by Nora Roberts
“If the Malmon demon is also lycan from the bite, will he be stronger than Hulk Smash?”
“Hulk Smash.” Despite the possibility, Sawyer grinned. “Where did you get . . .” He shifted his gaze from Annika to Riley, nodded. Gave her a thumbs-up as he ate more French toast.
“Maybe, but not until the first change, and the first change will hit him hard—if he’s infected. Let me make some calls and— Shit! Calls. My brain got scrambled. White. Dr. White.”
“Doyle said you connected. Get anything useful?” Sawyer asked.
“Yeah, I did—and he’s sending more. Let me get my notes.”
“In my room.”
She paused, half out of her chair, to stare at Doyle. “What?”
“I took them to my room last night, to try to decipher them.”
“You can’t go riffling through my things.”
“They were right there by the phone. You started to say something—looked like you’d struck some gold—then the sun went down.”
“My room, my notes. And you couldn’t decipher them because I have my own code due to people who try to jump claims.”
Deliberately, he met her outrage with dismissal. “It’s half-assed shorthand, Morse, and I’m pretty sure some Navajo. I’d’ve broken it in a few more hours.”
“My ass,” she said and stalked off.
“It’s a good code,” Doyle said when she was out of earshot. “I’m surprised she can read it herself.”
“I’m going to get my maps.” Sawyer pushed up. “If she’s got a direction, maybe I can verify, or pin it down. Maybe this is enough.”
“Just Capri,” Sasha told him. “Because it’s here. I’m absolutely sure. I need . . .” She, too, got to her feet. “I need to paint. Don’t wait for me.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know,” she said to Bran, “but I will. It’s today. I know that. It’s today, and I have to . . . Don’t wait for me.”
“Should you go with her?” Sawyer asked.
“No, let her begin without distractions.”
“Where the hell is Sasha going?” Riley demanded. “I think I have big news here.”
“As she does.”
“Vision time,” Sawyer said. “We’re supposed to go on this without her.”
“Fine. Okay, it started falling into place about halfway through the conversation with White. He’s smart, but boy does he ramble, and he takes winding paths. Anyway.” She set down her notes. “He’s a proponent of the Bay of Sighs–slash–Island of Glass connection. He’s eliminated Atlantis from the mix—that took a while for him to wade through. He thinks he’s dated the rebellion and the disconnect to about three thousand years ago, and during that time, while the island goes where and how it chooses, shows itself to those it chooses, the bay’s been adrift. Powerless, rudderless, you could say. And those imprisoned in its waters—his words—sigh and sing in the hopes of calling to a redeemer.”
She flipped a page over. “And catch this. The redeemer, like they once were, is of the land, of the sea, seeks and is sought, and will come, defy the witches and monsters, will redeem them, help them redeem themselves when a star, a queen star, falls from the sky into the bay.”
“We’ve been looking for the bloody bay,” Doyle began.
“There’s more, and here’s where I got it. The star, blue as the bay, the bay, blue as the star, are one until the redeemer lifts it from the hand of the queen of the sea who holds it safe for the queen of all.”
Riley looked up expectantly. “Don’t you get it?”
“We’re supposed to find the queen of the sea now?” Doyle demanded. “Would that be Salacia, as we’re into the Romans here?”
“Yeah, it would be, and I’ve got a pretty good idea where to find her. Wife of Neptune. Look, Tiberius retired here, right, and built his palaces, his villas—and commissioned a lot of statues. Some of which have been found in the one place we figured was off the list.”
“The Blue Grotto,” Sawyer declared as his compass glowed and began to move over the map.
“The Blue Grotto, once feared by locals because they believed witches and monsters lived there. Once used by Tiberius, who placed statues in the cave. Some have been found, and it’s believed there could be more—deeper.”
“It’s a tourist attraction,” Doyle pointed out.
“Now it is. He’s got more theories and papers—but White, he’s going in the wrong direction. He’s focusing right now on Florida. I mean, seriously? Blue as the star.”
She shifted to Annika. “And what do we have here? Why, we have a guardian who is of the land and of the sea. You’re up, Anni.”
“But I don’t know where to find the queen and her hand. I’ve been in the waters there, but never heard the sighs or the songs before this.”
“It wasn’t time,” Bran said simply. “We weren’t together, and it’s clear this quest demands that. Sawyer’s compass agrees. The Blue Grotto. Now we work our way to diving for the star in a place where they sell tickets to tourists.”
“Not at night, they don’t,” Riley pointed out. “It’s closed at night, and diving’s not permitted—though I betcha it happens. The problem with that is I have two more nights before I can strap on a tank.”
“Bubble helmet. I saw it on YouTube,” Sawyer told her. “Scuba-diving dog. Cat, too. Awesome.”
“Not going to happen.”
“Since it would take longer to outfit you when you go furry than to wait, it doesn’t work here. But it could—just saying.”
“Theories from some friend of a friend and the compass aside,” Doyle began, “we need to go there, or the vicinity, and see.”
“A theory that slides in like a key in a lock, and the compass makes the location a bull’s-eye. But,” Riley continued, “since we need to wait if we try the night dive, it wouldn’t hurt to head there. With the Fire Star, it was Sasha. It called her, we can say, pulled her.”
“Nearly drowned her,” Sawyer pointed out. “So when we do this, the rest of us watch Annika.”
“I can’t drown in the water as you can’t drown in air.”
“There are other ways to come to harm,” Bran reminded her. “If the Water Star is for you, and everything indicates it is, we’re with you.”
“It’s an honor,” Annika said slowly, “to be chosen. I don’t want to disappoint, to fail you, or my duty. If I’m meant to find the star. Will you trust me to try?”
“No question there,” Sawyer assured her. “But that doesn’t mean we don’t protect each other.”
“I understand. The . . . all for one, one for all.”
“You got it.”
“But if it’s for me, I don’t want to wear the tanks, the suit. If it can be at night, and no one will see, I want to be free in the water.”
“I’m going to vote that’s probably the way it’s supposed to be. Especially if you feel strongly about it. And it’s part of the trust,” Riley added. “Right?”
“No bubble helmet for Riley, no tanks for you.” Sawyer glanced at Bran, Doyle. “Any objections?”
“I think not, and don’t believe Sasha would have any.” As he spoke, Bran glanced up toward the terrace.
“You’re trying not to worry about her, but you are. Go check,” Sawyer suggested. “Then we’ll all stop worrying about her.”
“She’s learned control and focus so quickly, accepted as a gift what was, all of her life, a burden to her. It goes to trust, but . . .” As he couldn’t settle, Bran got to his feet. “I’ll just have a look.”
“If she must paint,” Annika said as Bran walked into the villa, “it will be something we need.”
“Odds are.” Thoughtfully, Sawyer picked up the compass, felt it vibrate softly in his hand. “And I’ve got something we could use, if it works for everybody.”
“We could gear up here,” Riley said. “And you could just zap us to the grotto after the moon. No boat needed.”
“That—and with that no patrols
wondering what a dive boat’s doing in that vicinity at night. But I’m more thinking why wait?”
“Because I’m not scuba diving in wolf form, cowboy, awesome or not.”
Sawyer simply turned the compass, revealed the watch.
“Well, shit.” On a half laugh, Riley shook her head. “I didn’t think of that.”
“Forward or back, either way, we wouldn’t have to wait to go.”
“Back. I did think of it.” Doyle shifted to give the watch a closer study. “And back far enough there’d be no patrols. When did all the tours and tickets and regulations start? You’d know,” he said to Riley.
Since it was a simple matter for her to flip through the encyclopedia in her mind, Riley shrugged. “A couple of Germans—writer and pal—visited the cave in the 1820s, guided by local fishermen. The writer wrote a book about it, and the statuary they saw. By the 1830s, it was a tourist destination. Back,” she murmured, and her archaeologist heart glowed in her eyes. “We could go back to the time of Tiberius, even Augustus, and . . . that’s not what this is about.”
She propped her elbows on the table, nested her chin in her fists. “But man, it’s cool to think about.”
“So to be safe, before 1820?”
“Yeah. And you’d probably want to avoid the French occupation, the back and forthing there, early 1800s.”
“Believe me,” Doyle confirmed. “You do.”
“You can do this?” Annika asked. “Do the travel to a different place, a different time, at once?”
“Yeah. It’s a wilder ride, but I’ve done it.”
“I won’t mind the wild.”
He grinned at her, and unable to resist, kissed her hand. “You’ll get it. Riley should pick the when. I’ll get the coordinates for where. Once Bran and Sasha are on board, we can start prepping for the trip. One thing.” Sawyer looked at Riley. “If we can do this before sundown in the now—there and back, it won’t matter to you. If we can’t get back until after sundown, what happens to—with you?”
“Never done it, but I’m going to say the change will hit me like a mother. I can handle it. But there and back before the moon? Better.”
“Nerezza will be on us,” Doyle said. “Either in the cave when we find it, or when we come back.”
“The shift—time and place?” Sawyer lifted a shoulder. “I’m not saying don’t be ready, but I think it might be enough to at least confuse her. But yeah, once we have it, she’ll hit. So, battle plan.”
Annika also considered it an honor to be part of the council of war. “We must protect Bran, so he can make the star safe if I find it. But . . . the compass doesn’t say where to go when we have it safe.”
“Not yet.”
“It’s a lot to take on faith.”
“Got a better option, Mr. Bright Side?” Riley asked Doyle.
“We go anywhere. Get the star, secure the star, then go anywhere until we know. I’ve looked for centuries, and never got close, to the star or Nerezza, until the day in the cave on Corfu. If we’re booking odds, they’re long for us to find all three in a matter of months. And then find the Island of Glass?”
“We’re six.” Sawyer took Annika’s hand in a firm grip. “We have two months more, and that’s it. I don’t believe, not for a second, we won’t find them before that.”
“If I must go back to the sea before . . . I can still help. I will help.”
“We’re not even going there,” Sawyer began, pausing only when Bran came out. “Everything okay?”
“It is. She’s . . . amazing. I didn’t disturb her—doubt I could have.”
“What’s she painting?” Riley wanted to know.
“Beauty, and I believe the place to send the Water Star. I believe the place we’re to go once we have it.”
“Where? If we can pin it down, I can start working on a house or villa, or a bunch of pup tents.”
Bran merely smiled at Riley. “If I’m reading the painting correctly, that won’t be necessary. As it’s my house in Ireland she paints—to my eye. The house I built at the end of a path, the painting she created before any of us met. The one I bought before I knew her.”
“Another island.” Riley sat back. “So that fits. Coast?”
“West. It’s in Clare, where Doyle is from. I think it’s a fine fit, yes.”
“We’d stay at your house. Oh, I would like that very much. It must be beautiful.”
“For me, it is,” he told Annika. “And there’s room enough for all of us. I wondered when I had it done why I wanted such a large place, but I saw it in my head, felt it should be just so, and that’s what I did. Problem?” he said to Doyle.
“I haven’t been back to Ireland in some time, and to Clare in longer yet. I should’ve known this would be a part of it. Well, you can fill Bran in on what we’ve worked out.”
When he rose, walked away, Annika looked after him. “It hurts his heart.”
“Going back to where he started, to where he lived when he just lived. That’s a price to pay.” Riley rose. “I’ll go piss him off about something, get his mind off it. Clare,” she said to Bran. “Your family’s from Sligo, but you built a house in Clare.”
“It called to me, the path, and what was at the end of it. The ruins of an old manor on the cliffs above the thrashing sea. Different from the rolling hills of my birth, but it called to me.”
“I guess this is why. I’m going to piss Doyle off, then pack. Might as well be ready to go.”
By noon Sawyer sat on the terrace watching Sasha. No one wanted her left alone for long, and he’d opted to sit there for an hour while Bran worked.
He’d set up a table, cleaned his guns. After that he laid out his map of Ireland, and watched his compass glide unerringly to the coast of County Clare.
He told himself not to worry about Annika, and not to think about time other than whatever year, month, night Riley chose. But his mind circled around all of that, until he really focused in on Sasha’s painting.
He didn’t know a lot about art, other than what appealed to him or didn’t. And knew nothing at all about the creating of it, except for what he’d watched Sasha do when she sketched or painted.
What lived on the canvas now struck him as ridiculously beautiful. Almost impossibly. The light—how did she create that luminous, inside-a-seashell sort of light?—just bloomed over a stately (that was the word that kept coming back to him) stone manor. All tall, arched, leaded-glass windows. It held two towers, round and peaked, and what he supposed were terraces built to resemble battlements.
Flowers and shrubs spread at its feet like colorful skirts, and trees, summer green, spread their shade, dappling the spread of grass, greener than emeralds.
And all of it rose above cliffs, dramatic, stormy gray, and the thundering sea that crashed below.
He could see Bran there, perfectly. The magician in his cliffside castle. For himself, when he settled, he’d look for a cottage-type place, on the beach somewhere—anywhere—with blue water and the sway of palms. But he could see the heart-clutching appeal of Bran’s home on the cliffs.
When Sasha stepped back, he started to speak. But one look at her eyes had him holding his silence.
She picked up the painting, set it on the worktable, then propped her sketch pad on the easel.
So there was more.
After opening a box, she picked up colored chalk, and began to sweep and guide it over the page.
He watched Annika come to life, but as he’d never seen her. Rising up in the water, or so it seemed to him, her face toward the surface, and transported. Her hair swirling through the impossible blue.
For a moment Sawyer thought it was like watching a photograph develop, so quick and sure were Sasha’s strokes.
Annika’s arms lifted high above her head, wrists touching, hands cupped. And with Sasha’s chalks, with her gift, the star appeared in Annika’s hands, brilliant and blue.
“In the water and of it,” Sasha said. “From the goddess’s
hands into the guardian’s. And she is in the water and of it. Luna’s star, star of water, gifted with grace, with joy, with love, now held by the daughter.”
Slowly, Sasha set the chalks down, turned to Sawyer. “But the night comes, brutal and bloody, and must be faced. The risk will be yours, traveler. And the choice to take it.”
“What risk?”
“Your life, to save all else. Will you embrace the goddess of dark, take her to the light, leave her lost? She will find her way again, but will you risk to spare the blood of friends? To make the time to heal again?”
“Pull her into a shift? Is it possible?”
“Only you can know. You are the traveler. She is the daughter,” Sasha said, gesturing to the portrait. “You must both choose. So do we all.”
Sasha’s eyes closed; she breathed out a sigh. “Sawyer?”
“Yeah, hey, welcome home. You need to sit down.”
“No, I’m fine.” She waved him off. “Really, even a little buzzed. I know what I said to you, but—”
“Let’s just let that simmer. Annika finds the star, the Water Star.”
“I know she can.” As she studied her own work, Sasha picked up a rag to wipe chalk from her hands. “And I know there will be voices all around her, and weeping with the sighs and songs. It’s all I know.”
Now she turned to her worktable, and the painting.
“This is where we need to go, and the star of ice waits for us. It’s Bran’s home, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, he recognized it when you were working on it earlier.”
“Bran’s,” she repeated. “And more. Could you ask the others to come up? They should see.”
“Yeah, I’ll get them. Here.” He offered her a bottle of water. “You’ve been at this for a good four hours straight.”
“It needs a little more work, but— It’s enough for now.”
Bran came first, slid an arm around her as he studied the portrait of Annika.
“Does it illuminate her, or does she illuminate it?”
“I think it’s both. I felt I needed to rush, that time is running out. I didn’t capture the glow—of her, of the star. It would bring tears, that glow.”
She turned her face into his shoulder. “Bran, are you sure you can’t help them? Sure there’s nothing you can do to allow her to stay with him?”
“Even if it wasn’t beyond my powers, and I believe it is, the spell wasn’t done to harm. She was given the gift of legs, and for a purpose. And she took an oath, of her own free will. I can’t circumvent that.”
“It breaks my heart.” She held close a moment, made herself step back. “You’re going home.”
“We are. It’s yours, fáidh, if you’ll have it. Would you live there with me, and me with you in your mountains in America? And my flats in Dublin and New York. Any and all.”
“I’d live with you anywhere. Any and all, Bran.” She held him again as she looked at the painting. “It’s beautiful and powerful. It’s so yours. Do you know why you built a home just there?”
“Only that when I walked that path the first time, came to the cliffs and the ruins there, I knew it was for me. It needed a home, and I needed to be there.”
Annika stepped out, gave a gasp. “You’ve drawn me. I found the star. I hold it. I will find it.”
“You can, and I believe you will.”
Doyle came out, just ahead of Riley. Sasha felt her heart wring out tears of sympathy.
“Got yourself a star, Anni. And I’m betting that portrait’s reality before today’s over.” Buoyed, Riley shifted over to where Doyle stood, staring down at the painting.
“Some digs, Bran. I think we could rough it there on the last and final leg of this quest. How many bedrooms?” she asked.
“Ten, though two are only put into use for that when my family comes in a herd.”
“Is there one in either of those towers?”