The compass. He coveted the compass, and only more since he’d failed to . . . acquire it.

But she clearly coveted the stars, so a bargain must be struck. “If, as you say, the stars exist, nothing six people are or have can compare to their worth.”

“The guardians—these six—are not all I’d give you. The offer of money is too usual for you and me, Andre, though I can give you more than any man can hold. You can choose more wealth, but I think you’ll make another choice.”

“What else is there?”

She lifted a hand, and in it rested a clear ball of glass.

“Parlor tricks?”

“Look and see.” Her voice whispered over his skin like ice. “Look into the Globe of All, and see.”

“Something in the wine,” he murmured as clouds and water stirred and stirred inside the glass.

“Of course. Only to help you forget all of this should you choose to refuse me.” And, she thought, to make him—like his servant—susceptible to suggestion.

Hers, should he disappoint her, would be for him to return home, take the weapon he now had at the small of his back, put it into his mouth, and pull the trigger.

If he refused, he was of no use to her.

“Look and see,” she said again. “See the six. Guardians of the stars. Enemies of Nerezza. See them, and what they are.”

He saw Riley standing under the light of a full moon, saw her transform into a wolf that threw back its head to howl before running into shadows.

He watched Sawyer, holding the compass, vanish in a golden light and reappear in another.

He saw a man hold lightning in his hands, a woman who spoke of visions and things yet to come. Another man run through with a sword who rose again, healed and whole.

And the woman, the beauty who dived into a night sea and rose up with a jeweled tail.

“You see the truth.” Nerezza spoke quietly, watching the dazed and dazzled look in his eyes. “What they have, all and each, you can possess. Do with what you will. Think of hunting the she-wolf, the thrill of it. She has a pack, more hunting. Think of possessing the mermaid. Of owning the compass. Of harnessing the magician, the seer for your own purposes.

“Or destroying them. How it would thrill to destroy such creatures. Your choice. Enslave or destroy. And the immortal?”

She smiled when he looked at her again, when she saw what she’d known she would on his face. The greed for life.

“This could be yours.”

“Immortality.”

“A payment, if you choose. I can give this to you.”

“How? How can you give me immortality?”

“I am Nerezza.”

“Named for the goddess who cursed the three stars.”

She rose, lifted her arms. The candlelight swirled into walls of fire. Her voice was a thunder that dropped him to his knees.

“I am Nerezza. Goddess of the dark.”

The strange bird gave a cry, almost human, then swooped. Malmon felt a quick sting at his throat, but made no sound. He trembled with awe, with lust.

“Refuse me and leave, never to see again the wonders. Accept my task, and choose your payment. Wealth, power? Life eternal?”

“Life! Give me immortality.”

“Give me the stars, and it’s yours.”

The fire died to candlelight; she sat. She held out a paper, and a silver quill. “A contract, between us.”

His hands shook—fear, excitement—he’d forgotten what it was to feel so much. To calm himself, he drained the wine in the glass, then accepted the quill.

“It’s written in Latin.”

“Yes. A dead language for immortality.”

He read Latin, as well as Greek, Arabic, Aramaic. But his heart thudded as he translated. He wanted more time. A night to think, to settle his nerves.

She rose, skimmed her hands down, and the gown spilled away, leaving her naked, magnificent.

Nerves smothered under lust.

“Once signed, we’ll seal. It’s been too long since I’ve had a man in my bed. A man worthy of it.”

He could take a goddess, have immortality, possess all the powers he’d seen inside the ball of glass.

He signed his name, and she hers. He watched those names bleed and burn into the parchment.

Then she took his hand. “Come with me, and we will do all there is to do to each other, until the light comes.”

She took her fill of him, took with a voracious hunger he nearly matched. Because he pleased her, well enough, in bed, she knew she would use him there again.

When he slept, she smiled into the dark.

Men, of all worlds, of all natures, all species, were to her mind the simplest of creatures. They might spring to act, to violence more fiercely, more quickly than the female, but the female remained cannier and more clever.

And the male? Sex would always rule them. The offer of it, the act, the need.

She’d had only to offer this when he hesitated, and he had signed the contract, in his own blood. That blood now burned and bound him.

He belonged to her now. And when he helped her take the stars, when she granted him his choice of immortality, he would belong to her—as ever she wished—for eternity.

When Annika couldn’t sleep, she crept downstairs. She saw the light under the door of the room where Sawyer slept, and yearned to go in. Just to sit and talk to him, or better, to lie with him in the bed, quiet and warm.

But she understood when doors were closed, those inside usually wanted alone.

She slipped outside to stand and look out over the flowers, the steep road where the singing woman had pushed her baby in the stroller, and out to the sea.