After a quick glance around, I squatted back on my heels and placed the flashlight I’d covered with cloth to dim the beam onto the dirt next to me. It was one A.M., a time of morning I’d come to dread-waking tense, alert for any sound. This time no outside force had awakened me-just my own nagging guilt. I had to know if the Amazons had gotten my message, and the middle of the night was really the only time I could be somewhat confident my family would be occupied and not stumble over me casting spells. Any of them discovering I even could cast spells was not something I wanted to deal with.
So one A.M. and here I was, squatting in the dirt, ready to call on Artemis and find out if the Amazons had gotten my message. Artemis might not be able to direct me to the girls’ killer, but she could certainly help me plug into the tribe.
I flattened my bare palms into the soil, connecting, letting my body soak in the power that pulsed from deep in the earth’s core. I needed all the strength I could get to do this. Linking myself spiritually to the Amazons again, after all these years…it was something I’d thought I’d never do.
Shaking off a renewed swell of anger-this one completely selfish, angry that the killer had chosen me to suck into her twisted world, leaving me with no choice but to face my heritage, at least to a degree-I carefully plucked acorns from the leather pouch I’d stolen from Bubbe’s workroom and piled them in front of me. Next, I unwrapped two tiny stone figures: a bear and a leopard, not too different from the ones I’d left at the safe camp. The fetishes would help me link to the girls’ families. If my message had been received, the totems would tell me; their clans’ mourning would tell me.
I built the fire, a tiny one, but big enough, I hoped. I couldn’t risk anything larger; performing the ceremony in my side yard was risky enough. I certainly didn’t need the neighbors calling the fire department on me.
As the fire crackled, I tossed one of the acorns onto the blaze and murmured a prayer to Artemis.
“Artemis, huntress of the moon, guide me along the path to truth. Grant me the strength to see through the mist, to feel what those of this totem feel, to know what otherwise they might hide from me.”
Smoke snaked from the fire: twisting, turning, morphing.
The world shifted beneath me and my nails gouged into the damp earth. The musky scent of decayed leaves filled my nostrils, then the smoke shifted again, this time taking on the round shape of a bear ambling through the woods. My breath caught in my chest. I reached out and grasped the bear totem in my hand.
Sorrow pierced me like a spear. The pain was so sudden and intense that I almost dropped the tiny stone figure. Gasping in a breath, I clutched the fetish tighter, pushed past the sorrow, and felt for what I knew would follow.
Anger pulsed against me. Revenge, retribution, the need was tangible. Flashes of steel, women flipping across a grassy clearing, fighting, training…my heart beat faster, as if I shared their exertion. Then the mood switched-darker, faces I couldn’t make out gathered around a fire, a big fire, a council fire.
My own anger leapt at the sight. My hate for the council that had cost me so much was interfering with the vision.
Nostrils flaring, I tried to separate myself from the vision, to keep my past and emotion from intruding. I gripped the bear figure tighter in my hand and rubbed my thumb over its head, apologizing for my weakness, begging Artemis to forgive my digression. I squeezed my eyes shut until tears leaked out, but the effort was fruitless. The connection was lost.
I opened my eyes and, with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, watched as the smoke thinned, spiraling down back into the fire, until I stared at nothing but a few smoldering embers.
I still held the tiny bear. Unclenching my fist, I let it drop onto the dirt. My palms pressed into the earth again; I hung my head and struggled to breathe.
My message had been received-at least for the first girl, and since I’d left the fetishes together, reason said for the second too. I waited for the guilt to diminish. I’d done my part. I’d warned the Amazons. But my wait was futile. There was no relief, no feeling of completion-just a hollow sickness deep in the pit of my stomach.
The girls were still dead, and I was still involved.
After hiding all signs of my clandestine spell-casting, I stumbled back to bed. I didn’t expect to sleep, but somehow I did. Then around three, the sound of crying woke me. I clutched the wool blanket, my thoughts first rushing to Harmony-my mommy instincts in full force even though she hadn’t suffered from night terrors since she’d been four. But the door to my bedroom was closed, no towheaded preschooler gazing up at me from the side of the bed.
Now, sitting upright, I touched my fingers to my fevered cheeks. They came back wet. The sobs had been coming from me.
A nightmare. I must have been having a nightmare. Not surprising, considering my life lately.
Scrubbing the moisture off my face with the wool blanket, I tried to settle back down, to brush aside the anxiety that still clung to me.
Then I felt them. The dead girls. Their presence weighed on me, then flitted away, only to return an instant later to tug at me like the impatient child I’d imagined when I first awoke.
They wanted me to help them, were becoming more restless as their fruitless wandering went on.
I tried to shake the feeling off and told myself it was just the remnants of my nightmare-the heightened sense that came with waking deep in the night.
But it was a lie. As my mind wakened more fully and became less hazy, their presence grew stronger, not weaker.
Something had them trapped, and the little piece of my soul that had gone with them when I’d performed the death rites wasn’t enough to keep them calm much longer. Their panic was growing, was big enough to be a tangible force in the small space of my bedroom, clawing over my skin, making me want to curl into a ball to protect myself.
Why is this my problem? Why did their killer choose me?
I picked up my pillow and flung it across the room, knocking a lamp to the ground with an earth-shattering crash.
The noise seemed to settle them. I waited for them to reappear or one of my family, awakened by the noise, to knock on my door, but all was quiet. I breathed in, my chin dropping to my chest, and my fingers crimped the blanket.
Damn it all. I didn’t want to be involved, didn’t want to face my past. Didn’t want to be responsible for the souls of two dead teenagers.
Something flickered past me then, just a whisper of a touch, as if the girls were waiting, watching.
I refused to look up, as if staring at the navy blue wool of my blanket would make the nightmare I’d been thrown into disappear. I sat there the rest of the night, until dawn turned the sky outside my window a peachy pink and the morning sun broke the link between spirit and mortal.
No dead girls’ spirits around to plead with me for help, to make me question who was more barbarous-the Amazons I’d left behind or me.
Chapter Five
I rose early that morning, unrested and edgy. Not only was my visit from the night before lurking in my mind, but today, for the first time ever, a man was joining the Amazons-or at least our little group of Amazons. I had called Peter right after leaving my conversation with Mother. He’d agreed to start today.
Short notice for everyone. Which meant no time to prepare my family-all in all, the best solution.
Fresh from a night of hauntings, I was ready to beard the lion of two millennia in my den.
After a quick look at my bedraggled reflection in the bathroom mirror, I dragged myself out to the main living area. Harmony was in her room polishing her nails while Bubbe stomped around the kitchen muttering something in Russian I didn’t care to translate, and Mother had already disappeared into the basement. A peaceful, if early, morning in the Saka household.