“Baked potato soup—in bread bowls. Good for a wet day.”
“Bread bowls? How am I supposed to think about research when I’m going to eat bowls of bread?”
Sasha took Riley’s arm. “By having wine first.”
“That could work.”
Wine usually worked, in Riley’s opinion. And she didn’t mind having some in front of the fire, her feet up while she worked on her tablet. Especially when the air began to smell of whatever Sawyer taught Annika to chop, stir, or mix.
It seemed to her Sasha felt the same as she sat in the kitchen lounge sketching. Doyle had said something about a hot shower and disappeared. Since she thought he wanted space, she provided it.
She noted idly that Bran was absent for at least an hour, came back in, left again. Shortly after helping Annika form balls of bread dough, Sawyer told her to cover them with a cloth, time it for an hour.
He slipped out.
Riley lowered her tablet. “What if we tried something like a scavenger hunt?”
“Why would you hunt scavengers?” Annika wondered.
“No, it’s like a game.”
“I like games. Sawyer taught me one with cards, and when you lose, you take off a piece of clothes. Oh, but he said we only play it for two.”
“Yeah, that’s better as a duet. It’s when you have a list of things to find, and you hunt for them.”
“Like the stars. So it’s a quest.”
“In a way.”
Sasha glanced up from her sketch. “How does a scavenger hunt help us find the star?”
“It’s a way to get us to comb through the house, to look for the unexpected. I don’t know. Reaching,” Riley admitted. “Doyle’s family built on this spot. He was born here. Bran built, three hundred years later, on this spot. We’ve been driving and hiking around Clare, diving in the Atlantic. But it’s making more sense, it’s just more logical, the answer’s right here.”
“Don’t you think Bran, being Bran, would have sensed it?”
Because Riley had rolled that around, she had a theory. “I think, somehow, it didn’t really begin for us until January—and Doyle’s unwilling rebirth. Yes, everyone but you already knew about the Stars of Fortune before we hooked up on Corfu—and that’s another in the mix. We all knew; you didn’t. The clock started when Doyle hit the magic number.”
She pushed up, poured more wine. “It’s a solid theory. January starts the clock, you start having visions about us, about the stars. It takes you a while, but you go to Corfu—and so do the rest of us. Same time, same place.”
“Riley is very smart.” Annika poured more wine, too.
“You bet I am.” She clicked her glass to Annika’s, and feeling generous, took the bottle to where Sasha sat, topped off her glass. “You’re drawing the house.”
“I love the house. I don’t think it’s any more than that. But I do follow the theory. And . . . Bran brought the other two stars here, into this house. So maybe this is why.”
“Good point. So we could go through it, top to bottom. Your visions, so far, say it’s somewhere cold, talk about a name on a stone. First on the hunt list is a name, a stone. You talked about the boy seeing the man, the man the boy.”
“We have three men,” Annika pointed out.
“Right you are. One of them was born here, was a boy here. That could be it. Or . . .” Riley sipped. “It could be symbolic again. Something in the house from Doyle’s time, or that represents—”
She broke off when Doyle came in.
“Who knew it was that easy to shut you up.”
“She doesn’t want to poke at a sore,” Sasha told him.
“Nothing sore.” He looked at the wine, and since it was handy, got a glass. “You had a point before. The whole whims-of-fate deal pisses me off. It wasn’t you, but like this wine, you were handy.”