“My mistress waits.”

The man’s voice scraped rough, like a lizard’s tongue over flesh. Malmon followed him up the stairs—more candles, and urns full of lilies so red they looked nearly black in the candlelight. Lilies so strongly scented they swam in his head.

He entered a large drawing room where Nerezza sat in an ornate chair, almost a throne, that glimmered gold. Its back rose up behind her with a carving of intertwined snakes at its peak.

She wore the same red as the flowers, so deep it showed black, with rubies like fat drops of blood dripping around her throat, from her ears.

An odd bird—not a crow, not an owl, but some odd combination—perched, like the gargoyles, on the wide arm of the chair.

Her beauty struck him like a bolt—both fierce and terrible. And so, in that moment, was his desire for her.

She smiled, as if she knew.

“I’m pleased you came. Leave us,” she told the servant while her dark eyes stayed on Malmon’s face. She rose, her gown rustling like papery wings, and glided to a decanter. Poured deep red into glasses. “A drink, to new friendships.”

How dry his throat; how fast his pulse. He struggled to keep his voice even, casual.

“Will we be friends?”

“We have so much in common already, and more to come.” She watched him over the rim as she sipped. “You came because you wonder, and your life has few wonders now. You’ll stay because you’ll know, and you’ll want.”

Her scent seemed to twine around him, made him think of everything dark and forbidden.

“What will I know? What will I want?”

“You’ll know what I tell you. You’ll then tell me what you want. Your choice to make.” But her eyes told him she knew that choice already. “Shall we sit?”

She didn’t sit on the throne chair, but moved to a curved settee, waited for him. And said, “The Stars of Fortune.”

“You believe they exist.”

“I know they exist. The first, the Fire Star, was found only days ago, in an underwater cave in Corfu.”

His interest piqued, and some irritation with it. His network should have picked up that information. If true.

“You have it?”

Something dark, and far more terrible than beauty, slid in and out of her eyes. “If I did, I’d have no need for you. I told you there are six who stand in the way. They found the star, they have it, and—for now—it’s beyond my reach. Now they hunt for the next, and I hunt for them. I . . . underestimated their inventiveness. I won’t do so a second time.”

Now he smiled, believing he held the advantage. “You want my help.”

“Your skills, your thirst, combined with mine. Force alone proved inadequate. I require guile, and human ambitions.”

“Human?”

She said nothing to that, only sipped again of the wine that swam in his head like the heady scent of lilies.

“You know two of the six.”

“Do I?”

“Riley Gwin.”

“Ah, yes.” Even the sound of her name made his mouth thin. “I know Dr. Gwin. A bright, resourceful woman.”

“She’s more than that. Sawyer King. And I see you have no love for this one.”

“He has something I want, and haven’t yet managed to take.”

“The compass. It can be yours. I have no use for it.”

Fascinated, Malmon leaned toward her. “You know of it, what it’s reputed to do?”

“He is the traveler, for now, able to shift through time, through space as long as he possesses the compass. You want that power.”

“I’ll have it. It’s simply a matter of time. One way or the other, I take what I want.”

“As do I. With these two are four others. None of the six are only what they seem. If you choose to do what I ask of you, I’ll show you what they are, what they have. And what they are, what they have can be yours. I only want the stars.”

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.”