Marco picked up a small sketch of himself, sleeping with a smile curving his lips.
“Marco, this is you! I mean, it’s got you. He’s really good.”
“He has a little cottage right in the village. More of a studio, really, because besides a bed, it’s mostly—well, other than weapons—art stuff. And his paintings and drawings, Breen, they’re really, really good. I was hoping they’d be pretty good, so I could say so, but we’re talking serious-artist good.”
“I can see that by this sketch. You need to frame it.” She set it back on the table. “I’m so happy for you.”
“I’m pretty damn happy for me, too.” And blissful with it, he trailed a finger over the sketch. “Going back to work?”
“Oh yeah. I worked on Bollocks this morning—that’s the one they’re paying for. But I’m going to shift over to the fantasy for a few hours. I know it’s a shot in the dark still, but—”
“Stop.” From his seat, he drilled a finger into her belly. “You’re a writer, girl. Writers write. You go do that, and I’ll finish this. Then Bollocks and I are going to have ourselves a photo shoot.”
“He needs to go out.” She walked to the door, opened it, and the dog streaked by.
“I’ll let him in if I’m not finished before he is.”
She left them to it and went back to her desk to dive into the world of danger and magicks.
Here with the words, with the imagery, she had control. Maybe she didn’t see the end clearly, not yet, but she saw stages of the journey.
But when she passed through into Talamh, it wasn’t just words, just imagery. And a great deal of the journey lay out of her control.
So it soothed and excited her to write, even when she found herself crafting echoes of what she’d seen or heard or experienced.
And when she pushed away from her desk, she hugged herself with the satisfaction of real progress.
She took time to check her email—Marco would ask again—and as always wondered if she’d find one from her mother.
No. Not yet, and, she admitted, maybe never.
She walked away from it, and found Marco in the living room with his keyboard, his headphones, and staff paper.
“You’re writing music!” She did a little dance when he jolted, pulled off the headphones. “You haven’t been working on your music since we got here. Let me hear it!”
“Not ready yet.”
“You don’t need to go through the headphones when you’re working it. I like to hear you work out a song. It’s like back in the apartment. If you’re still into it, we can wait to go over.”
“No, I’m good. I need to let it simmer—like my pot roast.”
“That’s the amazing smell!”
“Got it simmering, and it’ll do that for about four more hours. So I need you to, like, woo-woo it.”
“Do what?”
“Woo-woo it, so it coasts along, and if we can’t get back, it turns off. Can you?”
She held up a finger. “This may be the key to my deeply buried cooking skills. I can do that.”
“Great. Handy. You do that, and I’ll get us some jackets.”
She considered it like setting a timer—a magickal one. With a good day’s work under her belt, and the prospect of Marco’s pot roast for dinner, she set off with him and Bollocks.
“You’re going to ride that dragon again, aren’t you?”
“Oh, you bet your well-toned ass I am.”
“I’m not.”
“I’ll talk you into it one day.”
“You got a lot of words, Breen, but you don’t have near enough for that. Me, I’m going to hang out with Colm.”
“Who’s that?”
“Dude has a cottage right near Finola’s. He makes beer and ale. He’s going to show me how it’s done. Maybe one of these days, I’ll start making Olsen Ale.”
“It has a ring.”
They parted ways on the road in Talamh. To give herself a moment, she sat on the wall across from the farm. She saw Harken leading a horse from the stable to pasture. And recognized the mare as the one who’d mated with Keegan’s stallion in the summer.
Curious, she opened herself, and felt the life inside the mare. Would it kick, she wondered, as Aisling’s baby did?
She saw the boys just outside Aisling’s cottage, Mab on nanny duty. The Capital, she thought, with its crowds and movements, seemed very far away.