Bonus Content for Muse’s One Year Birthday!

Dear Friends and Readers,

Thank you so much for your support and kind words over the last year as my book has made its way out into the world. I’ve been holding onto this bonus chapter for a while. It’s not scary, or even really creepy, and it didn’t really belong in the book, but it gives a little insight on certain main characters, and others who never really get their day on the page.

I hope you enjoy and I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

And if you haven’t read it yet, pick up a copy of MUSE before you carry on. It’s a quick read and you can get it on Amazon or check out the other places that have it.

Keep making art.

-LC

Meet Sheena Meegan

Before the service for Silver was finished, Mr. Green walked out of St. Jean Baptiste. In his Liverano suit and his bespoke black oxfords he walked from the Upper East Side to Hells Kitchen. The city was hot. He stank. His feet hurt and he was exhausted. His stomach grumbled and his legs trembled and still he walked along the stinking Hudson, looking at Jersey on the other side. At Pier 90, his legs collapsed and he finally called a cab to take him to his Midtown apartment.

He slept on his leather sofa and had nightmares of squelching mud and cold roots wrapping around his throat and pulling him down into the breathing marshes. He woke up trembling, crying, sweating.

“I’m sorry!” he wailed, but he wasn’t sure who he was apologizing to. Not Terra. She was gone and his apologies didn’t matter to her anyway. Not to the artists. He had no right to seek their forgiveness.

Perhaps to himself. To the boy he’d been all those centuries ago who might have lived a very fine life. Fallen in love, had a family, enjoyed a glass of wine on the porch of his modest house on summer evenings, while his children played. There would have still been art, but his soul would be intact. He wouldn’t have destroyed so many to feed his lusts.

He hated himself for feeling so sorry for himself. But he also hated the sudden ache in his hips, the crick in his neck, the excessive exhaustion that overcame him day after day, when he would have been working.

He hated the roil of his belly when he ate rich food. The spike of his blood sugar. The cramp in his calves, the lance of pain in his head. He hated the sudden aging, the aches and icks of existing in a slowly dying body.

He was sorry for squandering the gift he’d been given. It had been such a gift. He almost envied Silver, Silvio, for his quick exit. The heart attack had been massive, sudden, and he probably barely felt any pain at all.

But what waited him on the other side?

Green still had a chance.

He met with his realtor the following day, at a café across from Central Park. The man was practically ejaculating at the prospect of selling off Green’s properties. The Midtown apartment. The Bronx single family. The penthouse. The loft. Everything except the Soho flat that Terra had never returned to after…that night.

She’d left everything. Her clothes. Her food. Her art supplies. Her art. She had never needed any of it, had she?

 Green had only been there once. Seen the blood splattered on the floor by the doorway. Seen the canvases leaned up against the wall. He’d locked up and left again. He didn’t know when he would be back.

The realtor rambled about investments and quick sales and staging the spaces, but Garret wasn’t listening. He watched families across the street, walking into Central Park. He used to pity everyone who wasn’t in his world. He thought their lives small and terrible with their Target clothes and Taylor Swift and stock art prints.

The people across the street were smiling though. They looked so much happier than he’d felt for a long, long time. Except, perhaps in the presence of Terra.

His phone chimed and he saw it was Black, again. They hadn’t spoken at the funeral but that was because Garret had gone out of his way to avoid his associate. It was funny that Bernard thought that Garret would forget that they’d bashed in his head and locked him in a basement, just a few weeks ago. He blocked the number.

“Do you want me to send you any listings?’ the realtor asked, breaking trhough Garret’s thoughts.

“For what?” Garret asked.

“Houses? Apartments? If you’re looking to move to the suburbs there are some really wonderful properties available right now in Suffern.”

Garret couldn’t contain the cringe that shuddered through him at the mention of the suburbs. “No. No I won’t be looking to buy right now.”

“Where are you going to live?” The realtor asked.

It didn’t matter. He wasn’t sure he’d even be in New York City much longer. He looked back out to the park. When was the last time he’d walked through Central Park? Walked by the NYU art students, sketching the fountains? It was warm out today and everyone looked relieved to be in the sun.

“I’ll have to check recent listings in the neighborhoods,” the realtor continued on. “I should be able to have it all sorted out by this afternoon if you—”

“Have your office email me for anything you need,” Garret stood up abruptly.

“Oh, all right, but—”

“I have another appointment. I just remembered,” Garret said. “I’ll touch base with you tomorrow.”

He plunged for the door suddenly desperate to be in the sun too. To feel it on his ancient skin.

The air outside was warm, gritty with street dust and exhaust, but the buildings kept the street in shadow. Garret dashed to the corner where the crosswalk lights were already blinking out a warning, and ran across to catch up with the crowd stepping onto sidewalk outside the park. He cleared the trees and the walls and finally stepped into a patch of sun. He lifted his face to soak it in, praying it would burn away the empty voids within him left by the roots of creation.

“Garret?” a voice spoke beside him and he opened his eyes to see Sheena Meegan.

Sheena had been in the scene when they had moved back from Paris, twenty years ago. They’d paid her no attention then. She’s been a pest, a puppy, filling the free papers with promotions for her art school friends campus exhibitions, annoying gallery owners with portfolios of obviously student work, organizing odd shows at bodegas and bars and hotel lobbies. Black had slept with her a few times, when she crossed his path, when she couldn’t get him to cover any of the exhibits for her friends, or even introduce her to some of his contacts, she started to avoid him.

Then she published a review in his paper. Black laughed at it, mocked her and her review and her silly shows to everyone he could, and Green knew she’d gotten under his skin.

When she approached him about an artist she’d been trying to line up an exhibition for, he humored her because of it. But when he looked at the work, he realized that Sheena Meegan was no hack. The florals were from a young artist named Dana Glonciel, and Garret had taken her on as a client, immediately.

Sheena had something of what Garret had. That nose for talent, that eye for art, but she also had the soul Garret had lost. She cared about the artists she worked with, not just for what they would get her.

Sheena had established herself, quietly, over the last twenty years, to be a damn fine publicist. She wasn’t the most successful in the industry by far. She didn’t have the most clients and her rates were lower than they should be, but she had a reputation for being honest, and really caring about her clients. And most of her clients did very well.

Whenever Garret saw Sheena at galleries and events, she was always in an understated suit by an understated designer. Although Silver and Black would scoff at her style, Garret thought she was rather elegant. But today she was nearly unrecognizable in a soft blue sundress. Her dark brown hair, always up in a bun or French twist, cascaded down over her bare shoulders in soft waves. Garret thought he wouldn’t have seen her at all if she just passed him by, but now that he looked at her he recognized the golden honey brown of her eyes.

“Sheena, hello,” he said softly as she approached.

She reached out and brushed something off his jacket. “I meant to speak with you at the funeral yesterday. To pass on my condolences, but I missed you.”

“I didn’t stay long,” Garret said, his voice soft, uncertain. There was a warmth radiating off Sheena, rolling over him, through him. Her skin was golden in the sun and he wished she were the type of woman that hugged people when she greeted them.

“I am so sorry,” she said, keeping a polite two feet away. “Scott seemed so healthy. It must have been a shock.”

“He wasn’t as healthy as he seemed,” Garret said. “It really was a long time coming.”

Sheena tilted her head to the side, and narrowed her eyes slightly as if she were trying to read his meaning in fine print.

“What are you doing at the park?” Garret changed the subject. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in casual clothes.”

Sheena smiled. “Yeah, I guess I’m a bit of slob today. I needed to get out, touch grass. You know.”

“Not a slob at all,” Garret said. “You look—” He stopped himself from saying beautiful. Everything had changed and everything was different but he couldn’t help but remain a professional. “—Very nice.”

Sheena smiled brighter. “Well, I decided to take the day to hit up the zoo. I like to go when it’s nice out. Walk around in the sun. Eat something fried. Watch the penguins.”

“Penguins?” Garret’s surprise was apparent in his voice and Sheena laughed.

“I love penguins,” she said, her voice taking a sort of dreamy quality.

“Well, who doesn’t?” Garret found himself smiling too.

“Would you…” Sheena started and then stopped herself. “Oh, sorry. I’m sure you’re on the way to something important.”

“No,” Garret said. “No, I’m not.”

“Okay then.” A blush appeared across Sheena’s face and she looked down at the gum studded sidewalk. “Would you like to come see the penguins with me? I’ll buy you a corn dog.”

“I’ve never had a corn dog,” Garret said.

Sheena said nothing but raised her honey-brown eyes to his, waiting for his reply.

“I mean,” he continued, “That I would like to try one. And see the penguins.”

“Good,” Sheena said softly and tilted her head toward the park. “It’s this way.”

She started into the park and Garret followed after her, the ache of his legs and the crick in his neck and the discomfort of being human suddenly replaced with a warm thrum in his chest and a hope for something that he’d forgotten was possible again.