CHAPTER ONE

New York City

Five months and twelve days after her mother died, a painting ripped a hole in the fabric of Tillie Morrisey's life.

If it had not been an opening for her best friend's first show in three years, she wouldn't have even gone. It was pouring, the kind of Manhattan deluge that fills the gutters to knee height in ten minutes, so she was forced to wade to the subway, then splash the three blocks to the gallery. She would look like a drowned cat by the time she got there.

Two doors away from the beacon of the gallery spilling light from its big windows, an old woman tripped right in front of her. She was clearly unhoused, pushing a cart, her coat dragging on the ground. She stumbled, five feet ahead of Tillie, and practically somersaulted over, feet in the air.

Four other people were on the street, and not all of them were as clearly dressed up as Tillie, but none of them stopped. Tillie felt ashamed of herself for hesitating for even a tiny second—what did it matter if she got wetter or ruined her makeup?

She hurried over, holding her umbrella aloft. "Are you all right?" she asked. "Let me help you up."

The woman was a ball of cloth, layer after layer, her gray hair scattered down her back. "Bless you," she said in a craggy voice, allowing herself to be helped to her feet. "I can trip right over the air!"

"Take my umbrella," Tillie said.

"Oh, no, not for free!"

"Really, I don't mind. I'm just going right there." She pointed.

The woman peered up at her, and Tillie found herself pressing details into her artist mind, seeing the lady as an ancient little hedgehog, her hair caught under a knitted scarf, her nose red from the cold. She scrounged around in her pocket and came out with something she pressed into Tillie's hand. She imagined a germy rock, and wanted to drop it, but not until the woman was no longer looking.

"Thank you." Tillie handed her the umbrella, then dashed for the shining lights of the gallery.

A crowd had already gathered, impossibly polished patrons in cocktail dresses and suits, the monied folk you want to see at an opening. No one would mistake Tillie for one of them with her dripping hair and aging boots, but she wasn't there for them. Standing in the vestibule for a moment, she shook herself like a wolf and pushed her wet hair out of her face.

What had possessed her to give her umbrella away? Now she'd have to walk home in the rain. She looked at the thing the woman had given her. It wasn't a rock but a rather beautiful reddish crystal, and unexpected tears stung her eyes. It felt like a nod from her witchy, hippie mother, whom Tillie missed painfully.

The shoulders and heads of murmuring people hid any sign of him. Instead, her eye caught on a side wall, on a particular painting. It wasn't large, but the colors—many greens and slashes of pink, with turquoise and yellow—blazed into the room, loud as a siren. It drew Tillie across the floor.

She stopped in front of it, hair dripping on her shoulders.

It was of a little house in a nest of trees and bushes, with a porch and two figures without faces, and a pale cat licking a paw. The colors sizzled, blazed, those improbable pinks, the saturated lime and lemon. The figures wore turquoise.

Tillie didn't move, captured entirely by the scene, and even as she stood there, she didn't know what was so mesmerizing. It felt like a place she should know, and if she could just focus, she'd bring it in. The cat, licking a paw. The two girls.

A sound like a train filled her ears. Her chest was tight. Improbably, she felt tears running down her face, and could not seem to move away.

In his hotel room across the street, Liam Redfern had been staring through his window at the rain, feeling marooned and homesick for his own house, where his things were arranged the way he liked them and he could make himself a proper cup of tea. He'd drink that cup sitting in his favorite chair that looked out over a rocky cliff to the bay, where sailboats decorated the horizon. He hadn't been there in nearly five months, and he was very tired of life on the road.

It wasn't so much that he missed the room, the tea, that particular mug his mother had brought him from one of the Renaissance fairs where she sold her honey and soaps. He missed the simple routines of his life there, the simple beauties he'd chosen to be calming, such as his garden that he tended himself when he was home. He missed the meditation space and the kitchen where he cooked simple, good food.

The tangle of emotion, weariness mixed with longing mixed with resistance, was a warning that had grown more insistent over the past couple of weeks. He needed to talk with Krish about it, and sooner rather than later.

Below, he saw a woman hurrying through the rain, carrying a yellow umbrella. It was unexpectedly bright in the dark evening. He saw it tilt, and then realized that the umbrella was shielding a homeless woman and her cart of belongings. The woman with the umbrella helped her up and gave her the umbrella. Then she dashed away, entering the gallery below his windows. He'd noticed the gallery this morning, the window displaying abstracts in a palette of blues and greens that made Liam think of the sea. Now he was intrigued by the woman who'd left behind her umbrella.

A prompt rose, clear and strong. Go meet her.

A lesser voice argued that he might be recognized. Another said he should stay in and work on a new group of meditations they wanted to release in the near future. They being his business team, not Liam himself.

Which had become part of the problem.

He could see the woman pause by the door. She wore green stockings, and her hair tumbled down her back, dark as enchantment.

He grabbed his coat.

Tillie had no idea how long she stood mesmerized in front of the painting.

A hand touched her elbow lightly. "Are you all right?"

Jerking away from the stranger, Tillie slapped tears off her face, embarrassed.

The man raised his hands, palms out. "Sorry. I didn't mean to frighten you."

She blinked. For the second time in two minutes, she felt swamped by visuals. The man's face was straight from a Renaissance painting, with a high brow and eyes as clear as an angel's. The hair was pure surfer, sun-bleached blond, too long. The throat and hands showed the same long exposure to sun. But they were a long way from either Italy or surfing.

"Are you the artist?" Tillie managed, pointing to the wall.

"No. I'm not a painter, I'm afraid." The accent was from New Zealand. Maybe South Africa.

She looked back to the painting and walked up close to read the card: Shiloh. Forest #21 . The colors blared, commanded her attention, and the buzzing started again, so loud, as if she were hearing some real thing that came from the world of the painting, something she couldn't identify. Birds? Insects?

She swayed.

"Steady," the man said, arm around her waist. This time she didn't protest. "Let's find you a chair, shall we?"

She allowed herself to be settled on a plastic chair near the coat check, out of the way.

"Breathe," he said. "I'll fetch you some water."

"Thanks." The noise in her head subsided as she took long breaths in, let them out. A part of her wanted to march right back and stare at the painting again, but she might fall flat on her face the next go-round.

Before the man came back, Jon appeared. He was her oldest friend from art school—a delicately beautiful dark-brown man with luminous eyes and the most elegant hands she'd ever seen. He'd fled a tiny town somewhere in Oklahoma and never looked back. They'd been roommates for years, sharing a terrifyingly cold space that was big enough for both to paint, with corners for sleeping and the bare bones of a kitchen while they tried to make their way.

He said now, "Tillie, baby! Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm good." She waved a hand, dismissing the weirdness. Don't look at the painting. Don't look at the painting. "Maybe I'm coming down with something."

"Do you want something? Some—"

"I've got some water here, mate," the man said, handing her a metal bottle. A good voice, Tillie thought, smooth and rich, doubly excellent with that accent.

"Thanks," Jon said, standing. He, too, appreciated the long limbs, the Renaissance mouth. He reached out a hand. "And you are ...?"

"Liam." Tanned wrist with scatters of bleached hair, four bracelets of natural stone and crystal around it. Definitely surfer/hippie/New Agey something or another, Tillie thought. No ring. Not her kind of man, but he would be worth a night or two of play. Those shoulders, his amiable expression.

"Liam. That's a name you don't hear too often," Jon said, giving his trademark grin, bright as a full moon.

"Not here, but pretty common where I come from."

Jon dipped his chin. "I stand corrected."

Liam shifted his focus—and Tillie thought it was as if he steered a spotlight, wide and deep, and shined it on her. It was hard to look away. "You all right?"

"I'm fine," Tillie said. "Thanks."

He raised a hand. "Take care, then."

Jon and Tillie watched him go, an athletic spring in his fit body. "Runner, you think?" Jon said.

"Mm. I'm going to guess surfer."

"Maybe." He touched his artfully thin goatee with one long finger. "Don't make 'em like that on the East Coast too often."

Tillie laughed, and slapped his arm. "Come on, let's see the show."

She carefully avoided the wall with the strange painting, keeping her eyes averted as Jon led her toward his abstracts, all modest in size with a spirit of melancholy or joy, phrased in unusual palettes. Two already showed the red dots that marked them as sold. "Well done," she said.

He wrapped his fingers in hers. "Thank you. That one reminds me of your eyes."

It was done in sea hues, with splashes of murky gray. "Really?"

"Yes." He stopped. "It took a month to get it right. All that light and all those shadows." He pursed his lips, considering. "I think I got it."

A ghostly shape lurked through the blues and greens, and something about it caused a return of the earlier disturbance. Tillie touched her belly. "Is there food here? I think I might be a little hungry."

"Jon!" a deep hearty voice said, the gallery owner. "I want you to meet—"

Tillie gave him a tiny push and slipped away, looking for the snacks that had to be here somewhere. Nothing too messy or hard to manage, somewhere near the back. A faint sense of dizziness followed her, muting the sounds of voices and music.

A gazelle of a girl with a long neck and yellow hair watched over the makeshift bar. Tillie pulled out her phone and snapped a photo, imagining the gazelle girl on an open plain, pursued by burly alpha lions.

She lowered the phone, narrowed her eyes, seeing possibilities in colors, in movement. The girl's long nose, long neck.

A flicker zapped the edge of her vision, the broken mylar that warned of an impending migraine.

Of course.

A migraine. That was what this weirdness was. She'd suffered from them for years, off and on, the remnants of a head injury when she was a small child. It was annoying that they could still surprise her.

"Do you have water?" she asked the gazelle.

Without a word, she produced a metal bottle, ice-cold. Working quickly to beat the growing size of the shimmering aura that would soon cover the vision of her right eye, Tillie filled an environmentally friendly plate with crackers and cheese and some wildly appealing raspberries. Water, food, rest. The magic cure. Sometimes. She couldn't lie down and have a nap, but she could address the other two.

A trio of chairs rested against the wall near the restrooms, and she gratefully sat down. The aura spread to the middle of her vision now, bringing a distant sound, a faint buzz. She opened the bottle and guzzled half the water. Maybe it would be only the aura. Sometimes, that was all it was. She closed her eyes and took long, slow breaths, pressed the cold bottle to her forehead.

"Try this," said the New Zealander, and pressed a cool compress into her hands. "Over your eyes."

She didn't question how or what he knew—the aura was spreading quickly, and she could feel the headache itself starting to build beneath her scalp. She lifted the wet, cold rectangle and pressed it over her eyes. "Thank you."

"Migraine?" he asked.

"Yes."

"D'you mind if I try something?"

"Go ahead."

He took her left hand and pinched a point between her thumb and forefinger. "Okay?"

"Mm." Nothing stopped the aura once it began, but it didn't really hurt, either. It was just blinding and strange. If anything could hold off the migraine itself, she was willing to try.

He kept pressing the skin on her hand. "Tell me if the pressure is too much."

The sensation was solid, a focus point, and after a little while—two minutes or ten?—the rumbling threat started to ease. The aura pulsed, true to its own schedule, almost twenty minutes to the second every single time. It covered her right eye in bright geometric rainbows—then ceased. She kept her eyes closed a moment longer, and Liam kept pressing the spot on her hand. She took the compress from her eyes. Waited. Nothing.

"Wow."

"Better?" he asked.

"Yes," she said with some sense of wonder. "Is that acupressure?"

"It is." His hands dropped to his lap.

"How do you know that?" she asked.

"Part of my job." He flashed a quick, rueful smile. So appealing, a little diffident, and she didn't think it was feigned. It offset the dazzlement of his beauty.

"You're an acupuncturist?"

"Not exactly."

"You don't want to say?"

A shrug.

"Okay. Well ... um ... thank you." She dipped her head sideways. "Twice."

He held her gaze. Such clear irises, somehow guileless. A disturbance rippled in the air, just out of sight, a soft shift in time, maybe, a shimmer of green and blue.

"Right, then," he said. "You good now?"

Tillie nodded. "Are you here with someone?"

"No. I ducked in to get out of the rain."

"Can I buy you a coffee or a beer or something?"

The smile was slow. "Yeah."

"Let me tell my friend."

They stood together. The quickest way through the room was through the narrow space by the painting that had captured her earlier. She could almost hear it, and planned to pass with her eyes averted, but as if it carried its own alarm, it called her attention. She slowed. Stopped.

Pinks and greens and turquoise. Blocks and shapes, almost abstract but not. "It's not my usual thing," she said. "Why can't I stop looking at it?"

"I like it," he said. "The children, the cat, the sense of the forest, lurking. Dangerous and inviting. The colors are great."

That sound returned, muted, a call, a faraway roar. The buzzy sense of disconnect crawled up her neck, and Tillie felt like she could almost see something, feel something, like she wanted to speak. No, she wanted to climb through the painting into that other world. "Ugh." She straightened, rubbed the back of her neck. "It just gives me such a strange feeling, like ..." She shrugged. "I don't know. I can't call it in."

"It speaks to you."

Tillie laughed a little. "Literally." She shook it off. "Come on, we need to tell Jon we're leaving."

We . As if they were a couple.