Tír na nÓg Trilogy, Book III: Tír na nÓg

24-Hour Psychic

"What is this pandemonium?" Cathbad snapped.

"This city is absolutely huge," Tess remarked. It's noisy and crazy. Just please stay away from the cars. What's our plan, anyway? How are we going to find this building?"

Emery frowned. They'd paused at an intersection, at the curb, and she told the others to ignore people that asked them questions or called things as they passed. "I don't know," she admitted, feeling foolish. Cullen and Cathbad couldn't have known how big New York City was. In fact, she hadn't really known how big it was. She'd never actually been there. "I feel so dumb. I guess I figured I'd get some sort of vibes when we got here, or I'd just kind of look around and eventually run into it. Or maybe I thought we'd just be closer." She sighed. "We could be searching forever. I do know it was somewhere really rundown, though, where there were pretty much no people, and all the buildings were abandoned except for the one we went into."

"I should've known, too, Em," Tess added. "I don't know why we thought we could just come here and find one building in the midst of thousands."

Emery put a hand instinctively to her necklace. "I could call Charlie out, see if he'd tell--"

"No," Cullen firmly interrupted. "We will not use his help."

"All right," Emery replied, rueful for having mentioned it. "Well, if that was Central Park, we must be in Manhattan, and there's no way that building was in Manhattan. We can't just stand here, so let's start walking. If anyone thinks of something, speak up."

Emery guided the party in crossing 5th Avenue, and they headed into streets of brick and brownstone apartments and buildings. They carried on, really without much purpose except to keep moving, and crossed more streets, all the while observing zigzagging stairways and lamplit windows, people moving in and out of doors and cars winding their ways. Emery felt strange, seeing all the things she should've felt used to seeing. She'd been away from this world for too long, now, this place without magic and mystery, and yet for all its lack of mystical intrigue, it was wonderful and dangerous in other ways. She didn't quite feel as if she belonged, though. Emery had thought that returning would be comfortable, but it wasn't, and not just because of the looks she received. This world didn't sit right with her anymore. She knew too much, now; she was aware that even in a place so seemingly ordinary, evil could thread its roots. Hadn't the Fomorians themselves set up home here? And yet this place was entirely unsuspecting.

The longer they walked, the more Emery wondered what Cullen was thinking. He'd been in her hometown, back when he'd first appeared to try to tell her who she was, when he'd startled her with a kiss, when he'd tried to tell her she was his wife . . . so he must know of many things of this time period, like cars and architecture and electricity. But he and Emery hadn't spent any time talking about the modern world, what he'd seen or thought of it.

Every time they passed some sort of eatery, Cathbad was particularly interested, but Emery reminded him that money was necessary to eat, here. One couldn't just enter a place and request hospitality. The druid dealt with his disappointment and didn't speak much otherwise until, suddenly, he cried out so abruptly and joyfully that the others immediately stopped.

"Here is what we seek!"

Emery was briefly excited but then saw where he pointed. Across the street, a neon light in a storefront squashed between a duplex and a convenience store read "24-Hour Psychic" in blinking blue. Cathbad surely hadn't been able to read that sign; instead, he'd seen the display in the window: an arrangement featuring a hooded mannequin hovering over a crystal ball, waving its hands over the top. A variety of stones and chakras and dreamcatchers and all other manner of spiritual apparati hung around the figure in a collage of flea-market eccentricity.