the girl, and find her before they did. And then she had to discover a way to protect her from them—forever.
CHAPTER NINE
Cedar hated taking the red eye. Usually she couldn’t sleep on planes, but she was so exhausted she managed to doze for nearly the whole flight from Halifax to New York. She was glad, because it meant she didn’t have to talk to Finn. For the past seven years, she had been desperate to know why he had left, but now that he was sitting next to her, she was terrified of finding out. It was easier to ignore him.
When they got off the plane, she called her mother. Maeve sounded tense, and Cedar assumed she was still upset that she had chosen to accept the help of the Tuatha Dé Danann. Maeve listened quietly as Cedar filled her in. Then she asked several questions, but brushed off Cedar’s own questions with more promises to tell her more later.
Cedar hung up, frustrated, and she and Finn hopped in a taxi and headed into the theater district. The last time she had been to New York they had been together, on a spur-of-the-moment road trip. They had been sitting around on a Friday night, debating which movie to go to and bemoaning the lack of cheap theaters in Halifax. Finn had reminisced about a great hole-in-the-wall movie theater he had been to once in New York that showed classic films around the clock. Cedar had never been to New York, and as he told her about it, her eyes had started to twinkle, a cheeky smile spreading across her face. He knew her well enough to know what she was thinking.
“Really?” he asked, starting to grin. “It’s…seven o’clock.”
“Which means,” Cedar started counting on her fingers, “if we leave in an hour we can be there by ten in the morning, spend the day seeing the sights, go see a show or something, spend the night, and drive back on Sunday. It will be perfect!”
And it had been. They had crammed as many touristy things as they could into one day and collapsed in exhaustion at the Banana Bungalow hostel in the wee hours of the morning on Sunday. After breakfast at the greasiest spoon they could find, they had started the fifteen-hour drive home. It had been one of the best weekends of Cedar’s life.
Now, seven years later, Finn made a few attempts at conversation as they rode through the city, but Cedar’s answers were so stilted he soon gave up. They spent the rest of the ride in silence. When the cab pulled up in front of the café where they were meeting Brighid, Finn paid the fare and they got out. Cedar stood for a moment under the awning before following Finn inside. She told herself she didn’t care about him anymore, but that didn’t lessen her desire to break this other woman’s legs, goddess or not. She told herself she was being juvenile, that of course Finn had dated other women since her. Maybe he was even seeing someone now. It didn’t matter, she told herself. All that mattered was finding Eden. She quickly silenced her inner dialogue and walked into the café, where Finn was waiting for her just inside the door.
“This won’t take long, don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll just ask her our questions and then we’ll decide what to do next.” He turned and searched the room, stopping when his eyes rested on a woman in the corner. The woman saw him, too, and stood up to greet them. She was tall, with black hair and a regal bearing not unlike Riona’s. But this woman was designed to stand out. She had dramatic, prominent cheekbones; dark, deep-set eyes that framed a long, straight nose; and a full mouth that was stretched into a wide, expansive smile. When she held out her arms in welcome, several folds of silky black material fell from them. Under her flowing top, she wore tight leather pants and platform shoes, adding another three inches to her already impressive height. She had an ageless beauty, and she could just easily be twenty or fifty. Cedar couldn’t tell.
“Fionnbharr,” Brighid said, wrapping her arms around him and kissing him on both cheeks. “You came.”
“And you,” she said, taking a step back and looking Cedar up and down. “You must be Cedar.” She clicked her tongue and made a hmm sound that Cedar couldn’t interpret. “Well, she’s certainly attractive, I’ll give you that,”