Katherine stood on the corner wearing the skirt and jacket she'd laid out that morning, hugging a backpack full of books. She didn't look up as I approached, and when I pulled alongside, she slid into the passenger seat without comment. I checked the rear view mirror to make sure no cars occupied the road behind us, then turned to her.
"Are you okay?"
"Take me to your apartment. I want some answers." Her voice was cold and dead.
"Katherine—"
"Now!" She shouted, staring straight ahead. I put my foot on the gas and pulled away from the curb. The tension between us built for more than a minute while she hugged her books in silence.
"Did you drug me?" she asked suddenly.
I had no idea what to say, so I froze.
"Did you drug me!" she bellowed so loud my ears rang.
"No, but—,"
"Stop the car!"
I continued driving and tried to explain, "It's complicated."
"Screw complicated and screw you! Take me home!" She shouted again, and my heart rammed against my ribs. I pulled over, afraid she might throw herself out of the passenger door. I hadn't known she could get that angry.
"Katherine, I—"
"You bastard asshole liar, I hate you! I hate you! Take me home!" She struck the dash with her fists, then at last she turned to face me. Her eyes were dark and veined with red. "What else did you do to me?"
"Nothing, I didn't drug you!" I finally got a clue and told her what she needed to hear, praying it wasn't too late to salvage the moment.
"Don't lie!" She fumed but made no effort to get out. I took that as a good sign.
"I'm not," I said as calmly as I could, "it really is complicated if you want the whole truth. I'll explain everything, but I need you to see something first." Any version of the truth would be meaningless without evidence, and I didn't think to bring anything with me.
"What do you need me to see?" She asked savagely, "your sex dungeon?" Though her tone didn't relax, the comment was ridiculous, and she had to know it.
"I won't ever lie to you, Katherine, but I can't tell you all the truth, not all at once, or you won't believe me." I sounded just like Miss Gold. Maybe it helped me understand her better. Maybe it made me more afraid of what she hadn't yet told me.
Katherine had visibly softened, but she still snarled her words through the tears streaming down her face. "I want to trust you, but something is wrong and all I know is it has something to do with you."
You don't know the half of it, I thought, but I kept that to myself. Instead, I said, "Let me show you and you can decide. If you believe I deliberately hurt you in any way, I will drive us both to the police station and you can tell them anything you want. I won't deny it."
"I don't want to do that." She huffed.
I watched her for a few more seconds. Tears still glistened on her cheeks, but she wasn't sobbing or shrieking. Tentatively, I took my foot off the brake and when she didn't protest, I drove the rest of the way to my place.
When we arrived just a few minutes later, she looked more tired than angry, and she waited quietly for me to open her door and took my hand when I offered it, though she flinched slightly at my touch. We ascended the stairs without speaking, and I held the door for her as she walked through.
She dropped her blazer over the back of a dining chair, set her backpack on the seat, then marched into the living room and slumped onto the sofa, folding her arms in front of her.
"Okay, make it good." She shot me a lidded glare, but it had lost most of its fire in the past few minutes. I didn't sit immediately, instead, I walked past her and hefted the Glim and the loose pile of artifacts from the floor underneath the window.
"This is what I wanted to talk to you about this morning."
"That junk?" She eyed the contents of my arms with suspicion.
"Yes," I set the pile on the coffee table and took the hagstone out of the bowl.
"Thomas, I want to know what's happening to me."
"It's not happening to you as much as it is to me," I said, "but you're part of it now."
"What does that even mean?"
"I want you to look at me, through this." I handed her the stone, and she took it, turned it over in her hands, and glanced back at me.
"It's a rock."
"It's not just a rock. Look through the hole."
She gave me a long-suffering stare, then held it up to her eye and jumped. She lowered it and looked it over, searching for something that would explain what she'd seen.
"What is this?" She said, mystified but not ready to believe it wasn't a trick.
"It's called a glen something. A hagstone. I don't know a whole lot more about it than you do, to be honest."
"What are the different colors?" She looked through it again.
"For that you need some background, but you would have called me crazy if I didn't show you this fir—"
"Woah," she leaned forward to the table and brushed her hands across the Glim. "The book is beautiful! Where did you get this?"
"Miss Gold."
"Miss what?" She stopped staring at the artifacts and looked up at me with her natural eyes.
"The person I met on Sunday. Stewart Hall, remember?"
"Right, your rendezvous." Either the hagstone was a very good distraction, or my proximity helped Katherine more than I'd anticipated. She was no longer accusing, so I sat down next to her and she didn't resist when I took her hand.
"It started when I met her. Then I drank something and ended up with this stuff," I gestured at the table, "it's a long story."
Katherine held the stone back up to her eye, "Is it supposed to be some kind of magic?"
"Would it help if I said, sort of?"
"Not even a little." She lowered the hagstone and cracked a smile and it eased my heart to see it. "Do you know how full of it you sound?" She added.
"More than you can imagine."
"I can imagine a lot."
"Maybe, but there's a lot more."
"More than this?" Katherine jerked her head toward the coffee table. I nodded, and she sighed deeply, turning the hagstone over in her hands. "Okay," she said finally, "Then you better get started because I'll need time to decide which one of us is more insane."
I explained everything in as much detail as I could remember, starting with Miss Gold, telling Katherine about the tea and the storage unit, and then lapsed into the list of details I'd been given in her dorm. I retained most of it, but I didn't explain it as well or as thoroughly as my godmother had. It took surprisingly little time.
It helped that Katherine didn't interrupt and gave me her full attention. I'd sat in on her lectures once or twice, and she had the same expression there, just silently absorbing, categorizing, sorting, and filing the information away. When I'd finished, she continued staring without speaking, measuring my expression and body language. It was the only habit she possessed that annoyed me, that tendency to psychoanalyze people, but she was good at it.
"Well," she said at last, "I guess you'd better kiss me then."
"What?" I stumbled over my words in disbelief. "That's it?"
"What were you expecting?"
"I don't know. I thought maybe you'd call the hospital and have me admitted."
She smiled ironically. "I haven't ruled it out, but you have evidence and everything you said agrees with how I've been feeling. Don't get me wrong, your story sounds like nonsense but it's consistent with the facts and until I find something that fits them better," she shrugged, "I might as well play along. It's not like you're asking me to kill someone."
"No, but—" I began.
"Do you want me to freak out some more? Because I can if it'll make you feel better."
"Definitely not! You—you're taking this better than I thought you would. Better than I did."
"Thomas," she looked me in the eye for the first time that afternoon, "I trust you. I don't give that away easy, and when I do, I'm all in. I don't know if this is some wild fantasy cooked up in a fever dream or if it's the most real thing that ever happened to me, but If you're losing your mind, we're going to go crazy together."
I had never questioned Katherine's loyalty to our relationship, but hearing her commitment to me brought a lump to my throat and even if I had known what to say I might not have been able to get past it. She turned her hand over and squeezed mine.
"Are we on the same page?" she asked, and I nodded. "Good, because I'm not enjoying this. If you can do something about it, let's go."
"You sure?"
"If nothing else, I'll know if that part of your story is true or if it's just a creative way to get to first base. Either way, I'm ready."
My eyes locked on hers and I hesitantly leaned forward. I felt warmth rise in my cheeks and my lips began tingling long before they touched hers. The lights returned, swimming vigorously around Katherine and a faint but sweet, flowery smell came out of nowhere.
The instant her lips touched mine the world went white again, but not like before. The sparks that had been haunting me for the past few days flared brightly like oncoming high beams, and whether they were in my vision or my head I still couldn't see past them. They didn't stop the feeling of Katherine against me. Her mouth was warm and desperate, but not ravenous. A kind of hesitant tenderness flowed from her, with none of the primal lust, and I was engulfed in that moment, disconnected from the world around me.
She whimpered quietly as I reluctantly sat back. Her eyes were closed, her mouth still wrapped around an empty kiss, but after a second, she sighed deeply and swooned. I reached out and caught her shoulder.
"Are you okay? Katherine?" I feared she would pass out again, and I had no tea.
Her breathing came quicker than usual, but her eyes flickered open, heavy and dramatic. "Yeah, I think so." She placed a palm against her chest, panting and staring into the middle distance, collecting herself. "I just," her eyes turned to meet me and a flush rose to her cheeks.
"What?"
She dismissed it with a shake of her head, "Well as crazy as it sounds, that part is a hundred percent real, and I... Oh..." She closed her eyes again and swayed in her seat.
"Are you sure you're alright?"
"Might need to lie down." She answered. Concern drove off any other thoughts, but it was far better than watching her fall apart. I helped her into my bedroom, sat her on my bed, and, ignoring her instructions from that morning, I most emphatically did not undress her.
The sparks still swam and flickered, but I tuned them out and they retreated to the edges of my vision. When her head found the pillow, she smiled weakly and said, "Thanks for coming." Her words had begun to slur, slow and heavy, like syrup, and she squirmed a little as if luxuriating in the feel of the sheets and the mattress beneath them.
"You had to know I would," I said.
"I did. That's why..."
"Why what?" I asked, but she didn't answer. Her eyes had closed, her breathing steadied, and she dropped into sleep.
I sat at the café table in my dining room trying to figure out the Glim while she rested, and I made a little progress. It led me once again to the preparations for a variety of herbs used in medicines, all of which claimed astonishing properties and any one of them would be worth billions to a pharmaceutical firm if I could figure out the recipes, and if they actually worked.
I'd been hunting for one that might match Miss Gold's when Katherine walked out of the bedroom a bit before sundown, rubbing her eyes, wearing one of my shirts with far too few buttons fastened. The sweet smell returned with her. She never used to wear perfume.
"It didn't take you long to get comfortable," I said as casually as I could manage. I was thrilled to see her smiling, but remained cautious. Our situation was hard for me, and I couldn't imagine what she must be going though.
"I don't like sleeping in my clothes," was all she said. "I thought we covered that."
"But you're okay sleeping in mine?"
"Yours are more like nightshirts on me." She was right. The hem fell past her knees and it was baggy everywhere except her chest and hips. "Besides, I didn't sleep in it, you put me to bed dressed again."
"Then why change now?" Look at her face, I told myself, her face.
"Because I have one change of clothes here and they're wrinkled enough as they are. Do you know how often I'm going to pass out?"
I shook my head.
"Okay then, since you've refused to tuck me in properly, I'm going to be prepared."
"And dirty up all my shirts in the process."
"I could take it off." She suggested and her hands went to the first fastened button.
"No!" I spat quickly, "No, that's fine. Maybe while you're fiddling with the buttons do up the next one too. This is hard enough."
She dropped her hands in compromise, leaving everything as it was. "In case you forgot, I'm the victim here. How is this hard on you?" She wasn't picking a fight. Her intention was a playful exchange, but I wasn't ready to join in.
"It just—I'm not used to thinking about—you know." I gestured, trying to indicate her state of undress, trusting her to pick up on my meaning. "I went through puberty just mashing anything having to do with sex into the back of my mind, and I frankly still don't know how to deal with it."
There must have been more passion in my voice than I realized because her demeanor immediately changed. "I'm sorry, I should have thought of that." She took the trouble to slip one extra button through its hole, though not the next. "I thought I was being cute."
"You're way past cute, and that's the problem. I like it, a lot, and I want more, but everything I told you yesterday... I know it's new to you, but I'm still trying to figure it out too, and it's complicated."
"It's not complicated, you just..." she began pantomiming an innuendo with her hands.
"Will you stop!" I put my own hands up and she giggled.
"Sorry, I couldn't help myself. I'll behave."
Not too much, I hope. The thought went through my head faster than I could rein it in, so I switched gears. "It's okay, I need to learn to manage, but we have other things to work out."
"Like what?"
"Well, school for one. I've been trying to think through how long you can go without..." I stalled.
"Without a little action?"
"Uh, Right."
"Don't overthink it, Thomas."
"Kath, you need me to kiss you, and that apparently puts you to sleep."
"I wouldn't say that where people can hear you."
"I'm being serious. My best guess, without more information, is you can go twelve hours at most if I'm not around."
"Minus nap time." She added.
"Exactly," I nodded, glad she understood my concern. "Which means if you need four to recover, you've got eight hours, and since I don't know how much I'm helping by just being near you we should probably pad the numbers even more. Let's say maybe five hours to get out and do what you've got to do during the day."
She stepped behind me and bent to put her arms around my neck, delivering a kiss to my cheek. "All this math talk is getting me hot and bothered," she mocked. The Glim caught her eyes and she pointed to an ink drawing of a flowering tree, rendered in vivid pinks and subtle blues and grays. "That's pretty, what is it?"
"A tree." I said, not bothering to hide my sarcasm, "Look, I'm all for romance, but we need to figure this out."
She gave me a brief hug then let go. "It's not just me, Thomas, you can't leave me alone." I hadn't thought of that. She'd been fine on her own that morning, but she'd spent most of it in decline.
"But," she continued as she made her way into the living room, "I don't think the world will end tomorrow. Rachel will collect my notes and homework if I ask, and I can slip up to my room to get them. I won't be gone an hour even if I have to walk the whole way, and I'm pretty sure I can manage that."
"If she's going out to pick them up anyway, couldn't she bring it here?"
Katherine checked under a pillow from her end of the sofa, then put it back. "Sure, then she'll think we're shacking up and start asking questions I won't know how to answer. Where's the remote?"
I thought of something else and changed the subject, "I can't phone in my lab work."
"You're way ahead, it won't kill you to miss a few, and by then maybe things will be different. You said I was out close to twelve hours the first time, right? And just now it was what?"
"Maybe four."
"That Gold woman told you I might adapt."
I confirmed with a nod.
"Then maybe I'll only need an hour next time," she answered, her tone free of care or worry.
I shook my head at her. "How are you so calm?" I asked without thinking.
"I already told you, Thomas. I trust you. That's all any girl needs." She continued hunting through my sofa cushions.
I sat watching her for a long time, not only because she was easy on the eyes, but because she was looking for the remote, something so entirely normal that it seemed, as we approached the end of a very strange day, completely out of place. She had adapted more fully than I had, accepting her new reality after a brief explanation and a long nap. It defied reason.
Something Miss Gold had said, almost dismissively, nagged at the back of my mind. I brushed it aside because I wasn't ready to examine the implications, but there was no way for me to tell whether Katherine was sincere or if she was content merely because I wished her to be.