Chapter Four

Tired or not, I slept miserably that night and waking up to go to class was the absolute last thing I felt like doing. I made myself go anyway and managed, through some miracle, to find a mind-set that let me commit total attention to the instructor’s lecture. I doubt I’d ever taken notes so detailed before; they were nearly verbatim. Too bad the class was Disability and Society and the topic was increased reliance on computer systems in the workplace, where, on a better day, I probably could have led the class in a discussion and covered most of the same points just based on my own personal experience. Considering how badly I’d slept and what was haunting my thoughts, I’d be lucky if the notes helped me remember that I’d even been to class.

My sleeping habits had been so topsy-turvy that I almost forgot I was working at the No-Name that day. It felt like circumstances were conspiring to keep me busy all day long, when what I really wanted to do was find Esti and ask her what was going on. I did have a little time between the end of class and when I had to go to work, but Esti had class at this time on Tuesdays. I paced in circles around my room, eating the other half of a leftover gyro from Monday that I had forgotten to warm up and now couldn’t be bothered, while I wondered what I would even say to her when I got a chance. ‘Hello, how have you been since we slept together, and by the way, did you recently grow wings and somehow murder an abusive husband the other night?’ Yes, that was the trick; just work it in subtly. No problem!

I had no proof that it was actually her, anyway. Even the people who knew I could get visuals of people through audio alone would be very skeptical if I told them what I had actually seen, and for that matter, what I hadn’t. The woman in the video had certainly sounded ominous, but I hadn’t seen anything to contradict the coroner’s report that Zackary Orkin had died of heart failure, plain and simple. I had to assume he knew his business and had checked for any injuries which would have led to the heart stopping. I just couldn’t shake the feeling that she had done something, and that it was somehow tied in with my visual of her with wings.

And that made me want to scream, because I was walking down a road of clinical insanity. I was seriously suggesting that Esti was some sort of demonic entity with supernatural powers. It was ridiculous and I didn’t want to believe it. I was a perfectly well-grounded woman with plans to go into a profession that would make a huge impact on people’s lives, namely by saving them, and I was on track to carry those plans to fruition. I didn’t need demons or superheroes in my life to give it meaning. I couldn’t even say I was breaking under the strain of my own high expectations; now that I was in college, my life had actually slowed down a lot. Oh, sure, I had no doubt I had some unresolved issues stemming from being abandoned when I was a toddler, but this seemed like an odd way for them to start manifesting, and why now, after over a decade since I was adopted?

Unless it was tied in with the way I saw the world itself. Synesthesia usually yielded very consistent anomalous sensation, but it was a documented medical fact that mine was unique. Who was to say it would always remain as precise as it had been all my life? What if everyone soon began sporting wings, cat ears, and other bizarre appendages?

All I could think of to do was find out if Esti really had been there that night, and I had an idea how to go about doing that which didn’t involve asking questions that made me sound like I was suffering a fit of paranoia. I just didn’t like it. It involved violating Esti’s privacy, and whether or not I was dealing with a potential murderer, I was having a hard time feeling like the ends justified the means. Peeking into her room to check on her was one thing, but rifling through her belongings just felt wrong. I didn’t even know what I would do if I found proof she had really been there! And if she hadn’t, then all I would have to show for it would be evidence that I was delusional. It seemed like a lose-lose proposition.

Which is why I was feeling absolutely terrible about myself when I finally cracked open her door and crept inside, trying to keep an ear out in case someone came home early. The room was colder than I expected for a warm August day. Although I could smell traces of her favorite perfume, the scent was old, as if the room had been left uninhabited for some time. Feeling more uncertain by the second, I hugged myself and took a careful look around. If I was here, I might as well satiate my curiosity. One never knew where I might find a stack of confessions to unexplained deaths in the city, right?

One thing which struck me immediately was how spartan the room was, even in comparison to mine. There were no pictures on the walls, no stuffed animals or other obviously cherished adornments lying around, no houseplant or really anything colorful to brighten any part of the room. Her bed was a futon mattress with plain sheets. She had a desk piled with haphazardly arranged folders and textbooks, but no laptop, and an unzipped suitcase appeared to contain most of her personal belongings. I shied away as my synesthesia supplied me with a view of the assorted leather goods and objects whose purpose I could guess but would rather not. I knew Esti had a kinky side, but frankly that was even less my business than what I was here for.

I carefully walked over to the closet, although I’m not sure why; there was nothing to trip over. This is such a bad idea, I thought as I pulled open the sliding door and focused on what was inside. The variety of clothes was simultaneously reassuring and a little surprising. Esti had outfits for every occasion, including four formal dress outfits, two of which wouldn’t have been amiss at a wedding or dinner at a fancy restaurant. I saw clothing I could readily imagine being worn at any of the local clubs, and the variety would be sufficient to cover nearly any theme night. My attention passed over a couple of bundles of leather and what looked like PVC and snagged on a uniform at the far end of the closet, a kind I had only ever seen in anime enthusiast magazines. Hadn’t Esti once told me she had lived in Japan for a time? It was somewhere in her little rant about all the places she’d lived and the languages she spoke.

It was between the hanger with the folds of plastic and the strange school uniform. I couldn’t be content to see it in my mind. With a trembling hand, I reached past the fetish costumes and touched it. Black, if my synesthesia could still be trusted. I traced it with my fingertips: skimpy enough that a person could bare their breasts just by hooking a finger in the fabric and pulling it aside. Definitely a clubbing dress for a person who didn’t mind being looked upon lustfully.

There was plenty of room in the back for a pair of demonic wings, too.

I briefly entertained a fantasy of skipping work and being there when Esti entered her room to find me sitting on her bed with the dress beside me, but I quickly thought better of it. I still wasn’t sure what I would do with the knowledge I now had, but that was a good reason not to act on it immediately. If I was lucky, I might even be able to add to it. There was one other person I knew who was familiar with Esti, and conveniently, I didn’t even have to make a detour to meet her.

The walk to work seemed to go quicker than normal, probably because I was walking with a purpose today. I waited at every crosswalk with impatience, barely needing the electronic chirps to tell me when I could cross. I had to be single-minded right now. If I stopped to think too long, I’d start questioning my sanity again. Work was the last thing on my mind, although that’s exactly where I was headed.

Wonders be, Sae was at the counter today despite only there only being two people sharing a table in the dining area. I forced a smile as I walked in, folding my cane and tucking it away inside my purse. I checked my watch. “Tuesday, 1:41 P.M.” I hoped that would be enough time, considering I was still new to the business of clandestine interrogations and had no idea what I was doing.

“Hi Sae!” I said with only partially feigned cheer as I approached the counter. It was hard not to smile when she so visibly perked up as I entered. Just like a dog. Or, no, maybe a cat, I thought. No wonder I imagined her with cat ears.

“Hello Sanmei,” she replied brightly, with that faintly melodic quality I always thought of as a chirp in her voice. “Need a hand signing in?”

“No, thank you; I managed to get my phone to point to the right website,” I replied a little smugly. There’d been plenty of time waiting at those crosswalks, but I was still a bit proud of myself. “But I was hoping you could tell me what happened Thursday. I think I must have been half-asleep when you visited, because I remember opening the door and being surprised that you were there, and after that things get fuzzy.”

Sae chuckled and leaned on the counter. “There isn’t much more than that. I checked on you and you were looking pretty dead on your feet, so I made sure you got back to bed and then let myself out. Glad you’re feeling better now, though.”

“Thank you.” I paused and fished out my phone, swiping to unlock it so that I could sign into the website that tracked our hours. Our operation was pretty casual, but I tried to keep on top of this part of it when I could. I sometimes forgot to sign out in the evening and that wasn’t a habit I wanted to develop. I used the excuse of signing in to try and make my next statement more casual. “So you got to see my room, huh? I think you officially know more about me than I know about you now.”

“I didn’t see much,” Sae countered easily. I resisted the urge to frown at her. It was a neat deflection and I felt sublimely outmaneuvered. Once again, I cursed not being very good in social situations.

“But still, you even know where I live, while I barely know anything about you, and I’d like to know more about the friends of my friends,” I protested, trying not to let my frustration show.

“Really more ‘acquaintances’ than friends,” Sae said with a shrug. “There’s not that much to tell about me. I have two sisters and a brother and we’ve traveled a lot. I met Esti along the way and we’ve known each other for a couple of years now.”

Even this little was more than I had known previously. I motioned for her to wait a moment and darted across the room to fetch an apron, tying it around myself as I returned. Fortunately, it didn’t look like she had any inclination to leave quickly, although I honestly couldn’t say whether she was annoyed by my incessant questioning or not.

“Was that in Japan?” I asked breathlessly as I slipped around the counter, thanking God that today was being especially slow and giving me this chance to talk to her. “She said something about going to school there?”

Was it my imagination, or did Sae look a trifle uncertain? “Yes, Japan,” she said slowly, and then, as if seizing on my words, picked up steam. “At school. My siblings and I were all enrolled there.”

I felt a tickle of intuition. “And you knew each other for a few years before moving here?” When Sae nodded, I sucked in a breath. I don’t think she even noticed when I tuned out, remembering Esti’s rant, still fresh in my memory since encountering the Japanese uniform in her closet earlier:

‘My mother was Basque; my dad was German. He first met her in her home country and then they met again in Italy on vacation. Like fate, right? They stayed there a few years after I was born, doing their thing until I got older, and then we all moved to Korea when Dad landed a job teaching English. We went to America a few years after that and got stuck when 9/11 happened the day before we were supposed to go home. In the time it took them to get new tickets, they decided to stay instead, and we were there until their work visas expired. By then we were starting to hear about this place in Japan where I could get an education on the cheap, so they taught me Japanese to add to my headache. I know English, Basque, German, Italian, Korean, Japanese and phone sex.

‘And the worst part of it is, I was only there about six months before I had to move again.’

Sae was still talking and I’m afraid I interrupted her, speaking the thought aloud even as it entered my mind. “How did you meet her years ago when she was only in Japan for a few months?”

Sae grew very still. “Well, we’d encountered each other a few times before that,” she amended, and even I could tell how implausible that sounded. She was off-balance, the answers no longer coming as easily as they had a moment ago. I sensed that if I was going to capitalize on this opportunity, it had to be right away, before she shut me down.

“Where? In America? Korea? Italy?” I challenged softly, stepping a little closer. “A family of four darting around the globe, encountering the same person several times?” I didn’t give her a chance to find an answer. This hadn’t gone at all how I’d planned, but I thought I saw a way I could salvage it. “I’m sorry. You don’t have to answer that. But something strange happened Saturday night, and Esti was involved. I saw something I can’t explain. You’re the only other person who knows anything about her. Please, if you can just tell me anything that might help, I’ll forget this whole thing and we can pretend it never happened.”

I held my breath. Sae stared at me for several seconds and I could almost hear the wheels turning in her head. Probably trying to decide if I’ve completely lost my mind, a cynical part of my brain whispered.

“What is it you think you saw?” she asked very quietly. The door dinged softly as a young man came in. I bit back my answer and forced a fake smile, greeted him and waited with as much patience as I could for him to order. Blessedly, although Sae took off her apron and stepped back, she didn’t take advantage of the lapse to rush off. I was conscious of her eyes the entire time. That was the point at which I realized that I had to choose how I was going to answer that question.

I could certainly just leave it vague and say that I thought I’d seen her confront a man we knew to be abusive and dangerous. I could fish for more information and hope Sae divulged something that would help me decide what I should do or say to Esti. That was my first impulse. I was still very conscious of how insane it would sound if I described exactly what it was I’d seen, and how I’d seen it. It was already a large step for most people to accept that I could be blind and yet describe the photo they had in their wallet while it was still in their pocket. Now I was expecting someone to believe I had not only identified someone from the audio of a video, but that she was some sort of demon?

The idea of confessing it all was intimidating, but I could do it. I could say exactly what I suspected, what I feared, and hope that Sae was open-minded. I wanted to. I hated this new uncertainty about my vision. At least I could know if it was just a hallucination. At least I wouldn’t be alone in wondering whether I was losing my grip on sanity.

I think that was what tipped the scales. I’d been independent much of my life and had no experience having my own reliability thrown into question. I’d been questioned, even threatened with exposure as a fraud, but my senses had never given me a reason to doubt their veracity until now. I needed someone who could offer me some sort of objective place to stand before I sank under the tide of doubt and fear which threatened to overwhelm me.

When the customer had been served and had retreated to a distant table to drink, I turned back to her and committed myself. “The cop who died Saturday night was abusing his wife. I saw him threaten to shoot her Wednesday while I was here. I told Esti about it and I think she tracked him down somehow.” Conscious even of the three customers who were nowhere near us, I lowered my voice further. “What I can do with my synesthesia applies to everything I sense, including audio. I listened to a video someone put online. I saw Esti do something that stopped that man’s heart.”

I took a deep breath and then plunged into the worst of it. “And if you could tell me why I ‘saw’ her having wings when that happened, I’d very much appreciate it. Even if all you have to say is that I’m crazy.”

Sae didn’t call me crazy. What she said instead was, “Well, crap. You weren’t supposed to see that.” She snorted as I gaped at her. “You wanted the truth, I’m giving you the truth. Kei warned us that you’d figure it out sooner or later.”

“Figure what out?” I asked numbly, wondering who ‘Kei’ was. The similarity of their names made me wonder if it was one of the three siblings she supposedly had. I’d heard Ley before, and now Kei… what was next?

Sae considered me a moment. “Honestly, I’m not sure how much I should tell you. You don’t look like you’re handling what little you know too well, and there’s a lot more where it came from.”

‘A lot more.’ I shook away the urge to delve into this rabbit hole, reminding myself what I had come to find out. “Esti. I need to know anything you can tell me about her. Why did I see her with wings? Did she kill that man, and if so, how?”

She gave me a crooked smile. “You should ask her yourself. I can promise you, she’s more scared of you than you are of her. By the way — incoming customers. I’ll see you later, Sanmei.”

As I turned to greet the couple who had just walked in, Sae carried her apron back into our employee room and shut the door. I wasn’t entirely surprised when I checked inside the room 20 minutes later to find it empty, despite the total lack of windows or doors to the outside world. This time I knew she’d done it on purpose, so that I would know for sure. I had to assume this was her admission that the remainder of Thursday night had actually happened, but what—if anything—that meant, I had no way of knowing.

Esti was home by the time I got back from work that evening. I had thought of, and summarily discarded, at least a dozen ways of broaching the subject. In retrospect, I wish I’d given it more thought. Marching up to the couch and saying “My room, now,” might have given her the wrong impression. It certainly did Cassie, who’d been sitting next to Esti while she worked on something out of a notebook.

“Ooh la la,” Cassie crooned suggestively. “Esti, are you wearing your collar tonight?”

“Something tells me I probably should have!” Esti agreed, but at least she came with me willingly. I tried to ignore the laughter, but my face was burning as I led Esti into my room and shut the door. Without waiting for my prompting, she sat down bouncily on my bed, grinning cheekily. “I take it you’re interested in revisiting last Wednesday?”

There are times when I wish there were such a thing for me as shutting my eyes and counting to ten. Unfortunately, eyes open or closed made little difference, so I just had to summon up patience and courage from somewhere else.

“Let’s play a little game,” I said, seating myself more gracefully next to Esti. “Bear with me a minute. Let’s pretend this is our first time meeting and we’re being introduced by a mutual friend, someone who knows us both very well. We’ll both have to introduce ourselves, and we have to be honest because there’s someone nearby who’s going to pick up on any lies we might tell. Are you with me so far?”

Esti blinked at me. “Uh, I think so. Can I ask where is this going?” Was it just my imagination, or did she seem abruptly nervous?

I made an effort to smile reassuringly, the way I would around a customer put off by the coffeehouse’s unusual décor. “Please just play along. I’ll even go first.

“What I would say is, ‘Hello, my name is Sanmei Long. I’m studying to become an emergency physician. I’m actually blind, but I have a form of synesthesia which allows me to function as if I could see, most of the time.’ “

“Although you being blind is probably why you never close your eyes, even during sex,” Esti put in. I flushed brightly, but still took note that her grin seemed forced. She was trying to derail me.

“Yes, but you don’t know that yet,” I chided her gently. “I would also say, ‘Sometimes I can even see things that most people normally could not. I can see that you’re wearing a blue bra,’ and darn you for not having something else I could use as an example. ‘Sometimes I can even get a picture of the people on the other end of the phone line. Or even in a video of Officer Orkin’s unfortunate last moments.’ “

Esti’s eyes widened, but her reaction, otherwise, was far more tightly controlled than I would have expected. Only the soft hammering of her heart betrayed her. I could actually hear it thrumming steadily in her breast. She gave no response beyond a single very slight nod of acknowledgement.

“If it helps, Sae is the mutual friend,” I added belatedly, reaching over and taking her hand. It wasn’t until I touched her that I realized how very tense she was, as if she were about to bolt from the room. Or disappear, the way Sae did. I had to admit I was dealing with things I had no comprehension of, which made her nervousness almost laughable. Sae had been right; I was far out of my depth. But I was trying.

Esti swallowed. “Did she put you up to this?” she asked grimly.

“She told me to ask you,” I affirmed, and then bravely added, “shortly before vanishing into thin air.” I didn’t add that I had reason to suspect it was the second time she had done that.

Esti closed her eyes and let out a long, frustrated sigh, pinching the bridge of her nose. “That damn cat. Okay then. That’s a thing she does.” That last came out in a sarcastic sing-song tone. She opened her eyes and smirked ruefully, finally returning the pressure on my hand. “Did she tell you about Omiyage?”

It didn’t occur to me to lie. I shook my head. “I don’t know who or what that is, so I don’t think so. I was kind of focused on you at the time.”

“You do know how to flatter a girl.” Esti took a deep breath and let it out with an elongated “ohhh-kaaay.” Pursing her lips, she nodded to herself. “Alright then, I think I know how to approach this. Are you going to freak out if I show you something?”

Surprised, I shook my head slightly. “I don’t think so,” I said uncertainly. “Would it happen to be a pair of wings?”

Esti simply nodded, closing her eyes. “And then some. If you have to make noise, try to make it sound like something I can brag about to Cassie later, okay?”

Before I could even begin to formulate a response to that, Esti changed. There were no magic words or flashy gestures. She did seem to concentrate, but that was the only outward sign that what happened next was a conscious evocation on her part. The room darkened, shadows lengthening and curving toward the bed. I drew in my feet onto the bed, transfixed by the sight. Blind or not, I could tell when a room was dark, and although the ceiling light had been on for Esti’s benefit, that light was now choked by the ever-expanding threads of shadow which streamed like rivers of ink from every shaded surface. And then they detached from the walls and become three-dimensional.

It was surreal. It was amazing. Afraid? No, I was in awe, a primal part of my brain reveling. I wanted to thrust my fingers into those ghostly streamers. No, I wanted to dance among them. It was real, every bit of it, and far more beautiful than I could have imagined. A thousand points of geometry converged and somehow I could see distinction between every one of them as they spun upon umbral vertexes, forming globules of darkness that drifted together like waves on an ocean of a thousand shades of black. It should have overwhelmed me, but instead I was delighted.

I became aware that one of the places the shadows were meeting were upon Esti, joining to either side of her spine beneath her scapulas. She shrugged out of her shirt, pulling it over her head with practiced ease, and the translucent coils carved a tight spiral in the air around her. Somehow the murky threads wove together, knitting substance from their impossible, ephemeral nature. The wings I had seen, smaller than my vision of them through the video had suggested, took shape and stretched gracefully, revealing thin curving bones protruding against a gray fleshy membrane.

My heart gave up its reins and I wept at the sight of them. I didn’t care that my method of sight was a hallucinatory trick of the mind. What I saw was beyond my comprehension and I ached to know more. Esti smiled and opened her eyes, revealing their serene blue depths to have changed to a carmine hue like that of blood. Her presence crashed over me and I fell backward, the swirl of tenebrous gossamer filling every ounce capacity I had to process anything. Esti was suddenly over me, straddling my waist and leaning down until we were face to face. I could do nothing to stop her, didn’t want to stop her. I yielded gratefully, waiting for rapture.

Esti touched my lips with her fingers, then cupped my face in her hand and whispered a command: “Forget everything that you’ve just seen and everything related to it.”

The shadows flared and converged on me, sweeping into my mind and drowning out everything in a haze of millions upon millions of ebony stars collapsing into an infinity of the void. Her power seized me without compromise and swept through my consciousness, scouring it clean. I breathed out, and with it came onyx. The room became lighter and the demoness once again took form in my mind, watching me expectantly.

I wet my lips. “How could I ever forget this?” I asked, gently refusing the directive.

Esti blinked and everything seemed to crash around us. The shadows receded, her wings evaporated into a short-lived black mist, and her eyes dulled to a soft blue again. She stared at me long enough that I had time to become conscious of her presence — in an entirely different and much more embarrassing manner.

“Your memory wasn’t wiped just now, was it,” she uttered, regarding me in stunned horror.

I inclined my head in confusion. Various emotions arose and played out as I returned her expression with its twin. “It was supposed to be?”

We stared at each other. Then a snort of disbelief and exasperation broke the silence. Esti threw back her head and laughed softly, thin, almost choking giggles spilling out of her. “Well… shit!”

“ ‘My name is Esti Maite. I was born in Italy to Basque and German parents, that much is true. What you don’t already know is that my father was a demon.’

“A demon, or at least the kind I’m familiar with, isn’t a fallen angel or even necessarily evil. It’s the energy we feed off of and how we get it that gives us such a bad reputation. It requires doing something which puts the person in a state of high emotions and vulnerability. There’s a lot of ways to do that, but the ones that work best, you guessed it, are pain and sex, which is how demons got to be known as tempters and torturers. You can guess which one I lean toward.

“Yeah… I fed on you Wednesday night. I needed the boost if I was going to hunt down Officer Asshole. I didn’t expect it to give you so much trouble, though! Usually I can feed from people and they don’t even notice it. Maybe wake up a little extra tired the next morning like they slept wrong, but that’s all. I don’t know why you were affected so badly, but I won’t do it again. Yes, that’s a promise.

“Now then… I’m only half demon, so my powers aren’t as strong and I have to feed more often to use them. Powerful demons are changed by their essence, but mine is so weak that I look fully human unless I’m drawing upon it. The only big thing that separates me from you most of the time is the way I can put out pheromones that kick people’s libido into overdrive. Otherwise I have a few powers, but mainly illusions and hypnosis, and apparently neither of them work on you. I honestly have no idea why. I already knew you were someone special, Sanmei, but the way you interact with my powers is proof that there’s even more to you than I’d guessed. I’m serious! Okay, and maybe I was hoping you’d overlook that part if I flattered you enough. Sorry.

“Sae is something else. I’m not even sure what she is, but no, she’s definitely not human. She has powers I seriously don’t even understand, but if she didn’t tell you about them, then maybe I shouldn’t either. It’s her privacy. The only thing I can say for sure is that she’s apparently able to transform herself, because the first time I met her, she was some sort of cat person with ears and a tail, and now she looks like any human.

“Speaking of that: About Omiyage? Listen, I know you’re not going to like it, but I think it would be better if you didn’t pry into that. All you need to know is that it’s nothing that will ever hurt you or anyone you know. It’s not a bad thing, but it’s something that needs to be kept secret, at least for now. You’ve got a life that’s going to be full of plenty of excitement without Omiyage getting involved.

“Tell you what. There are things that could happen which would make it better to know than not to know. I promise that if any of those things ever happen, I’ll tell you everything. Heck, I’ll show it to you firsthand. But I don’t see it happening unless your life winds up being ‘interesting’ in the way the Chinese meant it in their favorite little curse.

“… No, I never used my pheromones on you. You’d know if I had. Well, because you’d have torn off your clothes and jumped me. Yes, they really are that powerful!

“Is that a challenge? Oh, you are really going to regret this.”