“I don’t think I’d be very popular there. Not with your boss, anyway. I’ve developed this habit of saying what I think.”

He gave her a small smile. “My guess is that is long overdue.”

She nodded. “Are you sure there’s nothing else you can tell me about the ring? In all this time, you’ve never formed an opinion on how to find it? On how it hides? On what might prompt it to give a signal?”

He was silent for several seconds, his brow scrunched. “I’ve been going over my notes—trying to find something that would help. There was one incident that was a bit off, but it was prior to my being placed on this assignment, so the information I have is secondhand.”

“Secondhand is better than nothing. A lot of facts can be carried in gossip.”

“That’s true. Well, the story as I heard it is that one of the Seekers started feeling odd—dizzy, short of breath, flushed—but only when she was at home. It never happened elsewhere.”

“But she couldn’t find the ring?”

“No. And given that she died of heart failure shortly after my predecessor met her, we can’t be certain she was even in proximity of the ring. It might have been a medical condition.”

“But she had no symptoms outside her house? Unless there was something toxic in her home, that doesn’t track.”

“Correct. My predecessor checked for toxins but found nothing. However, she’d had a young child die shortly before he arrived. Remember, this was years before competent medical care was readily available so it wasn’t uncommon. Because of that, the argument was made that being in the home and seeing her daughter’s belongings triggered the failure of an already-weak heart, but that when she was away from her home, it was easier to block from her mind.”

Marina sighed. “Yeah, that makes more sense than the ring causing it. What about Aphrodite?”

“What would you like to know?”

“What does she like? I know she likes dogs, but what else? If the ring contains her blood then it might be attracted to the same things she is. What does she love the most?”

He gave her a rueful smile. “Herself. Aphrodite is very self-indulgent. I assume you gathered that from the way she treats her husband and her dismissal of her sexual partners, even those she shares a child with.”

“She doesn’t sound like a very nice person…um, goddess.”

“There are worse, but there are better.”

“And there’s nothing else you can think of? Nothing at all that might send me to the right avenue of investigation?”

He shook his head. “I wish there were. I’ve gone over everything a thousand times—literally—but I can’t come up with anything.”

She nodded. It was disappointing, but she figured that would be the case. Alexios had nothing but time and if there was anything that had stood out to him, he’d had plenty of opportunity to notice and document it. It was beyond troubling to her that this situation had carried on for so long and through so many Seekers and yet they still knew next to nothing. Maybe it was as simple as the ring was no longer on earth.