The action seemed to knock Zery out of her trance. Her arm stiffened. She took a step forward.

“Why?”

Mother stood between us, and despite my efforts I couldn’t get around her. “She didn’t do it.”

“I saw her, and she laughed. She sat over Pisto and laughed.”

“From relief. I thought it was you.” I darted far to the right, out of Mother’s reach, made it past her to a spot not far from where Bubbe murmured over Pisto’s body. With my grandmother and Pisto between us, I stared at my old friend, willed her to believe me. “I didn’t care for Pisto, but I didn’t kill her.”

“Like you didn’t kill the other girls? How did you get their totems? Alcippe said you brought them to camp; I didn’t believe her. I convinced myself she’d made a mistake, that her dislike of you was coloring her perceptions. But it was you, wasn’t it? You killed them and now Pisto. Tell me why.” Her sword arm was stiff, her stance stiff too, rigid with anger.

“There is no why. I didn’t kill them, any of them.” I took a breath, prayed she’d believe what I was going to tell her. “I found them, like this, on my front porch.”

“On your front porch?” She shook her head. “I know you. You can do better than that.”

I held out my hands. “I can’t. It’s the truth. I don’t know why, but the killer brought them to me-woke me with a rock tossed at my window. I came down and they were here. The first one…when I realized she was an Amazon…I didn’t know what to do, had no idea who to trust.” I rubbed a hand over my forehead. “What would you expect me to do? What kind of greeting would I have received if I’d shown up at the safe camp with a dead Amazon teen in my truck? I convinced myself I had no choice, took her totem, released her spirit, then left her somewhere I knew she’d be found, so the police would be called in.”

Zery looked away, at the brick wall of my shop. I was sure she wasn’t even seeing the dusty red bricks and cracked mortar, that her mind was spinning as out of control as mine.

“The second…well, I realized the tribe might not even know. I had to do something to alert you. So, I brought the totems.”

“So, you brought the totems,” she repeated, like some kind of automaton.

“But the dead girls, they’ve been visiting me. They came tonight. I knew something had happened. I just didn’t know what.” I looked down at Pisto then, the full reality that she was dead setting in.

Bubbe brushed hair off the dead warrior’s face, started to fold her hands like I’d done with the others, then with her fingers posed above Pisto’s right breast, Bubbe paused and looked up at me.

I pressed my hands together in front of my lips, in a praying posture. “Like the others,” I murmured.

New creases formed on my grandmother’s face. I could tell she was disturbed. I wanted to ask her what she thought it meant, why anyone would mutilate the girls so, but as the question formed in my mind, Zery sprang back to life. She paced forward, her sword extended.

“You have to come with me, back to camp.”

I glanced at the shop where my daughter and Dana slept.

Dana. Pisto.

I swallowed. The young hearth-keeper had just lost the last of her immediate family. Pregnant and the end of her line-except for the baby boy the Amazons wanted her to give up.

I shook my head. “I’m not leaving.”

“We’re not giving you any choice.” As if solidifying from mist, Alcippe stepped out of the shadows.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Making sure a killer doesn’t escape.” She swept the long skirt of her dress out of her way and stalked forward.

Seeing her now brought forth every suspicion I’d ever had. I started to move too, toward her. “That’s a good idea. Why don’t you tell us what you know about the killings?”

“Me?” She laughed. “It’s over, Mel. Your hatred has gone too far.”

“Mine or yours? Both girls broke the rules, didn’t they? Snuck up to Madison without your permission. Did they like what they saw here? Were they questioning the need to stay hidden? Is that why you killed them, to preserve the precious Amazon way of life?”

Her hands disappeared into the sleeves of her kaftan.

I took another step, barely noticing that Bubbe had stood, that the staff she’d held earlier was back in her hand. “You tattooed them all too, didn’t you? Is that why you took their givnomai, taking back what you gave them, denying them their right to be Amazons by killing them, then stealing their personal power?”

“What?” She and Zery said the word at once.

Zery began to walk toward Pisto, her gaze locked on her lieutenant’s T-shirt-covered breast.

Alcippe pulled her hands from her sleeves, shoved them up into the air. Grass that had been flattened under my bare feet seconds early shot upward until skinny green tendrils curled around my thighs, pulled on me.

I cursed and clawed at the weeds, managed to jerk one leg free just to have it captured again as soon as I set my foot back onto the earth. Past trying to hide any of my skills, I pulled in a breath and exhaled.

A gale erupted from my lungs. Fed by my emotions, it knocked into the high priestess. Her kaftan molded to her body. Her hair whipped free of the braid she’d contained it with, snapped like something alive into its full length behind her. She stumbled, and her face…her expression, the shock that I was doing this to her…it was worth the wait.

Her magic forgotten, nothing but weeds to be trampled under my feet, I stalked forward, inhaling as I went, spinning my arms with each step. I was going to do what I should have done ten years ago-would have if I’d had the skill. I was going to blow her so far and so deep across the earth, there’d be a trench from here to the Gulf of Mexico.

I was strong, powerful, and unstoppable. I held the breath, felt it in my lungs. Then as I opened my lips to set it free, I saw Bubbe move, saw her staff swing toward me.

There was no time to do anything except watch as the hard polished end of my grandmother’s staff collided with my forehead.

My knees collapsed and the world around me faded…the power in the breath I’d held fading along with my consciousness.

I woke in the cold and the dark. Something about the space seemed familiar, but it took a few minutes to realize I’d been locked in my own basement-in the boiler room with my dirty laundry and Harmony’s outgrown toys. The front of my head pounded. I touched my fingers to the pain and quickly found the reason-a ping-pong-ball-sized lump.

Who knew Bubbe packed such a wallop?

But at least she’d hit me and not responded with magic. My head probably wouldn’t have survived that.

I allowed myself another few seconds to become accustomed to the knowledge that my five-hundred-year-old grandmother had KO’d me with a staff, then I tried to stand. My head tilted left and right, like some demented bobblehead-doll, my stomach, though, surely empty…I’d lost all track of time…clenched…I made it as far as my knees before giving up, at least somewhat.

On all fours, I crept to the door, then, my head still down, reached up and twisted the knob. As I’d guessed-locked. I fell back onto my belly and lay there with my nose pressed against the one-inch crack under the door.

“Shit.” Not my favorite curse, but it fit my mood.

A staff rapped into the floor on the other side of the door. “She’s awake,” a female voice I didn’t recognize announced.

“I’ll get Alcippe,” replied another.

“No. I put her here. I’ll talk to her.”

The voice of my conqueror, all five hundred years of her.

The guards, at least I assumed they were guards and not my own personal servants waiting for me to awaken so they could serve me lemonade and cookies here in the luxury of my boiler room, must have agreed to her demand because the next thing I knew the door had whacked me firmly in the side of the head.