"It's private stuff," she snapped. "Intimate stuff. She doesn't know you." Despite a thousand vows, she felt her eyes fill. "Neither do I."

That single tearful look punched a hole in his heart. "Dana."

When he stepped toward her, she snatched a bread knife off the counter. "Put your hands on me again, I'll hack them off at the wrist."

He stayed where he was, slid his hands into his pockets. "Why don't you just stick it in my heart and get it over with?"

"Just stay away from me. Flynn doesn't want Malory left alone. You can consider this your shift, because I'm leaving."

"If I'm going to be guard dog, it would help to know what I'm guarding against."

"Big, bad sorcerers." She yanked open the back door. "Anything happens to her, I'll not only jam that knife in your heart, I'll cut it out and feed it to the dog."

"Always were good with imagery," he drawled after she'd slammed out.

He rubbed a hand over his stomach. She'd tied it in knots—something else she was damn good at. He looked at the coffee she hadn't touched. Though he knew it was foolishly symbolic, he picked up the cup and poured the coffee down the sink.

"Down the drain, Stretch. Just like us."

Malory studied the paintings until her vision blurred. She made more notes, then stretched out on the floor to stare at the ceiling. She jumbled what she knew in her head, hoping it would form a new, clearer pattern.

A singing goddess, shadows and light, what was within herself and outside herself. To look and see what she hadn't seen. Love forged the key.

Hell.

Three paintings, three keys. Did that mean there was a clue, a sign, a direction in each painting for each key? Or was there a compilation in the three paintings for the first key? For hers?

Either way, she was missing it.

There were common elements in each portrait. The legendary subject matter, of course. The use of forest and shadows. The figure cloaked by them.

That would be Kane.

Why was Kane in the portrait of Arthur? Had he actually been there at the event, or was his inclusion, and Rowena's and Pitte's, symbolic?

But still, even with those common elements, the Arthurian portrait didn't seem part of what she was certain was a set. Was there another painting, to complete the triad, of the Daughters of Glass?

Where would she find it, and what would it tell her when she did? She rolled over, examined the portrait of young Arthur once more. The white dove at the right top. A symbol for Guinevere? The beginning of the end of that shining moment?

Betrayal by love. The consequences of love.

Wasn't she dealing with consequences of love now, within herself? The soul was as much a symbol of love and beauty as the heart was. Emotions, poetry, art, music. Magic. Soulful elements.

Without a soul, there were no consequences, and no beauty.

If the goddess could sing, didn't that mean she still had her soul?

The key might be in a place where there was art, or love. Beauty or music. Or where the choice to keep them or discard them was made.

A museum, then? A gallery? The Gallery, she thought and bolted to her feet.

"Dana!"

She dashed toward the kitchen, pulling up short when she saw Jordan sitting at the scarred table working on a small, sleek laptop.

"Sorry. I thought Dana was in here."

"She took off hours ago."

"Hours?" Malory passed a hand over her face as if coming out of a dream. "I lost track of time."

"Happens to me regularly. Want some coffee?" He glanced toward the empty pot on the counter. "All you have to do is make it."

"No, I really need to… You're working. I'm sorry to interrupt."

"No problem. I'm having one of those days where I fantasize about having an alternate profession. Like being a lumberjack in the Yukon or a bartender at a tropical resort."

"Pretty disparate choices."

"Either of which seems like more fun than what I'm doing."

She noted the empty coffee cup, the half-full ashtray set beside the jazzy laptop on a secondhand picnic table in a stupendously ugly kitchen.

"Could be the ambience isn't particularly conducive to creativity." "When things are going well, you can be in a sewer with a notebook and a Ticonderoga."

"I suppose that's true, but I'm wondering if you're set up in this… unfortunate room because you're watching out for me."

"Depends." He eased back, fiddled with his dwindling pack of cigarettes. "If that's okay with you, sure. If it's going to piss you off, then I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about."

She cocked her head. "And if I said I had to leave now, that there's something I want to check out?"

He gave her an easy smile, one she thought might pass for innocent on a less wicked face. "I'd say, is it okay if I tag along? It might do me good to get out of the house for a while. Where are we going?"

"The Gallery. It occurred to me that the key must be attached to art, to beauty, to the paintings. It's the most logical place in the area to look."

"Uh-huh. So, you're going to walk into a public place of business, during business hours, and nobody's going to mind if you go on a scavenger hunt through the stock and/or office areas."

"Well, when you put it that way." Deflated, she sat across from him. "Do you think this whole thing is just some kind of lunacy?"

Jordan recalled watching several thousand dollars appear and disappear. "Not necessarily."

"And if I said I might have a way to get into The Gallery after business hours?"

"I'd say you wouldn't have been picked to be a part of this unless you were a creative woman with a flexible mind who's willing to take some chances."

"I like that description. I don't know if it always applied, but it does now. I need to make some phone calls. And, Jordan? I think it shows a strong sense of character and loyalty for a man to waste his day looking after a stranger because a friend asked him to."

MALORY took the keys from Tod and gave him a huge hug in return. "I owe you big."

"I'll say, but I'll settle for any sort of an explanation."

"As soon as I can. I promise."

"Honeybun, this is all getting really weird. You get fired, then you hack into Pamela's files. You turn down the invitation to come back to home and hearth with a substantial raise. And now you're going to skulk around the place after closing."

"You know what?" She jingled the keys in her hand. "That's not the really weird part. All I can tell you is I'm doing something important, and with the best intentions. I'm not going to do The Gallery or James, or most especially you, any harm."

"I'd never think you would."

"I'll have these back to you tonight. First thing in the morning at the latest."

Tod glanced out the window to see Flynn loitering on the sidewalk. "This doesn't have anything to do with sexual fetishes or fantasies?"

"No."

"Well, that's a shame. I'm walking away. I'm going to have a lovely martini, maybe two, and put all this completely out of my mind."

"Do just that."

He started out, then stopped and looked back at her. "Whatever you're doing, Mal, be careful."

"I will. Promise."

She waited, watched Tod stop to speak to Flynn before sauntering off. She opened the door, gestured Flynn in, then locked it, set the security code. "What did Tod say to you?"

"That if I got you into any sort of trouble he'd hang me up by my balls and then snip off various other body parts with manicure scissors."

"Ouch. Good one."

"You bet." He peered out the window to make sure Tod was gone. "And let me tell you, if I was thinking about getting you into any sort of trouble, that image would be a very strong deterrent."

"I guess, when it comes down to it, I'm the one who could be getting you in trouble. There's the legal angle, the criminal angle, and your reputation as publisher and editor in chief of the Dispatch on the line here. You don't have to do this."

"I'm in. Manicure scissors are those little pointy ones that curve, right?"

"That's right."

He hissed out a breath. "Yeah, I was afraid of that. Where do we start?"

"Upstairs, I think. We can work our way down. Assuming the keys in the painting are in proportion, it'll be about three inches long."

"Little key."

"Yes, a fairly little key. The business end is a single, simple drop," she continued and handed him a small sketch. "The other end is decorative, this complex pattern. It's a Celtic design, a triple spiral called a triskeles . Zoe found the pattern in one of Dana's books."

"You three make a good team."

"It feels like it. It's gold, probably solid gold. I can't imagine we won't recognize it when we see it."

He glanced toward the main showroom with its vaulted ceilings and generous space. There were the paintings, of course, and the sculpture and other artworks. Display cases and tables. Drawers and chests and counters with infinite cubbyholes.

"A lot of places a key might hide in here."

"Wait until we get into the storage and shipping areas."

They started in the offices. Malory set aside her guilt at going through drawers, riffling through personal items. This wasn't any time for delicacy, she told herself. She crawled around James's desk, searching under it.

"Do you really think people like Rowena and Pitte, or whatever god's in charge of hiding the keys, would tape the secret key to the bottom of a desk drawer?"

She sent him a sulky look as she slid the drawer back in place. "I don't think we can afford to overlook any possibility."

She looked so cute, he thought, sitting on the floor with her hair tied back from her face and her mouth all pouty. He wondered if she'd worn black because she felt it suited the circumstances.

It would be just like her.

"Fair enough, but we'd get through those possibilities faster if we called the whole team in."

"I can't have a pack of people running around here. It's just not right." And the guilt of what she was doing scraped her conscience like ragged fingernails. "It's bad enough you're here. You can't use anything you see here in a story."

He crouched down with her, stared into her face with eyes that had gone winter cool. "Is that what you think?"

"It doesn't seem unreasonable that the thought crossed my mind." She rose to take a painting off the wall. "You're a journalist," she continued as she checked the frame, tested the backing. "I owe something to this place, to James. I'm just saying that I don't Want him involved." She rehung the painting, chose another.

"Maybe you should write up a list of what is and isn't appropriate for me to write about. In your opinion."

“There's no need to get testy."

"Oh, yeah, there is. I've invested a lot of my time and energy in this, and I haven't printed a word. Don't question my ethics, Malory, just because you're questioning your own. And don't ever tell me what I can or can't write."

"It's just a matter of saying this is off the record."

"No, it's not. It's a matter of you trusting and respecting someone you claim to love. I'm going to start in the next room. I think we'll do better separately."

Just how, she wondered, had she managed to screw that one up so completely? She took the last painting off the wall, ordered herself to concentrate.

Obviously Flynn was oversensitive. She'd made a perfectly reasonable request, and if he wanted to get huffy about it, it was his problem.

She spent the next twenty minutes going over every inch of the room, and comforting herself with her conviction that he'd overreacted.

They didn't speak for the next hour, and though they were two people performing the same task in the same space, they managed to avoid contact.

By the time they started on the main level, they'd developed a rhythm, but they still weren't speaking.

It was tedious, frustrating work. Checking every painting, every sculpture, every pedestal and objet d'art. Going over the stairs tread by tread, crawling along the trim.

Malory took herself off to the storeroom. It was both painful and thrilling to come across newly acquired pieces, or to see others that had been sold since she'd left The Gallery and were waiting to be crated and shipped.

Once she'd been privy to every step and stage, and had been granted the right to acquire items and negotiate a price. In her heart The Gallery had been hers. She couldn't count the times she'd been inside it after hours like this. No one would have questioned her presence then. There would have been no need to beg the keys from a friend, or to feel guilt.