It took less than three minutes to get to the address on Makis’s business card. It took twenty to find Makis’s class space.
I thought I knew the building where Harmony had been taking art classes-I’d driven by it thousands of times. But once I parked the truck and jogged toward it, things got fuzzy.
I found myself standing in front of the address, suddenly unable to remember where I was going, what had driven me here.
I turned, started to shuffle back to my truck and, just as quickly, my memory returned, my panic with it, but increased.
Three steps forward and the fog returned. I blinked. An older woman wandering past asked if I needed a drink. I refused, stumbled again to my truck.
I slammed into it, my palm smashing down on the hood. Harmony. How could I…? I stared back at the building, focused on the door that bore the same numbers as the card in my hand.
A ward. Makis had some kind of ward on the door, something akin to what Bubbe had cast over my front yard when the Amazons were gathered there trying to save Zery, I guessed.
I had no experience with the spell, no idea how to combat it. I forced my heart to slow and my gaze to wander over the building front. Through the glass door I could see ferns and vines hanging from seventies-era macramé hangers. The mass of plants blocked my view deeper into the shop. Murals, a scene of the Capitol, one of some cows, and a group of football fans wearing white and red, covered the front windows.
Makis had managed to provide his shop with complete privacy in a way no one would think to question. I glanced around, looking for inspiration-considered tossing a rock through the Badger fan’s red jersey, smashing the window, and maybe the ward. But there were too many people around. And a move like that would only alert Makis to my presence and state of mind.
The roof was flat. A one-story, probably with no attic, not even a crawl space. I glanced back at the plants, at their junglelike growth. Plants needed sun, and painted-over windows didn’t provide much.
I had an idea. I left my truck and jogged around the end of the block, into the alley that ran behind the shops.
A Dumpster was set a few feet away from the building’s back wall. It was an easy jump from there to the roof. I paused, checked my grip on reality. I still knew where I was and what I had to do. Makis hadn’t been guarding against someone trying to break into his shop, just been trying to stop the casual passerby from entering.
Letting out a relieved breath, I crept toward the front and the upraised white square I prayed was what I thought it would be.
I stopped next to the skylight, a grin breaking across my face. I allowed myself less than a second of self-congratulation before hunkering down next to it and peering inside.
It was darker than normal outside and lights were on in the shop, making the scene below well lit, if small. The window was only a couple of feet wide. Even leaning side to side, I could see only a small piece of the shop below, but it was enough. Directly below me, a paintbrush in her hand, stood Harmony.
My palms pressed on the window’s edges, I leaned forward, tried to see what was happening below-to decide what my next move should be. Makis had had access to Harmony for over a week. There was no reason to believe tonight was the night he would target her-not that I wanted to take the risk and leave her alone with him. But I also didn’t want to do something that would send him over the edge, cause him to attack if he hadn’t planned to.
For the first time I wished I’d given in to another of Harmony’s demands-for her, us, to get cell phones. I had just never seen the need. But now, staring down at her, so close, but so impossible for me to reach without crashing through the glass, I did.
When we got out of this, I was taking her to the mall. I’d be supermom for at least a day. The thought made me smile, and as I settled down next to the window where I could keep an eye on my girl, I relaxed.
Until I saw the wheelchair behind a bookcase, visible to me, but not my daughter. The chair was turned over, its occupant sprawled across the floor.
Makis’s face was pale, his arms and legs akimbo-unnatural. And three feet away, completely unaware, sat Harmony, painting.
Something was very wrong.
I lifted my fist, ready to rap on the glass, but as my knuckles lowered, a figure stepped into view-a boy, brown hair, slim build. The boy I’d seen Harmony flirting with at school. The boy she’d been mooning over with Dana, I assumed.
He angled his head as he talked to her. A diamond stud winked at me from his ear. He moved again, to stand behind Harmony. He wrapped his hand around hers, the hand that held the paintbrush. Together their hands moved up and down in broad strokes, slow, sensual, almost sexual.
As his arm moved up, his T-shirt shifted, revealing the edge of a tattoo. My already tense muscles squeezed tighter. My fingers dug into the edge of the skylight, until the tips became numb. Another upward, then downward stroke and the tattoo was revealed-a dog, a hound, black and tan. Just like the stray that had followed me around my shop, followed Zery into the shower, watched Pisto jerk off her shirt.
The boy pressed closer to my daughter, his face so close to hers his breath stirred her hair.
The skylight creaked, the casement coming loose under the pressure of my grip. The boy and Harmony looked up, revealing his face.
Nick, the boy I’d offered a job to, who’d shown up but left and never came back.
I saw him, knew him, realized I’d been wrong more than right-but it was too late. He’d seen me too.
He grabbed Harmony by the arm and threw her to the ground, reached behind him, and grabbed the notebook I’d seen him sketching in that day on State Street.
I stood and jumped at the same time, praying the glass would give. My feet hit the pane, cracked but didn’t give.
Harmony struggled to her feet, her hair falling free around her shoulders. Her eyes rounded and her face paled when she saw me. I screamed for her to run, to get back, to find cover, then jumped again, this time adding a rush of air.
The glass shrieked and gave beneath me. I plunged downward, trying to weave a bubble of protection around me as I did, but only succeeding partially. Glass tore at my jeans, caught my shirt, ripped into my shoulder. I fell to the ground, landing in a squat-not the best position unless you’re a cat.
Pain shot through my ankle. Without thinking, I pressed my hands onto the floor for balance. They came back up bloody, pieces of glass protruding from my palms.
I glanced around, looking for Harmony…Nick. To my left there was the sound of fighting, bodies bumping into furniture, paintbrushes or pens scattering to the floor. Then Harmony, yelling, “What the fu-?” The rest was muffled, by nothing more than a hand, I prayed.
I clawed the bigger pieces of glass out of my palm, and scrambled through the debris. The shop was like a maze, file cabinets and drafting tables with their tops flipped up formed walls that cut right, then left. I whirled around one corner, only thinking of getting to my daughter as quickly as I could, and tripped over the downed Makis, grabbed his fallen wheelchair to keep from tumbling onto him.
His olive skin was ashen, his breathing shallow. My heart told me to crawl over him, continue toward Nick and Harmony, but as I moved my foot to step over him, I stopped, placed two fingers against his throat. A pulse strong and steady beat under his skin.
Deeper in the shop, Harmony yelled, but her voice was strong, angry. Something crashed. She yelled again. My girl was putting up a fight, holding her own.
I pulled my hand away from Makis and folded my fingers into my palm. He was unconscious, but not dead. I couldn’t help him now, but I could set him back in his chair, roll him somewhere out of the line of fire. It took only seconds to right his chair, a little longer to get the dead weight of his body into it. Then I shoved it into a nook, behind a double-wide steel file cabinet I thought would stay standing, even through the tsunami I was prepared to unleash in this place to free my daughter.
Then I crept forward, hoping my quiet had confused Nick, led him to believe I was too injured in the fall to follow-that it was just Harmony he had to battle now.
They stood in the back, twenty feet from a door that led to the alley. Nick had her by the arm, was trying to drag her toward it. Harmony picked up a jar filled with clear liquid and threw it at him with the intent and speed of a major league pitcher.
Nick twisted, his arm extended, his fingers curved and stiff, and slapped the jar off its trajectory, into a wall. The jar smashed, liquid splattered, and the room filled with the stench of turpentine. Harmony seemed undeterred, grabbed for something else-a stone pestle, but I froze. Nick’s speed and grace, the power with which he swung, even the shape of his hand-it wasn’t human.
He jerked Harmony, spun her into his body, so her back was against his chest. She flailed the pestle behind her trying to strike him, but he grabbed her wrist, shoved her hand to her side. He whispered something in her ear, then wrapped his fingers around the pestle, crushed it to dust in his fist.
My daughter’s eyes rounded, and I could feel her panic like a spear to the chest. She’d got it now-that Nick wasn’t normal, not just a crazed boy. But she couldn’t know what I knew, that he was a son of the Amazons and somehow he was calling on the powers of the givnomai he’d stolen-the speed and grace of a tiger, the strength of a horse…at least one more yet to appear, maybe more. Who knew when he’d decided to start depositing his gifts on my doorstep-how many girls he might have killed before?
His fingers that had just crushed stone to sand trailed down her upraised arm in a gesture so clearly predatory and sexual, every fiber of my soul contracted. Rage soared through me.
I sucked in a breath, but held it-frustrated. Harmony was squeezed against him, her body between his and mine. I couldn’t touch him with the wind building in my lungs, not without catching Harmony in the gale too.
His fingers tangled in her hair; he pressed his lips to a spot on her neck, right behind her ear. Then he murmured something else, something that made my daughter’s body stiffen, her eyes harden. Her hands formed claws, not literally, but they might as well have been the talons they mimicked. She reached behind her, blindly raked her bubble-gum-pink nails over his cheek-leaving four bloody welts in her wake.
He shrieked, shoved her away, sent her reeling into a bookshelf. Papers, metal cans filled with paint, chunks of uncarved marble and stone smashed to the ground around her. She lay on the ground, heaving for breath, scrambling for a new weapon. I moved forward, instinct urging me to her side, but as I did, a creak overhead drew my attention. A huge chunk of granite, once destined to be carved into art, teetered on the shelf above her head. As I watched, it tumbled down, straight for my daughter’s head.
I let out the breath I’d been holding, batted my hands, and prayed I’d hit my target.
The stone, falling one instant, was smashed backward the next. The force I’d created drove it into the wall, into the plaster, through lath, until it barely jutted out like a foothold on a climbing wall.
Nick and Harmony both turned-stared at me. With the same speed he’d shown earlier, Nick was back at her side, his fingers around her wrist, dragging her through the rubble that littered the floor.
I launched myself at him, landed on his back in a move driven by nothing except sheer outrage and passion. My arm wrapped around his neck and I squeezed, wished for the strength to pop his head off and send it rolling across the floor. Wanted to stand over his body and kick it until it stopped moving, until not even a reflexive death twitch was left. Rage-hot, cold all-encompassing-dropped over me until I didn’t know my own name, didn’t even know why I needed to kill this boy, just that I did.
I was an Amazon, and I was going to make him pay.
I felt him shift in my arms, heard his clothing tear as his body grew. Suddenly he slipped from my hold, my fingers running over fur. Then he stood facing me…not Nick, the skinny boy, but Tiger prowling, snarling, warning me to get away from his prey.
Harmony gasped. I didn’t look down at her, just gestured behind me, telling her to get out. For the first time in her life she obeyed me without argument.
Tiger roared as she ran, leapt toward me…and Harmony. A wall of air released from my lungs forced him back, sent him sliding across the floor. He clawed at linoleum, his claws gouging, a growl rumbling from his chest.
He stood, paced left, then right, watching me, deciding his next attack. I didn’t care. I reveled in his indecision, knew that every minute he wasted, Harmony was getting farther away. As long as she was safe, I could take my time deciding how to kill him, die in the process if need be. All that mattered was that my daughter had left.
“Mom?”
I froze, didn’t look, but didn’t have to. I knew the voice, knew the title, and knew by the tiger’s intent stare that Harmony was standing behind me.
“Get out,” I ordered, slashing my hand and releasing more wind to send a bookshelf smashing to the ground, forcing Tiger to jump backward out of its way.
“Makis. He gave me something.” She shoved something cold and smooth into my hand. I glanced down, just long enough to see a double-faced totem, male on one side, female on the other. Both carrying a child and spear. At the feet of each sat a bird and a chisel. Amazons and their sons, both hearth-keepers, warriors, priestesses, and artisans. The imagery wasn’t lost on me, but it offered nothing either. I tossed the stone to the side.
“Get home or call Bubbe and Mother, anything. Just get out of here. Now.” I felt like I was screaming, but couldn’t be, my teeth were clenched too tightly.
Harmony stepped around me, bent to retrieve the totem. A tentacle, long and coral in color, wrapped around her, jerked her across the floor. I glanced up, to where Tiger had been. He was gone and in his place was the third givnomai, not one used by many, Octopus.
The creature pulled her closer until she was almost engulfed in his body. She went limp, her arms and legs falling loosely toward the floor.