“What?”
“The one you called Silence. A forest in soft morning light, with a narrow path winding through trees green with summer, some coated with moss that shimmers in light quiet as a whisper. Beyond the path, that light glows, brighter, bolder, in a kind of beckoning. It would make the observer wonder what lies at the end of the path.”
He picked up another sketch, one of himself, feet planted, head back, with bold blue lightning flashing from the tips of his upstretched fingers. “It’s all very interesting, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know what any of this means. I don’t understand any of it.”
“But you came nonetheless. From America?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re from America, Riley.”
“Originally. I move around a lot. And you came from Ireland.”
“Originally. But to here, from New York. I have a place there.”
“Doing what?” Sasha demanded.
If he noticed her sharp tone, he didn’t show it. “Magic,” he said, and offered her a passionflower, richly purple. “The hand’s quicker than the eye,” he said easily, “especially since the eye’s so easily misdirected.”
“You’re a magician.”
“I am. Stage magic—street magic when the mood strikes.”
A magician, Sasha considered. The lightning could symbolize his line of work. But it didn’t explain all the rest. Nothing did.
She looked down at the flower in her hand, then up at him.
The sun was setting in the west behind him in an explosion of fiery red and hot licks of brilliant gold.
“There’s more,” she said, but she thought: You’re more.
“There always is. Considering that, and this.” He set the sketch of the stars on the top of the stack. “I think the three of us need to have a discussion. Why don’t we have that over a meal?”
“I could eat. You buying, Irish?” Riley asked him.
“For the privilege of sharing dinner with two beautiful women, I am, of course. What do you say to a bit of a walk, till we find a place that suits our needs?”
“I’m in.”
When Sasha said nothing, Bran took the flower from her, tucked it over her ear. “You’re no coward, Sasha Riggs, or you wouldn’t be here.”
She only nodded, put the sketches back in her portfolio, and rose. “I’ll tell you what I know, in exchange for what you know.”
“Fair enough.”
* * *
They walked the narrow, cobbled streets of Old Town with its colorful shops and stalls and pavement cafes. Dusk gave the air a quietly lavender hue, one Sasha stored away knowing she’d have to paint it. Old, sunbaked buildings, madly blooming pots of flowers, a bold red cloth hanging on a line overhead among other linens, waiting to be brought in and put away.
If she thought about perspective, tone, texture, she wouldn’t have to think about what she was doing. Walking around in a strange place with people she didn’t know.
She marveled at how easily Riley and Bran exchanged small talk, envied their ability to be in the moment. They gave every appearance of enjoying a pretty evening in an ancient place with the scents of grilled lamb and spices in the air.
“What appeals?” Bran asked. “Indoors or out?”
“Why waste a good clear night inside?” Riley said.
“Agreed.”
He found a place, as if by magic, near the green of the park, where the tables sat under the trees and fairy lights. Happy music played somewhere nearby—close enough to add some fun, far enough not to intrude.
“This local red’s good. The Petrokoritho. Up for a bottle?” Bran asked.
“I never say no to a drink.”
Taking Riley’s answer as assent all around, Bran ordered a bottle. Sasha thought of the Bellinis as she looked at the menu. She’d take a couple sips of wine to be polite, and stick with water. And food—God knew she needed some food in her system.
She felt empty and quivery and out of place.
She’d go with fish, she decided. They were on an island after all. She studied her choices while Riley and Bran talked starters, with Riley making suggestions.
Reading Sasha’s questioning glance, Riley shrugged.
“First time on Corfu, but not my first time in Greece. And when it comes to food, my stomach has a endemic memory.”
“Then I’ll leave it to you.” Bran turned to Sasha. “Take a risk?”
“I was leaning toward fish,” she began.
“Got you covered. How about you?” Riley asked Bran.
“I’ve a mind for meat.”
“Done.”
Once the wine was tasted and served, Riley rattled off several dishes in Greek. Sasha’s own stomach shuddered at the prospect of strange dishes.
“Have you traveled much?” Bran asked her.
“No, not really. I spent a few days in Florence and in Paris a few years ago.”
“Maybe not much, but you chose well. I thought you’d been to Ireland.”
“No, I haven’t. Why did you think that?”
“The painting I bought. I know the place, or one very like it, not far from home. So, where is your forest?”
She’d dreamed it. She often dreamed her paintings. “It’s not real. I imagined it.”
“The same way you imagined me, and Riley, and the others we’ve yet to meet?”
“Lay it out, Sasha,” Riley advised. “The guy’s an Irish magician. He’s not going to bolt over a little strange.”
“I dreamed it.” She blurted it out like a confession. “All of it. All of you. I dreamed of Corfu—or I finally figured out it was Corfu, so I came. And I walked out onto the terrace of the hotel, and saw Riley. Then you.”
“In dreams.” He drank some wine, watched her with those dark, hooded eyes. “You’re a seer. Are your visions only when you sleep?”
“No.” It struck her that he didn’t react—nor had Riley—as others usually did. With skepticism, smirks, or with giddy questions about their own futures. “They come when they want to.”
“Bloody inconvenient.”
She let out a quick laugh. “Yeah. Bloody inconvenient. They’ll come here, the other three. I know that now. Or maybe they’re already here. But they’ll find us, or we’ll find them. Once that happens, I don’t know if there’s any going back.”
“To what?” Bran wondered.
“To our lives, to the way they were before.”
“If that’s what’s put the worry in your eyes, it’s always better going forward than back.”
She said nothing while the waiter served the starters. “You both want to find these stars, and your reasons probably matter, but all I know is something wants us to find them or we wouldn’t be here. But something else doesn’t want us to have them. That something is dark and dangerous and powerful. It may not be a matter of going forward or back, but of not existing at all.”
“Nobody lives forever.” So saying, Riley dug into her eggplant starter.
Bran brushed a hand over Sasha’s, lightly. “No one can make you do what you don’t want to do. It’s your choice, fáidh, to go forward or back.”
“What does that mean—what you called me?”
“What you are. Vision-seer, prophet.”
“Seems to me a prophet should see things more clearly.”
“I’ll wager others with your gift have thought the same.”
“If I go back, I don’t think I’ll ever find peace again.” While that was true enough, she knew a deeper truth. She couldn’t walk away from him. “So it looks like forward. I’ve never had dinner with two people who just accept what I am. It’s good.”
She sampled the dish Riley had called tzatziki, found the smooth yogurt, the bite of garlic, the cool tang of cucumber went down easily after all.
“And so’s this.”
The food settled her. Maybe it was the wine, or the fragrant night, or the fact that she’d finally fully accepted her decision, but the raw edges of her nerves quieted.
When Bran cut some of the meat, put it on her plate, she stared at it.
“You should try it,” he told her.
To be polite, she told herself, she did—but the act felt ridiculously intimate. To distract herself from the heat that had nothing to do with a bite of grilled lamb, she picked up her wine.
“How do you know about the three stars?” she asked Bran. “They’re why you’re here. Why we’re all here. How do you know about them? What do you know?”
“I’ll tell you a legend I’ve heard of three stars created by three gods—moon goddesses, they were. Or are, depending on where you’re standing. They made these stars as gifts for a new queen. Just a baby, say some legends, while others . . .” He glanced at Riley.
“Others say young girl. Kind of an Arthurian riff—a true queen chosen at the end of another’s reign through a test of sorts.”
“There you have it. These sister goddesses wanted a unique and lasting gift for the queen they knew would rule for the good, who would hold peace softly in her hand as she did. So each made a star, one of fire, one of ice, one of water, all brilliant and filled with strength and magic and hope, which can be the same.”
“On a beach—white sand,” Sasha added.
He continued to eat, but watched her carefully. “Some say.”
“There’s a palace, silver and shining, on a high hill, and the moon’s white and full, beaming over the water.”
“You’ve seen this?”
“I dreamed it.”
“Which can be the same,” Bran repeated.
“They weren’t alone on the beach.”
“They weren’t, no, not alone. Another like them, but as unlike as white to black, wanted what they’d made, and what the queen had, which was power over worlds. The three knew her for what she was, knew as they tossed the stars toward the moon, and the other struck out at them with her dark, they would need to protect what they’d created, and all that lived.
“The stars would fall,” he continued, “the other had seen to that, and she could wait. So the three used what they had to see that when the stars fell, they would fall away from one another, as their full power is only reached when together. They would fall in secret places, hidden and safe until the time came for them to be lifted out, brought together, and taken to the next new queen.”
“It’s a pretty story, but—”
“Not all of it,” Riley interrupted. “Give her the other side.”
“If the other takes possession of the stars, all the doors on all the worlds will unlock. The dark, the damned, the destructive will spring free and devour all they can. Human worlds, and others as vulnerable, would not survive it.”
“Worlds.”
Smiling, he topped off her wine. “Do you ever wonder at the arrogance of men who think they alone exist in the universe?”
“Most native cultures and elemental faiths know better,” Riley commented.
“You’re a scientist.”
“I’m a digger,” she told Sasha. “And I’ve dug up enough to know we’ve never been alone. There’s a little more to the legend.”
“A bit,” Bran allowed.
“Those who seek it risk death—natch—but if they prevail, they save the worlds, which is pretty important. And each will find their own fortune.”
“Both of you believe this.”
“I believe it enough. I’ve been looking for them, off and on, for about seven years.”
“Twelve,” Bran told her. “On and off as well.”
“It’s been kind of a hobby for me, until now. Now?” Riley polished off the last of her wine. “I think it’s become my freaking mission.” She set the glass down, leaned toward Sasha. “Are we in this—the three of us?”
“Six. It has to be the six. I don’t think we’ll get far until it is.”
“Okay, but that doesn’t mean we can’t start looking.”
“Where?”
“The mountains to the north, a lot of caves there. That might be a good place to start.”
“How do we get there?”
“I’ve got a jeep. That’ll get us somewhere. Got hiking boots?”
“Yes. I do a lot of hiking at home.”
“How about you, Irish?”
“Not to worry.”
“Great. So we’ll meet up in the morning, head out, what, about eight?”
Bran winced. “A morning person, are you?”
“I’m what I need to be.”
Sasha walked back with them to the hotel in a half daze. Too much wine, too much travel, too much stimulation. She’d sleep, just sleep, and sort the rest out in the morning, she told herself.
“What floor?” Bran asked when they stepped into the elevator.
“Third.”
“So am I.”
“And I make three on three,” Riley said.
“Naturally.” With a sigh, Sasha leaned against the wall, dug out her key.
When they got out, turned in the same direction, Sasha all but felt Fate’s sticky fingers pinching the back of her neck. She stopped at her door. “My room.”
“I’m across the hall from you,” Bran said, smiling now.
“Of course you are.”
“And right next door.” Riley strolled down to the door beside Sasha’s.
“Where else would you be?” she mumbled, and unlocked her door.
“Night, kids!” Riley sang out.
“Good night. Thanks for dinner,” she said to Bran, and closed the door.
Bran walked into his own room, switched on the lights. The evening, he thought, had certainly been more entertaining than he’d anticipated. He’d intended to wander out, maybe have a drink, take a solitary walk around to let himself absorb where he’d been driven to go.
Then the women.
He could admit here, alone, that seeing himself in that sketch as one of six had given him a jolt. But such an interesting jolt. As interesting as realizing the artist happened to be the same Sasha Riggs whose work hung in his New York home.
She’d claimed the scene had come from her imagination, and perhaps it had. But he knew that forest and knew it well. And he knew what waited at the end of the path in the shimmering light.
He got a bottle of water, and the tablet he traveled with, plopped down on the bed. And began to research the two women Fate had apparently dropped at his feet.
There were other ways to learn more about them, of course, but this seemed the most fair and aboveboard. He believed in being fair, at least initially.
He had no doubt they hadn’t shared everything with him—the adventurer and the seer—but he hadn’t shared all with them. So that seemed fair as well.
He took the adventurer first, because in truth he felt far too hard a pull toward the seer.
Not simply Riley Gwin, he noted, but Doctor Riley Gwin, who’d earned the title in archaeology and folklore and myths. Born thirty years ago—and two doctorates by thirty meant she was no one’s fool—to Doctors Carter Gwin and Iris MacFee, archaeology and anthropology, respectively, she’d spent a good portion of her childhood traveling.
She’d written two books and an assortment of papers and articles—publish or perish, after all. But devoted most of her time, from what he could glean, on digs or traveling on her own in pursuit of lost treasures and myths.
Searching for the stars certainly fit.
He switched to Sasha.
She was twenty-eight, he noted, only child of Matthew and Georgina Riggs, née Corrigan—divorced. She’d studied art at Columbia. Articles on her were few and far between, which told him she shied away from the media. But she was represented by one of the top artist agencies in New York. According to her official bio, she’d had her first major showing at the Windward Gallery, New York, at the tender age of twenty-two, and lived quietly in the mountains of North Carolina.
Unmarried, which was handy.
There was, he thought, a great deal more to Sasha Riggs than that.
So he’d have to find out the great deal more, one way or the other. But not tonight, he decided. For tonight, he’d let it all rest, and see what came.
He set the tablet aside, stripped down. He might have preferred the night to the morning, but since he had morning to face, he’d get a decent night’s sleep.
He left the curtains and windows open and, listening to the night, thinking of stars, of fortune, of women with secrets, began to drift off.
The knock on the door brought him out of the half sleep and into mild annoyance. Rolling out of bed, he snatched up his jeans, tugged them on.
It didn’t surprise him overmuch to find Sasha at the door, but it did to see her in the hallway wearing a thin white sleep-slip that barely hit the middle of her very pretty thighs.
“Well now, this is interesting.”
“She’s at the window.”
“Who would that be?” He’d started to smile, but when his gaze finally managed to travel from those thighs up the white silk, beyond breasts and throat to meet her eyes, the smile faded off.
Dream-walking, he thought. The trance glazed her eyes like glass.
“Where are you, Sasha?”
“With you. She’s at the window. She said if I let her in, she’d give me my heart’s desire. But she’s made of lies. We should make her leave.”
“Let’s have a look.”
He took her hand, led her back across the hall, into her room. Shut the door behind him.
She had it dark as a cave, he noted, curtains drawn tight across the windows. He added some light, and Sasha lifted a hand, gestured toward the curtains.
“There she is. I told her to go away, but there she is.”
“Stay here.” He walked to the window, yanked the curtains open. He saw a shadow pass—a bare flicker—thought he heard a rustle, like the dry wings of a bat. Then there was nothing but the sea under a three-quarter moon.
“There, she’s gone.” Sasha smiled at him. “I knew she’d leave if you were here. You worry her.”
“Do I?” he queried.
“I can feel some of what she feels. Not all. I don’t want to feel all.” Hugging herself, she rubbed her arms. “She left it cold. It’s fire she wants here, but she left the cold behind.”
“Come, back to bed with you, where it’s warm.”