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?

I didn’t have time to analyze the question. Instead I pressed my advantage-swung the flail until it twirled in a slow jerky arc. “You tell me. Where would Zery go? Is anything missing?”

Her brows lowered, Pisto stared at me. Her gaze tracked the round-and-round movement of the studded metal ball. My shoulder began to ache, and I realized I’d screwed up royally. I had no idea how to make the thing stop, not without bashing my own brains out.

Mother cursed, an unprecedented act on her part, then jerked the flail from my hand. The head hit the wall, knocking a foot-wide chunk of plaster onto the floor. I grabbed my arm, began massaging my shoulder.

“Her sword. Does she keep it here?” Mother asked.

I glanced at the box. There was no sword.

Lips pursed, Pisto nodded. “But she prefers a staff.”

Zery’s staff stood angled against the wall.

“Well, she has a sword. That’s something.” I tried to take comfort in the words. I tried to tell myself Zery was too strong to be taken by the killer-the girls he had taken were just that, girls-inexperienced and too full of their own emerging talents to realize danger. But it didn’t help.

Above our heads, the floors rattled-feet pounding as Amazons awoke and raced from the building.

“Pisto, it’s Zery. Come now.” The guard’s voice.

I didn’t wait for Mother or Pisto. I grabbed Zery’s staff and flew up the stairs.

The Amazons were back in my front yard. This time there was no fire, but there was an Amazon queen staked out spread-eagle.

Zery lay unconscious on the ground. She was stomach up, and dressed in a T-shirt and shorts. Her arms and legs were spread, her body forming a five-pointed star. Shoved into the ground next to her was a sword-the one missing from her room, I guessed.

Bubbe had control of the scene, holding the Amazons back with one hand and a good dose of magic. She’d gathered air into a flat spinning disc that she held out like a shield. If an Amazon tried to approach, she knocked her aside like a gnat.

She had also, I hoped, done something to put a hush over the noise the group was creating. Yells, feet stamping, and unsheathed swords clattering drowned out anything I could hear, but I ignored it all and rushed as close to where Zery lay as Bubbe’s air shield would let me. I tried to get past her, but the old miscreant pointed a finger at me, letting me know she wouldn’t hesitate to send me soaring into the grass-covered hill behind me.

Then Mother and Pisto arrived. With a few smacks of their staffs against one another’s, the raging Amazons quieted-not completely still, but still enough we could hear my grandmother speak.

“She’s caught in a web. Not one easily broken. I’ve tried.”

I frowned at my grandmother. I had never heard her say she couldn’t do something.

“But she’s just lying there,” one of the warriors called out.

Pisto strode forward. Bubbe, her focus on the warrior who had spoken, missed her movement. The Amazon lieutenant got within three feet of Zery, before my grandmother noticed-telling me my grandmother was truly shaken. That fact scared me almost as much as what happened next.

Zery’s body jerked. Her eyes, which had been closed, flew open. Her face flashed shock, then pain, then determination.

“Pisto, stop!” I yelled.

The Amazon froze, her gaze on her queen’s face. She’d seen it too-the pain. But like me, she couldn’t see what was causing it. Then, with no movement of her head, just her eyes, Zery glanced down toward her left breast, and I saw the source…a growing circle of blood, right where Zery’s givnomai tattoo was-or should be.

My stomach lurched. Was it missing; had the killer already stolen it from her? Was she dying before our eyes?

“Zery.” Her staff fell from my hands.

Ignoring my grandmother’s glare, I stumbled to her side. “What can you do? What have you tried?” Accusations camouflaged as questions. I knew Bubbe wouldn’t leave Zery there, pinned to the ground like a dead bug on a collector’s Styrofoam pad.

She jerked a hand toward Mother, who grasped me from behind.

“Melanippe. What do you think? You think I leave Zery there for no good cause? The web. It’s set. I take a step; she bleeds. I reach my hand to unravel the spell; she bleeds.”

I took a breath. Tried to focus. “What’s holding her there?”

The creases in Bubbe’s forehead deepened. “The magic.”

“No bonds?” I leaned forward, looking around my grandmother at Zery’s wrists. There was a shadow on them-a design.

Bubbe pushed her lips against my ear. Her lips were dry as they brushed against my skin. “A drawing. An artisan’s work, one skilled as priestess as well.”

I turned my head. Our noses almost brushing, I stared her in the eyes. Questions, concern, fear-all three showed in her gaze.

Not me. I wouldn’t…The objections must have shown on my face. She reached with a gnarled hand and stroked my face. “I know, devochka moya, but the others…? I have no control of their minds.”