“Oh. I don’t know. They are not fish, not mammal, not people. They’re other. But I can try. I will try.” She set her jaw. “It would help.”

“An early-warning system. Otherwise, we do what we’ve done?” Sawyer glanced around the table. “Buddy system, stick together, do the work. If things get too dicey, I can shift us. We should have a secondary location. If we have to travel from the water, we’d come here, but if we have to travel from here?”

“How about Monte Tiberio?” Riley suggested. “High ground.”

“If that works, I’ll get the coordinates. Meanwhile.”

Sawyer took out the compass, opened the bronze case.

When he set it on the map, it glowed, shimmered in place on Capri. But didn’t move.

“Gotta work for it,” he said, and pocketed it again.

“I’ll start just that.” Bran rose. “Bullets, bolts, and blades. And bracelets. Interesting.”

“I’ll dig into research. See if I can find out anything about sighs, songs, more underwater caves.” Riley pushed to her feet. “Do you want the map?” she asked Doyle.

“Maybe later.”

“I’ll get dinner started.” Sasha pushed a loose pin back into her bundled-up hair. “Can you help, Annika?”

“Yes, I like to help.”

When Sasha and Annika went inside, Doyle leaned back with his beer, looked at Sawyer. “Happiest siren I’ve ever seen. Nobody would blame you for moving on that.”

“She doesn’t . . . I don’t think she gets that. It. It’s like hitting on somebody’s little sister. From Venus.”

“Looks all grown-up to me, but your call. How about we take a walk, past the grove. See what, if anything, we might want to fortify.”

“Good thought.”

While they ate under the stars, Andre Malmon adjusted his formal tie. He expected the evening ahead to be a tedious bore, but duty called. He rarely answered when duty called, already regretting doing so now.

Still, there was a potential for new contacts at this dull charity affair. Contacts were never boring. He wanted something new, something exciting.

So little excited him these days.

What hadn’t he done, after all? What hadn’t he seen? What couldn’t he have simply by flicking his fingers?

His last two adventures—he never called them jobs, though he charged exorbitant fees for his services—had barely amused him. So little challenge.

The woman he was currently seeing had begun to annoy him just by existing, as did the whore he used for more inventive play. He expected he’d dispose of them both very soon.

He had offers pending, of course, but none stirred his juices. Murder? Easily done, but he no longer killed for a fee—unless the kill offered him personal pleasure.

Theft? Sometimes intriguing, but again why steal for someone else? He’d rather steal for himself—and couldn’t, at the moment, think of a single thing worth the effort.

Kidnappings, brainwashings, mutilations. Ho-hum.

Of course there was the standing offer of fifty million for a unicorn, or its horn.

Money couldn’t buy sanity.

If he got bored enough, he might take the time and effort to have a fake horn fabricated. But that was scraping the barrel clean.

He passed a hand over his hair—gilded blond, perfect waves around a handsome face with a sharply sculpted mouth, a thin nose, and deceptively quiet blue eyes.

Perhaps he’d kill Magda—his current amore. Not the whore, whores weren’t worth the killing. But Magda, the heiress with the hint of royal blood. Magda, the beautiful and serene.

He could stage a murder/mutilation, add touches of the occult and sexual perversion. Such a scandal!

It might perk him right up.

He scowled at the knock on his bedroom door, turned when it opened.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Malmon.”

“You’ll be sorrier.” His voice, cold and British, carried a whip of temper. “I expressly told you not to disturb me.”

“Yes, sir. There’s a woman here to see you.”

He stepped forward. “What does ‘not to disturb’ mean to you, Nigel?”

“She’s waiting in the drawing room.”

Nigel, stoic and discreet, offered a card. Incensed, Malmon started to strike it away, but the look in his butler’s eyes stopped him.

Blank. Next to dead. He merely stood, staring, the card held out.

Malmon snatched the card, the glossy black rectangle with the bold red lettering of a single name.

Nerezza

“What does she want?”

“To speak with you, sir.”

“She got past the gate, past Lucien, past you?”

“Yes, sir. Shall I serve refreshments?”

“No, you bloody well won’t serve refreshments. Go hang yourself, Nigel.”

And pushing past the butler, Malmon started down to the parlor.

He felt annoyed, certainly. But he was also curious. He hadn’t been curious for days.

He checked the derringer up his right sleeve. He never went anywhere, not even inside his own homes, unarmed. And since Lucien appeared to be as useless as Nigel, walked into the parlor.

She turned. She smiled.

She was a vision. He couldn’t have said her beautiful, but beauty blinded him. Dark hair swept in coils over her shoulders, made all the more striking by a streak of white bolting through the black.