Marina reached up and swiped her finger under her sister’s eyes. “Let’s start with something small and that will be the easiest to see a change. Let me get a pic.”

She grabbed her cell phone and took pictures of the offending dark puffy circles.

“How long will it take?” Halcyon asked. “Do I have to wait until tomorrow?”

“I don’t know. I always messed with my face and hair at night, so when I woke up, the changes were there. Maybe sleeping activates it. Or maybe it’s just time. It’s not like there’s an operating manual for this.”

“No worries. So let’s assume I believe all of this—what do you need from me?”

“I need help finding the ring. You’ve been reading Nancy Drew and Agatha Christie since third grade. Surely you have some ideas on how to go about this. I can’t even locate a missing sock from the dryer.”

“That’s true, and I do love a puzzle.”

“Okay. So I bought cinnamon rolls from the bakery before I went into work and I have a stash of Hawaiian coffee.”

“Jesus, why have you been holding out? I’d commit murder for a bakery cinnamon roll.”

Marina put the coffee on to brew and pulled out the cinnamon rolls, which were still warm. “So how do we start?”

Halcyon took a bite of one of the rolls and sighed with pleasure. “We start with what we know.”

“Which is basically nothing.”

“Not true. We know a little. We know that no one has found it before you, so either they all sucked, or didn’t try, or the ring is elusive. I’m going to bet it was a combination of all three. Then there’s Alexios’s theory that the ring will be located near the—what did he call you—the Seeker?”

“But that doesn’t make sense. How can it relocate without people noticing a ring appearing?”

“Money appeared in your bank account and no one noticed. But it might be simpler than that. Let’s say the ring gravitates toward those from Aphrodite’s bloodline. What’s the easiest way for a ring to move around?”

“On a finger.”

Halcyon sighed. “You are really bad at this.”

“We’ve already established that.”

“Okay, so here’s my thinking. Unless the ring can change its appearance, then it looks like it did when this metalworking god made it. So that means old.”

“Like an heirloom! That makes total sense. So nothing that looks modern. A collector’s piece.”

“Exactly. Although that presents a few problems.”

“Yeah, the breaking-and-entering kind of problems,” Marina said.

“Here’s an idea—why can’t we just have this Alexios walk through a locked door and steal the ring after we locate it?”

“Because he can’t see it, remember?”

“Oh, right. I bet it really chaps their godlike asses to have to depend on us lowly humans.”

“Probably, but it wouldn’t be polite to point it out.”

“You know me—I’m all about being polite. So we’re back to potential breaking-and-entering charges.”

Marina nodded. “Not to mention grand theft if the ring is worth a lot by our standards. I don’t know if Alexios can make an arrest go away. And that’s assuming we’d steal from people anyway.”