Surely she’d had friends before. There were a few girls from school that she kept in touch with. But when she thought about it, she did that because they were in the same sorority and their parents knew each other. They had lunch when they were in town; they caught up. But that was about it. She showed up to charity functions for her Dad, and even planned a few. She knew the women who fit in there, they had gone out for drinks. She’d gone clubbing a few times with some of her coworkers, but that hadn’t lasted long.
No, she didn’t think she’d ever had a real friend before. But she didn’t say it.
Neither did Margot. Her new friend just handed over a soft, pink Victoria’s Secret sleep tee and told her to stay where she was. Margot took the futon in her own guest room.
Katharine slept until sometime right before dawn, when she woke up, sensing that something else was in the room. She didn’t flinch, even though it took a full minute to remember where she was. Then she was mad. It had come to Margot’s home.
The faint light of dawn sifted in through the thin curtains, revealing a shape sitting in the middle of the floor. As her eyes adjusted, she saw that not only was it a panther, but it was stretched out as if it had made itself comfortable.
Leaning over the edge of the bed, she did her best to stare it in the eyes. Her voice was low and mean, and she said the words the way Zachary had when he had gotten rid of the wolf. “Get out.”
This was the creature that had tormented her. It had toyed with her for months, showing up in her condo, disappearing, leaving traces of soot, and rearranging small things until she thought she would go insane. To what end? What purpose had all that served, except maybe to show that it could get to her? No more. “Get out.”
Just then, the door opened, throwing light across a sector of the room. Katharine jerked her head up to see Margot standing in the doorway. “I thought I heard someone–oh, holy shit.”
She looked down at the panther. And as Katharine watched, it looked back up at her. Its head moved, almost as though to nod, and then it turned its gaze back to Katharine before sinking into the floor.
If she hadn’t been so pissed off that it had come here, she would have laughed hysterically at the look on Margot’s face. Her expression of horror went over the line of comical. But it didn’t last long. As usual, her friend held it together. “So, that was the thing that visits your place?”
“Yes.” Katharine was now sitting up on the side of the bed, legs dangling over the edge as she looked at the huge spot of soot the panther had left. She was just as pissed that she’d have to clean up the mess as anything else.
“Well, at least it’s official,” Margot declared. “You aren’t crazy. I just saw a panther in my room and it sank into the floor.” “Amen to that. Do you have a wet vac?”
“No.” Margot frowned at her. “Are you always this calm about it?” “At this point, it has happened enough that recently, yes, I have been rather calm. I’ll bring my carpet scrubber by later and clean this up.” “Do the animals always look like that?”
“Like what?” Katharine was puzzled. Black? Kind of silent? What?
“Its coat was black, but there were so many colors reflected in it. The way colors reflect in an oil slick. It looked solid and real but not quite like something I could look up and find in an animal guide.” Margot’s brows pulled together in the look that told Katharine she was thinking of how to say what she wanted. “Like we would find out that breed of cat doesn’t come in pure black or something. Like something was just a little off.”
“Yes, they do always look like that. Except for the leopard. I didn’t notice anything unusual about it.” She paused. “Except that it jumped out a plate-glass window without damaging itself or the window. But otherwise it was normal, I guess.”
“But it was beautiful.” Margot stretched the word out as if the panther was something to be admired. There was a hitch in her breath as if even just the memory of the animal left her awestruck. Then her voice changed tone completely. “Oh, crap! I thought it was beautiful! I’m in its thrall!”
That time, Katharine did laugh.
• • •
Zachary watched from a distance as the two women finally fell back on the bed. They shared the wide mattress this time, not wanting to be alone as they each tried to get a little more sleep before daylight. Things were breaking.
Allistair hadn’t turned and run like he should have, and it had turned out to be a good move on his part. But that didn’t work in Zachary’s favor.
The women were starting to put all the pieces together. They knew about both of them now. They knew there was a choice to be made. Margot was helping Katharine and it was speeding the process up.
If Zachary were greedy, he might have thought about bringing both of the women with him. After all, how often did a human wind up in Margot’s place, seeing creatures from across the veil but not being courted by them? But he wasn’t greedy, and he was smart enough to know that, though he could offer her all the riches and benefits that he was offering Katharine, he wasn’t strong enough to carry two through the process. Yet.
Allistair had stayed there at the edge of Katharine’s bed most of the night. The panther had staked its claim and made the point to Zachary that he could go anywhere he pleased–including Zachary’s space, and anywhere Katharine might go. And he also did it to show Zachary that he could get there first.
It all pissed Zachary off. For one about to fail for the umpteenth time, Allistair had a knack for hanging on, for showing up just where he wasn’t wanted. And that move the other night in his own condo was just too much.
Zachary had protected the place against Allistair when he first claimed it. And it had worked. Allistair himself had never been able to breach the boundary. But as the animals he could. Zachary hadn’t thought ahead to protect his condo against all forms. Who incorporated as a creature? It was an old trick from lower orders, used before they became as powerful as they were now. Who would have guessed that Allistair would resort to it?
But he had resorted to it. And it had paid off.
Still, Zachary could get another move in before daylight.
• • •
“Holy crap!”
Katharine heard Margot’s voice from the bathroom. “What?” But the question was unnecessary because she was already headed that way and Margot was already talking.
“There’s a message on my mirror.”
And sure enough, sparkling on the glass–as though ice crystals had simply frozen there–were the words Mihi crede.
Margot ran out of the room. At first, Katharine thought it was in fear, but in a moment she was back, pen and paper in hand and a faint gleam in her eyes. She wasn’t afraid. Then again, it wasn’t her life at stake, even though within the last few hours whatever it was had invaded her life.
Her friend copied the note twice, then checked the two copies against each other. She pulled her cell phone out from where she’d stashed it in the waistband of her pajama pants and snapped a picture. Margot turned to Katharine, still breathing a bit heavily from racing around like she had. “I got it. Look.” She held up the cell phone.
But Katharine shook her head. “I don’t see it.”
Margot nodded sadly. “That’s why I wrote it down first.” Then she pointed at the mirror. “It’s already fading.”
Sure enough, it looked like the ice crystals were melting. But Margot had already moved on. “I’ll get it translated first thing … I don’t know about you, but I am going to be running on adrenaline and coffee today. I have to go to work. I need my paycheck and we need my access to the library.”
The paper scrap was folded neatly and tucked into one of the pockets of her purse while Katharine just stood and watched, and then Margot walked off to get ready for work. Finally getting herself together, Katharine followed her out the door about ten minutes later. In the time it had taken her to put her own clothes back on from last night and grab her purse, Margot had gotten ready for a
day at work.
Her hair was slicked up into a twist, she had on some makeup, and she was dressed. Katharine was pouring out two insulated cups of coffee for them when Margot emerged from her room, ready to go. Katharine was impressed. “Wow, you did that fast.”
Margot smiled. “I’m organized. I had this whole outfit set aside for an ‘Oops, my alarm didn’t go off’ day. This is the fastest hairstyle I know. Nothing to it.” She took the coffee Katharine offered and they were in their separate cars, heading in different directions, before Katharine even realized that she had taken the cup from her friend’s cupboard and driven off with it without even asking. But they both knew she’d bring it back. She didn’t need to ask.
Friends knew that.
Something settled in her soul.
She had to head home first; she couldn’t wear the same clothes again. She had to put a change of clothes into a bag and had to throw the wet vac into the trunk to take to Margot’s that evening.
She didn’t see Zachary in the hallway as she approached her door. She thought she might, given the early hour, but the hallway was thankfully empty.
The last she had seen of him, he had stared down the black wolf and told it to get out. Eventually, it had turned and walked out of the bedroom, and Zachary had followed it. Even though her heart was about to thump out of her chest, she had pretended then to be asleep.
Katharine had wanted to believe it was just a big dog. Zachary certainly hadn’t acted like it was anything other than a pest in his bedroom. He had even muttered something about watching dogs. And she had thought maybe the fact that it had looked like all the other animals, as though this particular species didn’t come in all black, was just a coincidence. It must have been a real dog. Otherwise, wouldn’t Zachary have been as shocked as she had been the first time she’d seen an animal in her apartment?
She had tangled it all up in her brain. She’d concocted excuses–Zachary was dog-sitting, he was half-asleep and didn’t realize he shouldn’t have a dog in his unit, it was just a dog, she’d just had too much to deal with–but she couldn’t write it off anymore.
Not now, when it made more sense.
Zachary had not been freaked out by the dog because he knew exactly what it was.
She had two creatures following her, and they appeared to be acquainted with each other. As she stood there in her own hallway, ideas bloomed in her brain. Puzzle pieces started connecting. The pissing match that had erupted between the two of them at Light & Geryon when Zachary came to get her for lunch … they had known far more than she at that time. The fact that the two had appeared almost simultaneously in her life. It was clear now they had known each other before she had known either of them.
She was putting more things together in her head when she got the last bolt undone and opened her front door … to utter chaos.
The TV was tipped facedown onto the floor. Her bookshelf was practically naked; books littered the floor in front of it, some with torn covers. Angry but unafraid, she stalked through the rest of the unit. Her bedcovers were tossed about, her clothing on the floor. Her lotions and toothpaste and all the little bottles and tubes that were on the counter had all been tipped. Most were piled in the sink.
There was no message on the mirror here.
There was no soot on the carpet.
Katharine went back out to the living room and lifted the corner of the TV to see if it was broken or just knocked over. From what she could see, it appeared intact. She set it back down.
She had thought the TV would be the deciding factor. If it were broken, she’d call the police, report a crime, and file an insurance claim. But even as she squatted down to lift it, she realized it didn’t matter. She wasn’t going to file this with any agency.
There was no way she wanted to see the police in conjunction with another crime. She’d been through enough. Nothing looked truly ruined except a few of the books. She realized then that, even if it had been bad, she still wouldn’t have reported it. What good would it do? It would bring the cops. It would raise her insurance. And it would have tons of other people traipsing through her condo when she knew they wouldn’t find a thing.
And her blasé attitude would only swing the cops right back around to the Mary Wayne case they still hadn’t closed. Zachary had gotten them off her back, but they could get right back on so easily with something like this.
She decided to sort through the clothing for an outfit to wear to work. Coming from Margot’s had put her on a short schedule, and finding her apartment like this had definitively made her late. Katharine sighed. She wouldn’t be able to use it as an excuse at work because she wasn’t reporting it. The last time she’d alerted someone that she wasn’t reporting things, Margot had crawled down her throat and told her she had a demon.
She was pulling a skirt from under a pile of her things when Zachary appeared at her front door. Almost swearing under her breath at her stupidity, she realized she’d left it open.
His startled expression seemed genuine, but what did she know?
His voice carried to her as he picked his way across the mess to stand in her bedroom doorway. “You weren’t home when this happened, were you?”
She looked him up and down, trying to figure what he was about. She had first believed him a demon and run straight to Allistair. Then she had believed the same of Allistair and run to Zachary, thinking he was human. But the timing and the painting had changed her beliefs. When she added in the encounter with the black dog, she knew that there was no safe choice–neither man was as he appeared.
She didn’t look him in the face. Which was he? Angel or demon? She needed to figure it out, and fast. “Of course I wasn’t home.”
“Katie, you should stay with me until this gets cleared up.”
She knew better and still didn’t look him in the face. “I have a place to go. I don’t think that will be necessary.”
“Are you going to call the police?”
A slow calm settled over her and she felt her back straighten, felt the need to make her own decisions, no matter what Zachary might be. “No, there won’t be any prints, and you and I both know it won’t serve any purpose.”
“We do?” He took another step into the room, either unable to sense that she was uneasy with that or simply not caring.
“Yes, we do.” Holding an undamaged outfit from her fingertips, she looked up at him and this time met his eyes. Instantly she was beset with feelings of safety and concern. They washed over her like water, and she felt better. She wanted to stay with him; a niggling sensation at the back of her brain told her she’d be safe there. She didn’t listen to any of it. “Please, leave. I have to get to work.”
He turned to leave. But at the door to her unit he turned back to her. “Be careful.”
“Always.”
• • •
Allistair waited patiently for Katharine to show up at work. She couldn’t afford to be late these days. She had to come.
So in human form he spoke with Lisa, walked the hallways to grab a cup of coffee from the break room, and said hello to as many Light & Geryon employees as he could. There was so much money controlled here, yet none of them knew how they were changing the world.
They had faces that were neither innocent nor happy, but they had their work ethic. And their paychecks. Like most people, their colors changed day by day, melding into the air around them. A few people maintained the shade unique to those who had found themselves. But very few of those humans worked here at Light & Geryon.
Slowly Katharine was becoming stable, no longer just floating along, reacting to the few things that happened directly to her and ignorant of the changes she made in the world by doing so. If he could get to her, he could change that. She could use this place, make its impact bigger, if she wanted.
Stepping into the men’s room, he checked himself in the mirror. He could see the large eyes and long teeth shimmering just under the human form he kept remaking each time he incorpo
rated. This shape had been the easiest; it was the way he had naturally formed as he passed through the layers to get to Katharine’s level.
He was proud of his dark skin tone. It was darker than last time he’d had a human assignment, meaning that, in spite of his many failings, he had made some progress. His human eyes were dark too. Always a good sign of achievement. But his real eyes, the eyes of the creature he was, saw beyond all that. They saw his true self, the skin and the form and the muscles that would be called overdeveloped in human terms.
He was consistently right here in front of them, and they didn’t see it. If you didn’t look further, you missed what was there for the taking.
Just as Katharine had taken for granted that there was only one creature. Didn’t she see that the black animals were different from the spotted? She had only just now recognized that he and Zachary had both showed up in her life at the same time–she was only now putting those pieces together. Though he was impatient with her, she wasn’t really any slower than most other humans would have been. He left the restroom, knowing full well none of those around him would look further than the façade or try to see what was there under his seemingly innocuous surface. Shame on them.
He was pouring the coffee as his senses perked. Katharine.
She was coming up from the garage.
He stood there in the break room and tried to look as though he wasn’t waiting. He sipped at the coffee, savoring the still, cool ceramic against his lip and the stinging burn of the bitter liquid on his tongue. He made sure to notice these things.
Katharine was coming around.
She was putting pieces together.
He wasn’t long for this body.
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