End Game

House cat

"Have I just been bought and paid for?" Emmy-Lee wondered as she departed the lawyer's office, a freshly signed contract in her handbag. Exiting the elevator on the ground floor, she made the slow-motion dash from air-conditioned office block, through mid-day heat, to a waiting ride, closed her eyes to absorb the brief feeling of vertigo as it lurched skyward.

Her apartment wasn't far. Literally a hop, skip and jump away. A blur of motion, a familiar lobby, and then she came to a halt, found herself sitting at her kitchen table with a glass of chilled water in front of her and nothing for company but her own thoughts and a lot of legally binding fine print.

"It's a no-brainer in practical terms," she reminded herself. "The money ... But so quick. Stray cat to house cat in one scratch of pen on paper." Like a registry wedding. The witch inside her knew that such transformations demanded more ceremony than that before they could be considered consummated.

There was a time, at the warehouse and in the park, when she'd imagined it was her who'd bewitched him. The way he looked at her. Or was he bewitched already, and therefore protected? In thrall to his work, transformed by it into some sort of automaton ... something in the way he talked? Like a politician who has been so heavily focus-grouped and media-coached, has spoken to so many voters, that all the empathy has leached out of him, is now capable of nothing more than voicing empty policy. It left her with a sense of his being not quite connected to the world shared by everyone else. Whatever spell she might cast, would it merely fly past, ineffective?

But then there were those other times, when he would phase back into view. "Start preparing a media launch," he'd instructed her as they were preparing to part. When she'd asked how she might do this with only the haziest idea of what it was she was meant to be launching, Husk had only laughed.

"Filling the screens with content-free content – isn't that precisely your area of expertise?" The way he was smiling at her was a dead ringer for a real person. "We may have come together by chance," he told her, "but it seems to me you're the ideal person for what I need. Fate has brought us together, Emmy. This is meant to happen."

There were friends she might have confided in, ... But no, the contract had been very clear on that point. Common sense, too. She knew her friends too well because they were just like her: perfectly capable of keeping their own secrets, but not anybody else's.

Emmy-Lee sipped on her ice water and sighed. Then shivered as a vision passed before her eyes. It was her sister inviting her to come work as a sales lady in her real estate agency. "It's what you need, Em," the vision cackled. "A steady living. I'm expanding into life insurance. You'd be just the person to take on that side of the business."

Emmy-Lee grasped the table top, breathed deeply,and soon enough the vision passed. For a time she just sat. Then she stretched and yawned, took a compact from her handbag and began to check her makeup.