sat with her back against the door. Should she just wait? Or call off the dogs?
She was reaching for her cell phone, wondering why she hadn’t thought of calling him all along, when the door opened behind her and she tumbled onto her back at his feet–his bare feet that led up to nothing but a towel.
He grinned. “I thought
I heard a knock, but I was in the shower.”
She couldn’t help smiling as she righted herself. Dusting her butt just for show, and wondering where that move had come from, she got to her feet and simply said, “I brought dinner and an apology.”
He stepped back and let her pass by. “Neither is necessary. But dinner is appreciated. Just let me get dressed.”
She sighed. Part of her wanted to tell him not to get dressed. But even though he said he didn’t need an apology, she needed to give it. It might even be selfish to do so, but that didn’t change things. So she didn’t stop him from entering his bedroom.
Her head tilted as he opened the door. “Is that a wet vac? Is that what I heard running?”
She pointed at the small red and white contraption on the floor. It sported an arm with a small brush and a water container.
“Yeah, I spilled a drink I had in here. I’m really concerned about the white carpet.” With that, he pulled the door behind him, leaving a small crack that gave her a glimpse of a bed, perfectly made, and a bedside table with a single book and lamp sitting on it. The book looked new, and definitely nonfiction. She wanted to know what it was, but she pulled her eyes away.
As she did, she noticed that he was lying. He couldn’t be really concerned about the white carpet. It was the same as the thick, pale, cream-colored pile she had in her own unit, but with random circles of gray. If he was concerned about the carpet, that concern was as far as it got. Whatever it was wasn’t getting cleaned up well enough, that was certain. Either he or the wet vac wasn’t working up to code there.
But it made her grin. He was such a guy. Her mother had always said that men wanted things to look nice, but wanted other people to make that happen. Something about the missing chromosome or some such.
She turned her attention to the food and wandered through his kitchen, pulling dishes out of their organized places in the cabinets. She checked the dishwasher when the drawers yielded no serving spoons and found it perfectly empty. Oh, well. A zap in the microwave brought the pasta back to life, and while she waited for the machine to ding at her, she rifled through the drawers again looking for a wine bottle opener. No luck there either. She frowned.
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