God's Eye (55 page)

In the end, only the Light & Geryon building had fallen; everything else in the city, even the things right around the building, had stayed upright. In fact, it had later been determined that the structure had collapsed not so much due to poor construction but because it had been at the exact epicenter of the quake. It seemed her father had built on a small fault line that no one had seen before, running right through Marina del Rey.

Katharine still wondered sometimes whether Zachary had caused it, whether in his anger he had done more than roar his fury and had actually destroyed something. She probably wouldn’t ever know, and wasn’t sure she wanted to.

It had been a long year, and she really had nothing by which to mark where she’d been at the beginning of it. She hadn’t even celebrated her last birthday. But in that time things had changed so drastically.

She’d lost Light & Geryon, both the building that had stood as an icon in her life and the people who had made up the company. And she’d lost her father; she’d somehow thought he’d always be there as stalwart and unchanging as the brick. She was glad she had told him that she loved him.

There had been a handful of fights she’d had with Uncle Toran about her business this last year. And even more that she hadn’t. She had bitten her tongue so many times knowing that telling him what she thought was a waste of her breath. But he started some of the arguments anyway. Each time he learned more about what she was doing, what she was trying to build, he told her in no uncertain terms how stupid an endeavor it was, and how it would never work. People wanted money. But she had stood her ground, sad that she had to fight so hard for it, and glad that it was hers to hold. And still, she had fought to push all the arguments and hurtful words aside and told him, as often as she could, that she loved him.

He had only offered a nod at that. But it was the best he had to give, and Katharine had come to accept it. He wasn’t going to pick her up and swing her around and tell her he was proud of her. Aunt Lydia had stood by his side, clearly showing her support of her husband’s opinion, but at least she’d stayed silent, neither berating Katharine nor lauding her. And later, Aunt Lydia had stood still and proud at Uncle Toran’s funeral, then sold their stately home and moved back east with her sister. Katharine hadn’t seen or heard from her since.

Her own beach house now had all the rooms painted. She had a better couch, soft and comfy and even a little worn-looking. Sunk into the corner of the soft pillows, she had a nightly habit of curling up and reading, and all too often falling asleep there.

Though she had found the perfect headboard and frame for her bed some time ago, she often didn’t crawl into it until three or four in the morning, and she rarely slept the night through. She was plagued by nightmares, and it seemed for a brief time each night that things were worse than they ever had been during the waking horror she had lived.

She watched Allistair get pulled from the air over and over in her dreams. Each night she lost him again. Sometimes she was in his arms when he would be ripped away. Sometimes she smelled singed flesh and watched as he screamed. Sometimes she did.

In one version she plunged a long sharp knife into his chest while Zachary looked on and smiled. No therapist was required to figure out what that was all about.

After a while, Katharine had finally learned how to make her own friends, as evidenced by the small but true turnout to her first real birthday party. The first one she’d had where people were invited only because they liked her and wanted to celebrate the year. But even so, there was no boyfriend. No one she was even interested in.

Katharine had not yet figured out how to make that connection. And she wasn’t sure she would figure it out either. Margot had held back and not pushed her, seeming to sense just how painful that would be.

But the year had brought other interesting changes. This house was Margot and Liam’s. As of a month ago, they jointly held the mortgage. Green Sea was not making money hand over fist, nor were investors lining up and beating down the door. But each month brought a few more. Each advertisement or drive they did found a few more people with a few extra dollars who thought those dollars were worthless unless they did something good.

Green Sea had propped up a work-study college that had started to fail. The students and graduates had rallied, but so many were liberal arts majors and employed as social workers that the alumni alone had not been able to save the school that had saved them. Green Sea had done it. And a handful of the grads and professors had in turn joined the investment pool.

The company had poured money into an inventor who had developed a disaster setup that he planned to sell to every fire station, ambulance owner, and hospital around the country. Green Sea had gone all in, because his invention not only sped up triage setups and saved lives, but his business plan had provided for a free kit donated to an impoverished area in another country for every ten units sold. They were still putting money into production, but Katharine had hopes that when it went on the market in two months, they would see the predicted turnaround. And maybe even more investors. It was now a game of wait and see.

Some of the people at the party worked for her and Margot. Jeff had leaned over and wished her a happy birthday, regardless of what Margot’s cake said, as he put it. Then they had all sung to her. It was the first time the song had been performed for her by amateurs rather than a hired band. Well, she thought the song was for her even though they had all warbled,
“Haaaappy Biiiirthday, Kaaathannnne.”

Over her laughter and the last line of the song she thought she heard Margot protesting. “It says ‘Katharine’! Katharine!”

The candles were lit in front of her, and they all cheered and catcalled, and a voice somewhere in the back shouted out, “Make a wish!”

For a moment, while the candles flickered in front of her, she thought about what to wish for.

She wanted to sleep at night.

She wanted to not feel guilty.

She wanted to not miss him, and not miss what she hadn’t seen clearly enough until it was far too late. She wanted …

So, just as Allistair had told her it would work, just as Margot had found that spells were often powered on a burst of human breath, Katharine closed her eyes, held tightly to her thoughts, and blew.

•  •  •

It hadn’t worked.

The thought had passed through her mind as Katharine stood there in the coffee shop in the middle of fifteen people, all more alert than she was. It seemed she had that thought about once or twice a day.

She had never slept well after the earthquake, and the well-meant but apparently poorly executed birthday wish had done nothing to help. In fact, if she had to pinpoint a time when things had changed, it had been just after her birthday party when the dreams had escalated. Now, each night she saved Allistair. She chose him. She grabbed at him and pulled, knowing that he was about to be yanked out of her world and fighting to keep him with her. Each night, in her dreams, she did something that prevented the wailing that had ended with the end of his life.

But as soon as they shared a sigh of relief that he was safe, she would kill him. Sometimes by stabbing him, sometimes by burning him at the stake, or shooting him, and worst, by recanting and choosing Zachary.

She had never lied to herself about that–that she had been less than three seconds from choosing Zachary. She might be her own person, but her own person had spent the past year not sleeping well.

Hearing her name called out, she absently reached up to grab the coffee. She’d gone for the brewed stuff rather than the blended throughout the winter. This morning, the weather had changed. It was nearly eighty at 8:00 a.m. and hot coffee wasn’t going to wake her up. This past week, the dreams had gotten even more persistent; so many times, even during a single night, she would see Zachary. He would come up to her, his beautiful face changing, his breath going fetid as he closed the distance. She never could really run or even back up in the dreams. She always cringed, with his sharp teeth threatening just inches from her cheek or mouth. He never said anything other than the same three words:
You killed him.
Most of the time, in the dream, he laughed.

Perhaps even harder to deal with were the dreams where she saved Allistair and the two of them stayed together. They lived a life as a couple. Normal. Buying a house. Making dinner. Playing with a child that she couldn’t quite see clearly but knew was theirs. It all seemed so real. And because of that, when she woke up, she was devastated anew each time.

She tried to come fully awake and gather her thoughts. What was the worst was that they were just dreams. Zachary wasn’t there. And neither was Allistair. She remembered when he had been. She knew the difference. And this was just her subconscious trying to tell her something. Unfortunately, if it wanted her to understand, then it would need to let her get some sleep so she could process things. Clearly, it had other plans.

So this past week she’d been having the coffee shop guys add an extra shot of espresso to her drinks.

In a little while, when the caffeine kicked in, she’d be happy to be at her job, glad to be controlling where all the money went. But right now it was a two-shot morning. So she wasn’t really surprised when she reached up to grab the cup only to have someone else’s fingers brush hers.

As she raised the cup to her lips, he spoke rapidly. “Um, that’s my coffee.”

“Huh?” Well, she hadn’t slept in about a week really. Clearly, she wasn’t going to be eloquent today. She turned the drink around and tried to study it without spilling it. The cup was the right size, the marker scrawled across the lid looked like what she had ordered.

She was turning it the other way to look for a name as he spoke again. “I’m Aaron.”

She blinked and looked briefly at him, but only got the impression of clear green eyes and blond hair before she turned her attention back to the cup.

He was right that it wasn’t her coffee, but … “You’re E-R-I-N?”

This time she did look up and he grinned a little abashedly.

Her brain kicked in as she wanted to laugh and then realized she shouldn’t. “I’m sorry. It
is
L.A., and I shouldn’t judge.”

When he laughed, she decided she could too. Maybe she hadn’t made that big an ass out of herself. She could hope.

“No, I’m Aaron with the standard A.” He reached up to the counter and turned the other nearly identical cup around. “And you are … Catherine?”

She shook her head. “Almost.” She spelled out her name with a shrug.

“Hey, at least they got yours gender-appropriate.” He switched the two cups, gently lifting his out of her hand.

As she looked at her fingers oddly, thinking that it had been really dumb of her to stand there and talk to him about his coffee while she continued to hold on to it, he carefully slipped her drink into the curve of her hand.

“Thank you, Katharine with a K. It was nice to meet you.” He nodded at her slightly, then went on his way.

Katharine made her way out of the coffee shop, sipping her drink through the purple straw and starting to come just a little more awake as the caffeine and the wind off the ocean both hit her brain at the same time. The Green Sea office was just down the street. Close enough to the water to smell it, but far enough away to save the rent money for more important things.

She had two new employees coming in today, and grabbing someone else’s coffee from the counter wasn’t a good indicator of how she would fare in educating the newbies. But she was happy they had two new people. They needed them. Things had been slowly picking up speed since that emergency services device had hit the market. The current investors were seeing real profit in addition to the good feelings promised when they signed up with her firm. And the profits were bringing the investors’ friends on board, too.

They’d learned early on that Katharine’s connections into moneyed families had meant relatively little. Aside from the occasional relative here or there, old wealth didn’t have much concern about the air or the seas or even other people. And those occasional rebellious cousins usually wound up getting themselves disowned. No investment money there. No, they’d had to start from scratch.

And just under a year into it, they were beginning to break even. They worked day and night sometimes. Too many times Margot had been the bearer of bad news–namely, that a really good investment was involved in something they didn’t put money into. A new incubator for underdeveloped preemies was getting marketed at such a high cost that it was bankrupting the parents of the babies who needed it and lining the pockets of the manufacturer.

And that had just been the last disappointment in a long line. It was rare to find something worth her money. Something that would make the world better. So when they found those things, the whole office celebrated. And on the other days, they worked to find the investors who wanted to put their money into those things.

Margot grabbed her and started talking as soon as Katharine came through the door.

That was something else she had learned this past year. She’d never really been a morning person before. She’d just done the morning thing like everyone else in her office. But Margot was the real deal. She was up and around by six, seven at the absolute latest, and cheery-eyed to boot.

This morning, she was waving a stack of papers and no doubt knowing that the diamond on her left hand was glittering as she moved it. Liam had gotten her a princess-cut solitaire. And Katharine guessed that he had liked it because it was square. She didn’t doubt that the one sitting with military precision on Margot’s ring finger was perfectly even. And she knew it had come from upstate New York, not Africa or Australia. Someone had gotten a decent wage, plus hazard pay and benefits, to get that thing out of the ground.

Margot’s voice twinkled like her shiny rock. “Guess what I have?”

“A much better morning disposition than me?” Katharine wrinkled her nose and looked at her friend. The world still looked a little blurry.