by Nora Roberts
This time, though she stayed on her feet, Annika moved with her—gave Sasha a tiny nudge on the roll. “Squeeze! Tight! Tight, tight, and push!”
Sasha landed—wobbled, but landed. Regained her balance, executed the kick and backhand.
“Good! So good.” Annika applauded again.
“I tipped left again. I could feel it.”
“But not so much as before.”
“You pulled it off,” Riley told her. “Do it again.”
“Okay. Okay. Don’t help me this time. If I fall on my face, I fall on my face. But I’m going to get this bastard.”
“That’s the spirit.” Riley slapped her on the shoulder.
She did it again, wobbled again, nearly overbalanced, but pulled back.
“Together,” Annika decided. “All three.”
“Oh boy, okay.”
“Tight. A fist in the belly.”
Riley nodded. “On three. One, two, three!”
Sawyer stopped at the edge of the lemon grove. “Check it out.”
With Doyle, he watched the three women spring, roll, spear up. “The brunette’s got speed and form,” Doyle commented. “The blonde’s got game, and she’s coming along. But the mer-girl? Makes it look like a stroll on the beach.”
“You’d think there’d be an adjustment for her—moving in water, on land. But either way, she just flows.”
“Great legs.”
Doyle started forward again as the three women discussed something with Annika gesturing with her hands. And stopped to watch when Riley shook her head, but backed up. And laced her hands into a basket.
Annika ran toward her, jumped to hit one foot in that basket, and as Riley pushed up, flew into a perfect backflip to land in what Sawyer thought of as the Superhero Lunge. Low, one knee bent, the other leg cocked out, one hand resting on the ground.
“I should be taking videos,” Sawyer added.
Then Annika spotted them, leaped up to run forward.
“Come practice with us!”
“I could practice the rest of my life and not pull that off.”
“I can teach you.”
“Bet you could,” Doyle put in, “but we need to take a hike, get a better sense of where we are, our position, our weak spots.”
“Agreed.” Riley nodded, then looked up at the wide blue sky. “But that’s a big weak spot.”
“We’ll need to be ready for it.”
“Bran’s working on it, and could probably use a break from that. I’ll go tell him we’re heading out. Ten minutes?” Sasha asked.
“Works for me.” Sawyer smiled at Annika. “You’ll need shoes.”
They set out with light packs, taking the narrow road up its steep incline first. The day, already warm, offered a baking sun over their bird’s-eye view of sea and sand, of houses jogging down the long slope in their soft roses and whites and umbers.
As they walked, Sawyer drew maps in his head. He was good at maps—had learned at his grandfather’s knee. The compass—a gift, a charge, a legacy—required knowledge of place and time. The hand that held it, the traveler, needed more than luck and magicks.
They passed groves of olives, of lemons, and he added them to his mental guide. The gardens, the houses with shuttered windows, the ones with windows open to the air.
From their high view, Riley pointed toward the mainland.
“Capri used to be part of the mainland, and was peopled during the Neolithic age. Colonized by the Teleboi, then the Greeks of Cumae. The Romans took it over in 328 BC.
“But Augustus—ninth century—developed it. Temples, gardens, villas, the aqueducts. Tiberius, who came after him, built more. And the remains of his villa are on top of Monte Tiberio. We’re heading that way, though it’s a hike yet.”
“Have you been there?” Sasha asked her.
“Yeah, it’s been a while. I came with my parents. Hell of a place, Villa Jovis, even now, and more than worth exploring if that’s what we’re after.”
“A god might enjoy having her own HQ in what remains of a Roman emperor’s villa,” Bran speculated.
“Yeah.” Riley thought of it while they continued the steep climb. “It’s got some grandeur left, but it’s a long way from private. You see people going up, like us, people coming down? That’s likely the destination. It’s a big draw on the island.”
“The island’s potholed with caves,” Doyle pointed out.
“It is.” As she walked, Riley sent him a curious glance. “Have you been here before?”
“I have. Longer ago than you. Petty wars. The English and French wanted Capri, fought over it.”
“In 1806—French occupation overthrown by the English. In 1807, French take it back. Which side were you on?”
“Both.” He shrugged. “It was something to do. It’s changed in two hundred years. The roads, the houses, the funicular. But the land takes longer to change. I know some of the caves, the grottos.”
“The Grotta Azzurra.” Annika beamed. “It’s so beautiful. I, too, visited with my family to bathe in the water and the light.”
“The Blue Grotto seems like a slam dunk for a Water Star,” Sawyer imagined. “Which is probably why it won’t be.”
“Its light burns blue only after it’s lifted. Now it waits, cold and quiet.”
They stopped, turned to Sasha. Bran laid a hand on her arm. “What else do you see?”
“Her. I see her, through the smoke and broken mirrors. Nerezza, the mother of lies. She’ll make her palace in the dark, of the dark, and there forge a new weapon against us. Promises of power seeded on thirsty ground. She waters with blood. A new dog for a new day.”
Sasha fumbled for Bran’s hand. “How did I do?”
“You did well. Headache?”
“No. No, I’m fine. I let it come. I can’t bring it, but I can let it come.”
“Your face is pale.” Digging in her pack, Annika took out a water bottle. “Water helps.”
“It does.”
“So does food, and there’s some up ahead. I smell pizza,” Riley said.
“Wolf nose,” Sawyer commented.
“That’s exactly right. I vote lunch.”
Riley’s nose proved accurate. In under a quarter mile they sat outside a little roadside trattoria.
“Have you got your sketch pad?” Sawyer asked Sasha.
“Never leave home without it.”
“Can I borrow it a minute? I want to get something down while it’s fresh.”
Intrigued, Sasha pulled out her pad, a case of pencils. “You never said you drew.”
“Not like you.”
As the vote for pizza rounded the table, as beer and wine were served, he sketched out his map from memory. The curve of the land, the sweep of sea and beach, the rise of hills. He added the road they’d traveled, positions of houses, groves, fields.
Riley leaned over to study the work. “That’s pretty damn good, cowboy.”
“You gotta know where you are. Which is here—or the house is here. We came up this way, over, and now we’re here.”
He drew a compass rose at the bottom of the page.
“What do we have if we go back and down?”
“You’d end up at the Piazzetta—or as it’s known by locals, chiazz. The square—little, as the name indicates—is the social center and tourist haunt. Cafes, bars, and, fanning out from it, the narrow streets, the shops—”
“Shopping?” Annika interrupted Riley’s explanation. “We can shop?”
“We’ll need to eventually. Supplies, ammo. You’ll get trinkets,” Riley assured her. “Up here, that’s the Marina Grande.”
“Got it.” Sawyer penciled the name in.
“We’ll pick up the boat—another RIB—our equipment there in the morning. We have a van on tap if we need it, but I don’t recommend driving here—van or bike—unless we have to. Public transpo’s good, plus we have Sawyer if we need to get somewhere fast. The funicular goes from Capri town to the marina if we need that
. It’s just getting there. Bus is probably the best way to get to the marina from the house.”
“Just how do we get weapons on a bus?” Doyle demanded.
“I’ll come up with something,” Bran assured him.
Since the pizza came out then, hot and bubbly, it blocked an immediate argument. But sensing one coming, Sawyer took a stab.
“We could hike it. Public transpo when and if, legs otherwise.”
“A reasonable compromise,” Bran declared. “We can see how it goes. I’ll deal with the weapons either way, and we can consider the hike to the marina part of our morning calisthenics.”
“I like calisthenics,” Annika said. “I like pizza, and this wine is very nice. I can hike to shop.” She gave Sawyer an under-the-lashes smile. “You could go with me.”
“Ah—”
“We should walk off lunch,” Doyle put in, “and get in an hour’s weapons training. I bet there are shops around the marina, Gorgeous. You’ll get your chance.”
“I like my weapons.” She studied her bracelets, smiled at Bran and Sasha. “They’re pretty. It’s nice to have a day together. To practice, yes, to train and to plan. But just to walk in the sun with all the flowers and trees. To eat pizza. To just . . .”
“Just be?” Bran suggested, and plucked a starry little flower out of the air.
With a laugh, Annika tucked the flower behind her ear. “Yes. To just be together. Here, where Sasha said to come. Where Sawyer brought us. Where here”—she laid a hand on her heart—“I know we are meant to be.”
“Seventh daughter of seventh daughter knowing?” Riley asked.
“Yes, it may be. But I know. And I feel, I feel so strong that we’ll find the Water Star, that whatever weapon is forged against us, it will never be enough. The dark cannot win, so the light must.”
“You’re a light, Anni,” Sawyer told her, and made her heart swell.
“One of six. It’s good to be one of six. Can I have more pizza?”
Sawyer took a slice, slid it onto her plate. “All you want.”
They hiked back for weapons training. Annika liked using her magic bracelets, and liked even more practicing with them in the lemon grove. The floating balls Bran conjured for her could slide and bob behind trees, try to hide, so she had to be quick and clever to deflect.
And careful not to destroy so he didn’t have to stop his own training to make her more.
She didn’t mind sharing the grove—it smelled so nice!—while the others practiced with bows. But when the time came for the guns, she couldn’t pretend not to hear that awful sound.
Bran said he blocked it so it couldn’t reach outside the grove, but inside, the sharp, brutal sound boomed and echoed until she slipped away.
She would practice more, alone, but she wanted to be away from that sound, from the stink the guns made.
Because they excused her from using guns, she’d make up for it, be useful somewhere else.
She missed the dog, and the chickens they had in Greece—for the company and for the tending. But though the garden here wasn’t as big, it still required weeding. The house still needed order.
Sawyer had shown her how to make the sun tea, so she searched the kitchen for what she needed. She learned well, she reminded herself, and could do this small task alone. She was here to learn as well as to fight and to find.
She was here to help. She knew the water in the pot had to boil, and this took time. While she waited, she gathered laundry. Some clothes had the blood and gore from the last battle on Corfu. She would make them clean again.
This also took time, considering the machine that washed clothes wasn’t the same as the machine in the villa. She did what she thought was right, put the big glass jar in the hot water. She forgot the word Sawyer used, annoying herself. But this step was to make sure no bad things got into the tea or jar.
Because Bran had taught her about herbs, she went outside, cut some as she’d seen Sasha do.
She cleaned them, put them in the big glass jar. Once she’d added the water, put on the lid, she carried the jar out into the sun.
Now the sun would do the work.
And she could weed the vegetables and harvest the ripe ones, as she’d been taught.
It would be so pretty, she thought, to live this way, without the training, the fighting. To tend a house, a garden, to make tea with the sun. To find a dog who liked to play. A house by the sea, so the water was always close. A place she could live with her friends, where she could share Sawyer’s bed.
Oh, how she wanted to learn what it was to mate with him.
She could dream, she told herself. It hurt no one to dream. To dream of a house by the sea where she lived with her one true love and her friends, and all the worlds were safe from the dark.
She knew most of it could never be. She had only three turns of the moon before the legs were no longer hers, and the sea once again her only home.
But she could dream, and do all she could to beat the dark.
She straightened when Sasha crossed the lawn, put the basket of tomatoes and peppers on her hip.
“These were ready.”
Sasha took a look, nodded. “They sure are. You’ve kept busy.”
“The sun’s making the tea. I used the mint and the plant that smells like lemons, and the chamomile.”
“Very nice combination.”
“It looks pretty already, but it needs more sun time.”
“Maybe, but when the rest come, they might not give it more. It’s thirsty work. I think they plan a pool break. Gardening’s thirsty work, too. I bet you’d like a swim.”
“Always. Um . . . I have laundry in the machine, but it’s not the same machine. Can you make sure it’s right?”
“I’ll look on my way up.”
“For your suit.”
“No, actually, I’m taking a different break. I need to paint.”
“A vision?”
“No, I just need to paint. The way you need to swim.”
Her smile soft, Annika nodded. “Because it’s what you are.”
“Exactly. But you know, I may bring my easel down here. I don’t need alone as much as I did.”
“Then I’ll bring out the glasses and the ice.”
Sasha led the way inside, turned into the small laundry.
“I did the soak with the salt for the blood. And the little bottle Bran made to help purify.”
She went through the steps she’d taken as she pulled clothes out for Sasha’s inspection.
“You did everything just right.”
“When they’re dry, I can fold them like you showed me. After the break. I can get my suit and swim.”
“And after the break, Bran wants everyone to help, the way you did at the villa, with protection. Drawing the curtain, and security.”
“There are brooms.”
“Good. This time you can help teach me, as I slept through the last round. And after that, when we’re curtained and protected, we’ll hold our first war council on Capri.”
“The men and Riley.”
“They’re the most experienced, but you and I, too, Annika. We’ve fought, we’ve bled. We all sit on the council now.”
She set the table with glasses, a big bucket of ice, clipped the mint as Sawyer showed her and made it into a bouquet in a little vase. She formed slices of lemon into a flower on a small plate. And because someone was always hungry, created a display of fruit and cheese and crackers.
Pleased, she ran upstairs to change into the suit for swimming. She’d only asked for one before she’d started this quest. It made so little sense to swim in clothes she had only thought to need one. Now she decided she would take some of her shopping money and buy another. Or perhaps two more.
Clothes were fun and pretty, and one of the best things about having legs. She stepped out of her room as Riley opened the door to hers.
“Pool time,” Riley announced. “Sawyer and Doyle are already down there.”
; “Oh! Can I see?”
Riley shrugged, gestured to the terrace doors. “Go ahead.”
She dashed over, saw Sawyer and Doyle sitting by the pool, facing each other in talk. On the lawn, Bran stood with Sasha as she set up her easel.
Simple joy radiated in her voice as she called out. “Hello!”
Sawyer looked up, smiled—she loved his smile, so quick, so bright—and waved at her.
Leading with that joy, she leaped onto the rail, dived.
She heard Sawyer shout something, did an easy, happy roll, and slid blissfully into the pool.
“Merda!” He jumped in, ready to drag out her unconscious body when she surfaced, laughing. “Christ, Anni, you could’ve broken your neck.”
After slicking back her hair, she blinked in curiosity. “How?”
“It’s not that deep, and from that height, you could’ve hit your head on the bottom.”
“Why would I do that? My head knows where the bottom is.”
“Looked like fun.” Riley leaned on the rail above.
“It is fun.”
“Humans might know where the bottom is,” Sawyer told her, “but they can’t slow their descent or pull up when they hit the water the way you can.”
Annika looked up at Riley. “You shouldn’t dive from there.”
“Got it.”
Annika took Sawyer’s hand, tugged him in a little deeper. “We can have a race. Racing is fun.”
“Yeah, like any of us has a shot against you.”
“I would swim backward.”
“And still,” Sawyer said as Doyle let out a snort. “But okay, challenge accepted.”
He went back to the end, waited for her to roll onto her back. “Ready? Go!”
