Margot was asking questions faster than she could talk, and certainly faster than Katharine could answer them. “It had feathered wings? What did you do? Did you touch it?”
“No, I threw my lamp at it.”
“You did?” Margot was in awe. “Why?”
“Angels don’t have feathers.” Katharine shrugged. It had seemed so logical at the time. People thought angels had birdlike wings, but that wasn’t what she had been seeing; it wasn’t what had appeared in the painting at all. So, upon seeing the creature reach out to her, contrary to hundreds of years of belief, she had instantly grabbed something to throw at it.
“Did you hurt it?”
“No, it disappeared before the glass even got to it. The lamp shattered on the wall.”
Margot absorbed what she could, then took a stab at it though she clearly didn’t think all the pieces worked. “So then you stepped in the glass and came over here?”
“No, I went back to sleep.”
“What?” Margot frowned at her.
“Yeah.” Though it didn’t make much sense at all now, it had seemed so logical at the time. What else was she going to do? She hadn’t wanted to ruin Margot’s date, so she hadn’t called, hadn’t told her about the false angel with feathered wings. Hadn’t shared the latest detail at 2:00 a.m. She’d laid down to wait for morning.
But now she told her about waking up with Allistair, and even though she tried to explain what she had felt when he held her, she couldn’t.
She didn’t have the words to explain it to herself, let alone someone else. And she was too embarrassed to try to say how swept away she had been, how fervently she had wanted him, how clear her thoughts had been when she did. It was only later that she realized what she was doing–and who with–and had gotten so upset. But she’d known it was him even while she slept. She would recognize the smell of him and the feel of his body heat anywhere. And she’d wanted him.
She didn’t know how to say any of that to her friend. But she did know how to say what she wanted. “We have to do the protection spell again. Allistair is more powerful. It worked with Zachary, but Allistair seemed to get through it.”
Margot’s eyes snapped wide. “It worked?”
“Yes, but I think only on Zachary.”
“How do you know?” Her friend leaned forward, her grin growing wider. “How could you tell?”
“Because when I talked to him, I saw what I was supposed to feel, I knew it, but I didn’t feel it. It just went past me. I don’t think that makes any sense, but …”
“It does. I get it.” Margot was nothing if not organized, and even as she was acting gleeful at their initial success, she was motoring around the apartment in her T-shirt nightgown and puffy, feathery slippers. In moments, she had everything they needed for the protection spell. They had bought three of each item, prepared to run the spell three full times if necessary. They had completely over-purchased. The herbs that were smoked and the candles, the salt–all of it was reusable. So it turned out they had enough materials to concoct protection spells until Armageddon. Or at least Katharine hoped they did.
They worked until the sun came up, doing the only thing they knew how to do to keep Katharine safe.
• • •
At 8:00 a.m. that morning Katharine had stood in front of her mirror and called Margot again.
She had swept up the glass in her bedroom and run the vacuum over it to get any small shards. She’d picked out a suit and laid it on the bed while she climbed into the shower. For some reason she had looked around before she climbed in, as though that would make any difference.
At least when she had turned the water on, she felt like she was alone.
When she climbed out, the message had been there.
So she’d copied it diligently twice–just like Margot. Then she had called her friend. After explaining all of it, telling her that this message was in the steam, and waiting through a small handful of questions, she asked one of her own. “Did you get the translation of the last message?”
“Oh crap!” Katharine thought she heard a horn blare in the background. Perhaps Margot was on her way to work? Margot sputtered, “I forgot to tell you. With everything else going on, I just forgot. It said ‘Trust in me’… Or at least I’m relatively sure it did.”
But who was she supposed to trust? Who had left the message? The black dog? The one who ransacked her apartment? Were they the same?
The only one Katharine really trusted these days was Margot. And she had known the librarian a shorter length of time than any of the others.
She didn’t speak for a few minutes, just stood there looking at the almost too neatly written message on her mirror and wondering what me paenitet et te amo could possibly mean.
Surely, it didn’t mean … no.
Te amo had to be something different in Latin. Not … “Katharine! Are you there?”
Jostling her brain out of its wandering, Katharine assured her friend that she was there and that she was okay. But she still stood there with her hair dripping rivulets of water all around her, her towel tucked up under her arms. Her bare feet left imprints on the carpet while Margot talked.
“I also found an article about shape-shifting in demons. Who knows how true it is, but I found the same kind of information in several different unlinked sources. So I tend to think it’s probably got the right idea at least.”
Katharine waited silently through all of it, watching as the steam cleared from her bathroom mirror, taking the message with it. The words that certainly didn’t mean what they looked like they might.
Margot’s voice filtered through her thoughts. “It said they could shift into any kind of creature, but that they were forbidden to take the shape of another,” Margot continued. “So they can appear as a kind of creature you know, like a dog, but they can’t take the exact shape of your dog.”
Like she cared–she didn’t have a dog. And the words that clutched at her were almost gone.
She must have indicated that she was still listening, because Margot kept talking. “It means they can’t appear to you as each other.”
That, finally, got her attention. She had called to Allistair and the beast had answered yes.
“Can they answer to someone else’s name?”
“I don’t know.” Katharine could practically see her friend shaking her head. “But it did say they could take the shape of a dead person.”
“Oh, okay, I’ll keep my eyes peeled for any dead relatives.” It was meant to be sarcastic, but immediately she thought of her mother and wondered how she would fare if one of them came to her as her mom. Would she be able to resist listening to her?
“No, I was thinking of your coworker.”
Her thoughts shifted immediately at Margot’s suggestion, and Katharine shuddered.
• • •
Katharine was grateful that Allistair didn’t show up at work that day. For eight hours she was given brief respite from the whirl of insanity around her. For just a while, she could pretend she was normal again. She wrote reports, pulled figures on companies, and did what she used to do before Zachary and Allistair had come into her life.
Even though her brain knew otherwise, she managed to keep up the illusion that nothing had changed. For lunch, she picked up a sandwich from a nearby deli and ate it at her desk. Then she went back to filing, informing, researching. She found good investments and recommended them.
She ate dinner at her dining table, by herself. There were plenty of frozen Tupperware dinners in the freezer, as she hadn’t been eating them at nearly the pace she had before all this. The service had even left her a voicemail saying they’d noticed, and asking whether she wanted to cut back next week. She should call them back, but she didn’t feel like it.
Katharine wanted to call Margot, but her friend was out on a date with Liam again. She’d been thrilled to find out that Margot had already met a few of his friends, and that they had known him a long time. He was nice
and outgoing but not particularly charismatic. All of this made Katharine feel a little more secure about Liam.
She changed into loose cotton pants and a T-shirt and watched a sitcom on TV before crawling into bed, scared that something would happen, and just as disturbed that the fear would keep her up all night whether or not something happened.
Though she was afraid, she fell under right away and slept deeply and undisturbed the entire night.
The next morning, she went through the usual routine of getting dressed, putting on makeup, putting up her hair. Her mirror was clean and so was her carpet. The car started with a soft purr, as usual, and she drove to work in silence and on time. The guard waved her into the garage, and she said hello to two different people she recognized as they rode up the elevator.
For the first time, she wondered if others recognized her. People she didn’t know, or people she had met but didn’t remember. Would they remember her? Would they remember the boss’s daughter, regardless of whether they knew anything of her or not?
She looked more closely at faces she passed in the hallway, wondering how many times she had seen them before and never noticed, and not finding any answers in any of them.
When she arrived, her office was deserted, and she hoped it would stay that way. Files were handed off to Lisa, calls were returned. Her morning was perfectly normal.
Until Margot called.
Her friend opened with, “He’s a really good kisser. Do you want to do another protection spell tonight?”
The rapid-fire change in topic didn’t faze Katharine in the slightest way, and she felt the beginnings of a smile on her face. “Oh no you don’t. Spill. I need details.”
There was almost a hum coming through the phone line; surely it was the energy Margot was radiating. “He’s really great. At one point we were coming out of the theater, really late, and this gang was following us–”
“Gang?” Katharine’s eyebrows rose.
“Yeah, about ten guys, faces low, looked like trouble, you know? And the street was deserted; it was just us and an empty parking garage. So as I’m trying to walk faster and faster, Liam tugs my hand and slows us down.” Her words were nearly falling over themselves, and she sounded just a little breathless. “Then he turns around, and he kind of rolls up on his toes, like he’s a predator or something. You know, that stance that only the best-trained fighters get but everyone can recognize?” She didn’t wait for Katharine’s answer. “He looks them point blank in the face and says, ‘Can I help you?’ They all just scattered. It was so …”
At the sound of the sigh on the other end of the line, Katharine supplied “Dreamy?” and then she laughed.
As the shards of her own joy pierced through her reality, she sat with her cell phone clutched in one hand and suddenly realized she’d gone right back to coasting through her old life the past few days. While she was grateful that things had been quiet recently, she had slipped far too easily into her old routines.
She’d done everything the way she always had–without actually experiencing any of it. She hadn’t enjoyed her food, or even the silly TV show she’d watched last night. She hadn’t even double-checked the companies she recommended investing in.
So now she changed what she could, and she took a deep breath in and dove into the conversation with her whole self. She wanted to know about Margot, about the date. She wanted to be a better friend. “He’s a fighter?”
“Turns out he was elite military. But he can’t tell me more than that or he’d have to kill me.”
Katharine laughed again, this time from somewhere deeper. “What did you say?”
“That I’m becoming Wiccan and I’ll cast a spell on him to make him tell me his top-secret military stories.”
“Is that true? Are you becoming Wiccan?”
“I think so.” Margot sighed and her voice lost the silly quality it had held just a moment before. “This is the first time I’ve seen anything work, and I have to say all this has changed my perspective from ‘Go to church on Sundays and major holidays and pray you’re in the right religion’ to ‘Step up and do something.’”
“You don’t think we’re messing with something we shouldn’t be?”
Margot laughed. “I think it’s messing with us! Besides, I always had trouble with a God who put temptation right in front of me but expected me to never go for it. That just seems like bad parenting.”
“Yeah, me too.” She sighed herself this time, and felt it in her chest.
“Do you want to come over tonight and bulk up the protection spell? We can grab supplies and do the binding, too, if you want.”
It was an invite like she never would have thought she’d say yes to. And it was the best thing she’d heard in a long time. “Should I pick up Chinese on the way? Or should we just grab some while we’re out?”
Katharine made plans and closed her phone, and finally took a good look around her office.
Her shoes pinched her toes. She kicked them off and enjoyed the feel of the plush carpet beneath her stockinged feet. It was a waste to have such thick pile when everyone wore heels.
The room was a little too warm. The shades were closed as they had been almost every day she’d worked there. She wasn’t even sure what the view was.
The walls were a shade of cream that bordered on ecru–the same as every other office in the building. Katharine wanted to believe that she kept the color as it was because she would move offices when she moved jobs again. But the fact was, she wasn’t one for making any waves, not even tiny ones.
Except it was turning out that she was one for making waves. She wanted an office with a color, a real color, not ecru … and open curtains, not blinds. Her desk was a sleek, standard mahogany that Light & Geryon used in all the offices. And really, she hated it. She didn’t like ultra modern lines. She didn’t like the nearly white carpet in her condo and the standard-issue paint color that she had just left on the walls there, too.
She didn’t like anything she had.
And she was only just now seeing that there were things she did like and that they weren’t out of her grasp. She could change the world around her rather than bouncing along in a world that everyone else had changed for themselves. She could be good or bad, right or wrong, or just different. But she could be.
Katharine peeked out the window and nearly gasped when her gaze skipped over the top of a nearby building and landed in the rolling waters off the coast. But she could only see it if she stood at the window. Still, she opened the shades and let the sun in.
Plopping down at her desk, she began writing up her latest paperwork in the sunlight that now spilled in around her.
She printed the report and delivered it to Sharon outside her father’s office, refusing to go in. She just needed to leave the folder for him.
Feeling lighter than she had in a long time, Katharine tried to ignore the pinching in her shoes as she headed back to her own office and rounded the last corner.
Blue sky greeted her beyond the glass panes. She stared at the view outside her own windows for a moment before she spotted Allistair sitting at his desk.
Sucking in just a little air at her shock at finding him there, Katharine fought for composure. “You’re late.”
“No one will notice.”
He was standing before the door swung closed behind her. Startled, Katharine turned to see it latch shut, just as if a person’s hand had pushed it. When she looked back at Allistair, she lurched backward. He now stood right in front of her.
“Katharine.”
“No.” She didn’t need to hear what he asked to know what her answer would be. She didn’t want to hear any of it anyway. Her right foot snaked out behind her and she tried to step back.
Reaching out for her, Allistair clasped her hands. Lacing his fingers through hers even as she struggled to get free, he brought their palms together. “Don’t fight, please.”
But she did. “What are you doing?”
She tried to pull her hands away, but his grip was like iron. His face pressed close to hers and he smelled like something she wanted.
Why did she want him? Why was he able to get through? Was he just that strong? She found her voice for a second. “Stop.”
“I can’t, Katharine. I have to do this.” There was something in his tone that made her look directly at him.
His eyes were tired and clearly far older than his years on earth appeared to be. But the sadness in them didn’t change her feelings. “Please don’t.”
“I don’t want to, but I have to.” He shook his head a little and tried to claim her gaze again. She didn’t let him.
“I want what comes from this, so I have to do it. Just watch.”
Without her permission, her eyes fell shut. And just like with Zachary, a world opened up in her vision.
A police officer in a dirty, dusty town fought back against gunfire, until his own gun exploded in his face, blowing half of it off. The scene continued as he fell forward to the ground. The gunners grabbed several boys where they crouched, hiding, and hauled them away while their mothers screamed. One mother was shot for the noise she was making.
The scene that had intruded into her brain shifted to a family in the middle of nowhere. No father, only a mother and five skinny children who were clustered around her. Katharine listened as the two oldest begged their mother to let them work, promised they could do it, that they could bring in money. But somehow, even though she was only a visitor to this scene, Katharine knew what the mother would have to do to get her boys a spot in the mines. Her stomach turned as the mother agreed and they walked back toward the shantytown. But there was nowhere else to go.
Again, a new scene appeared. A mother and father, both in threadbare flannels and thick work boots, huddled against each other as the doctor gave them the prognosis for their child. There wasn’t enough money for her care, and all the money in the world wouldn’t cure her.
She watched as a man in his own home made his maid perform for him. Lewd things that Katharine had never wanted to see. Still the scenes changed. They got worse and worse.
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