Sight Unseen

by AnonYMous

  “Tired,” Amelia said. “I get it. That was a lot, today. We can call it an early night if you want.”

  As they parted ways on the sidewalk outside, Amelia gave her a hug. “Just remember, don’t second-guess yourself.”

  Amelia knew her too well. “I shouldn’t have gone. The moment he said he wanted to meet my mother—I should have called it off. I knew it would screw with my head.”

  “It was a tough call.” Amelia hesitated. “But—Kate, maybe it was worth it. You’re out of debt! That’s all you wanted, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Some people would call that a miracle.” Amelia squeezed her arm. “Really—don’t be too hard on yourself.”

  With a weak smile, Kate turned toward home.

  Out of debt. Two days ago, it had seemed like the impossible dream. But now, all at once, it was real. She’d been unburdened of her largest anxiety, the reason for her insomnia. She could resume her graduate work. It was a miracle.

  Why, then, did she feel like she was sinking?

  A breeze passed over her, startling her, making her gasp. She came to a stop, heart drumming, conscious of the odd look from a man walking his dog nearby. The sidewalk ahead was empty, the amber light of the streetlamps calling out a mineral glitter from the cement.

  The leaves rustled overhead. Leaves rustled in normal breezes. This was a thoroughly normal breeze, which passed over her as weakly as an exhaled breath.

  What would it mean if your mother saw more clearly than you do?

  “I am losing my mind,” she whispered.

  Maybe that had always been her real fear: that she would end up like her mother. That this particular lunacy ran in the blood.

  Or maybe she was just the victim of a severely cruel prank.

  The possibility felt like a lifeline. Yes, of course. Maybe the check was fake. Maybe this whole thing had been a sick sham set up by Galen, or her mother—some trick to lure her back to the compound. Maybe North was an actor, a paid actor, and when she tried to deposit the check, she’d find out that she’d been conned.

  She cut right, away from her house, walking briskly, faster and faster, until she was all but running. The bank was still open, lights lit, counters manned. Ten minutes until closing. She slipped in as a college student exited, walked straight to the counter, sick with hope.

  “I’d like to deposit this,” she said, and handed over the check.

  The teller accepted it with practiced blandness, as though people came in to deposit fifty thousand dollars every day. He slotted the check into the scanner machine, watched it slide back and forth. “All right,” he said. “Just dip your card.”

  She cursed softly.

  He frowned up at her. “Pardon me?”

  “It’s real?”

  His scowl deepened. “Do you have some reason to think it’s counterfeit?”

  “No.” Her lips felt numb. “I just—I want to be sure.”

  He squinted at the check. “The watermark looks correct.” He lifted the check to the light. “As does the holographic thread.” He offered a brief smile. “Perfectly real.”

  Clearly he thought this verdict should reassure her.

  “Right,” she whispered.

  “Now, if you’ll dip your card?”

  She dug in her bag for her bank card. Her fingers shook as she punched in her PIN.

  Back out on the street again, she felt dizzy. Then, suddenly, weak in the knees.

  She sat down on the curb. So, the check was real. So what? It didn’t mean she hadn’t been conned. Her mother had cash to spare.

  Granted, the con itself was weak—Pangaea hadn’t taken particular advantage of her visit.

  But the point was, she’d managed to drag Kate back into her delusional world. Well done, Mom! Your daughter’s genuine emotional distress and oncoming panic attack, all for the low, low price of fifty thousand—

  No. It didn’t make sense. Her mother had a weak grip on reality. (No grip on reality.) But she wasn’t outright malicious.

  “God damn it.” Kate pulled out her cell phone and scrolled through her contacts list. Hit send.

  The phone rang only once before North picked up. “Yes?”

  “Are you working for my mother?”

  “You know the answer to that.”

  “Answer me anyway.”

  “No, Kate. I am not working for your mother.”

  He sounded mildly amused, damn him. She groped for something else to say. “Then . . .”

  He waited. The silence crackled.

  “Was there something else you wished to ask?” He sounded mildly impatient. “If not, I will disconnect.”

  Again with that weird phrasing.

  His sigh filled her ear. “Very well. Good eve—”

  “Wait.” Her throat worked around another question. She couldn’t ask it. Asking such a ridiculous question would mean that she really had lost it.

  Did you control that wind?

  Instead, what came out was: “Where are you?”

  For she was hearing now, in the background, the sound of music. Salsa music? Clatter and conversation.

  “The Mission,” he said. “I’m paying a visit to your stepfather this evening.”

  “Ex-stepfather.”

  In reply, she could all but hear him shrug. “Would you like to join me?” he said. “I can wait.”

  Her hand tightened until her phone made a cracking noise. “I . . . don’t know.” Some part of her, the deepest and strongest instinct in her, told her that joining him tonight might mean more than she could possibly guess.

  Maybe more than she could handle.

  “I’ll give you an hour to decide,” he said. “Make up your mind on the way. I’m at Sixteenth and Valencia.”

  The line went dead.

  Chapter 6

  Kate had misspent many college weekends in the Mission, bouncing from bar to salsa club to late-night burrito shop, but the address that North texted was unfamiliar to her. It turned out to be a hole in the wall, a real dive bar that had once been something special, with a mahogany bar belted in brass railing.

  North waited in a booth near the back, a drink untouched on the table before him. She saw the moment he spotted her. A strange look crossed his face—relief, transforming instantly into something fiercer, more concentrated and covetous. It made her stomach clutch. Her mouth went dry.

  But in the next moment, she felt uncertain all over again. He leaned forward, out of the shadows of the booth, and the blandness of his expression announced more clearly than words how little it mattered to him that she’d come.

  She really was losing her mind. Imagining things, seeing what wasn’t there. Her nerves were back, burning in her belly like poison.

  She ordered a martini before joining him.

  “I’ve never been in here,” she said as she sat. Had she not been looking for the address, she would have walked right by. The windows were security glass, no sign outside.

  “It’s one of the old guard,” he said. “Opened in the fifties. Fewer and fewer of them survive, these days.”

  That note of regret in his voice made her slant him a skeptical glance. In a dark sweater that looked to be cashmere, his blond hair expertly ruffled, his jaw glinting with silver stubble, he looked like the dictionary definition of gentrifier. “So you’re from this area?”

  “You sound doubtful.”

  “Your accent isn’t exactly American.”

  He shrugged. “Born abroad. But raised here.”

  “Huh.” She sat back, befuddled. A San Franciscan since childhood? “These days, that makes you a rare breed.”

  His smile was quick and flashing. “Rarer than you know.”

  The remark skated too close to her unnamed intuitions. She found herself growing uneasy again.

  The cocktail made a good excuse for a tangent. She clasped her hands around the cold, sweating glass. “You know the martini was invented in San Francisco?”

  “I didn’t.�
��

  “Yeah, some miner during the Gold Rush stopped on the way to Martinez and asked for a serious drink. Later on, the bartender at the Occidental dropped the sweet stuff from the recipe. Voila: from the Martinez to the Martini.”

  “Apocryphal,” he said.

  “Oh yeah? How so?”

  He opened his mouth, then paused. “It seems apocryphal,” he said mildly.

  Again, that uncomfortable feeling skated through her. I haven’t met your kind in two centuries.

  How old did he think he was, exactly?

  Roughly twenty in your years.

  God, why was she here with him? What had really brought her over the bridge tonight? If she wanted to be entertained by lunatics, she could always go home to Hidden Springs.

  She lifted out her toothpick and bit down on a cheese-stuffed olive. “So you grew up here. I guess that means you’ve got family here, too?”

  He wasn’t an expressive guy, but she was beginning to learn how to read him. The minute hardening of his jaw was as close as he came to tensing up. “Until recently,” he said.

  “They moved?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did it get too expensive for them?” That was the usual story.

  He gave her a faint smile. “They didn’t like the changes they were seeing.”

  “Oh.” She glanced around the dimly lit bar, which was increasingly crowded by young guys in hoodies, most of them staring into smartphones. “Yeah, the tech boom really did a number on us.”

  “That wasn’t their complaint,” he said. “They disliked the rising discontent.”

  His family sounded like assholes. “It’s been rough for people.”

  “Indeed. A growing number of homeless. Hunger, poverty, want. The angered climate.”

  “Angered climate?”

  “Climate change, you’d call it.” He turned over his hand, his bare palm cupped, as though to hold the pool of red light from the neon beer sign overhead. “Our calling is to help. To tell the history to shape the history.”

  Yep, okay, it was getting weird. She took a long breath. “Like a bard.”

  His smile was swift. “You did some research today.”

  She shifted in her seat. “I found some fan fiction online, yeah. Something about Irish mythology—”

  “Celtic,” he said. “The Irish nation came later.”

  Okay, her heart was pounding now. She didn’t want to go down this road. “So, what? Your family didn’t want to help. So they . . .?”

  His face darkened again. “They retreated.”

  His open contempt unnerved her. “You don’t approve.”

  His hand closed, fisted. He drew it out of sight beneath the table. “As you know,” he said evenly, “family can be difficult.”

  She felt a pulse of surprise. Of all people, he seemed the least likely to have family troubles.

  It made him seem more human, somehow. Ha! She settled deeper into the booth. “So you see them much?”

  “Not in several years.” He lifted his drink, but as far as she could tell, he didn’t swallow. “I do miss them. Much as you miss her.”

  She painted her initials in the condensation on the table. She wanted to deny it. To say that all she missed was the land, and the trees.

  Instead, she decided to be truthful—with herself, as well as him. “She wasn’t always like this, you know. She used to be able to . . . balance things. To be a mother as well as a . . .” She would not say witch. “Landlord.”

  “Perhaps she’ll find her way back to that balance.”

  “Unlikely.”

  “She misses you as well. That much is obvious.”

  “Is it?” She felt doubtful.

  “It’s no wonder if you can’t see it.” He sounded almost gentle. “But it was clear to a stranger.”

  The notion made her weirdly agitated. “Well, if she misses me, it’s her fault. She has to know that. I told you about Galen—my ex. He used me to get to her, and she encouraged him. What mother does that? Takes in a guy who’s been lying to your daughter, using her. And for what? To join your crazed little club.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said after a moment. “That must have been difficult.”

  He sounded like he meant it. But she didn’t want his sympathy. “You know he was in med school when he joined Hidden Springs? He could have done something important with his life. She encouraged him to drop out.”

  “Yes. She believes that what she offers is equally important to the world.”

  Kate flinched. “That’s the problem with being delusional, I guess.”

  “Call her what you will, Kate.” He spoke very softly now, as though he sensed how primed she was to explode. “At least she aspires to address the world’s problems. She doesn’t run from them.”

  “Like your parents, do you mean?”

  Maybe she’d meant to hurt him. But he nodded readily. “Yes.”

  A disbelieving little laugh escaped her. He thought leading a cult was better than running off to Europe or wherever? “I guess everyone’s parents look better than our own.”

  “Her aims are noble. You can’t argue with that.”

  “Sure, I guess you could see it that way.” But it was very, very generous. “I think, though . . . maybe we should reserve our praise for people who do real good. Pangaea sits up in those hills and chants for peace. She’s not really helping anyone.”

  “There’s a fine human saying,” he murmured. “‘The thought’s what counts.’”

  Her stomach clenched. She decided to overlook the fact that he spoke of human sayings as though there were other species to choose from. “That’s a nice cliché. But it’s full of shit. Impact is what counts. Not intentions.”

  His head tipped. He was studying her very closely. “I agree with you.”

  “Good.”

  “You could have a very powerful impact,” he said. “You have no idea of your own potential.”

  Beneath the table, her hands balled into nervous fists. “Don’t.” She cleared her throat. Not now. Not . . . yet. “So, your family bailed. Where’d they go?”

  He studied her a long moment, then shrugged. “As far away as possible.”

  That wasn’t exactly an answer. “So what are you doing about it? All these problems you wish they’d help with. You said you’re a businessman. Let me guess, you’re on the boards of a few charities. Throw a few galas every year.”

  He was still holding her eyes. “Your cynicism is very attractive, you know.”

  She blinked, thrown off. He said it so evenly that he couldn’t intend it as a real compliment. But his dark eyes were steady, and they had a weird, dizzying effect on her, as usual. She felt herself blush.

  “I . . . gee, that’s the best compliment ever.”

  He smiled. “Cynicism is a crucial requirement for seeing clearly. Of course, for true sight, cynicism must be paired with a sense of the possible.”

  “Optimism never was my strength.”

  “Optimism is pleasant. But what I mean is a sense of . . . the world’s wide scope.” He spread his hand on the table. She’d never had a thing for guys’ hands, but his were . . . riveting. Grace and strength combined.

  “Are you a musician?” she asked abruptly.

  “Yes.”

  “Piano?”

  He shook his head.

  “What, then? Trumpet?” Something requiring dexterous fingers.

  “Not an instrument you’d be likely to know.”

  She took a deep breath. “Okay, you keep hinting at it. Just tell me.”

  “Tell you what?”

  “Whatever it is you keep dancing around.”

  He arched a silver brow. “Be more specific.”

  Jesus. “You don’t really think you’re an elf, right?”

  “No, that was your mother’s notion.”

  “Or a fairy,” she said impatiently.

  “Not the word I would use, either.”

  “You don’t really think you’ve been
alive for two centuries.”

  His expression did not change. “Do you need a denial?”

  She made a frustrated noise. He sounded like her therapist. What is it you need to hear? “I need . . .” An explanation. “Today, the—the wind . . . ” It would sound insane if she put it into words. “I just don’t . . . ”

  He rose without warning, leaving her to scramble after him.

  “Where are you going?” she said as she caught up to him at the door.

  “To Eagle Johnson’s.” He offered her a sideways smile. “A cynic cannot be persuaded. So come, then. Discover the truth for yourself.”

  Chapter 7

  North knew he had crossed a line. It was not his place to pry into the business of mundanes, much less to drag one of them against her will into the Seeing world.

  But this afternoon in the forest, when he had listened to Kate Marsh speak of the trees, he had understood the truth far better than she. The small talents of her mother had birthed something larger and altogether fiercer in her. ‘Mundane’ did not describe her.

  The trees knew it. They had offered their friendship to her in respect and recognition of a fellow force. In the spell-riddled landscape her mother had labored to create, where the vegetation withered beneath the discord of conflicting energies, Kate’s regular visits had kept the fairy ring healthy and thriving. She would have been glad to know that, if only she had been willing to hear it.

  What a pity for her to live in ignorance of the favor she had done the trees. And what a pity for her talents to go to waste, when he could make such use of them.

  Impact, not intention. So she claimed to value. With her aid, his impact would be far more effective. Many of the ills gnawing at the city were human in design. But chaos inspired chaos. As the mundane world crumbled, so too did the magic that drew from its energy. Increasingly, inspired by the disorder around it, the Seeing world forgot the wisdom of old rules.

  Kate Marsh could help change that. She had the potential to punish those who broke the Law. She needed a tutor, though. And first and foremost, she needed to See the world, and herself, for what they truly were.

  Impact, not intention. Her philosophy. What matter, then, if his intentions were not entirely honorable? For she was lovely, as well as powerful. And North was acutely aware, as he walked beside her down the dark and lively street, of the sway of her dark hair—and the brush of her hand against his—and the scent and warmth of her body. He was acutely aware of her, and of little else. Her presence deafened him to the mundane chaos, and after two centuries of cacophony, the muting effect of her presence felt as restorative as a human’s weekend trip to the spa.