Celtic Fire. Alex Archer

buildings between the pub and the hotel on two hands, proving just how close everything was. It couldn’t have been more than a couple of minutes’ walk.

      She’d been eating without realizing or tasting what she’d been putting into her mouth and now her plate was empty.

      Annja pushed it to one side, poured the last of the water into her glass before she folded the map back into its original shape.

      A quick glance around her proved that life did indeed go on without one; the young mother with her wasp-fearing child had left, but at least the middle-aged couple still weren’t talking to each other. The group of men were working on another empty glass mountain. Time seemed to be passing at a different pace. She could easily have sat there for the rest of the afternoon and just let the world pass her by. After all, it wasn’t often life afforded Annja Creed the luxury of just sitting and thinking about nothing in particular other than enjoying what was around her for what it was.

      She drained the last of the water from her glass, running her fingers on the outside to wipe the condensation away.

      Another wasp fussed around her empty plate. But rather than dive-bomb her, it skirted the edge of her plate, obviously feasting on the sweet tang of leftover dressing, so she let it alone.

      A wave of tiredness hit her from nowhere.

      She caught her head lolling and realized she’d pretty much blanked out while staring at the wasp. So much for soaking up the warmth of the sun. She should probably check into the hotel and grab a few hours’ shut-eye, but if she slept it was unlikely she’d wake up again until the next morning, wasting the rest of the day.

      She hated wasting time.

       Chapter 6

      The house was silent.

      It felt strange to be coming home to an empty house. She was so used to Geraint being there. So used to him just being part of her world it felt peculiar that he’d stay in London even an hour longer than necessary. But he had.

      Awena couldn’t wait to show him the fruits of her labors and, rather like the eager child she used to be, felt acutely disappointed she couldn’t do it straightaway.

      They had shared the large house halfway up the mountain—looking down on every other house in the valley—since they’d been children, usually in the care of a housekeeper-cum-nanny while their father came and went.

      That she could no longer remember what her mother looked like without looking at the few photographs they still had of her was a constant source of pain for her, but memories were like that. So much so she couldn’t be sure if the few she had of the woman were actually true or created from the stories she’d been told by her father. He’d even made her promise not to forget. Could she really remember the trip to St. Davids in Pembrokeshire on the west coast of Wales, when she’d barely been two years of age? It seemed unlikely, but the memory was in her head whenever she reached for it. The place was no more than a village, but somehow had been designated a city simply because some religious soul a few hundred years back decided to build his cathedral there. She’d been there many times since that first visit, of course, but it was the first visit she impossibly remembered. It didn’t matter, really, even if it was an imagined memory. So were the occasional flashes she got of her mother smiling down at her. Sometimes the mind was just being kind.

      It had been a few years since the old housekeeper had lived with them. She’d been replaced by an occasional cleaner who ran the vacuum and a duster over the place a couple of times a week. And if necessary she could double as a cook if they wanted something beyond Awena’s culinary expertise—but those occasions were few and far between, with her father rarely coming home these days.

      In the evenings it was almost always just the two of them, comfortable with no other company and never needing anyone else. It was how they had been for most of their lives. It was how she wanted it to stay for the rest of their days. Her greatest fear was that there would come a time when one or the other of them would feel the need for more, for that something their twin couldn’t give.

      She wrapped the stone in the blanket that had kept her warm through the night and carried it into the house from the car.

      It felt even heavier now than it had when she had stolen it from the museum, but then she had been fueled by adrenaline and urged on by the fear of discovery. Now there was no strength brought on by the risk of failure, and she was still stiff and tired after trying to sleep in the back of the Land Rover. She wasn’t good when it came to sleeping away from her own bed. She was a homebody. Besides being cramped, the back of the car had been stuffy and her sleep had been restless at best.

      She felt an overwhelming sense of relief when she placed her burden down carefully on the scrubbed pine kitchen table.

      She was hungry and thirsty and in desperate need of a hot shower and fresh clothes. But she was happy and that was the most important thing.

      She tackled her needs one at a time: first, she spooned coffee into the filter machine, filled the reservoir with water and switched it on, then she headed upstairs for a shower. She knew that she would feel better after that, more alert and ready to face the day. Geraint was unlikely to be back from his trip until at least lunchtime. Like their dad he was always disappearing somewhere, but that was the nature of his job; people needed him to fight their technological fires. It didn’t matter if it was their websites, their databases, their security protocols or whatever else he did; if it was to do with computers he was every bit as much a wizard as Myrddin Wyllt. That thought led her to stretching out on her bed without even getting undressed, and pretty soon she’d drifted into sleep, all thoughts of showers and coffee gone.

      When she woke it was well past eleven o’clock and the sun was glaring in through her window.

      The heat from the shower quickly steamed up the small room. She stripped, shedding her clothes like a snake sloughing its skin, and stepped behind the curtain.

      Needles of hot water stung where they struck, turning her skin red and raw, but the warmth made her feel alive.

      She lathered up, luxuriating in the little agonies of the hot water, suds sluicing off her back to gurgle down the drain, and long after she’d finished washing she stayed beneath the spray, head down, her long red hair sodden and hanging over her face.

      Finally, after more than half an hour under the flow with the water finally beginning to turn cold, she switched off the shower and stepped out.

      She felt the sudden blast of cold air from the open window, but didn’t move for the towel. Instead, she let the air dry her body, then dressed in fresh clothes, her damp hair sticking to the clean T-shirt as she went downstairs.

      The hot-plate of the coffee machine hissed as she entered the kitchen, the pot dripping condensation down the outside of the bell jar. She’d put enough water in the pot so that it hadn’t dried up yet, but there was only enough for one treacle-thick cup, so she poured it and focused her attention to the bundle on the table.

      She didn’t unwrap it straightaway. She stared at it, like she half expected there to be nothing inside the blanket. Then slowly she eased back first one corner and then the next.

      It wasn’t much to look at—a simple piece of stone with a hole in the middle.

      It wasn’t the kind of treasure that made it on to TV shows. It wasn’t sexy enough for any of those. Looking at it, it was easy to see why it had been mistaken for a quern. Although a decent archaeologist ought to have been asking where the second offset hole was. Otherwise, how could they have inserted the stick to rotate the stone and grind grain between this stone and the second lying beneath it?

      But it could have been the bottom of the pair, she thought suddenly, angry that she hadn’t considered it earlier. Her heart raced a little faster at the mere thought of it. She scrambled to get her fingers underneath and lever it up on its edge. Her fingertip snagged at the rough stone until she realized that she could use the blanket as a cradle