Excerpts for Both Gena Showalter's Ever Night & Jessica Andersen's Crystal Skull Below.

Gena Showalter "Ever Night"

Prologue After centuries of waiting, Torin’s patience was long dead. The woman he craved was, at last, almost his. For hundreds of years, he’d wandered the far reaches of the globe, a shadow in his woman’s life, always alert for signs of the magicks stirring. Now, that the moment had come, to have the Awakening strike on a tidy suburban street in Long Beach, California seemed almost a joke. One he didn’t find amusing.

Across the street from him, a bell rang and hundreds of school children spilled from a pale green stucco building like ants from a hill. Their bright laughter was sharp to a man already on a razor’s edge. His gray eyes narrowed behind his dark glasses as he watched the kids scatter in the sunlight. The last barrier between him and his woman had fallen. His skin felt electrified with the rising of power in the air. His blood hummed and if he’d had a heartbeat, it would have been thundering in his chest.

A woman hurried past him to gather up her child and gave him a quick, appraising glance. Her steps quickened, her gaze shifted from him and she rushed her child away as if they were being chased by demons.

He knew what people saw when they looked at him.

Taller than most men, he had long dark hair that fell loose to his shoulders. He wore a black T shirt that clung to the hard muscles of his chest and abs. His black jeans and scuffed, shit-kicker boots finished off the dangerous image. His face was lean and hard, sculpted with sharp planes and angles and his pale gray eyes gave away none of his thoughts.

He looked exactly what he was.

A warrior.

A killer.

A Sentinel whose second chance had finally arrived—and this time, he wouldn’t be denied.

Chapter One “They took my mom away last night.”

Shea Jameson wanted to lock her classroom door and walk away. It was the only sane thing to do. But the tremor in her student’s voice pulled at her. The day was over at Lincoln middle school and the hallways should have been emptied. Shea knew because she always waited until everyone else had left the building before she headed home. She made it a point to avoid crowds whenever she could. As a teacher, she was faced with classes filled with kids everyday, but they didn’t bother her. It was the parents of those children that worried her.

She looked down at Amanda Hall and sympathy rose up inside her. Shea had heard the rumors, the whispers all day. She’d watched as the teachers reluctantly protected Amanda from those who only yesterday had been her friends. And she knew that the girl’s situation was only going to get worse.

“Ms. Jameson, I don’t know what to do.”

Her heart broke for the small blond girl leaning against a row of closed lockers in the empty school hallway. The child’s face was streaked with tears, her blue eyes swimming with them. Her arms were crossed over her middle, as if trying to console herself and when she looked up at Shea, stark misery and panic were stamped on her small features.

She wouldn’t be able to turn her back on the girl, despite the risks, Shea thought with an inner sigh. How could she and still live with herself?

“I’m so sorry, Amanda.” She glanced over her shoulder to be sure there was no one near. Not a soul was around though and the silence, but for Amanda’s soft sniffling, was deafening. The beige walls were decorated with posters announcing the coming Fall Festival and Shea’s gaze slid away from the drawings of cackling, wart encrusted witches burning at stakes.

The small hairs at the back of her neck were standing straight up and she would have sworn that there was someone close by, watching her. A shiver of something icy slid along Shea’s spine, but the halls were still empty. For now.

She shouldn’t have stopped, a voice in her mind whispered. Shouldn’t have spoken to the girl. No one knew better than Shea that there were spies everywhere. That no one was safe anymore. If someone should see her talking to this child, her own personal nightmarish circus would begin again and there was no guarantee that this time, Shea would survive it.

But how could she walk away from a child in desperate need? Especially when she knew exactly what Amanda was going through? Shifting her books and papers in her arms, Shea dropped her free hand on the girl’s shoulder and tried to think of something comforting to say. But lies wouldn’t do her any good and the truth was far too terrifying.

If Amanda’s mother had really been taken, she wouldn’t be coming back. In fact, it was probably only a matter of time before the authorities came to snatch up Amanda as well. And that realization pushed her to speak.

“Amanda,” Shea asked quietly, “do you have anyone you can stay with?”

The girl nodded. “My grandma. The police took me there last night. Grandma didn’t want me to come to school today, but I did anyway and everyone’s being so mean...” She shook her head and frowned in spite of her tears and a flash of anger dazzled her damp eyes. “My mom’s not evil, I don’t care what they say. She didn’t do anything wrong. I would know.”

Shea wasn’t so sure of that. These days, secrets were all that kept some women alive. But even if Amanda was right and her mother was innocent, there was little chance she’d be released. Still, what was important now was Amanda’s safety. The girl had already learned one harsh lesson today— don’t trust anyone. Her friends had turned on her and soon, everyone else would, too. Once word got out about her mother being taken, the girl would be in danger from so many different directions, she’d never find shelter.

“Amanda,” Shea whispered fiercely, “don’t come back to school tomorrow. Go to your grandmother’s and stay there.”

“But I have to help my mom,” the girl argued. “I thought you could go with me to the principal and we could tell her that my mom’s not what they think. Mom’s the President of the PTA!”

Shea winced as the girl’s voice rose. She couldn’t afford for anyone to see them. Couldn’t risk being seen helping the child of a detainee. Leaning down, she caught Amanda’s eyes and said, “Your mom would want you to be safe, wouldn’t she?”

“Yeah...”

“Then that’s the best thing you can do for her.”

“I don’t know...”

“Amanda listen to me,” Shea said, her words coming faster now as the creeping sensation of being watched flooded back into her system. “There’s nothing we can do to help your mom. The best thing for everyone is for you to leave here and go straight to your grandmother’s. Okay? No stops. No talking to anyone.”

“But—“

A door opened down the hall and Shea glanced toward the sound. Her stomach pitched with nerves as she spotted the school principal coming out of her office. Lindsay Talbot’s eyes narrowed as she looked at Amanda and Shea huddled together speaking in whispers. Instantly, Ms. Talbot darted back into her office and Shea could only wince.

“Just go, Amanda,” she said, giving the girl’s shoulder a quick squeeze. “Go now.”

The girl picked up on the urgency in Shea’s voice, nodded briefly, then turned and ran down the hall toward the back door. Once she was gone, Shea took a breath, steeled herself and walked in the opposite direction. Her heels clicked on the tile floor as she neared the glass wall of the school’s office. The front door was only a few feet away and the sunlit afternoon shone like a beacon of safety. She was leaving, no matter what, she thought, but she had to know what Ms. Talbot was doing.

Shea glanced through the office windows in time to see the principal hang up the phone. Then the woman turned around, met Shea’s gaze and gave her a cat-about-to-eat-a-canary smile.

Just like that, it was over.

All of it.

Shea had been happy here. For awhile. She liked teaching. Liked the kids and she’d been convinced that over the last year and a half she’d found safety. That her behavior, her gift for teaching was enough to prove to everyone that she was nothing more than she claimed to be. A sixth grade science teacher.

But as she met Lindsay Talbot’s hard stare, Shea felt the old, familiar stir of panic. Fear rushed through her system, churning her stomach, making her hands damp and drying out her mouth. She had to run.

Again.

She let her papers fall to the floor in a soft rustle of sound, then she tightened her grip on her shoulder bag and raced for the front door. As her hand dropped to the cold, steel bar and pushed, she heard Lindsay Talbot call out from behind her, “You won’t get away. They’re coming.”

“I know,” Shea murmured, but ran anyway. What else could she do? If she stayed, she’d end up with Amanda’s mother. Just one more woman locked away with no hope of ever getting out.

Outside, she squinted at the beam of sunlight that slanted into her eyes, and took the steps down to the sidewalk at a dead run. She dug into her purse as she turned toward the parking lot and blindly fumbled for her keys. Her only hope was to be gone before the MP’s arrived. It would take them time to find her and in that time, she’d disappear. She’d done it before, she could do it again. Dye her hair, change her name, find a new identity and lose herself in some other city.

She wouldn’t go back to her apartment. They’d be expecting her to, but Shea wasn’t that stupid. Besides, she didn’t need anything from her home. She traveled light these days. A woman constantly on the move couldn’t afford to be dragging mementoes from one place to the next. Instead, she kept a packed suitcase in her car trunk and a stash of emergency cash tucked into her bra at all times, on the off chance she’d have to leave in a hurry.

A cold wind rushed at her, pulling her long, dark red hair free of the knot she kept it in. Slate gray clouds rolled in off the ocean and seagulls wheeled and dipped overhead. She hardly noticed. Parents were still milling around out front, picking up their kids, but Shea ran past them all, ignoring those who spoke to her.

Her car was at the far end of the parking lot, closest to the back exit. She was always prepared to run and wanted to be able to slip away while her pursuers were coming in the front. She was sprinting now, her heart hammering in her chest, breath strangling in her lungs. She held her keys so tightly the jagged edges dug into her palm.

The soles of her shoes slid unsteadily on the gravel laced asphalt, but she kept moving. One thought pulsed through her mind. Run. Run and don’t look back.

Her gaze fixed on her nondescript beige two door compact, she never saw the man who leaped out at her from behind another car. He pushed her down and her knees hit the asphalt with a grinding slide that tore open her skin and sent pain shooting along her nerve endings.

Hands reached for her as a deep voice muttered, “Gimme the purse and you can go.”

Absently, she heard voices rising in the distance as parents saw the man attacking her. Oh God, not now, she thought as she turned over and stared up into the wild eyes of a junkie who desperately needed money. She couldn’t deal with this now. Couldn’t have all this attention drawn to her.

He pulled a knife as if he sensed she was hesitating. “Give me the money now.”

Shea shook her head and when he reached for her again, she instinctively lifted both hands as if to push him off and away. She never made contact with him though. She didn’t need to. A surge of energy pulsed through her and shot from her fingertips and as a whoosh of sound erupted, the man in front of her erupted into flames.

Shea stared up at him, horrified by what was happening. By what she’d done. His screams tore through the air as he tried to run from the fire. But he only fed the flames consuming him and as his shrieks rose higher and higher, Shea staggered to her feet, glanced down at her hands and shuddered.

That’s when she heard it.

The chanting.

Over the sounds of the dying man’s cries, voices roared together, getting louder and louder as she was surrounded. One word thundered out around her, hammering at her mind and soul, reducing her to a terror she hadn’t known in ten years.

She looked up into the faces of her students’ parents as they circled her. People she knew. People she liked. Now though, she hardly recognized them. Their features were twisted into masks of hatred and panic and their voices joined together to shout their accusation.

“Witch! Witch! Witch!”

Shea fought for air as the mob tightened around her. There was no way out now. She was going to die. And if the crowd didn’t kill her, then the MP’s would take her away when they arrived and she would be as good as dead anyway. It was over. The years of terror and dread, the hiding, the praying, the constant worry about survival.

“Stop!” she shouted, her voice raw with horror at what she’d done. At what they were about to do to her. “I didn’t do anything!”

A useless argument since they’d all seen what had happened. But how? How had she done it? She wasn’t a witch. She was just... her. “If I had power, wouldn’t I be using it now?”

Some of the people around her seemed to consider that and their expressions reflected worry. Not what Shea had been after. If they were worried about their own safety, they’d be just that much more eager to kill her.

Her head whipped from side to side, desperately looking for a way out of this. But she couldn’t find one. In the distance, she heard the wail of sirens and she knew that within minutes, the MP’s would arrive. And the Magic Police weren’t going to let her get away. They might save her from the mob—on the other hand, they might stand back and let these everyday, ordinarily average people solve their problem for them.

Frantic now, she stumbled back as the crowd pushed in until she realized they were herding her closer to the burning man stretched out on the asphalt. Heat from the flames reached for her. The stench of burning flesh stained the air. Shea looked from the dead man to the crowd and back again and knew that whatever happened next, she deserved it.

The fire suddenly erupted, growing until hungry licks of orange and red flames leaped and jumped more than six feet high. Someone in the crowd screamed. Shea jolted. Black cars with flashing yellow lights raced into the driveway and then screeched to a stop. Men in black uniforms piled out and pointed guns, but they were the least of her problems now.

Flames reached for Shea. Engulfed her. The roar of the quickening flames deafened her to her surroundings. She screamed and looked up into a pair of pale gray eyes reflecting the shifting colors of the fire. She felt hard, strong arms wrap around her, as a deep voice whispered, “Close your eyes.”

“Good idea,” she answered, then fainted for the first time in her life.

Jessica Andersen "Crystal Skull"

Deep in a rainforest south of the Mexican border

“For an archaeologist who’s made the discovery of her career, you don’t seem all that happy,” Javier said from the far side of the underground cavern, where he was systematically photographing a panel of carved hieroglyphics. Wearing jeans, scarred boots, and a UFC t- shirt, the ex-wrestler handled the high-tech camera as expertly as he wielded their portable excavator and the double-barreled shotgun that was his constant companion out in the field.

Natalie grimaced. Should’ve known he wasn’t down here just to take pictures. Her grizzled dig coordinator—and good friend—wasn’t big on being belowground. The others must’ve deputized him.

Settling her headlamp more firmly over her dark ponytail, which was damp at the ends from the cool condensation that slicked everything inside the ancient temple, she focused on the painted clay pots she was supposed to be examining. “I’m just tired.”

Which was true. The members of her six-person team had been pulling double shifts ever since she had discovered the cave two days earlier. They were racing to catalog the artifacts before things hit meltdown territory with the locals. Which was imminent.

She had all the necessary permits, but the residents of the nearby village had stopped caring about the paperwork the moment she had peeled back the overgrown vegetation to reveal a cave entrance carved with images of winged, humanoid creatures that matched the local legends of the bloodthirsty bat-demons known as camazotz.

Add to that the approaching equinox—which was supposedly when the creatures came up from the underworld and terrorized the villagers—and the fact that a local jaguar had recently developed a taste for livestock, and she had herself a village on edge. There was real potential for a pitchfork-wielding mob to descend on the dig at any moment.They probably would’ve been there already, if it hadn’t been for her connection to American ex-pat and local hero, JT Craig.

And how much did that reminder suck?

Javier snorted. “Girl, you showed up everyone who said you were crazy for turning down a season at Tikal and bushwhacking out into the middle of nowhere instead. But you did it. You found a new freaking ruin. Tired or not, stressed or not, you should be happy-dancing from here to base camp and back again. So what gives?”

She shrugged, the motion pulling where her lightweight camp shirt stuck to her skin. “There’s no such thing as a ‘new ruin.’ It’s an oxymoron.”

“You’re the moron if you think I’m letting you change the subject. So give. What’s wrong?”

“I’m—” fine, she started to say, then cut herself off because she knew that wouldn’t fly with Javier, especially when she wasn’t fine. She was restless and stirred up, itchy and twitchy. “I just keep thinking that I’m missing something, that I’m not where I’m supposed to be.”

And wasn’t that the story of her life?

“We’ve gotten this far following your instincts, so I’m not going to diss them now.”

Which was true. Others might think she was too brave for her own good, going off into a particularly volatile section of rainforest based on her gut feelings and the devil that kept pushing her to do more, be more, but Javier and their teammates followed her without complaint.

Still, though, his tone had her glancing over to where he was fiddling with the tripod-mounted camera and attached laptop. “Why do I get the feeling there’s a ‘but’ coming?”

“But if you’re feeling off, are you sure that it’s about the dig and not about—”

“Don’t say it,” she interrupted, scowling back at her pots.

“Somebody has to.”

“Or not. I’ve never let my personal life interfere with the work before, and I’m not going to start with JT. Weren’t you the one who told me that I’ve got the dig-site boyfriend thing down to an art?”

He hadn’t meant it as a compliment, either. Ever since he’d married Nikki, the team’s bubbly computer guru, he’d been busting on Natalie’s long string of short-term, no-harm-no- foul relationships. He had seen her ten-week relationship with the gray-eyed ex-Army Ranger as a step in the right direction.

Or not.

“This time was different. You and JT were—“ He broke off when someone shouted his name from topside, the word echoing along the stone tunnel that led down to the sacred chamber. “What?” he bellowed back, setting up a reverb that made Natalie wince.

“We could use you up here,” Aaron shouted back.

Natalie breathed a sigh of relief at the interruption. There was no point in talking about her and JT. What was done was done … and they were way done.

Javier scowled. “Dang it. I just finished setting up this shot. Couldn’t the crisis du jour have waited a few minutes?”

They both knew could’ve shot five frames in the time it had taken him to set up this one. He‘d been stalling so he could push her some more on why she’d ended things with JT. What he didn’t know was that it had been the other way around.

Waving him off, she said, “Go ahead. I’ll take care of the pictures.”

“Come topside when you’re done. You should eat something.” The “and we’re not done with this conversation” was implied.

Once he was gone, she tried to clear her mind and focus on the work at hand. She took the picture he had set up, then started to move the camera to frame the next set of glyphs while the attached laptop added the image to the composite they were assembling of the entire carved panel. But instead of setting up the next shot, she found herself shifting aside the camera so she could get up close and personal with the hieroglyphs that made up the huge, intricate text.

For a moment, she let herself imagine the artisan who had chiseled the words into the cave wall. He would have known who he was, where he belonged within the hierarchy of the ancients: The scribes had been more than peasants but less than royalty, falling roughly equal with ballplayers and engineers. On some level she envied that—not the stratification, but the identity.

He had probably been a priest, given the religious overtones of the cave. He would have worked in there, hour after hour, painstakingly carving each symbol and pictograph of a language that had allowed its users to embellish at will, turning words into art.

So beautiful, she thought, trailing her fingers along the carved panel.

It was also an enigma. Everything else in the room belonged to the good guys: The altar on the opposite wall was a carved chac-mool that honored the rain god; the winged serpent motifs on the walls represented the creator god, Kulkulkan; the carved and painted rainbows up near the ceiling were a reference to the goddess Ixchel; and the ballgame scenes painted on the clay pots she had been examining paid homage to the sun god, Kinich Ahau. All sky gods, positive influences.

The glyph panel, though, was different.

The nine rows of text—for the nine layers of the underworld, Xibalba—looked like normal Mayan hieroglyphs … except that in every pictograph that should have contained a human or animal figure, there was a bat-demon instead, a camazotz, with sharply pointed ears, tri-cornered mouth, pushed-in nose, long fangs and talons, and strangely tattered wings.

The locals believed the ancients had built the temple to appease the camazotz, and that she risked awakening more of the creatures by excavating the sacred site. But although Cooter, her crazy-brilliant Mayanist mentor, had harped on the value of trusting the natives to know more about their homes than any visitor—however well educated—could, logic said that the legends of the camazotz had come from the temple itself, and maybe costumes worn by the members of the bat cult that had probably worshipped there. Not the other way around.

“Chicken and egg,” she murmured, trailing her fingers along the writing.

The wonky glyphs meant that she couldn’t read the text. Instead, she would have to farm it out to an expert, which was why the photographs, tracings and other records were a top priority.

So get back to work. But the same gut instinct that had prompted her to turn down the safe-bet Tikal project and disappear into the jungle, and that had eventually led her to the cave, now rooted her in place.

A chill prickled across her skin, an almost electric crackle that was how her gut feelings sometimes hit her. She was missing something. But what?

Frowning, she stared at the panel, touched the carved surface. The silence in the echoing chamber amplified the small sounds of her breathing, making the air seem to throb with the quiet. Her fingertips scraped along the carved stone, from ridge to dip, from one bat-faced demon to the next, the next, and—to something else.

She froze, her pulse going zero-to-sixty as the shape jumped out at her.

There was a bird among the bats.

And it wasn’t just any bird. It was the bird.

The parrot’s head sat atop three stacked circles and wore a flaring headdress of curling feathers in a glyph that was achingly, acutely familiar. Yet the parrot’s head didn’t correspond to any pictograph in the historical record. She knew that for a fact … because she had been searching for it ever since her thirteenth birthday.

“Holy. Shit.” She touched the small silver pendant she wore around her neck. She had found it!

All the restless, edgy energy that had plagued her since she’d first set foot inside the cave—hell, in the forest itself—suddenly concentrated itself in her chest. A hot, hard buzz seared through her system, saying: Do it.

But do what?

Swallowing hard, she touched the parrot’s-head glyph, stroking a finger along the feathered headdress and down the curved beak. It was really there, really real. It was—

“Ow!” She yanked back her hand and stared at her fingertip, where a thin slice oozed blood. “What the hell?”

Getting in close to the wall, she squinted at a gleam of … was that glass? Impossible. The ancient Maya might have built pyramids and carved intricate writing and art, but they had done it all without using metal or wheels, never mind glass. They had been knappers and carvers, mostly, which left her with …

“Jade,” she breathed, seeing the faint blue-green sheen to the material of the thin blade that had been inset into the carving, almost as if its maker had wanted to punish the person who dared to touch the strange glyph.

Or … take a blood sacrifice from them. Blood had been the basis for many of the rituals of the ancient Maya. And even, some said, their magic.

When she was around other academics, she snorted at the idea of true magic. The Mayan shaman-priests had been experts at misdirection, using hidden doorways and polished stone mirrors to make the kings and masses believe that they could teleport themselves, move objects with their minds, and summon fire with a thought. Privately, though, she had hung on Cooter’s stories about ancient magicians, wishing they were true .

And right then, there was nobody in the room but her.

Do it, her instincts said, coming suddenly so much louder, so much clearer than they ever had before. What have you got to lose?

There was magic in blood, at least according to the stories the crazy old Mayanist had regaled his students with, year after year … until he disappeared into the rainforest. Logic said he’d had an accident or been killed by bandits. Inwardly, though, she had preferred to think he’d found the magic-wielding warriors he had sought. She and Cooter had been very alike—both out of place, both searching for something. She wanted to believe that he had found his place in the end.

Do it.

Senses spinning, heart pounding, she pressed her bloodstained fingertip to the parrot glyph. The moment she made contact, the restless, edgy energy inside her went supernova, and a strange, soundless detonation thudded through her.

She reeled back. “What the hell?”

Her hand was vibrating, sending pinfires streaking up her arm and leaving her struggling for breath. Then she simply stopped breathing, freezing dead as the carved stone making up the parrot glyph shimmered, rippling and pulsing as though it had suddenly come alive.

Moments later, the glyph and the surrounding stone disappeared, revealing a shallow niche that contained a small, lumpy something.

Holy shit, was all she could think. Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit.

That hadn’t just happened. It was impossible. Unbelievable.

Only it had happened. There was a hole in the wall where the parrot had been. What was more, the humming restlessness inside her had become a warm, satisfied glow, one that had stopped saying do it and now urged take it.

“I can’t,” she whispered. She had to document the object from every angle before she touched it, had to investigate the trick door. Because it had to be a trick door. The alternative was ... Impossible.

Take it, those deep-down instincts whispered. This is for you alone. You found the parrot glyph. Your blood opened the door.

Hand moving almost without her conscious volition, she reached in and touched the solid, lumpy object. It shifted, suddenly gleaming luminous amber as the overhead lights caught the stone.

Maybe an inch in diameter, the clear yellow crystal had been carved with perfect detail into the shape of a human skull.

Take it. Hard, hot possessiveness washed through her. She wasn’t aware of making the decision, but suddenly she was picking it up. Cupping it in her palm, she raised it to eye- level. The sockets were dark with shadows, save for two pinprick gleams reflecting back from her headlamp, making the skull seem to stare back at her as it warmed against her skin.

Holy. Shit.

“This is a joke, right?” she said, trying to interject logic into a situation suddenly turned incredible. Javier and the others were trying to cheer her up with a gag, riffing off the legendary crystal skulls that were supposed to help save mankind from the so-called 2012 Mayan doomsday.

But how had they managed it? If they found the trick door, they would’ve said something, she thought, glancing back at the wall. It’s a huge—

Her mind blanked at the sight of a solid wall, with no sign of the niche. The carvings were back in place once more … but the parrot’s-head glyph was gone.

In its place was a screaming skull.

Oh, holy shit times a million. The screaming skull glyph wasn’t supposed to exist, either. It represented—according to the doomsday nuts, anyway—a group of warrior-magi who were supposed to save mankind from the rise of ancient horrors at the end of 2012: the Nightkeepers.

“Impossible,” she whispered, staring at the screaming skull and feeling the warm, solid weight of the crystal in her palm, the fading sting of her sliced finger.

“Natalie?” Javier called.

She jolted, flushing. “I’ll be up in a minute.” Her heart hammered in her ears and the rush of blood through her veins had taken on a strange humming sensation.

“I don’t think we’ve got a minute. We need you up here.” Javier’s voice was too tight, she realized suddenly.

Something had happened topside. Oh, crap.

She hesitated. What now? Stay and investigate the skull glyph? Go up and tell the others what she had found? Go up and tell them nothing? Something told her that the skull was hers alone. A secret.

“Natalie, now!”

“Coming!” Her hands shook as she tucked the skull into an inner zippered pocket of her tough bush pants. Then she bolted up the tunnel. An odd, almost tribal rhythm pounded through her veins, t making her feel tough and capable, strong enough to take on the doomsday herself. Not that she believed in the end-time. That had just been another of the stories.

Then she stepped out into the late afternoon sun, and a cold dose of reality slapped her right across the face.