“But you left something out.”
“Something?” So many things.
“A certain Celtic god.”
“A—What?” The fluttering panic below her collarbone again. Until Sally wiggled his eyebrows.
“Oh, you mean . . . That was just—He was only—” Now she did sigh. “Gorgeous.”
Sally wiggled closer. “Paint me a picture.”
So she did.
Over the next few days, Breen clung to routine. Writing early, breaking for a workout. And with the door locked, the shades drawn, conjuring a wraith to continue her training.
The next week, she boarded the train for New York.
She used the travel time to watch the world go by, and to think about that world. The homes and businesses, the farms and factories. All the people who lived here, worked here. She’d thought about it all before, of course, but had considered herself a small, unimportant cog in the wheel. Her day-to-day decisions didn’t matter. Walk or take the bus, scramble eggs for dinner or order Chinese, buy new shoes or make do.
Nothing she did changed anything or made a real difference.
Now it did. Every decision she made—or didn’t—mattered.
So she had to be sure she made the right choice.
Traveling to New York, and traveling alone, was an important personal choice, and one she couldn’t have made six months before.
If she didn’t have the courage for this, to take something so important to her, something she’d worked for and dreamed of, how would she find it to fight for a world, to use her gifts, her power to stand for the light against the dark?
Armed with her agent’s detailed instructions, Breen transferred at Penn Station to the subway going downtown. Everything struck her as huge, vast, and yet somehow too small to hold everyone at once.
Though Marco had selected her outfits for her two days of meetings, she worried she’d overdressed or underdressed, or just looked like what she was: a woman out of her depth.
She stood in the crowded subway car, clinging to her overnight bag and the lovely charcoal-gray computer bag Sally and Derrick had given her as a congratulations gift.
She saw a woman in a gorgeous head scarf jiggling an infant in a sling. A man in a business suit frowned as he read something on his phone. A woman in a red suit and high-top sneakers sat with an enormous shoulder bag on her lap and looked bored.
At every squealing stop, more piled on, some squeezed off. Shopping bags, briefcases, cell phones, earbuds. The smell of someone’s burned coffee, someone else’s too-heavy cologne.
To keep nerves at bay she concentrated on the next step.
She got off at her stop, wound her way through the tunnel with a flood of others. Grateful she’d packed reasonably light, she hauled her overnight up the stairs and into the sensory assault that was New York City.
She hadn’t expected to like it, not even a little. But she found herself fascinated. It had such energy. She could feel it tingling along her skin, all but see it in shimmering colors as traffic pushed along the street, as people clipped—dodging and weaving—along the sidewalk.
She joined the cacophony of sound—blasting horns, so angry and impatient, a sea of voices in mixed languages and accents—and, under the bright blast of sun, began to walk.
She didn’t care if she looked like a tourist as she gawked, as she craned her neck to look up at the towering buildings. Nobody paid any attention.
And that, she realized, was part of the beauty. No one paid any attention. No one knew her, noticed her, looked at her. She could slide into the flood of people. Not blend and fade away as she’d once done. But just be.
On impulse she stopped to buy a bouquet of stargazer lilies from a sidewalk cart, and took their scent with her on the short walk to the hotel Carlee recommended.
She’d wanted small and quiet, and when she stepped into the lobby, knew Carlee had delivered. Not big and bustling, not at all, but charming with its overstuffed sofas and polished marble floors.
Though too early to check in, she left her bags, assured of their security, and went back out to join the urban hike for the three and a half blocks to the agency.
Her agency.
She’d seen pictures of it on their website, but didn’t feel the least bit silly standing outside the double town house with its creamy white bricks and dark wood doors to take a photo of her own.
With the lilies in the crook of her arm, she walked up to the door on the left—as instructed—pressed