“I’m going to Sally’s.”

“Ah, what a fine place that is. What good craic!”

“Do you want to come?”

Obviously touched, he smiled at her. “I might next time if I’m round and about, but I’ll go home myself and tell your nan you’re with friends.”

“Thanks, Sedric.” She got up, walked to the bus door. “I miss your lemon biscuits.”

“You’ll have some when you come home.”

She got on the bus, took her seat. She started to lift her hand in a wave. And shouldn’t have been surprised he’d vanished.

When she walked into Sally’s, she expected to feel assaulted by the noise, the crowd, and found herself the opposite.

Here it was the familiar, the strange comfort of home.

While still too early for the first formal show and the real crowd, she recognized Larue onstage as Judy sweetly singing “Over the Rainbow.”

She’d been there, Breen thought. She’d been over the rainbow.

She glanced around for Sally, for Derrick, and when she didn’t see them, headed straight to the bar and Marco.

He set a flute of champagne in front of her.

“Champagne?”

“Sally said to pop open the good stuff for you to celebrate your book.”

“My book?” she repeated with a deadeye stare.

Though he tried to look shamefaced, he couldn’t pull it off. “I’m weak. I couldn’t help myself. I’m putting an order in for loaded nachos ’cause I know damn well you didn’t eat. Plenty of protein coming your way in a tasty package.”

“Then you’re forgiven, because I could eat.”

She started to reach for her glass, but was spun around on the stool, gathered in, lifted up.

Sally, as Cher in the crowd-pleasing white jumpsuit and long black wig, scooped her up.

“Here she is, ladies and gentlemen, the world traveler, the bestselling author, the belle of any ball, Breen Siobhan Kelly!”

Laughing, she hugged back. “The book’s not even published yet.”

“I’m a never-miss fortune-teller, and I’m going to do ‘Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves’ just for you.”

“I missed you and everything about you.”

“Catch it, because it’s coming right back at you.”

“Hey, my turn.” Derrick wrapped an arm around her before giving her a noisy kiss and a dozen white roses.

“Oh, they’re gorgeous! Oh, thank you. I feel like a princess.”

“You’re ours.”

Sally sat on the next stool, tossed back the long hair in a very Cher gesture, and winked at Derrick. “Honey, how about you put those beauties in some water so they stay fresh for our princess?”

“You got it.”

“And, Marco, you put that order in—pour me a glass of that fine bubbly first, then scoot. Breen and I need a little girl talk.”

Sally picked up his glass when he had. “Now, let’s get this out of the way. How did it go with your mother?”

“I guess as well as could be expected.”

“That bad?”

“Maybe worse. But.” Breen lifted her glass in toast. “It’s done. Besides, I’m with my real mother right now.”

“Baby, you’re going to make me cry, and this makeup’s prime. Now, I’m going to say how sorry I am about your father. You were right there for me when I lost my daddy a couple years ago. I wish we could’ve been there for you.”

“In a way you were. And as bad as it was—as it is—I know he loved me. He would’ve come back. He always loved me.”

“And you met your grandma?”

“She’s wonderful, Sally. You’d love her.”

“I hope to meet her someday.”

Breen sipped so she wouldn’t sigh. “That would be amazing.”

“And you got yourself that adorable dog—another I can’t wait to meet—learned how to ride a horse, wrote a whole damn book and sold it. It’s a good thing I wasn’t in makeup when Marco told us. I blubbered some—proud, happy tears. Baby girl, you sure have been busy finding out what makes Breen tick.”

“That’s exactly right.”

“Derrick and I read your blog every morning. We sit right there in bed with our coffee and our tablets and read, and damned if we didn’t feel we were right there with you, seeing it all.”

Sally wagged a red-tipped finger. “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 the buzzer. A moment later the door buzzed back at her, the lock thumped open.

She walked into what had been a dream.

As she waited in the contemporary casual reception, she worked on convincing herself this was reality. Then Carlee walked in with a broad smile and extended a hand to greet her.

“It’s so good to meet you at last. How was your trip?”

“It was quick. And the hotel is exactly what I wanted, thank you for recommending it. Thank you for . . . everything.”

She held out the flowers.

“Oh, they’re beautiful. So sweet of you. Come on, let me take you up to my office. I’m so glad you could come in just a little early so we’d have time to talk before we meet Adrian for lunch.”

She talked fast, moved fast, as she led Breen to a staircase and up in her low black heels, slim black pants, and starched white shirt.

She wore her streaky blond hair in a short, face-framing pixie cut. From their conversations, Breen knew she had two children, one in college, one in high school. But she moved like an energetic teenager.

Along the way, she stopped briefly in hallways—book-lined—in offices, poked into a conference room to introduce Breen to other agents, to assistants, a diverse group of men, women, races, ages.