ML – 2021.001 “Apart, Together”   Magdalena Marie Lockheart was where she had always been since returning from the hospital months ago. The old, decrepit farmhouse that she once visited somehow became a place to call her own. To her, this place didn’t feel like it was hers. It was hardly familiar. Even as she rested on the bed in the first-floor study; it still…

Prologue One Month Ago “Oh God…” I stepped into the sterile emergency suite at Albany Medical instantly regretting my decision to come. I wasn’t sure if Lucy Wylde was lying there asleep, unconscious, sedated, or dead… well, I knew she wasn’t dead… but she was still somber and uneasy to bear witness to in that condition. I couldn’t speak. The thoughts from my mind pushed…

Prologue   Three years ago I was lying in an alley in New York with blood pouring out of my head and my clothes torn to shreds. If it wasn’t for the luck of a certain passerby making the decision to intervene – a certain Nadette Fischer – I don’t know what my attackers would have done to me to finish the job. My first…

Prologue The flaps of my leather coat and my hair swaying in the breeze. My arms folded tight across my chest. I had been here, stood in this very spot several times before. But what I see before me is nothing more than my reflection, because it is nothing. What I see is an empty lot on the corner of a busy New York street,…

“I told you she’d fail.” Jason Bridges doesn’t seem to care about the subject of conversation as he goes about his business behind his desk. On the far side of the office Cherie Von Allen rubs her own injured shoulder, unsure that it’s as simple as her boss is making it sound. “With all due respect, Mister Bridges, I wouldn’t call Maggie’s effort a failure.”…

Against my better judgment (and the well-wishes of the CWF medical staff) I hopped on the first flight out of Cologne, Germany. Once again I didn’t end up staying for the end of a show. When the plane touched down at BWI it was two in the morning, but I had been in the air for eight hours. I had a headache the size of…

The last time I saw Cherie Von Allen, I was walking out of the Capital One Arena in DC with her in tow. I was angry. Can’t really say that I was angry at her, but she’s the one who caught all of the venom that I had to spew. She was looking out for me, like she only ever was, and I had to…