CHAPTER NINE

New York City

Tillie surfaced from painting with a sense of awakening. She stood in front of her easel, but it was not the gazelle girl she'd started with.

It was the giant cat from her dream, who in turn had come from the painting at the gallery. She'd drawn him with oil sticks in deep indigo and amber, with long, long whiskers and pale blue eyes. Wise eyes, wise and kind, knowing. Human eyes but ... not.

Her hands were covered with color, which happened with the oil sticks, but usually, she pulled on latex gloves. Not this time. Her arms were smeared with layer upon layer of color, up to her elbows.

At her feet were scattered multiple drawings of him, in many poses. They were tossed carelessly on the floor, one after the other. Tillie squatted and picked up a few of them. This one just his face, his nose as big as a building; a pose with him asleep, tail tucked over his paws. Always the bandit stripes.

She had no memory of drawing these pieces. The place where the memory should have been was as blank as if she'd had anesthesia. She frowned in confusion.

How many drawings had she made? She picked them up and stacked them in a tidy pile, counting.

Sixteen.

Her heart raced erratically.

An urgent need to pee suddenly overtook her, and of course, the buzzer rang from below. Dumping the drawings on the big table in the center of the room, she dashed over to the wall, pressed the intercom. "You can leave packages with the super."

"It's Liam," he said.

Liam. She looked down at herself, then at the room, but honestly, she had to pee before anything else. For one second, she considered sending him away, but her gut sent up such a huge roar of resistance that she said, "Come on up."

She buzzed him in, then dashed for the bathroom. In the mirror, she saw that she was a complete mess, hair yanked back into an erratic ponytail, smears of turquoise over her cheekbone and neck. Her hands would need serious scrubbing.

There was nothing she could do in the three minutes it took for him to get to the top of the stairs. Before she got out of the bathroom, he was knocking playfully on her door: tap, tap, tap, tap, tap .

"Coming!" she called, and looked around wildly for one thing she could do to make herself or her world more presentable.

There was nothing. She yanked the door open. "Welcome to the madness," she said, gesturing broadly for him to enter. "Sorry. I lost track of time."

He looked quite different. Cleaned up, as if he'd come from some hip, posh job. His hair was brushed back from his face and secured, and the scruffy five-o'clock shadow was gone. The shirt was high-end linen, patterned in light purple, and although he wore jeans, they were similarly expensive. She blinked. "Wow. You look fabulous."

"My disguise," he joked. "Looks like you've been hard at work."

A stab of terror bolted through her chest—how did she lose hours ?—but she recovered. "Afraid you caught me as myself."

"I like it." His voice, as smooth and resonant as a long chord on a cello, worked through her skin, landed in her blood.

He waited outside the door, hands in his back pockets. "Sorry, come in," she said, flustered. "Sit down. Let me get you a beer—no, I don't have any. Um, how about coffee, or maybe—"

He closed the distance between them, hands landing on her arms above the elbows. "I've caught you at a bad time. Do you want to keep working?"

The scent of him filled her head, lime and clove and the promise of sex.

What she wanted was to lean in and wrap her messy arms around him, make imprints of her color-smeared breasts on that beautiful shirt, but instead, she took a breath. Shook her head. "I'm actually starving."

"Me, too."

"Uh ..." She spread out her hands. "I have to shower. Help yourself to something to drink. Bubbly water or—" She shook her head. "That might be it."

"Truly, I don't need anything." He sounded like he meant it. "Take your time."

It was a little odd that he just settled in the big chair so easily and took out his phone, turning on the lamp, which cast a warm yellow light over him.

As if he belonged there.

As she scrubbed the layers of oil color from her body, Tillie tried not to think about the lost time, but the mess itself was part of the strangeness. Oil colors could stain the skin, and she did what she could to protect herself from them: gloves, long sleeves, a mask. She hadn't done so this time.

She didn't remember shifting from the charcoals she used to draw the gazelle girl to oil sticks. Didn't remember tossing drawing after drawing to the floor. Didn't remember any of it.

What the hell had happened?

Her mother always said there was a very fine line between madness and creativity. Arlette often fell over the line, disappearing into worlds only she completely understood.

As water poured down her face, Tillie worried that she might be developing her mother's illness, that this was the first volley in whatever undiagnosed thing she'd lived with, because she would never get treatment, even after Tillie left home and realized that Arlette really might benefit from some clinical intervention.

Would Tillie end up lost in a world of her own creation?

The world of the cat. Cat Land.

The phrase reverberated, as if she knew it, as if she could tell a story about it. Once upon a time, there was a king of cats ...

She laughed. He seemed like a friendly enough fellow, after all, even if he was the size of a lion. A giant lion.

Some of her tension eased. Maybe she was being slightly dramatic.

Aware that Liam was in the other room, she kept her fussing to a minimum: simple makeup, her damp hair woven into a braid. Mindful of his outfit, she donned a black cashmere sweater and jeans. When she came out, he was still completely at peace with himself, reading on his phone.

"Hi."

He lifted his head. "Ah, the woman returns. When you first opened the door, I thought you were a crayon."

She laughed. "It was a deep day." She paused, glancing toward the stack of newsprint drawings. "An odd day, actually. Do you mind if we go by the gallery? I need to see that painting again."

"Sure," he said, standing. He slipped his phone into his back pocket. He pointed at the table. "Do you mind if I look?"

"Go ahead." She sat on the bench by the door to tie her short boots.

For a few long moments, he leafed through them, gently lifting one after another, and Tillie felt a faint dizziness—but she dropped her feet to the floor and grabbed her coat from a hook by the door. "Ready?"

"Am I allowed to comment? Or is it better if I don't?"

She shrugged. "I don't mind. I have no idea what they are."

"A cat, I'd say," he said with a quirk of his lips. "Made with energy and emotion and power. I'd pay substantially for one of these, mate."

"Yeah?" She crossed the room, boot heels knocking a rhythm against the wooden floor. Maybe this was the something she'd been looking for to give her work fresh energy. Setting aside the fear of the lost time, she allowed herself to really look at the drawings, and he was right. Fantastic energy. Joy. Fear. Intense colors and line work. "I just don't know where they came from."

"You will, in time."

"I mean—" She started to explain and then realized it didn't matter. Not right this minute. The scent of him filled her head, struck her limbic memory, and she was transported to the taxi last night, kissing him, anticipating something entirely different from a migraine. She was sorely tempted to take one more step and kiss him now, but it felt weirdly dangerous.

"Let's go take a look at the painting from last night," she said instead. "And get some food."

Settled in the taxi on the way over, she asked, "Now that you've seen my raw artwork, are you going to tell me what you're doing in town?"

He picked up her hand. "I lead meditation workshops."

"Um, what?"

He half shrugged. "You asked."

"It does explain the aura of calm." She waved a hand in a circle, indicating his body and head.

"Am I calm?"

"Yes." She inclined her head, thinking that he also felt safe, which was not usually the thing she was drawn to in a man. Though after Jared, she was pretty tired of drama. "What sort of meditation?"

"Mindfulness, and some visualization."

"Huh. Like, ‘You're walking down a forest path and the birds are singing ...'"

"More or less." His eyes glittered, and he made no defense nor took offense.

"I don't know that I've met a meditation teacher before. Is that why you're in the city?"

He nodded.

She plucked the bracelets on his wrist, rolled the beads beneath her fingers. "I should tell you I'm not in the slightest bit spiritual."

"We don't have to be the same."

When the taxi pulled up to the gallery, she got out first and stood on the sidewalk, waiting for Liam, but her eyes were already searching for the painting. She only could see Jon's giant abstracts, which practically hauled people in off the street. "Jon sold out last night, which if you don't know, is pretty incredible."

"Jon. That's your friend?"

"Yeah." She tapped her fingers against her thigh, bracing herself to go inside.

"You okay?"

She shrugged. "Maybe?"

He took her hand. Tillie looked up, grateful for the solidness of his hand. His presence. He was just tall enough that she felt appropriately small, a patriarchal bit of bullshit she nonetheless loved. Taking a breath, gripping his hand, she said, "Okay, let's do it."

A gallery worker greeted them as they came in. "Hello!"

"Just looking," Tillie said, moving like an arrow toward the back.

And there it was, the painting. Medium size, 11 x 20 inches. Still not at all the sort of thing she usually gravitated toward, but it didn't matter—her heart surged toward that porch, that cat, the figures. Did she want to buy it? She squinted at the price, but it wasn't that she wanted to own it.

She wanted to enter it.

Next to her, Liam was quiet, his hand solidly holding hers. Their palms were starting to sweat, and she was afraid she'd gross him out. She let go. "Excuse me," she said to the woman pretending not to hover. "Do you have any more information on this artist?"

"I'm sure we do. These six are the only ones we have, and they've only been here a week or so."

Six. She hadn't even registered the others. Another was clearly the same place, with the big rhubarb-looking leaves, and a road, and a house in the distance. None of them moved Tillie in the slightest. She liked the exaggerated color, but intellectually, not emotionally.

She looked more closely at the cat she'd connected with so deeply and saw that it had barely any details, just a shape in taffy and white. She'd supplied all the details herself, the whiskers and blue eyes, the stripes. "I don't get it," she said to Liam. "Objectively, I don't really like this style, but I want to be inside it."

"Does it remind you of something? Somewhere?"

She frowned, then shook her head. "I don't think so. I grew up on a farm upstate. We had cats, and even a porch, but none of these plants." She mined her memory for images from her travels, but nothing rose to match this house.

The woman returned with a single sheaf of glossy paper. "Not a lot of information. The gallery is the main contact, and as you see, it's just a single name. Shiloh."

"Do you know where she paints? Where she's from?"

The woman shook her head. "Sorry. I can find out for you, maybe."

"Will you?" Tillie gave her the number. "Text me."

"Are you interested in purchasing one of these pieces?"

"Maybe," she said, to be polite.

As she turned away, she caught sight of the cat in the painting again, and felt a swoosh of something, like wind, or a noise she couldn't quite identify. It made her dizzy, and Liam must have noticed, because he took her arm. She stayed still, waiting for it to pass. Terror rose.

What was happening to her? Was she going to succumb to a mental illness the way her mother had?

"Pie?" Liam suggested quietly.

"Too bright. Let's find a bar."

Liam settled with Tillie into an agreeably dark booth in a pub that smelled of a hundred years of beer. It boasted English favorites like shepherd's pie and fish and chips with mushy peas. Not vegetarian-friendly, but he was used to that. These days, there was always something, and on this menu, he found a mushroom risotto. Tillie ordered a pint of ale. Liam asked for water.

"Water?"

"I like it."

Her face captured him again, the simple oval, her indigo eyes. Her braid fell over her shoulder. Even in the low light, the white streak in her hair was quite visible. Her hands rested on the table, fingers folded together, quiet. He could imagine her as the wolf mother, the cat being, the owl mermaid from her art.

"You could be one of the characters from your paintings," he said.

"Feral?" She teased. "I've heard that before. I didn't get all the edicts about makeup and wearing certain things, all that. My mom was a total hippie."

"Seriously?" He spread a hand over his chest, weirdly delighted. "Mine, too."

"No kidding." She paused, studying his face. "That actually makes sense."

He grinned. "Like being a model?"

She had the grace to blush slightly. "Sorry. I mean—" She waved a hand. "We lived on a farm upstate, and my mom grew all of her own vegetables. Made kombucha before it was a thing."

"We were on the outskirts of the city, but same. No meat, no dairy, counters all covered with trays of sprouts and jars of sunflowers. She kept bees."

"Your own bees and honey. That's up there." She laughed. "I never had sugar until I went to a school Halloween dance in the seventh grade, but we bought ours. We didn't eat meat at all, but I was always trying to figure out ways to try it."

He chuckled. "Rebel."

"I was homeschooled until I was thirteen. You?"

"I never went to a public school. Homeschooled all the way."

"That's amazing. I never meet anybody with my background."

The waiter brought their food. "My mother would not have approved of this meal, I can tell you," she said, "but God that smells good. Are you still vegetarian?"

"I refuse to answer that question," he replied.

"So yes?" She grinned. "It's hard to eat meat if you've been raised without it."

"Yeah. I just . . . can't."

She sighed and touched her napkin to her lips. "When I traveled in my wild youth, I found it easier to let that go."

"Where'd you travel?"

"All over. Jon and I. At first, it was college holidays, you know, down to Mexico and Belize, and then after we graduated, we took a year and did the old-school backpacking thing." She enumerated the stops. "Started in Thailand, as one does."

"As one does."

"India, Sri Lanka, Croatia, Turkey, Egypt, Italy," she said, raising a finger for each place. "Germany, Norway, Iceland, then down to South America, Peru, Argentina."

"Impressive. Equal time in each?"

"That was the original plan, a month at each stop, but there were places we really liked and places we didn't care about. By the end, we were really ready to get back to New York and away from each other."

He laughed. "I did a gap year. Not as extensive as that. I didn't hear England on the list."

"We didn't go to the UK at all, or France, or Spain. It was a deliberate choice—those are the ones you'd visit anyway, right?"

"Fair enough."

"Now that we're sitting here, in a pub, I do wonder when I'll visit." She inclined her head and pointed above them, to where music came out of speakers. "I'm a fan of this kind of music, for one thing. Classic folk. I listen to this woman a lot when I paint. She sings the classics like this—" The song was a version of the story of Tam Lin. "But she also writes a lot of original songs that are in this realm, very dark fairy stories."

"Paula Davies," he said, leaning forward. "She lives in the town where my mum grew up."

"No way," Tillie said. Again. "She's my favorite."

For a long moment, he was quiet, only looking at her face. A sense of fate and fear mingled in his body, and he wondered if perhaps he should leave this connection alone, let it be. "I've never met anyone who knows her music."

"Me, either."

He stretched a hand across the table, palm up. "Give me your hand."

"Don't tell me anything scary," she said.

"No."

She reached over and placed her hand in his. Instead of reading her palm, he laced their fingers together, gauging the fit, finding it natural. Solid. "I think we were fated to meet, Tillie."

"I don't believe in fate."

"Don't you?" He held her gaze. A flicker moved there, a ghost.

She ran her thumb over the shape of his knuckles. "Would you like to come back to my apartment?"

"I believe I would."