She laughed, just a light twitter of sound, but I relaxed a little. She was going to be okay. It had to be tough, losing her sister, but she’d get through it.

“Can I stay here?” she asked, after retrieving a roll of paper from the toilet positioned between the wall and laundry sink.

“Here?” I motioned to the dingy space filled with smelly laundry.

“No, I mean here…your house. Alcippe is trying to get me to go back to the camp and I’d like to go…for a while, for Pisto’s-” She blew her nose on a length of tissue, placed a new piece against her eyes. “But I don’t want to stay. I know Pisto wanted me to, but…”

I pulled off another length of toilet paper and handed it to her. “Of course you can stay. I told you that already.”

“But with you here.” She glanced at the warriors. “I didn’t know how your family would feel about me. Pisto was my sister and you were the one who invited me.”

I waved the strip of paper in the air, cutting her short. “Nothing has changed-not as far as my offer. And besides, with me”-I searched for a term-“out of commission, they’re going to need someone to take care of them. You can do that, right?”

She nodded, the first spark of life I’d seen lighting her face since she’d walked through the door. “And I can stay here too, for a while.” She picked up the snarl of clothes I’d tossed onto the floor and nodded to the washing machine. “Harmony was looking for some of her things this morning. Your grandmother…she was…”

“Incredibly sympathetic?” I chimed in.

Her confusion obvious, Dana frowned. Sarcasm doesn’t work with her. I waved my hand in a never mind gesture and slid the tray off the washer. With Harmony at school and Mother and Bubbe busy-trying to get the Amazons to see sense, I hoped-Dana had to be feeling alone.

I glanced at the warriors. Obviously they weren’t going to do much to make her feel better. Besides, once she got the wash going and left, I’d be free to work my spell with the added camouflage of my third-hand washer clanking away, covering my chant.

With no objections from the warrior twins, I settled down to eat my lunch while Dana sorted and pretreated the wash, in general giving our clothing more care than it had seen since being shoved in a bag and brought home from the store.

While she loaded the first pile into the washer, I palmed the leather bag Bubbe had hidden under the cloth and slipped it behind a stack of socks so ripe I didn’t think even Dana would brave moving them.

Twenty minutes or so later, Dana had everything laid out in neat color-coordinated piles and had thoroughly instructed me on their proper bleach/no bleach/detergent mix. She looked a little sad when she took my tray and left. I liked thinking it was caused by leaving me, but I suspected it was more about not getting the joy of folding and fluffing all to herself.

After she left, the warrior twins showed me some teeth. It was not in the form of a smile, at least not one seen anywhere except on the face of a hyena before it lunged at your throat. I returned the gesture with a full peep at my own impressively healthy set of choppers. They growled and grunted, but left.

Alone, I pulled out the leather bag and worked the tie open with my teeth. Two totems, some twigs, a handful of acorns and a lighter fell onto the floor. I glanced at the door, afraid the twins might have heard, but after a few seconds turned back to my task.

I swept up a pile of dirt with my hand, then used it to outline a circle. That done, I placed the two totems in the center-a horse for Pisto’s givnomai and a lion for her telios. I paused, my fingers still touching the stone representation of the lion-the same family group as Zery. The groups had developed over the first few hundred years of the Amazons’ existence. It didn’t mean Zery and Pisto were closely related, but it did mean they probably felt some kinship, some loyalty based solely on sharing a telios.

Perhaps I could use that loyalty to make things easier on Dana. A vote from a queen would go a long way toward easing her life if she did choose to mingle with Amazons aside from outcast me and my family. And maybe that tie would make Zery more willing to stand by Dana than our lifetime of friendship had. I swallowed the bubble of hurt and went back to my work, added the twigs and an acorn to the circle’s center.

It took a few tries, but soon I had the twigs smoldering. A tiny wisp of smoke snaked upward. I leaned forward, closed my eyes, and called on Artemis.

This time the vision came hard and fast, almost knocked me back against the wall. Pisto-trapped and angry. I could feel her energy as clearly as if she stood in the room next to me. I sat lost for a while, caught up in the power, forgot that Pisto was dead-that the energy I felt so clearly couldn’t be hers. I had hoped to somehow tap into where her givnomai was now, get some feeling or guidance from Artemis, but this direct link…it was impossible. Pisto was dead, and her givnomai was no longer attached to her body. The emotion radiating from the combined totems could only exist if the combination were still attached to a live form-but they weren’t. Couldn’t be. Before an Amazon was allowed to choose her givnomai, a priestess checked to see if the pairing existed already. If it did, it couldn’t be used-not until that Amazon died, freeing the givnomai for another in her clan. Perhaps there was some slim possibility a priestess had screwed up, reused Pisto’s pair, but…I closed my eyes, let the energy flow through me, red-hot boiling anger…outrage…Pisto. There was no mistaking it.

Somehow the power in Pisto’s givnomai still lived.

But if it wasn’t attached to Pisto, if she didn’t have control over it-who did?

I smothered the remnants of the fire with my hand and sat there staring at the two totems-almost afraid to pick them up. What I suspected wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be.

I don’t know how long I sat there. Long enough that I’d rolled everything around in my mind multiple times, come back to the same well-worn possibility over and over.

The teens being delivered to me-to throw suspicion my way? To force me to face the Amazons?

Zery being staked out in a clear show of priestess and artisan skill. Skills I had, although none had known it, but skills others in the tribe, Alcippe, for example, possessed too.

Alcippe trying to force Dana to abort her baby. Alcippe angry when I got in her way. Alcippe appearing moments after we found Pisto-when she should have been miles away, back at the safe camp.

But why? Why kill the first girls-because they didn’t obey? Had they shown ideas of wanting to be free of the Amazon rules? To leave the safe camp, not just for a night, but forever? But then, why not kill Dana too? Because she knew the girl was pregnant, hoped in the beginning the child would be a girl, would pull Dana back closer to the tribe?

And then, when the baby had been a boy and Dana had come running to me…had the priestess snapped so thoroughly she’d gone so far as killing Pisto, knowing I would be yet again the obvious target of the Amazons’ wrath?

Was staking out Zery also because of me-punishment for her believing me?

Was all of this because Alcippe had lost control of the tribe, saw that mixing with humans was coming, and blamed me? Hated me?

I jumped to my feet and began banging on the door.

I’d started to wonder if the twins had left me when finally the doorknob began to twist. I stepped back, breathless from my whole-bodied attack to get their attention.

Bubbe stepped into the room. In her hands were my favorite hiking boots and the keys to my truck. Behind her the basement was dark and empty-no twins.

“What’s happened?” Bubbe’s face and the missing twins told me it was something bad.