I sat up this time, my sheet pulled around me, my back against the headboard. A nervous energy danced around the room, like the girls’ spirits wanted to tell me something but couldn’t figure out how to get the thoughts across.
After their last visit, I’d made a few preparations in case they returned. I pulled a bag of dirt and a candle from my bedside table’s drawer, along with the two totems I’d decided to keep. Not reinstating Bubbe’s serpent ward had told her I’d been snooping around her space. As soon as she made that discovery, I knew she’d immediately cataloged all her possessions and discovered they were missing. Why return them now?
I kneeled on the floor, then carefully dumped the dirt and formed it into one small compact pile. With the candle shoved into the middle and the two totems lying on the soil, I was ready.
The girls brushed around me, breaths cool, then hot, stirring the hair on the back of my neck, causing my worn T-shirt to flutter against my skin. They were agitated, even more than they had been on their last visit. The sadness I’d sensed then was still present, but pressed down by something heavier, darker…angrier…
Praying their movement wouldn’t make my job harder, I lit the candle with trembling fingers. The flame flickered but held.
If I’d known their givnomais, the process would have been easier. The combination of telios and givnomai was as unique as a fingerprint. No two living Amazons through history had shared the same matching combination. A priestess checked to assure this before she gave any girl her givnomai. This caused a lot of disappointment when a girl’s first choice was taken, but since the magic would be weakened if shared, they all got over it. They didn’t have a choice.
I could have drawn the givnomais in the dirt. It wouldn’t have given them their voices, nothing as dramatic as that, but it would have guaranteed no interference and no listening in-a private call versus talking on a party line.
But I hadn’t thought to ask while at the safe camp. Chances were, none there knew anyway. Because the combination was so personal, most Amazons kept their telioses hidden. A secret only their closest friends, relatives, and the artist who gave them the mark knew. I knew Mother’s, but not Bubbe’s. And I knew the fifty or so Amazons I’d tattooed before leaving the tribe. And I knew Zery’s. That was it.
The flutters changed to a flap, whispers to murmurs. I could almost make out a word. A hiss like a snake. The serpent from Bubbe’s ward? Were they warning me against it? Or against someone from the serpent clan?
Frustrated, I bent lower until my chin almost touched the candle’s flame. I placed a hand on each totem, willed my brain to understand what they were trying to say.
The smell of wax filled my lungs. A breath, strong, like a slap, hit me from the side. The candle went out.
Alone in the darkness, I heard it…“Zery…” and the girls were gone.
Chapter Twelve
I didn’t pause to think about what questions my bond with the dead girls might bring up. I didn’t pause to pull on pants or shoes. I didn’t pause for anything.
I leapt up and rushed from my room, ran straight down the fire escape. Once outside, I stared at the closed doors of my gymnasium. A few dozen Amazons slept inside. I couldn’t rush in, screaming for Zery. To do so would pretty much guarantee I wouldn’t leave with my head attached to my shoulders.
I took a breath, waited for my pounding heart to slow. I’d have to go in like a warrior: calm, controlled, and ready to fight whatever waited inside. I had my hand on the door handle when fingers wrapped around my upper arm.
“What are you doing?” Mother, fully dressed and armed for battle, squeezed my arm. Normally I would have flexed the muscle or pulled away, but honestly, I was just too darn glad to see her.
“Zery. Something’s happened to her.”
“How do you-?”
The expression on my face must have told her there wasn’t time to ask.
She pushed me behind her and knocked on the door with her staff, a fast but complicated rhythm that I had no hope of memorizing.
The door was flung open. An Amazon, wide awake and obviously on guard duty, slammed her staff across the opening, barring our entrance.
“We need to talk to Zery.” Mother had the art of body language down. Every inch of her said don’t question me.
The guard flicked her gaze from my intimidating parent to me, then twisted her lips to the side. “Not her.”
I moved forward, copying Mother’s stance as best I could, but it was hard to look intimidating in a stained UW Badger tee and no pants-or bra, for that matter. “Yes-”
Mother cut me off, with an elbow to my side. “We need to see Zery.” I couldn’t see her face, but I could tell by the other warrior’s that Mother’s expression had to be somewhere between pissed-off mother bear and starved lioness. The warrior stepped aside.
Mother left her staff by the door. I started to object, but she gave a terse shake of her head. “Their house. If something goes wrong, I’ll deal with it.”
I didn’t like it, but it wasn’t my choice. Already ten feet ahead of me, Mother cut to the right, weaving behind the sleeping Amazons who had tossed sleeping bags on the main gym floor. Zery, as queen, had taken an old office as a bedroom. It was in the basement, near the showers. I followed Mother down the steps. Behind me a warrior followed-not the guard. She must have awakened another to keep an eye on us while she stayed by her post at the door.
Mother waited for me by the closed office door. Her attention was behind me. “Pisto,” she said, giving a slight nod of acknowledgment. I glanced at the taller woman-the daughter my mother never had. She, like Mother, was fully dressed. Did they sleep that way or was speed-changing part of the training?
“What’s so urgent you have to wake the queen at this time of night?” she asked. Neither her body nor expression gave away any annoyance, at least to someone who hadn’t lived with a cryptic warrior all her life. But I could feel tension rolling off her like heat off a summer sidewalk.
Mother opened her mouth, but I decided it was time to take charge. “I just need to see her. If she’s angry because we woke her, she can take it out on me. You can all take it out on me.” Let her be in there. An angry Zery I could deal with, a…I cut my own thoughts off. I didn’t know why the spirits said her name. It didn’t mean…
Tired of the games, I pushed past the larger women and shoved open the door. The original furniture consisted of a metal desk and a chair. Zery had added a wooden box full of weapons and a cot. The cot was empty.
Panic flooded over me. I groped for the electric switch, somehow thinking in the dark I’d missed my six-foot, one-hundred-and-eighty-pound friend. But the yellow glow only revealed that the cot had been slept in. The pillow bore the indentation of Zery’s head, and the thin quilt lay bunched at the bottom of the cot, like she’d shoved it down before standing.
I started to move forward, to search for some clue, but a knife jabbed into my throat.
“Where is she?” The heat of Pisto’s body released the woodsy smell of the homemade soap preferred by Amazons. She was shaken. I couldn’t blame her. Her queen was missing.
My friend was missing. I was shaken too, and pissed.
I spun out of her reach and grabbed a weapon of my own, a flail, from Zery’s box. I had no clue how to use the thing, but Pisto didn’t know that. I held it above my head as if ready to give it a swing, but my action seemed unnecessary. Mother and Pisto both stood back, staring at me as if I’d just performed a miracle. Which perhaps I had. I’d escaped the clutch of a seasoned warrior. How had I done that?