“Where did you get this thing?”
“I have contacts, worked a deal. Figured I’d need transportation.” She got behind the wheel, tossed a folded map at Sasha. “Shotgun navigates.”
“All right, but it’s helpful to know where we’re going.”
“North along the coast to start. It’s a big island, but my research leads me toward a coastal location.”
“Why?” Even as the question formed, Riley hit the gas.
It might have looked like it hovered one step out of the nearest junkyard, but the jeep had enough kick to leap forward like a panther.
“Why?” Riley shouted over the engine’s roar as she punched down a narrow road, the shops a blur at the edges, toward the coast. “What makes an island an island?”
Sasha wondered if a crash hurt less if the eyes stayed closed. “It’s surrounded by water.”
“So why choose an island to hide treasure if you’re just going inland? The coast—bays, inlets, caves. Most translations of the legend talk about the Fire Star waiting to light again, that it sleeps in the cradle of land beneath the sea. Some mythologists figure Atlantis.”
“That follows, as Atlantis is a myth.”
Riley flicked Sasha a look. “You’re here looking for a fallen star created by a moon goddess, but dissing Atlantis?”
“And hoping I don’t die in a car crash.”
“That’s what the roll bar’s for. I have a colleague who’s been searching for Atlantis for nearly twenty years now. I’m leaving that one to him.”
The road was like a speedway where every driver seemed determined to cross his personal finish line before the rest. Riley drove like a maniacal demon, barely slowing when they zipped through a village.
“Kontokali, if you’re checking the map,” she said. “It’s got one of the oldest churches on the island, and a castle ruin I’ll check out if I have spare time. How you doing back there, Irish?”
He’d angled sideways, propped his feet up on the second seat. “You drive like a hellhound, Riley.”
“I always get where I’m going. Seeing as there are three of us now, I had a thought. We can each keep shelling out separately for a hotel room, or we could pool it, rent a place. It’d be cheaper all around.”
“And more private,” Bran added, as he’d had the thought himself. “It gets a bit awkward trying to discuss hunting for stars and evading dark gods in hotel restaurants. What do you think, Sasha?”
She stared out at the sea, and the skier flying along the blue behind a bright white boat. “I guess it’s more practical.”
“Done,” Riley announced. “I’ll make some calls.”
“To your contacts,” Bran finished.
“Pays to have them. Gouvia,” she added as they came to another village. “Old Venetian shipyards. Multiple beaches and coves. May bear looking into.”
Sasha had time to consider the sun-washed color of buildings, pedestrians in holiday gear, a stream of coastline before the village lay behind them.
“You don’t appear to need a navigator.”
“Not yet.”
Sasha got used to the speed, at least used enough for her heart to stop knocking at every turn of the road. She soothed herself with the sea, the movement of it, the scent of it in the blowing air. The fragrance of flowers mixed with it as they bloomed wild and free on the roadsides, their colors more vivid and intense than any she’d seen. Madly red poppies springing out of a field, greedy morning glory smothering hedges in violent blue, the curving branches of a Judas tree bursting with searing magenta.
She was here, Sasha thought, to find answers to questions that dogged her. But she was here in such bright, hot beauty, and that alone was a personal miracle.
She gave over to it, lifted her face to the sky, let the warm, perfumed air wash over her.
Riley had some tidbit about every village they passed through. Sasha wondered what it was like to be a kind of human guidebook, to have traveled so widely, to actually and actively seek out adventure.
For now, she let herself be in the moment, one of sun, speed, scenery.
She could paint for years here.
Maybe her heart knocked again when they sped along a stretch with sharp turns, with the sea a breathless drop tucked close to the road.
Gradually they turned west, bypassed a large and busy town Sasha identified on the map as Kassiopi.
The road snaked again, skimmed by a lake she longed to sketch.
“Coming in to Acharavi. Originally called Hebe—probably after Zeus’s daughter—in ancient times. Then Octavian sacked it in like 32 BC, so the current name, which basically means ‘ungracious life,’ since being sacked and burned is pretty ungracious.
“We’ll take a pit stop there,” Riley continued as they flew by a water park. “And I’ll make those calls. Albania.” She gestured to the land mass across the water.