Chapter 1: Meeting Daphne – Kate I .1 - Friday

Waking to find myself being tied to my own bed was not the end of the work week I was expecting. Looking back, it was the start of ... whatever this was. Easier if I just tell you.

My name is Kathryn Daniels. I’m an attorney employed by the firm McCormick, Weiss, and Daniels, no relation. It was Friday night. The past six months had been a bit hectic and definitely out of the ordinary. Just when I thought things would be settling back down and returning to normal, I went to bed just before midnight and fell asleep almost immediately. Only to wake some time later to find both wrists and one ankle tied to my brass bed frame. As I shifted surveying my situation, the metal frame creaked faintly. A girl, petite, late teens, possibly early twenties, was deftly securing my remaining ankle. Oh yes, she was also naked. How she managed to restrain me to this extent was beyond me.

I yanked my one free leg away. She looked up and said, with calm authority, “Kathryn Marie Daniels, where do you think you’re going? Both arms and one leg are already secured. Do you really think you can untie yourself with one foot?”

She actually stepped back, motioning with her arms, saying, “Go ahead, I’d love to see you try.” My wrists were secured above my head. She had a look of impatience as she stared into my eyes. Motioning again, she said, “Go ahead, I could use a good laugh.”

Glaring at her, I raised my one free leg, saying, “I can still kick the...”

The moment I raised the leg she deftly had the rope around the ankle and was securing it to the bed frame. Once she was done she looked at me, saying, “I’m not going to hurt you. This is for your own good.”

“So says Psycho Tinkerbell.” I could see she was very short.

She went around the bed, tightening each restraint, spreading my legs wider and stretching my arms overhead until the ropes bit gently into my wrists.

“You should just grab the railing above your head,” she said. “I’m worried you’ll get rope burns.”

“Thanks,” I said, the word loaded with mock sincerity. I grabbed the rail, mostly just to humor her. But it did help.

And then something odd hit me: I wasn’t scared. I was annoyed. It was the middle of the night, I was tied to my own bed by a naked stranger, and all I felt was annoyance. What is wrong with me?

She sat beside me, placing one hand on my stomach and reaching up to stroke my hair with the other. “I mean it,” she said quietly. “I’d never harm you. I’d never let anyone else harm you. I’d do almost anything to stop someone from even hurting your feelings.” Her voice was soft in a way that felt genuine, and her touch sent a strange warmth through me — a low, steady hum just beneath my skin. She leaned back and began to rub my stomach gently.

When she saw my hands gripping the rail, she said, “Good girl,” and went around and loosened the ropes at my wrists and ankles. The pressure faded from my skin.

She started talking again, but I’ll admit I wasn’t listening. Her hand had slid under my nightshirt — a long Superman t-shirt, Big Bang Theory fan — and she was tracing slow circles on my bare stomach. The sensation was difficult to describe. Not electric, not quite physical — more like something subtle moving between us, in both directions.

I interrupted without thinking, nodding toward her hand. She stilled it, laying her palm flat against my skin. The sensation spread to fill the whole of her hand.

“Yes?” she asked, with a small smile.

“That feeling — from your hand. What is it?”

“No idea,” she said. Then: “Though it feels to me like it’s coming from you. Like you’re the one starting it.”

Her reply was so automatic I knew instantly she’d experienced this before and had thought about it. How and when ran through my head. As a lawyer, my instinct was to question and/or argue. Given my current situation, I decided against it. Instead I said, in my most composed, conversational tone, “Could you repeat what you were saying? I was distracted.”

She glanced down at her hand and said, calmly, “Understandable.”

She began again. But my attention had already drifted. I’d called her Tinkerbell, but she was the opposite of blonde: black hair braided from the front and wrapped around to the back, the rest flowing down her back and shoulders. The style was beautiful and somehow didn’t look modern. Her face was striking — the features and skin of a teenager, but her eyes and the way she carried herself suggested something much older. Something more. Her body was compact and athletic, gymnast-like. She stood barely over five feet. She was lovely, completely naked, and completely unselfconscious about it.

At some point during this inventory, she had stopped talking. She was watching me watch her, one hand now tracing two fingers slowly up and down my sternum. My body responded before my mind caught up. Something under the thin fabric had tightened at her touch. She cleared her throat and asked, with elaborate patience, whether I’d always had trouble concentrating.

I tried for a smirk. My mouth managed it. My eyes, I think, showed something closer to confusion.

Still moving her hand, she asked if she should start over again — with pointed emphasis on the word again.

“Please,” I said. Just as politely. Just as sarcastic.

She smiled and began once more. She told me there were two reasons she had tied me up. Then she stood, still talking, and walked to the master bathroom. Her voice carried back through the open door: “Remember, six months ago, bumping into something outside your building?”

She returned carrying a pair of unusual scissors. She sat back down and began cutting my t-shirt from the neckline downward. I looked at the shirt. Then at her.

“Don’t worry — I replaced it. Same shirt, in your nightshirt drawer,” she said, unbothered by my expression.

“How do you know what’s in my dresser?”

“Please focus, sweetheart.” Her green eyes held equal parts exasperation and amusement. “Do you remember bumping into something outside your building?”

I glanced at the scissors still working their way down my shirt. “Yes,” I said, carefully. Then asked: “Where did those scissors come from?”

“Focus.” She took a breath. “We’ll cover the details at breakfast. Right now I need you to stay with me.”

“Tomorrow at breakfast” landed a beat late. “Breakfast?!” I said.

“FOCUS,” she snapped at me.

“Fine,” I said, giving her my best what-is-your-problem look. She’d finished the cut. I’m fairly busty, and the shirt fell open.

In a strained voice, she tried again. “The bump outside your building. You remember?”

“Yes,” I said, squinting at her. Thinking back to that day, I remembered leaving my apartment in the early morning, telling myself there was no need to rush. There would be plenty of time to get things organized. The evening before, just before leaving the office, my supervisor, Brian Malone, said he needed to talk with me first thing in the morning. I assumed it had to do with the Real Rally merger with RoadRunner Auto. Brian already didn’t care for me. There was no way I was going to give this slimmed-down Buddy Ebsen ammunition to criticize my work. I swear there was more meat on a scarecrow in the middle of a farmer’s field than there was on that man. All the legal work the firm was contracted to do, that meant my work, was done. It was done a week early.

So that morning, briefcase in hand, I left my apartment building. The street was quiet, the city just waking up. The smell of the ocean was in the air. A scent I’d learned to love since moving here. A sudden jolt shot through my arm—not painful, but wrong, like grazing a wall that wasn’t there. Something small flickered at the edge of my vision, but when I turned, there was nothing. A breeze crossed my arm. Looking down, I saw skin showing through a six-inch oval hole in my blazer and blouse. On the ground lay two clean-cut pieces of fabric—no tears, no frayed edges, as if someone had taken scissors and cut them out. I stood there staring, my brain stuck on one question: what the hell just happened?

I grabbed the pieces and studied them closely, just a couple of inches from my eyes. I’d never examined fabric cut by scissors this carefully, but I didn’t think even the sharpest scissors could cut this cleanly. It simply didn’t look natural. After a minute I broke out of my daze. Deciding to table what had just happened for now, I rushed back upstairs to change, grumbling about ruined clothes and wasted time. While changing, I noticed that my arm where the fabric had been removed was fine—no marks, no redness or irritation. As I dressed, I started coming up with explanations. The best one was that Scotty had transported the fabric up to the Enterprise and then back down, but missed. By the time I arrived at the office, the incident was almost forgotten, until now.

“That was me,” she said, and went back to cutting

“What?”

“Think about it, Kate. Didn’t you catch something at the edge of your vision? Dark hair, maybe. Skin.” She finished the cut toward my left shoulder, then spread her arms wide and looked at me, waiting, as if I should recognize something.

I looked her over quickly.

She said, slightly teasingly, “My eyes are up here, sweetheart. Focus.”

I rolled my eyes at her.

She started on the shirt’s right shoulder.

“Do you always go around invisible and naked?” I said, with all the sarcasm I had left. I wasn’t annoyed anymore, I realized. Something about her had my attention — not in the way she probably intended, but in the way of a story heading somewhere interesting. I wanted to know the destination.

She pulled the ruined shirt out from under me. “Yes,” she said. “And when you’re invisible, being naked doesn’t matter much. Obviously.”

Then she looked at me — really looked — and said, “You’re very beautiful. It’s wonderful you’ve started using that smile more. It puts a smile on my face.”

She reached out and ran two fingers down the side of my left breast. That current — whatever it was — felt stronger now, noticeably so. My breath caught. My eyes followed her hand without my permission.

“What IS that?” I asked, more forceful than I intended.

“No idea,” she said. “But I have a suspicion.”

She picked up the scissors again and cut away my underwear in two clean snips, pulling them free and tossing them by the rag that used to be my t-shirt.

“Who are you?” I asked. “And why are you doing this?”

“Good,” she said warmly, looking down at me. “You’re paying attention.” She reached for my robe from the chair beside the bed and slipped it on. “This is one of the reasons I tied you down — I didn’t want you panicking and hurting yourself. Don’t get scared. I promise you: in a day, two at most, this—” she gestured vaguely at herself, “—will all seem ordinary.”

I had already felt there was no reason to be scared of her. But I was getting cold, naked on top of the sheets, my annoyance returning. I began to say something when she simply vanished. The robe dropped to the floor.

My heart stopped. My eyes and mouth froze open.

A moment later — a second, a minute, I couldn’t tell — her voice came from the bathroom: “You okay? I’m assuming you’re a bit shocked.”

I was still staring at the place where she had been. My mouth opened and closed. No sound came out.

She came back into the room carrying a few things, setting them down between my legs. “Kathryn.” Her voice was firm. My eyes finally focused on her. “You okay?” She studied my face, then leaned down and gave my lips a quick kiss.

That same hum — the one that came with her fingers — was in her lips too. I came slowly back to myself and managed, “That was magic.”

She smiled — bright, genuinely pleased. “Thank you. I haven’t kissed anyone in a very long time. And never a woman. It’s nice to know I haven’t lost the knack. Was it better or worse than other women you’ve kissed?”

“What?” I said.

“The kiss —”

“Not the kiss,” I said. “The disappearing.”