Stars of Fortune (The Guardians Trilogy 1)

“The gift of magicks has come through the blood, and so has the quest for the stars. I came here because, as with you, Riley, I came upon some informat

ion. While once again scouring books until my eyes bled, I came on a passage that spoke of a fallen star, one of fire, waiting in a land of green. You might think Greenland, and I did, or Ireland, but there was more that convinced me it was here. It was written the maidens of Korkyra had hidden it, away from the mother of lies.”

“Not much different from what I found,” Riley said. “And the timing? You, me, Sasha? It cements it.”

“I’d barely arrived, and like you, booked the hotel on impulse as I thought to rent a villa. For the quiet, the privacy, as I’d need to work, and hotel rooms aren’t always . . . convenient for certain work.”

“When you make magick,” Annika said, and made him smile.

“When I do. And so I walked out on the hotel terrace, annoyed with myself for changing my plans and direction. Imagine my surprise when I found myself lured over to two beautiful women, with fascinating stories to tell.”

“So you teamed up,” Doyle said.

“I’d be the last to ignore power or turn away from the fates. And beyond the stories there were the sketches, Sasha’s brilliant sketches, which made it clear this was meant. Still, I felt it best to keep what I’m telling you now to myself.”

He frowned at his beer, then shrugged. “Others have been deceived by lovely faces, by fascinating stories, by the whiff of power and the promise of trust. So I bided some time—and it can’t be said I bided long, can it?”

Temper flared around the edges of his tone as he looked over at Sasha. “A bit of time to be more certain what I felt, what I knew was truth, and that meeting, that joining of forces was for the right of it.”

He paused, considered having another beer. “So we piled ourselves into Riley’s borrowed jeep and headed north and west, where I had always planned to go. And Riley, being enterprising and well-connected, arranged this place for us. On the way back, after we’d gone to get our things from the hotel, there was Sawyer, walking toward this place, on the side of the road.”

He opted for the beer. “And there,” he said to Sawyer, “you come into it.”

“It’s a family thing for me, too. The story of the stars came down through my family. I’m not much of a scholar, not like Riley here, so most of what I know is through those stories. And . . .” He scratched the back of his neck, frowned into the distance.

“Didn’t tell us the whole of it either, did you?” Bran asked.

“Not exactly. It’s the sort of thing people don’t buy into, and like you said, it hasn’t been long since we teamed up. A psychic’s one thing—I mean a lot of people buy into that. Hell, it’s an industry. No offense.”

“None taken,” Sasha assured him.

“But after today. Mutant bats from hell, evil gods, and, well, Bran, it might not seem so weird. Family deal again. An ancestor, back in maybe—nobody’s exactly sure—the fourteenth century. He was a sailor, and his ship went down in a storm. So he’s drowning and, the story goes, he was rescued, pulled to shore by a

mermaid.”

Doyle let out a short laugh, and Annika a gasp.

“Yeah, yeah, I know, but that’s the story. He woke up, the only one of the crew to survive, on the rocky shore of some island in the North Sea. And the, uh, mermaid, she’d gotten hurt saving him, cut up on the rocks, and too weak to swim. Dying.”

“No,” Annika breathed.

“He was pretty banged up himself, but he got some dry wood, some dry leaves, started a fire. He didn’t know if he should try to get her all the way into the water, or if she’d just drown, so he scouted up some plants, made a poultice for her cuts. Some of the supplies and pieces of the ship washed up, so he used what he could, built a kind of shelter, fed her what he could, took care of her.”

“Did she get better?”

“Yeah, happy ending.”

“Happy endings are good.”

“One night he woke up, and saw her swimming away. And he was alone.”

“But this isn’t happy,” Annika objected.

“Wait for it. Days later, she came back, and he went out into the shallows to meet her. For the first time, she spoke. She’d taken him from the sea because it was his fate, and those who came after him, to look for the three stars. He would tell the story to his sons, and they to their sons until they were found and taken home. She gave him a gift, a compass, and said it would guide him. This, too, he would pass to his son, and his son to his, and down the line.”

“You’ve got the compass?” Riley demanded.

“Yeah.” He dug in his pocket, held it out on his palm, lifted off the protective cover.