“I don’t know where this is, but I do know these three stars, the ones near the moon, they don’t exist. I’m not an astronomer, but I know they’re not there. I only know they were, somehow they were. And I know they fell. See this one.” She laid out another sketch. “All three falling at the same time, leaving those cometlike trails. We’re supposed to find them.”

Sasha looked up, saw Riley’s eyes stare into hers, feral and cold.

“What do you know about the stars?” Riley demanded.

“I’m telling you what I know.”

In a fast move, Riley reached out, gripped Sasha’s arm at the wrist. “What do you know about the Stars of Fortune? Who the hell are you?”

Though her stomach trembled, Sasha made herself keep her eyes level with the fierce ones, ordered her voice not to shake.

“I’ve told you who I am. I’m telling you what I know. You know more about them. You know what they are. You’re already looking for them—that’s why you’re here. And you’re hurting my arm.”

“If I find out you’re bullshitting me, I’ll hurt more than your arm.” But she let it go.

“Don’t threaten me.” Temper, hot and surprised, leaped up and out. “I’ve had enough. I didn’t ask for this, I don’t want this. All I wanted was to live in peace, to paint, to be left alone to work. Then you and these others are crowding my dreams, you and these damn stars I don’t understand. One of them’s here, I know it, just as I know finding it won’t be peaceful. I don’t know how to fight, and I’ll have to. Blood and battle, dreams full of blood and battle and pain.”

“Now it’s getting interesting.”

“It’s terrifying, and I want to walk away from all of it. I don’t think I can. I held one in my hand.”

Riley leaned forward. “You held one of the stars?”

“In a dream.” Sasha turned her palm up, stared at it. “I held it, held the fire. And it was so beautiful it blinded. Then it came.”

“What came?”

“The dark, the hungry, the brutal.”

Suddenly she felt queasy, light-headed. Though she struggled, what moved through her won.

“She who is darkness covets. To have what she desires consumes her. What the three moons created out of love, loyalty, and hope, she would corrupt. She has burned her gifts and all bright edges of her power away, and what remains is a madness. She will kill to possess them, fire, ice, water. Possessing them, she will destroy worlds, destroy all so she lives.”

Sasha lifted both hands to her head. “Headache.”

“Does that happen often?”

“I do everything I can to stop it.”

“And that’s probably why you have a headache. You can’t fight your own nature, trust me. You have to learn to control it, and to adapt.” Riley caught the waiter’s eyes, circled a finger in the air. “I’m getting us another round.”

“I don’t think I should—”

“Eat some nuts.” Brisk now, Riley shoved the bowl closer. “No way you’re faking this—nobody’s that good. And I’ve got a sense about people—not empathic, but a reliable sense. So we’ll have another drink, talk this through some more, then figure out where we go from there.”

“You’re going to help me.”

“The way I look at it, we’re going to help each other. My research indicates the Fire Star is in or around Corfu—and your dreams corroborate that. You could come in handy. Now—”

She broke off, flicked a hand at her bangs as she looked over Sasha’s head. “Well, well, it just keeps getting more and more interesting.”

“What is it?”

“Dream date.” Riley aimed a deliberately flirty smile, crooked a finger in the air.

Swiveling in her chair, Sasha saw him. The man who held the lightning. The one who’d taken her body.

His eyes, so dark, flicked away from Riley, met hers. Held them. And holding them, crossed to their table.

“Ladies. Spectacular view, isn’t it?”

His voice, Irish and easy, brought a shiver to Sasha’s skin. She felt trapped, as if a shining silver cage had dropped around her.

And when he smiled, she yearned.

“Where you from, Irish?” Riley asked.

“Sligo, a little village you wouldn’t have heard of.”

“You’d be surprised.”

“Cloonacool.”

“I know it. Sits at the foot of the Ox Mountains.”

“So it does, yes. Well then.” He waved his hand, and offered Riley the little clutch of shamrocks that appeared in it. “A token from home, faraway.”

“Nice.”

“Americans?” He looked back at Sasha. “Both of you?”

“Looks that way.” Riley watched his gaze shift, land on the sketches. She said nothing when he reached down, lifted the one of six people.

Not shocked, she thought. Intrigued.

“Isn’t this a fascination. You’d be the artist?” he said to Sasha. “You’ve a clever hand, and eye. I’ve been told I have the same.” He smiled. “Mind if I join you?”

Without waiting for assent, he got a chair from a neighboring table, pulled it up. Sat.

“I’d say we’ve a lot to talk about. I’d be Bran. Bran Killian. Why don’t I buy you ladies a drink, and we’ll talk about the moon and the stars?”

CHAPTER TWO

Sasha struggled to find her balance as he made himself comfortable, ordered a glass of the local red.

He’d walked out of her dreams, as if she’d wished him into being. She knew his face, his body, his voice, his scent. She’d been intimate with him.

But he didn’t know her.

He didn’t know her heart beat fast fists at the base of her throat, or that she had her hands clutched together under the table to keep them from shaking.

She needed a moment alone to gather herself, thought to scoop up the sketches and get away, but he turned those dark eyes on her.

“Do you mind?” he asked, and before she understood, without waiting for an answer, he picked up one of the sketches of Riley.

“She’s captured you very well.”

“Seems like.”

“Have you known each other long?”

“About a half hour.”

His only reaction was a single quirked eyebrow—the one with the lightning bolt scar. “Fascinating.”

He picked up, studied sketch after sketch, ordering them as he went. “And the other three people?”

“She doesn’t know. You don’t seem too weirded out about it.”

“The world’s full of mysteries, isn’t it?”

“What are you doing in Corfu?” Riley asked him.

He sat back with his wine, smiled. “I’m on holiday.”

“Come on, Bran.” Riley gestured with her own drink. “After all we’ve been through together.”

“I felt this was the place I needed to be,” he said simply, and picked up the sketch of the moon with its three bright stars. “And apparently it is.”

“You know what they are.”

Bran shifted his gaze to Sasha. “She speaks. I know what they are, yes. Where is altogether another matter. I have one of your paintings.”

“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.”