Chapter One: An Inauspicious Beginning

 

“Every one is a visionary, if you scratch him deep enough. But the Celt is a visionary without scratching.” 

W.B. Yeats, Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry

 

I awoke to the heady scents of juniper, sage, and sweat. 

Remnants of the dream hung over my bedroom like a canopy. Though winter morning light pushed sleepily through the condensation on my window looking over Cleveland Circle at the western-most edge of Boston, shadows still seemed to threaten from the corners of the room. 

Threats from some other time, past or future. Maybe even the present.

Threats that I, Cassandra Whelan, Ph.D. candidate in Irish and Celtic Studies, overworked grad student, and latently misanthropic witch, had to fight on a daily basis. 

Sleep was supposed to be my reprieve from that battle, but last night, the universe had other ideas. 

Like any good witch, I reached for the black journal on my nightstand and scribbled down what I could remember. I’d call Gran later to go over the dream. A seer like me—that is, a clairvoyant fae in a world that also included sorcerers, shifters, and sirens—she still lived in the house where she’d raised me on the Oregon coast, at the mist-covered foot of Neahkahnie Mountain. The only teacher I’d ever had in the magical arts, Gran would undoubtedly be able to offer guidance, along with yet another nagging reminder to come home to finish my real education before it was too late. 

Not yet, I say, as I always did.

I still had four more months to finish my degree. 

Four months until I could take up the assistant professorship waiting for me at a rural Oregon college just an hour from Gran’s house and the ocean that still beckoned my soul.

Four months until freedom from this city heaving under the weight of its memories, which often invaded my thoughts with a single touch. 

But I had to get through today first. 

I rolled over to check my alarm. Oh, Goddess, no. It couldn’t be. “Shit.” 

I jumped out of bed, grabbed one of the few skirts I owned out of my closet and tugged it on, followed by a thick pair of tights and wool kid gloves I kept for special occasions. 

“Shit, shit, shit,” I chanted as I ran down the hall to splash water on my face and brush my teeth in the tiny prewar bathroom. When I made it to the kitchenette to hunt for a portable breakfast, I looked at my phone again. 9:10. Oh, hell.

My roommate, a twenty-three-year-old master’s student named Aja, groaned from the old corduroy couch that took up the lion’s share of our small common room. “Cassandra. It’s Saturday. Why are you running around shrieking like a banshee?”

I winced at the casual use of the term. Aja was an Irish Studies student like me; she knew very well that the stereotype of the shrieking banshee originated from the Irish bean sí, the walking woman who heralded death. As a plain person, however, Aja wouldn’t know that the mythological figure was rooted in very real types of mind witches. Seers, like me. 

Like my people. 

Or what little I’d ever really known of them.

“The mini-seminar today with Rachel Cardy.” I stuffed a banana into my pocket and slathered some peanut butter onto a piece of stale bread. “You know, she just did that new translation of The Taking of Ireland.. The department is trying to convince her to come here from Yale, and Professor James put me in charge of the whole event. I’m supposed to be there to welcome her at nine-thirty.”

“Oof. Good luck. Isn’t James your dissertation chair?”

“The one and the same.”

It was all I had to say. Horace James was a brilliant scholar of Irish mythology, head of my committee, and the man who essentially held my future in his gnarled hands. 

He had also refused to approve my dissertation for defense on four separate occasions this year, and I was running out of time. Agreeing to organize and emcee a crowded event that would likely be standing room only—otherwise known to me as hell on earth—was my last-ditch effort to curry the old curmudgeon’s favor enough to get his rubber stamp of approval on the final chapter.

And thanks to that horrible dream, I was late.

Aja made a face as she sat up, almost like she were the mind reader in this apartment, not me. One side of her bobbed blonde curls was flattened to her cheek while the other bunched up by her ear. 

“Long night?” I tucked a notebook into my messenger bag along with a granola bar, ignoring the whiffs of beer and fleeting memories that tingled, even through my gloves, from Aja’s jacket.

“You could say that. Wait. I was going to tell you something, but you’d already gone to your room when I got in last night.” 

I didn’t reply. I had one rule for roommates: once my door was closed, I was done for the night. Usually that was before eight p.m., after a bath and the saining I did to cleanse the apartment of the memories that had been clinging to its corners and surfaces since it was built sometimes in the early eighteen-nineties. The smoke of juniper, sage, and rowan couldn’t get rid of its history completely. Nothing could. But along with the Old Irish spell Gran had taught me when I was thirteen, it was enough to help me sleep. 

Although last night, maybe I’d slept a little too deeply. I’d have to take it easy with the rowan next time.

“Anyway, the weirdest thing happened,” Aja continued, oblivious to the fact that I was more focused on scarfing my toast than listening to her story. “Nick and I were at the show. The band was really going off, and everyone was dancing like crazy. Gorgeous neo-soul, tribal-music-type stuff. You should really come out with us sometime, Cass. If you can ever get over your fear of crowds, that is. Therapy does wonders.”

“Uh-huh.” Unlikely. Therapy and the getting over my fear/pathological hatred of crowds. I twisted around the kitchen in search of my scarf and boots. “So, what was weird, then?”

Aja rubbed a bloodshot eye, smudging some leftover makeup under it. “Well, when Nick went to grab us some drinks, this guy tried to chat me up. At first it was your pretty average pick-up kind of thing. You know, ‘good band, huh?’ He was pretty hot and had this posh kind-of British accent, but I was there with someone else, so I just brushed him off. I thought he got the idea.”

I made a motion like I was winding a tape as I located my scarf by the hearth. “Little faster here, Aj.” 

“Okay, but then he started asking me other questions. Like, what did I study, where did I live, stuff that started to get a little too personal. I said the Irish modernists and the rest was none of his business. Then he wondered if I was at BC too, and did I know you, and when I turned to ask him what his deal was, I swear, it was like the whole room froze for two or three seconds.”

I looked up from where I was tugging on my boots by the door. Suddenly, it felt like ice had been poured down the back of my shirt. “What do you mean, the whole room froze?” 

Aja shrugged. “Like, the band stopped playing, and the people stopped dancing, and I swear to God, Cass, I thought half the crowd was watching to see what I would say. Then everyone started dancing again. I looked at the guy to tell him off, but he was gone.” She flopped back onto the couch. “I don’t know…maybe I imagined the whole thing. Nick and I did have mushroom tea before we went.” 

By this point, I was tugging on my parka, trying to pretend I wasn’t spooked. Aja wasn’t fae, but they had obviously surrounded her last night. That in and of itself wasn’t a surprise, since she frequented events that attracted a lot of fae creatures. Not seers like me. There weren’t many of us to begin with, and I assumed everyone was like me and generally avoided crowds like the plague. Shifters and sirens, though, loved a good party.  

Still, why a strange fae would be looking for me was the real mystery. Almost as mysterious as the ability to freeze an entire crowd for any amount of time—something I had never heard of anyone doing. We weren’t supposed to call attention to ourselves. Discovery meant death. Even I, as estranged as I was from the fae community, knew that.

“Cass?”

“Hmm?” I shook myself out of my thoughts. 

“I said, who do you think it was?”

I paused, then crossed room to do something unusual: remove my glove to touch my roommate. A pat on the shoulder would seem comforting to her, but as she thought about it, I might able to See the episode as it happened last night. It was always a risk—my clairvoyance was unpredictable at best. Some days I could See people’s thoughts like orderly lines on a ticker tape or their memories like scenes in a movie. Other days were particularly bad. All manner of thoughts and emotions, spanning centuries descended just from bumping into a particularly popular lamp post.

I was really tired of Boston.

I prayed today would be a good day as my hand made contact. So far, the apartment had kept reasonably quiet this morning, so maybe my touch would cooperate.

A picture opened up in my mind’s eye—Aja was clearly trying to remember what she’d seen. Her memory, however, wasn’t very clear. The dark lighting of the club obscured the man’s face along with the other people she had mentioned. She was trying to see beyond her boyfriend’s attempts to kiss her, and there wasn’t much more she could glean beyond that, even when the room froze behind him. Her confusion colored the rest like a toddler’s scrawl of crayon over a white wall.

I pulled my hand back before the vision grew more chaotic, as I knew it would if I pressed my luck. “It was probably just an old student or something. You really need to stop drinking the stuff Nick makes you.” 

Aja nodded and yawned. “You’re probably right. Um, Cass?”

I slung my messenger bag over my shoulder and went for the door. “What’s up?” 

“Are you going to leave your hair like that?”

I turned to check my reflection in the mirror next to the front door. My face looked fine, if still marked with a few creases from my pillow. Pale white skin and bright blue eyes looked back at me. A little too piercing, as always, with darker circles than normal underneath. My nose, overly long and sharp, pinked at the end to match my lips, which were just a little too red. Everything was just a little too much—the physical hallmark of being fae. 

My hair, though, was a different story: an unruly black mantle with a mind of its own that was entirely too witchy for my taste. I had cut it off several times, but it always grew back at an alarming rate until reaching its apparently preferred length of just below my shoulder blades. Today, it also suffered from the turmoil of my dreams, with some of the shorter waves bent awkwardly from behind my ears like the winding headdress of a bighorn sheep. 

So much for finger combing it into submission. What I wouldn’t give to be a sorceress right about now and be able to change my whole appearance with a brief spell.

“I see your point.” I hurriedly tamed the mass into a thick braided tail down my back. Still witchy, but at least it was neat—er. “That’ll have to do.” 

Aja pointed to the ground. “You forgot your glove—”

“Don’t touch that!” I sprang across the room and fairly pounced on the offending article, which was lying innocently on the table behind the couch. 

My roommate sat up again and tucked her chin over her knees. “Sorry. I forgot. No touching your things, right?”

I felt a bit sheepish myself as I pulled on the last of my protection. “No,  I’m sorry. I know I’m a touchy pain in the ass.”

“You’re quirky. There’s a difference. Plus you always make me tea in the morning, and you leave the best leftovers in the fridge. That mac and cheese last week. Holy cow.”

I smiled, wishing I could give her a real hug. Wishing something so simple wouldn’t ruin my entire day. And hers. 

“Don’t you have to go?” 

I started. “Yes. I do.”

“Good luck!”

But I didn’t answer. I was already sprinting out the door.

~

 

Chapter Two: Man of the Crowd

 

…the world seems full of good men—even if there are monsters in it.

Bram Stoker, Dracula

 

Normally, I loved Boston in the snow. Snow meant fewer people who might bump into me along with every random thought flying through their heads. Snow meant quiet, a cloak that hushed the millions of memories seething from every surface, every sidewalk, every patch of land in a city that had been continuously inhabited for at least seven thousand years. 

Today, however, it just slowed me down. 

By the time I jogged into Gasson Hall, one of the several neo-Gothic buildings at the center of Boston College’s campus atop Chestnut Hill, I was a mess, earning the baleful stares of the portraits of the college’s former presidents lining the walls of the meeting room.

All of them male. All of them priests. All of them men who very well might have cheerfully burned my ancestors alive if they had lived a few centuries earlier.

Professor James was chatting with the guest of honor next to several stacks of chairs waiting to be arranged around the room.

“Professor,” I called out. “Dr. Cardy. I am so sorry I’m late. My alarm didn’t go off. Please accept my apologies.”

Overkill? Probably, since I was maybe ten minutes late. Even so, Professor James’s glare matched the presidential portraits as he crossed the room to meet me. “How nice of you to join us at last, Ms. Whelan.”

“I really am sorry, Professor.” One boot was completely soaked from stepping in an ice-hidden curbside puddle, and the backs of my legs were splattered with slush. I dropped my bag near the lectern, then removed my coat and draped it over the top, but kept on my gloves. 

Professor James stared, as he often did whenever I showed up to our meetings with my hands covered. “Still?” It was a subject that had come up before. “Aren’t you hot in those things?” 

I didn’t answer as I used a paper napkin to wipe snow off my boots.

“It’s distracting,” he continued in the Hepburn-esque New England drawl that only people over the age of eighty seemed to have anymore. “You must know that.”

I frowned. It was a quirk, like Aja had said. We all had them. Academia drew oddballs like moths to a dusty, library-filled flame, and nowhere more than the Department of Irish Studies. Aja only wore one pair of shoes—green combat boots with bright pink laces. Another professor in the department regularly colored his combover with black spraypaint, and yet another had nothing in their office but a terrarium that was home to a human skull. 

Sometimes, though, I wondered if Professor James knew my secret. That my obsession with hand accessories wasn’t about vanity, but protection. From him. And from myself.

I rubbed my hands together, but made no move to remove the black wool. “Eczema.” 

He scowled. “Yes. Well. Come and meet our guest.”

I followed him to where Rachel Cardy was examining the portrait of Jeremiah O’Connor, the fourth president of BC. 

“Dr. Cardy. It’s an honor.” I offered my hand, glove on, to shake hers, bracing myself for the impact.

The hard truth was, the gloves didn’t always work. Nor did coats, hats, jeans, shoes, or other items of clothing.

According to Gran, seers sensed meaning, which was why some thoughts or memories spoke louder than others. If something mattered to a person, whether it was as small as a glance or as massive as a war, that meaning left its mark. On a bench. A desk. A piece of paper. A scrap of clothing.

Those echoes could usually be muted by more barriers that didn’t carry any history in them. Leather worked reasonably well. Wool was a close second. Cotton, linen, and other natural fibers came in as distant thirds.

But even on good days, these barriers only did so much. If the day was bad, or by some mistake, if I happened to touch an actual person in the midst of their actual meaningful experience? Gloves or not, I Saw everything. And it was like walking into a tsunami.

Still, I’d face a mental tidal wave as many times as it took today to get back into my professor’s good graces. My escape to quiet rural bliss depended on it.

Dr. Cardy shook my hand, and a summer breeze blew through my body. The room smelled of lilacs, despite it being February, overlaying a symphony of emotions that somehow worked in concert instead of against each other. General warmth as well as the typically magnanimous curiosity of her kind emanated from the tiny, bright-faced woman.

And what do we have here? she thought.

Dr. Cardy was obviously a siren, an energy magnet with the ability to transform potential into reality through passion. Siren power was a constant source of frustration to other fae for its unpredictable and intangible qualities. Shifters could sense it, but not recreate it; seers could See it, but not firmly separate it from other emotions or thoughts; sorcerers could feel it, but couldn’t manipulate it or anything touching it. 

Siren ingenuity and innovation were unmatched, and they tended to become celebrities of culture and art (or at the very least, their muses). At the same time, they were more mercurial than the rest of us, with contagious moods that were often responsible for crowd-swaying moments in history, from mob hysteria to the greatest civil rights marches. 

Most seers were not fans. I, however, was just grateful that Dr. Cardy’s state of mind seemed pleasantly lucid. 

“The pleasure is mine, my dear,” she said in a thick Yorkshire accent as she took her hand back. “Do call me Rachel. ‘Dr. Cardy’ sounds like I’m your physician.” 

Like all fae, she was noticeable, with porcelain skin and bright eyes that twinkled when she smiled. Her shiny auburn curls bounced with every small movement. 

But it was her translations of ancient texts that had made my heart ache from their beauty long before this meeting. Critics called her the next Seamus Heaney because of the way she had made old Irish stories accessible and even popular to a new generation, so much that her most recent work, a translation of Lebor gabála Érenn, had become a New York Times bestseller. 

“Rachel,” I repeated carefully. “I’m Cassandra, one of Professor James’s students.”

“Yes, yes. I understand you’re the lovely girl who’s arranged all of this. Horace tells me it will be standing room only. Well done.” 

Professor James scowled at the informal use of his first name. 

“Ms. Whelan will finish prepping you for the discussion, Dr. Cardy,” he said. “I’m going to the café while I still can. Like anything?”

“No, no, Horace. We’ll be just fine, happy as clams, the two of us.” 

Rachel waved a hand, swiping my shoulder just long enough to allow me to hear her internal laughter as she goaded my advisor. It was hard not to join in. 

Once the doors had shut behind him, she turned and smiled again, this time more knowingly. “Well, you’re quite something, aren’t you?”

“You’re very kind,” I said, suddenly unsure under her probing gaze. “I hope the talk goes as planned. I was excited about the prospect of you coming—”

“No, no, not that, although you have done a lovely job with the event. I mean you, Cassandra. A mind witch, aren’t you? Or perhaps a sorceress, although you haven’t the terrible coldness about you that they do. Locked up tight as drums, aren’t they? You’re certainly not one of us. Forgive me for saying, but I did read that paper you published last year. Insightful, but a bit dry. Not bad, though, not bad at all.”

I blinked, dumbfounded by her instant analysis. Sometimes, in my isolation, I forgot how easy it was for most of us to identify each other.

“Am I wrong?” she pressed. “Are you a shifter after all? I wouldn’t have pegged you for a selkie, but that black hair…it wouldn’t be the first time I was fooled.”

“No,” I finally blurted out. “No, I’m not a shifter. You were right on the first guess. We prefer ‘seers,’ though. As I’m sure—I’m sure you know.”

There was room for debate on the matter, of course. Some fae used the term witch to apply to any or all of us. Mind witches like me. Fever witches like her. Shape witches like shifters or stone witches like sorcerers. As with many other bigoted terms, “witch” had been reclaimed by plenty of fae determined to rewrite its definition with more positive connotations.

But that didn’t mean its origins had disappeared with new meanings, either.

“Oh, how rude I am,” she said. “Terribly sorry, truly.” 

She was so earnest that I couldn’t help but grin. “How did you know? Am I that obvious?”

Rachel smiled like I was a child, despite the fact that she was only a bit over five feet tall. “No, no. Just practice and intuition, you see. It was harder since you were so polite.”

I frowned. “Polite?”

“Not prodding all about my head like your kin usually do. Except for that handshake, of course. Powerful, that one. But everyone is a little curious.”

I swallowed. She could have no way of knowing that was because I wasn’t capable of reading her mind without contact. Or that I couldn’t stop once it started.

“It’s not foolproof,” she rattled on charmingly. “So sometimes I do make mistakes, but you have that aura about you only seers have. Quite bright, quite lovely. Very sharp. Mostly blue of course, though you’ve got some other unusual tinges of crimson too. Perhaps you’ve got a shifter in your genealogy somewhere, eh? You’ve also the face of some of the wise women. Sharp nose, sharp eyes, like they could see right through you. Of course, that’s exactly what you can do, isn’t it?”

She erupted into laughter at her own joke, and it was so utterly contagious that this time I did join her.

“Er, thank you,” I said once we had calmed down. “I suppose that’s good to know about myself. Did Professor James show you around?”

~

I wasn’t able to enjoy much of the lecture after giving my introduction. Instead, I was more concerned with shoving myself into the corner but trying to touch as little as possible and also keep my distance from the standing-room-only crowd that inched closer to Dr. Cardy as she discussed Pliny’s accounts of the ancient Celts. 

They were magnetized by her charisma. I just tried not to panic.

From the other side of the podium, millions of unwanted thoughts, feelings, histories, and dreams threatened to swarm this space the moment the talk was over. I couldn’t See them. Not yet. Not without touching, though a conversation about a new library from when I guessed was approximately 1925 kept trying to sprout through the soles of my boots like a persistent dandelion. Still, the other possibilities from the attendees heated the room like pressure building in a teapot that hadn’t yet whistled. 

Applause broke through my thoughts. Dr. Cardy stepped down with a bright smile as I took her place and bent awkwardly over the microphone to conclude the talk at last.

“We’ll take a few brief questions,” I informed the audience. “And afterward, the department will welcome Dr. Cardy to a reception at the faculty club, which is open to members and their guests.” 

Hands all over the room flew up. But while Dr. Cardy fielded questions, someone else in the back caught my interest. A man with gingery blond hair and light green eyes standing next to the portrait of Thomas J. Stack, the sixth president of BC who served for less than a month before falling ill and dying just after his thirty-second birthday. 

This man, however, looked fully alive. And about my age, too, though he stood with the bearing of a senior faculty member—self-assured with an arrogant, unwavering gaze. And that something. That sharp, striking presence only we had.

He was fae. I was sure of it. And judging from the cold, gruff control radiating from across the room, I didn’t need to touch him to know he was a sorcerer. 

Spellhunters, some called them. Pirates, said others. 

But it wasn’t the fact that he was a wizard that piqued my interest. What made the man stand out was that, instead of clapping or even glancing at Dr. Cardy speaking to her adoring fans, he had his large green eyes fixed squarely on me. And they did not move once.

~

The wooing of Rachel Cardy continued until the crowd followed her to the faculty club while I cleaned up the room at Gasson. By myself. Where I could breathe. Alone.

Well, not quite.

“I enjoyed your talk.” 

The voice was distinctly British with a tinge of something else I couldn’t quite place. A lilt he was trying to hide, maybe. 

Despite the compliment, the deceptively sharp tone caught me by enough surprise that I dropped the last of the stackable chairs on my toe with a grunt. Kiwi-colored eyes peered down at me with an expression that managed to be both cold and intent. 

Kiwi-colored eyes.

Blinking through the dark. 

I shivered.

“Would you like some help?”

After I caught the man staring at me earlier, I had stared back until he looked away. Dr. Cardy wasn’t alone when she said it felt like a seer could see right through her. Other fae believed we could in fact do such a thing (we couldn’t). It tended to make them uncomfortable when we looked for too long, and I had enjoyed that when I looked again a few minutes later, the man had disappeared. 

Until now.

“No, thank you. I got it.” I set the chair on the final stack a bit more firmly than necessary. 

“Cold?”

One gingery eyebrow quirked as the stranger nodded at my gloved hands. I fought the urge to hide them behind my back. Fae or not, he wouldn’t understand why I needed them. And I had no interest in presenting myself to such an imperious fellow as a defective seer. 

“Winter in Boston,” I mumbled.

I had to crane my neck to look up at him, which meant the stranger was well over six feet tall next to my lanky five feet, nine inches. Up close, he looked a bit older than I initially thought, if the threads of silver at his temples was any indicator. He was also admittedly handsome, with pale skin and neatly trimmed ginger hair shadowed ashy black at the roots, as if his naturally darker color was bleached from too much time outdoors. A slim torso with broad shoulders was dressed in standard academic garb: an inoffensive brown corduroy blazer patched tidily at the elbows, an olive-green shirt ironed within an inch of its life, and a gray cashmere scarf knotted around his neck without a speck of lint. 

His lichenesque eyes were the only colorful things about him—sharp, feline, and rimmed with lashes so dark it almost looked like he was wearing liner. The rest of his features were chiseled without seeming harsh. A crooked nose and straight jaw line were softened by neatly groomed stubble. 

As he noticed the way I noticed him, those green eyes rolled. Then he produced a semi-polite smile, lips pressed together. Forced. Irritable. Knowing. 

I frowned. He was decent-enough looking, but arrogance was not a quality I enjoyed in anyone. 

“The reception for faculty is in McElroy,” I said curtly, turning to locate my coat and bag. “Students aren’t allowed, but they’ll probably make exceptions for non-member faculty. Just walk toward Beacon, and you’ll run into it.” 

“Oh, I’ll call Rachel later. I wanted to compliment your stewardship of the event. Your comments were much more insightful than the average moderator’s.” 

I paused, unsure of what to make of this odd, stiff compliment. “It was just an introduction. I welcomed a scholar and set up some chairs. Are you in Irish Studies too, or do you know Dr. Cardy via Classics?” 

“God, no,” he scoffed. “I’m a scientist, not a bloody humanist.” 

Of course he was. Granted, I didn’t know any sorcerers personally, but I’d heard enough stories from Gran to know they weren’t the least bit interested in, well, people. Calculating to the core, all of them, she’d said time and again in her thick Irish accent. 

“But Rachel and I have known each other for a very long time,” he was saying. “Really, though, I’ve yet to hear any moderators with the insight that you have. In fact, I was wondering if you’d be willing to engage in further discussion over coffee or tea this afternoon. Perhaps now that you’ve finished here.”

I took a bit longer than necessary to button my coat and put on my scarf. I didn’t need to be a seer to sense the man’s obvious bullshit. But Aja’s description floated back to me—a good-looking guy…with a British accent. One who disappeared easily. 

“I suppose,” I said, resetting my expression to bland acquiescence. “I have plans right now, but I’m free later this afternoon. We could meet at the café just off the end of the B line on Comm Ave. Do you know where that is?”

The man smiled, revealing a row of sharp-looking white teeth. “I do indeed.”

We eyed each other for a long moment. And then I made a decision for the second time that today I could very well regret. 

“I’m Cassandra, by the way.” I pulled off a glove and extended my right hand, bracing myself for chaos. 

Something told me it wouldn’t be like other touches. Not a haze of recollections like I’d experienced with Aja or the bright, complex warmth I’d gotten from Rachel Cardy. Power oozed from the man. Maybe my day would be ruined by this single touch, but something also told me I needed to know who he was. And that I couldn’t trust a thing he told me. 

“Pleased to meet you, Cassandra,” the man replied carefully, eyeing my hand like I was offering him a knife blade-first. 

He didn’t take it. Then he also seemed to make a decision 

“Sorry,” he said as he stepped back. “Bit of a germophobe, I’m afraid. Hope you don’t mind.” 

I couldn’t even pretend not to be relieved as I backed toward the table where the rest of my belongings were. The man’s eyes narrowed. My skin prickled.

“Actually, I just realized that I’m busy this afternoon anyway.” I tugged my glove back on. Suddenly, I wanted to be as far from this stranger as possible. “You can contact me through the department if you need. My email is listed there.”

“Perhaps I will see you at another talk in the area,” he murmured lamely, now focused on a pair of his own smooth leather gloves, pulling them on one elegant finger at a time, pinky to thumb. 

“Sure.” I picked up my bag.

Twenty minutes back around the reservoir, and I’d be home. Sain the hell out of my room, take another very long bath, and then call Gran for an interrogation. 

When I looked up to bid the man a final farewell, I was alone in the center of the room, the heavy door swinging shut with a loud squeal while forty-five priests, complete with their collars, stared me down. 

It wasn’t until that moment that I realized I hadn’t asked the elegant stranger’s name.

And then the voices started.

~