• • •
They ate soup, drank wine, talked theories.
“Interesting,” Bran considered. “The idea the star might be in, or even of, the house.”
“Your builders might have mentioned it,” Doyle commented.
“He’s had three centuries to hone his skeptic creds.” Deciding to ignore Doyle, Riley tore a chunk off her bread bowl, enjoyed it. “The hypothesis, like this quest, like everyone here at this table, is founded on the unarguable fact that alternate realities, para-realities, exist. Accepting that, we move to other facts. Doyle was changed in January three hundred and thirty-three years ago. In January, Sasha began to have visions about the Stars of Fortune, and about us. Conclusion, that’s the kickoff.”
“We were all drawn to Corfu,” Bran continued. “Three of us met on the day we arrived, at the same hotel. Within days the six of us fought together, for the first time, against Nerezza. In our time there, a bond was formed.” He lifted Sasha’s hand to kiss. “Of varying degrees.”
“A bond,” Sasha repeated. “And each one of us came to the point where we were able to share our own heritage. I think, I really do, we’re where we are now because of that bond. It didn’t exist in January. It didn’t exist when Bran built this house, or when Doyle was cursed. But . . . the potential of it did.”
“Yes.” Delighted, Riley slapped a finger on the table. “That potential began the minute the stars were created, and evolved. The stars fell, and the research on when’s sketchy, but indicates they fell before Doyle was born. His birth—and the mystical rebirth from the curse? Another step in the evolution. The rest of us fill in. And don’t you have to wonder at the mix? Witch, mermaid, immortal, lycan, seer, shifter. Why not six witches, six immortals?”
“The diversity brings strength,” Bran surmised. “And challenges to overcome.”
“You’ve got to admit—you said it yourself,” Sawyer added as he looked at Doyle. “The closest you came to finding Nerezza was in that cave on Corfu, with us.”
“I’ll buy the timing mattered, the six of us mattered. It’s the idea the Ice Star is behind the baseboard that doesn’t ring for me.”
“If we follow the dots.” Lifting her wine, Riley spoke to the table at large rather than Doyle specifically. “What holds the most weight is the stars can only be found by the six of us—and couldn’t be found until the six of us came together. Ergo, the Ice Star might have been hidden in the house where Doyle was born, and might be hidden in or around this one now. The house is stone, and the data and the visions speak of stone. And the sea, which is right out there.”
“The man sees the boy, the boy sees the man. No, not a vision,” Sasha said quickly. “Just remembering. A mirror, a glass?”
“Now you’re thinking. And the bit about the name. Maybe something written down, something in a book.”
“A painting. The signature of the artist,” Sasha explained, “or the person in the painting.”
“Memorabilia,” Sawyer suggested. “A keepsake. Something engraved.”
“I’m going to write this down.” Riley rose to grab her tablet from the lounge. “Mirror, glass, book . . .”
“You make the words so fast.” Annika angled over to watch them come on screen. “Can you teach me? I like to learn.”
“Sure.” But Riley said it absently as she finally looked at Doyle. “Why did you choose the bedroom upstairs?”
“It had a bed.”
“Stop the smart-ass. Why that particular room?”
“And no particular reason except . . .”
“Except what?”
“It faced the sea. My room as a boy here did the same.”
“Okay. That could matter. Talk among yourselves. I want to play with this.” Riley took her tablet back to the lounge.
Doyle rose, followed her over. “You pissed about something?”
“No. Clearly, I’m working something out, whether or not you support the theory.”
“You’re pissed because I don’t buy in?”
“No.” She looked up now, held a level gaze. “Theories are meant to be debated and challenged. It’s why they’re theories. I’m a scientist. I worship ideas, even when they’re contrary to mine.”
“Then what’s the attitude?”
“I’m working something out,” she repeated. “This, and something personal. If I were pissed, I’d say so.”
“Okay.” He went back to the table, sat with the others.
Riley went back to ignoring him. It seemed the best course while holding an internal debate on whether or not to tell him she was in love with him. And if she told him, when. And if and when, how.
A lot of questions, and no clear answer.
She had a lot to work out, so let those questions circle in her mind while she added items to the hunt list, and let the conversation across the room wash over her.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
At the table Annika admired her ring, wiggled her fingers to make it sparkle. She thought she would most like to marry Sawyer on the island where he’d taken her—where one of her people had given his ancestor the compass. Where he’d told her he loved her the first time.
Everyone could come, the land people who were family, the merpeople. She hoped, so much, she could marry Sawyer while she still had the legs. Then she could wear a beautiful dress, and dance with him.
She caught Sasha smiling at her while the men talked of battle plans and hard things.
“I like to look at it, and to feel how it feels on my finger. Do you with yours?”
“All the time.”
“You will come to the wedding, and stand for me, you and Riley, the way we will for you?”
“I thought you’d never ask.” Sasha laughed.
“I think, would like so much, if we could marry on the island. Our island.”
Sawyer slid an arm around her. “I was thinking the same.”
“Really? Oh, then everyone could come. Our family, your family, my family. We would have flowers, on the land and on the sea, and music. And wine. It’s more than I can imagine. More than I ever did, and I used to dream of the rite, the promise when I was a girl. I had a place for dreaming special dreams, and that was the most special.”
“What kind of place?”
“In the warm waters of the south where the water is so clear the sun strikes through it, I had a secret place just for me. A garden of coral and sea plants. I would curl there and dream my best dreams.”
Now she had the dream, she thought, and snuggled against him. “Did you have a secret place?”
“A tree house.”
Her eyes widened. “You had a tree for a house?”
“No, it’s a little house built in a tree. Up in a tree. My dad and my grandfather built it, for the kids. We all hung out there, but I’d climb up, especially on summer nights, by myself. I guess I dreamed some pretty good dreams there.”
“Especially after pawing through porn mags,” Riley said from across the room.
“Different kind of dreaming.”
“What are porn mags?” Annika wondered.
“I’ll explain later. How about you, bigmouth?”
“Me?” Riley glanced over again. “We traveled a lot, so I found places wherever. Books were my place, not so secret, but my place. Plenty of dreams inside books. But now that I think about it, there’s this old storm cellar back home. I guess that was my version of a tree house or sea garden.”
“Sasha.” Enjoying the conversation, Annika turned to her. “Where was your secret place?”
“I was going to say I didn’t have one, but that’s knee-jerk. Something you say without thinking first,” she explained. “The attic. It was very secret for me, somewhere I’d go to be alone, when I had to get away from everything, everyone. I’d draw, and imagine being like everyone else. I wasn’t happy the way I am now.”
“I wish I could have been your friend when you were a girl.”
“We’re making up for that now. Let’s keep it going. You’re up, Bran.”
“There’s a stream a fair walk from our home in Sligo. I’d set off for it when I was a boy and had deep thoughts to think. I’d sit with my back against an old, gnarled rowan tree, watch the fish in the stream, practice magicks, and dream of being a great sorcerer.”
“And you are!” Annika pressed her hands together. “Doyle, where was your place?”
“Days were full of work when I was a boy. Firewood to gather, peat to dig, stock to tend.”
“Walking barefoot through snow ten miles to school. Uphill,” Riley added, and earned his bland stare.
“You had no shoes?”
“She’s talking in smart-ass clichés,” Doyle told Annika. “I was the oldest, and so had more responsibilities . . . Knee-jerk,” he said with a glance at Sasha. “Old habits. We were forbidden to climb on the cliff, so of course, nothing appealed more. If I could slip away from my siblings, from the chores, that’s just what I’d do. I liked the danger of it, the sea crashing below, the wind whipping at me. And when I found the—”
He stopped, shocked, stunned. All along? he wondered as his mind struggled to grasp it. Had it been there all along?
“Not in the house. Not in the graveyard. The star’s not here, not there.”
Riley had already gotten to her feet. Now she set the tablet aside, walked over to the table. “But you know where.”
“I don’t—” The fact that he had to settle himself infuriated. “I may,” he said, calmly now. “A theory, following your dots. I climbed the cliffs, a bit, then a bit more, and when I didn’t get caught and hided, more still. Even at night, by moonlight, and Christ knows if I’d lost my footing . . . But that was part of it all. That thrill, that risk. I was the oldest, after all, and Feilim, he’d just been born, and my mother distracted, my father besotted. He was beautiful, even a boy of nine could see how beautiful he was. He was days old when I found the cave.
“I could use a whiskey.”
“I’ll get it.” As he rose, Bran glanced at the sketch Sasha worked on, quickly, skillfully, in her lap.
“A cave in the cliff wall,” Riley prompted.
“Aye. It was like a treasure. I went right in, as a boy with no sense would. The sea echoed in it. Here was something no one knew of but me, no one would have but me. I was a pirate, claiming my prize. Over the next weeks and months and years, it was my place. I took an old horse blanket, tinder, tallow, a small boy’s treasures. I could sit on the ledge outside it, look out to the sea and imagine the adventures I’d have. I whittled a pipe to play, to call my dragon. I’d settled on a dragon for my spirit guide long before. Thanks.”
Doyle lifted the glass Bran set in front of him. “I carved the symbol of one into the cave wall, and above it my name.”
“Doyle Mac Cleirich, writ the boy in the stone, and dreamed of the man to be. Warrior, adventurer.” Sasha set the sketch pad on the table.
On it she’d drawn a cave lit by a single candle held on a rock by its own wax, and a boy—dark, shaggy hair, dirt-smeared shirt—his face intent as he carved letters into the stone wall.
“Dreaming of what would be, he doesn’t see the fire and the ice. Nor feel the heat and cold. That is for the man, one who knows war is blood and death and will still fight. The star waits for the boy, for the man. See the name, read the name, say the name and its ice burns through the fire. One for the seer, two for the siren, three for the soldier. Dare the storm, children of the gods, and take them home.”
Sasha shuddered out a breath, reached across the table for Doyle’s whiskey. “Mind?” she said and downed it. Shuddered again. “Wow. That was probably a mistake.”
“You did well.” Bran laid his hands on her shoulders. “You did brilliantly.”
“You saw it?” Doyle tapped the sketch pad. “You saw this?”
“As soon as you started talking about the cliffs. It’s been like a film over my mind—hard to explain. And when you started to talk, it just lifted. And I saw you—I saw you as a boy in this cave. I felt . . .”
Doyle picked up the bottle of whiskey Bran had brought to the table, tipped more in his glass. “Go ahead.”
“Determination, excitement, innocence. Power all around you. You nicked your finger with the knife, and when you traced the letters you carved, your blood sealed them.”
Doyle nodded, drank. “Here, all along. Just as you said.” He looked at Riley. “I never thought of the cave. I even went there after we came here. Climbed down, went to see it again. I thought nothing of it. I felt nothing.”
“You were alone. Next time you won’t be.”
“It isn’t the easiest of climbs.”
Riley arched her eyebrows. “Getting to the other two wasn’t a stroll in the park either.”
“I’d say give me the coordinates, but if you’re off by a foot or two.” Sawyer scratched his head. “It’s a long way down.”
“We’ll use rope.” Bran looked toward the window. “But not tonight. Not in the dark, in the rain. In the morning then—please the gods we get a break in the weather—and together.”
“Say we find it, and I say we will. What do we do with it?” Sawyer asked. “Where do we put it until we figure out how to take it home?”
“Well, according to the established pattern . . .” Riley looked toward Sasha.
“A painting. I’ve been painting when I’ve had the chance, but nothing’s compelled me like the other two. Maybe, now that the film’s gone, I’ll be compelled. Otherwise, maybe a more ordinary painting will work as well.”
“And question after that, where the hell is the Island of Glass? I’ll keep hitting the books on it,” Riley promised. “But I’m starting to think I’m not going to find that answer in the library or the ’net. Still, I’ll keep digging. Starting now.”
“If we climb, we climb at first light,” Doyle told her.
“I’ll be ready,” she said and walked out.
• • •
She worked until after midnight, played with a couple of theories. Discarded them.
She wrote a long email to her parents, catching them up with where she was, how she was, asking them if they knew of any lines to tug she’d missed.
Time to shut it down for the night, she told herself. Time to get some sleep—or try to. If tomorrow was the big next step, they all needed to be ready.
Not just ready to find the star, to protect it, but to fight. The minute Nerezza got wind they had the last star, she’d come calling.
Thinking just that, she left the library, made her way to the sitting room where they stored weapons. Doyle sat quietly by a low fire, polishing his sword.
“You should get some sleep,” he told her.
“Heading that way. Same goes.”
“Soon as I’m done here. I didn’t think of the cave. I should have. I didn’t.”
“I didn’t think to ask if anywhere around here had particular meaning for you. I was hung up on the graveyard because I knew it did.”
“I thought you were right at first. I hated it.”
She sat across from him. “You’re entitled to want your family to rest in peace. I think . . . Do you want to know what I think?”
“When has that ever stopped you? Yes,” he admitted when she said nothing. “I want to hear what you think.”
“I think this is a gift. I think this is something given to you hundreds of years ago to help you resolve the rest. Every boy wants to be a hero, right? And now you are. You are,” she insisted when he shook his head. “They just gave you the choice to be one or to walk away. You didn’t walk away. You went back to the—gotta say evil—place where your brother was killed, and when Nerezza tried to use your grief against you, all of us, you kicked her ass. You didn’t want to stand in the graveyard today, and talk about your family. But you did. That’s not battle heroics, Doyle, but it’s stepping up. So—”
She got to her feet. “Like I said earlier, I’ve been working some things out.”
“On finding the island.”
“Goose egg there. I mean the personal business. We made sort of a deal, and I’m sort of reneging.”
He frowned at her. “What deal?”
“Just sex, just good, healthy sex. No sticky stuff. But things got a little turned around on me. In me.”
He set the sword aside, very carefully. “Are you pregnant?”
“No. Jesus. You’re irritating a lot of the time, and you’re moody. And pushy,” she decided.
“What does that have to do with sex?”
“It doesn’t. It has to do with the sticky part that wasn’t supposed to happen. I don’t know why it happened. I like to know why, so that’s irritating, too. I can hang some of that on you, too, as getting anything out of you is pulling teeth. Like I didn’t know until today you were twenty-six when you were cursed.”
“How do you know that?”
“I did the math, for God’s sake. How old you were when Feilim was born—nine—how old you’d said he was when he died. Seventeen. Which makes you—excluding the immortality—a couple years younger than me. That hit strange.”
Saying nothing, Doyle reached for his sword again.
“No, just hold off on that, and listen. I’m going to say that despite all that—and I could say you have qualities that balance out the bullshit, but this is already taking too long. Despite it, or maybe I’m twisted up because of it—I haven’t worked out which—I’m in love with you.”
“No, you’re not.”
Of all the responses she’d imagined, she’d never imagined a cool, calm dismissal. She’d prepared herself for hurt feelings, even a solid punch to the heart. She hadn’t prepared for insult and anger.
“Don’t tell me what I feel. Don’t tell me what I have in here.” She thumped a fist on her heart. “I’m telling you even though I’d rather not. Do I look happy about it? Am I doing the happy dance? Am I doing the cartwheel of joy?”
“You’re caught up, that’s all. We’re sleeping together, and everyone else is talking weddings and flowers. You’ve conflated them.”
“Bullshit. Insulting bullshit. Did I say anything about weddings and flowers? Do I look like somebody who can’t wait to run out and buy some big white dress and grab a bouquet?”
He felt the first trickle of alarm. “No, you really don’t.”
“I don’t like this any more than you, but it is what it is. I’m giving you the respect of telling you. You give me the respect of not accusing me of being some sentimental girl.”
He thought he should stand. “I’m saying I think we’re in a strange and intense situation. We added sex to that. We . . . respect each other, trust each other. Obviously we’re attracted to each other. You’re a smart woman, a logical woman, a rational woman. A woman who has to know—”
“I’m smart enough to know that logic and rational thinking mean dick-all when it comes to who you fall for.” Beyond pissed, she slapped her hands on her hips. “What do you think I’ve been telling myself? But I feel what I feel. God knows why.”
“I can’t give you what love asks for.”
She shook her head as the temper in her eyes dimmed to pity. “Moron, love doesn’t ask. It just is. Deal with it.”
“Riley,” he said when she started out, and she turned back.
“Don’t tell me you care about me. That’s cheap. That’s beneath us both.”
“There are reasons I can’t—”
“Did I ask you for anything back?”