by Lori Devoti
He was in my space. My heart rate sped up a few beats. Our verbal sparring was a strange turn-on. He smelled of cinnamon again and some kind of soap. The mixture was bizarrely alluring.
“I’d be happy to set you up with an appointment. I should have time later today.”
He blinked, obviously not following my response.
“A tattoo? You were complimenting my skill…”
He grinned, a real grin, and for a second I thought he was going to reach out and touch me.
“Alan, you in there?” his partner’s voice called from the main part of the basement.
Reynolds didn’t reply at first, just kept his gaze on me. Then with a chuckle he said, “You are good.” He moved toward the door. “Here,” he called.
I wasn’t sure what had happened, if he suspected me more or less, but I did know I was happy to see him go. Somewhere along the way, I’d lost control of the conversation-not that he’d had it.
We were both walking away from this exchange unfulfilled.
I waited for Detective Reynolds to let himself out the door we’d entered through, then took the front steps toward the main entrance-the steps to my shop. I got as far as the landing before the sound of shouting stopped me.
Outside, I had to go around the far side of my shop, the side away from the gym/cafeteria, to see what was going on.
Dana and Pisto stood a few feet away from each other, both of their faces taut with anger.
“It’s my life.” Dana reached for one of many duffel bags that lay scattered over the leaf-strewn ground. Pisto grabbed her by the arm, jerking her back to a stand.
I moved forward, but the two were too caught up in their argument to notice me. There was a growl, and the dog I’d befriended a few days earlier shot from behind me. He launched himself at Pisto, knocking into her side. Without missing a beat, the warrior swung, but the animal’s teeth were sunk into the loose-fitting sweatshirt she wore.
He hit the ground, but Pisto did too, or almost did. She landed in a semicrouch; one hand kept her from falling completely. All four legs firmly placed on the dirt, the dog pressed his advantage, began pulling at the shirt, snarling as he did.
With her free hand, Pisto grabbed a duffel and flung it at the animal. He dropped lower. The bag sailed over his back.
Dana stood to the side, her hands shaking and her eyes dancing in her face.
I looked around for a weapon. I didn’t care for the warrior and certainly didn’t like the way she’d been treating Dana, but I couldn’t stand by and see her bitten. My gaze lit on the water spigot that jutted out of the side of the building. I’d unhooked the hose weeks earlier, but I could work with the water.
I ran over and twisted the knob until water poured out. Then, forming a tunnel with my hand, I channeled the water through the opening and imagined it shooting forward. The water came together into a steady stream. I concentrated harder and envisioned footage of firemen battling a flame. The stream hardened and became stronger, so much so that my arms began to shake with the effort to control the seemingly solid, vibrating line of water.
Gritting my teeth, I dug my heels into the now-soft dirt and directed the make-believe hose at the dog. The first shot hit him in the snout. His jaws snapped open. As his body slid backward, pushed by the water, he stared at me with what could only be called surprise.
Pisto sprang to her feet and pulled a knife from her boot. In two long strides she was next to the disoriented hound. Without pausing to think, I turned the hose on her. The knife, caught in the flow, flew backward into the holly bushes.
Pisto, her face twisted in outrage, turned toward me. Faced with a raging warrior, I did the only thing I could: I sprayed her right in the gut. She bent forward, cradling the spray, and stumbled backward in the same instant. Behind her, the dog stood and she fell over his back, onto her seat in the muddy leaf-covered ground.
I un-tunneled my hands, let the water flow normally again, and prepared for what I knew was coming. With a cry of outrage, Pisto jumped to her feet, this time with a broken tree limb in her hands. I pulled in a breath, not sure what I was going to do, but knowing with Pisto’s state of mind I was going to have to think fast.
As options swirled through my brain-tornado, dust cloud, running-Dana came to life and sprang in front of the storming warrior. Her hands held out in front of her, her body angled and tense, she yelled, “Pisto! Stop! Think!”
Pisto was thinking; I could see that. And what she was thinking didn’t bode well.
“This isn’t about Mel,” Dana added. Her shirt was splattered with debris and her feet slid in the mud, but she didn’t move, didn’t back down from the obviously enraged warrior, not even when Pisto took another step closer.
Again the dog shot forward, but this time I stopped him-body-checking him before he could reach the pair.
Been there. Done that. Didn’t feel like repeating it-at least not now.
He sat, but his body trembled, and I didn’t think it was from fear or his recent dousing. With his attention locked on Pisto, his lip edged upward.
I had to say I shared the sentiment.
Pisto jerked off her sodden sweatshirt and tossed it on the ground. Underneath, her skin and jog bra were damp. She ran her hands over her arms, flicking off moisture as she did. “It is about her.” She turned to look at me. As she did, I realized she wasn’t wearing the high-necked sports tops warriors wore when working out. In this thing, her givnomai was clearly visible-the rough outline of a horse caught midstride as it dashed across her breast.
I was shocked she trusted me enough to bare her givnomai in front of me, but then again, she hadn’t planned to. She’d been wearing the sweatshirt. When she pulled it off, she was caught up in anger. Still, it was a slip. It made me wonder if all the Amazons were this lax. If so, my idea that the killer was using givnomais to prey on the Amazons fit. I filed the thought for later and went back to studying her tattoo.
A horse. It made sense. I could guess why she chose it: strength and the ability to get many things done at once. I might not like Pisto, but she took her role as Zery’s right hand seriously.
“It’s about you and your little hearth-keeper buddies idolizing her, thinking you can throw off thousands of years of tradition because it doesn’t suit you. Well, you can’t.” She picked up an armful of duffels and started moving toward the back-I assumed with the intention of cutting around behind the shop to the parking lot and Dana’s car.
“I’m putting these back in your car. You need to follow.”
As Pisto stormed off, loaded down with Dana’s possessions, Dana turned in the opposite direction-moving toward the front.
I stepped in front of her. “What’s happening?”
In my experience warriors were bossy but never proprietorial. That is, unless…“Who is Pisto to you?”
Dana sighed. “My sister-half, of course. But our mother died when I was still young. Pisto raised me. I’ve been a disappointment to her.”
A pregnant hearth-keeping sister who chose to live with the tribe’s only exile-a disappointment to the queen’s second-in-command? Surely not.
I wasn’t sure if it was to show my support for feeling like you’re a disappointment or for the pain of having to put up with Pisto as a sister, but in an uncharacteristic showing of physical emotion, I pulled Dana into a hug.
She collapsed against me. “I’m not going back. Even if you won’t let me stay here, I’ll go somewhere else. You blended. I can do it too.”
I didn’t say anything, just stroked her hair and wished I could make everything simple for her-remove the old biases, have the world accept her, whatever would make the next sure-to-be-hard months of her life easier. But I couldn’t. I could, however, continue doing what I’d been doing for ten years-pissing off the Amazons.
“You don’t have to go somewhere else. You and your baby can stay here, as long as you want.”
There I’d said it, sealed my fate a little more. I just hoped Dana’
s appearance didn’t signal an influx of whoever her “hearth-keeper buddies” were-the ones who, according to Pisto, idolized me. I’d never been idolized before. Even my own daughter had skipped that phase. I knew mothers whose four-year-olds worshipped them, mine just asked me to get out of her light while she scribbled out her Crayola masterpieces.
But while being appreciated was certainly appealing, becoming housemother to a group of pregnant hearth-keepers wasn’t.
As I ushered her into the school, I had to ask, “None of your friends are pregnant, are they?”
My confrontation with Pisto used up all of my energy for dealing with Amazons. Which was just as well, as I had a full day and night scheduled at the shop. We stayed open till ten. I usually didn’t work that late, but my Amazon side activities had cost me. I had clients to work in and with Janet still sick, not enough staff to pick up the load.
By the time I got the shop closed and myself up to our living area, Harmony was in bed and Mother and Bubbe were in their own rooms doing Artemis knew what. I grabbed some cold chicken from the refrigerator and went to bed.
Chapter Seventeen
The next morning over a breakfast of apple pie, I got to hear about Harmony’s first two art classes-how utterly “crush” (I assumed that meant great) the project they were working on was going to be, how “down” (nice?) her teacher was, and most important, how “hot” (that one I understood way better than I wanted to) one particular boy was. The last part wasn’t directed at me. Actually, none of it was. Dana and Harmony had been giggling over the details for the past twenty minutes.
At the moment my daughter was acting a little too “average American teen” even for my liking. I picked up her backpack and shoved it onto her lap. “Time for school. Dana will be here when you get back.”
With an eye roll, she took my implied advice and trotted down the stairs.
I left for my office, where I barricaded myself in until lunch. Paperwork was stacked to my shoulders, and if I didn’t sign some checks, the Amazons wouldn’t be the only ones coming after me with sticks.
I’d signed my last John Hancock of the morning when there was a knock on my door. Expecting Mandy, I shouted for the person to enter.
Peter, again with the premium coffee, wandered through the door. The coffee and the cautious look on his face both warned me I wasn’t going to like the reason for his visit.
He shut the door behind him, but graciously waited for me to take my first sip to jerk the rug out from under me-not that I’d been feeling that secure on it anyway.
“How well do you know this Dana?”
I took another sip.
“It’s just…she’s been spending a lot of time with Harmony, and the other day I found something I thought you might want to see.”
I waited for him to hand me something, but instead he pointed to my computer. “It’s on there.”
Feeling more confused by the second, I rolled my chair backward to allow him space beside me. With a few clicks, he’d navigated his way to one of those social-networking sites where pseudomodels and dreaming-big bands posted pictures and music.
“Here.” He stepped back.
“You have got to be-What is this?” What I saw on the screen shocked me-pictures of obviously drunk girls hanging on boys and revealing more skin than an elephant in a bikini.
“Not here.” He clicked some more. “Here.” This page was a little less shocking, but only marginally. It seemed to be focused on body art-female body art. Again, it was obvious that wherever the photos had been taken, alcohol aplenty had been flowing.
The first row was butt shots-just generic run-of-the-mill angels and flowers, typical stuff for girls, if in a slightly tantalizing position. His finger pointed to the next row, three pictures over.
Dana hanging on a boy whose face wasn’t visible, but while little of the boy had made it into the shot, plenty of Dana had. Both of her breasts spilled from her bra. And clearly visible on top of the right one-her givnomai, a bee.
Answered my question about the Amazons getting lax.
“Damn it.” Stupid, stupid girl, didn’t she know…My eyes wandered to the row below and my brain froze.
The next row, not a single face was visible, but I didn’t need faces. From the growling bear and snarling leopard tattoos, I could identify the first two girls as easily as if they’d walked up and introduced themselves. The dead girls-their telioses immortalized for all to see.
“Whose page is this?” I asked.
Peter propped his butt onto my desk beside me. “Screen name is ‘tatluvr.’ That’s all I know.”
I blinked in frustration, then switched my concentration back to the screen. If the dead girls’ telioses were on here, were their givnomais too? Sure enough, a few pictures down from Dana’s, I spotted them. I couldn’t know for sure which image went with which girl-these pictures were much more focused on their breasts than Dana’s had been, but I knew without a doubt the tiger and even the octopus I was looking at were Amazon givnomais.
I wanted to investigate the site more, but not with Peter lounging next to me. I had to get rid of him, but first there was something I needed to know. “How’d you find this?”
He stared at the wall.
“You aren’t going to tell me you were just surfing and found this, because if you do…” I let the obvious say itself.
“You wouldn’t believe a client sent it to me?”
“No. I wouldn’t.”
He tapped his finger against my mouse pad. “Harmony. She was complaining that you wouldn’t let her get a tattoo, and telling me ‘everyone’ had tattoos, even Dana. Then she showed me this. I guess Dana showed her the site, thinking some boy Dana liked would be pictured there.”
“Her baby’s father.”
“Yeah.” Peter looked at me, and I felt like the worst mother ever.
He held up both hands. “No judgments.”
No, of course not. I let it go, followed up on another point of interest instead.
“I didn’t realize you and Harmony talked.” First Dana, now Peter. Did my daughter confide in everyone except me?
His reply consisted of a sympathetic stare.
I picked up the mouse. Unable to resist, I clicked through the next few pages. There were at least three more photos easily identifiable as Amazon-one telios, a hare; and two givnomais, a salmon and a deer.
“We have to find out who set up this page.”
Peter didn’t ask why, just replied in a low tone, “You could call your detective friend.”
I glanced up at him, surprised by the mention of Reynolds, but even more so by the tone-as if the detective and I had, well, something going.
Alone in the basement with Reynolds, I’d felt an awareness. I couldn’t deny that, but in front of Peter I was confident we’d been nothing but professional, distant, even.
“I wouldn’t call him a friend.” Whatever had happened in Mother’s workout space didn’t make us friends.
“Really? He seemed kind of friendly.” Peter twiddled with the cord on my mouse. I stifled the urge to jerk the wire out of his fingers.
“Well, he isn’t. We aren’t.”
Peter shrugged. “None of my business.” But his expression said it was.
Feast or famine. I hadn’t had a man interested in me for a decade and suddenly I had two…kind of…maybe…I looked at Peter, tried to figure out what was going on in his head. Was he attracted to me? Was I attracted to him? Or was something about all the stress I’d been under doing weird things to my libido?
He leaned down. “Of course, it could be my business.” And he kissed me.
I think my heart stopped from shock-but it started back up again, double time.
His fingers cradled the nape of my neck, tipping my face to his. He tasted of premium coffee, hazelnut. Had to love a man secure enough to buy a flavored brew.
My hands somehow found their way to his knees and then I was standing, my legs between his, my fingers rest
ing lightly on his hips. He didn’t change his grip, didn’t pull me closer, and I was afraid to move further myself, like any overt action on my part would cause him to pull away. As surprised as I had been when the kiss started, as his lips moved over mine and parts of me constricted that I’d forgotten could constrict, I knew I didn’t want the kiss to end.
But it did, and in as confusing a manner as it had started.
He pulled his mouth free, placed his hands over mine, and gave them a light squeeze. “So, you’ll talk to Harmony?”
My mind was foggy and my eyes were half closed. I fluttered my eyelids, trying to make sense of what he was saying. Talk to Harmony about our kiss? Was that necessary?
“She seems pretty taken with Dana, and after seeing this…well, you don’t want her to think flashing tattoos to get on some Web site is a good idea.”
Things were back in focus now, and embarrassment at how lost in the moment I’d become while Peter had clearly moved on settled in. I pulled my hands from his legs and stepped back. “Not too big of a worry. At least for a few years. Harmony doesn’t have any tattoos and won’t till she’s legal.”
“Still, it wouldn’t hurt…” Peter slid away from my desk. I turned-picked up a piece of paper and shoved it into a random file.
Fingers trailed down my spine, stopping right at the spot where my shirt separated from my jeans. Every muscle in my body locked up, while my heart jumped back into beating overtime.
“And let me know about that detective. I’m hoping he is my business.”
Before I could think of how to reply, he’d spun back around my desk and sauntered from the room.
I plopped into my chair with enough force it rolled backward two feet. After heel-walking back to my start point I stared at my computer screen, but I wasn’t seeing teenage girls exposing themselves for the camera, or even dead Amazons at the moment-my mind was in too big of a whirl.
I sat there another few minutes, then shook myself. One kiss and I lost track of everything else going on. Just showed humans had nothing on Amazons as far as being ruled by basic urges.
