“Their souls were stolen.”

“It’s more than that. Are you going to eat the rest of that steak?”

“Hmm.” She glanced down at her plate. “No. Do you want it?”

“For Moe. I go back empty-handed, he’ll sulk.” He asked the waiter to box up the leftovers, then smiled at Malory. “Dessert?”

“No, just coffee. Tell me the rest.”

“Two coffees, a crème brûlée, and two spoons. You’ll never hold out against the crème brûlée,” he said to Malory, then leaned forward to finish the tale. “The bad king’s a clever guy, and a sorcerer. He doesn’t take heat for slaying innocents, and he turns the good king’s choices and policy against him. If a mortal is fit to be queen, if three half-mortals are worthy of rank, then let the mortals prove it. Only mortals can break the spell. Until that’s done, the daughters will sleep—unharmed. If mortal women, one to represent each daughter, can find each of the three keys, then the Box of Souls will be unlocked, the daughters’ souls restored, and the kingdoms united.”

“And if they fail?”

“The most popular version, according to my granny, has the bad king setting a time limit. Three thousand years—one millennium for each daughter. If the keys aren’t found and the box unlocked within that time, he alone rules, both the god-world and the mortal.”

“I never understand why anyone wants to rule the world. Seems like one big headache to me.” She pursed her lips when the dish of crème brûlée was set between them. Flynn was right, she decided. She wasn’t going to be able to hold out against it. “What happened to the lovers?”

“A couple of versions of that, too.” He dipped his spoon in at one end of the dish while Malory dipped into the other. “My grandmother’s pick is the one that has the grieving king sentencing the lovers to death, but his wife intervened, asking for mercy. Instead of execution, banishment. They were cast out through the Curtain of Dreams, forbidden to return until they found the three mortal women who would unlock the box of souls. And so they wander the earth, gods living as mortals, in search of the triad who will release not only the souls of the daughters but their own as well.”

“Rowena and Pitte think they’re the teacher and the warrior?”

It pleased him that their conclusions meshed. “That would be my take. You’ve got a couple of weirdos on your hands, Malory. It’s a nice faerie tale. Romantic, colorful. But when people start casting themselves and others in the roles, you’re edging into psychoville.”

“You’re forgetting the money.”

“No, I’m not. The money worries me. Seventy-five thousand means it’s not a game to them, not a little role-playing entertainment. They’re serious. Either they actually believe the myth or they’re seeding the ground for a con.”

She toyed with another spoonful of the crème brûlée. “With the twenty-five thousand, I now have approximately twenty-five thousand, two hundred and five dollars, which includes the twenty I found in a jacket pocket this morning. My parents are fairly average middle-class people. They’re not rich or influential. I don’t have any rich or influential friends or lovers. I’ve got nothing worth conning.”