We left Jack at the sidewalk that connected the school to the gym. He raised his hand holding the papers. "I'll read up."
With the basement stairwell closed, we went in the front and then down the main steps. Bubbe's space, where she ran her business, was off the main room, near the outside door that was now inoperable.
The priestess was inside and she was alone. She was sitting on the floor, her legs crossed and her red skirt pulled up almost to her waist. Her legs were bare and pale with firm muscles that didn't match the age of her face. It made me wonder if she did something to make herself look older to others.
Humans tended to underestimate the elderly. Bubbe wasn't beyond taking advantage of that.
As Mel often pointed out, Bubbe wasn't above taking advantage of much.
The old priestess spread a pile of dirt over the floor in a circle in front of her and without looking up, asked, "What did your Internet tell you?"
Mel growled, and I guessed this was yet another sticking point between them. But then she answered, "Too much. Jack is looking it over."
Bubbe snorted, then picked up the stone image of a panther and placed it on the edge of the dirt. There was a pile of similar stones, each carved into the shape of one of the Amazon telioses sitting beside her. One by one, she placed each into the shape of a crescent moon. When she was done, she looked up. "You have a job for me? One you cannot do yourself?"
Annoyance flickered over Mel's face, making it obvious her grandmother was prodding her in a way I couldn't see.
"Zery has a name. She wondered if you could locate someone based on that."
"She wondered? And you could not tell her?"
Mel's jaw hardened. Afraid the two of them would let their personal issues get them off track, I stepped in.
"She's a past queen and on the high council. Until a few weeks ago she was my contact."
Bubbe's gaze stayed on her granddaughter for a few breaths, then with a sigh she turned it on to me. "You are not to reveal the name of your contact. You know that."
I had the unexplainable urge to squirm, not all that differently than I had when I was six and was caught playing with Mel in her grandmother's workroom. But I was too old to allow her to intimidate me now, or at least to let her see she intimidated me.
I lowered my chin, stayed strong. "The council is broken. The rules don't hold."
"If you respect the tribe, the rules must hold."
"Like the rule to kill Andres?" I asked. "You can't pick and choose."
She rubbed the pads of her middle finger and thumb together. Again I had the feeling she could reach out with some power I couldn't see and swat me to my knees.
I braced my legs and stared her down.
She smiled. "Come. Whisper in my ear."
Beside me, Mel murmured with strained patience in her voice, "You passed the test. Artemis knows what it was, but you passed."
Pretending not to have heard, I knelt beside Bubbe and did as she had asked.
"The telios?" she said.
I opened my mouth, but she shook her head. "Touch. Move into the center."
Feeling completely out of my element, I plucked a boar from the line and carefully placed him in the middle. I started to pull back then, to stand and give the priestess room, but she grabbed my hand and held it tightly in her own.
Then she started to chant, low, fast, and in Russian. I didn't understand a word of what she was saying.
The dirt rose from the ground, darted back and forth, thickening in spots, then thinning-fleeting images, or what almost was an image before flattening out into nothing but dust. It swirled and boiled, rose up and spread out. . then with no warning, it fell.
The boar was still sitting in the middle. All the fetishes were sitting where Bubbe had placed them, but the dirt had formed a shape, one that looked familiar but that I couldn't quite place.
Bubbe held her hand out over the crescent and muttered. When she looked up, her eyes were worried.
"She is here." Her finger jabbed toward the center of the shape, shoving away dirt to reveal the concrete floor beneath it.
I stared, trying to see what she was telling me.
"Here." She jabbed again.
I frowned, then I saw it. The dirt had formed the shape of the North American continent and her finger was right of the center, where I guessed Wisconsin, perhaps the northern part of Illinois would lie.
I gasped.
"She's here."
I wasn't sure what my high council contact being in the area meant, if it meant anything. Like any Amazon, she could be traveling through for the upcoming fair, visiting relatives. . lost.
Or she could have come looking for my mother, or me.
If she was looking for my mother, she would be at Mel's. If she was looking for me. .?
The safe camp.
I went to wake Bern.
I slept on the way down, as did Mel. There were two cars' worth of us. Everyone except Dana, Mateo, and Bubbe came, and the babies. . we left them at Mel's.
Leaving Bubbe behind was a tough decision, but we couldn't trust the babies with just a son and a hearth-keeper, even if that hearth-keeper had a mother lion's ferociousness when it came to protecting her child. And, to be honest, I had no idea what, besides shifting into a massive bird, Mateo's skills were.
Weighing everything, it made sense to leave Bubbe with them. Heading back to Illinois, we had three warriors, two hearth-keepers, a son, and Mel, who while classified as an artisan I knew had strong warrior and priestess skills too. It was a strange group, but one I trusted for the job-even Jack.
Oh, and we also brought the dogs. Bubbe had insisted.
We pulled into Jack's driveway around nine thirty.
There was nothing left of the cabin, at least nothing that could be used as shelter, but with access to the safe camp through the woods, it seemed like a good place to set as our base of operation.
We did, however, need some shelter besides our cars if we were going to stay here for long. And, since we had to assume no one at the safe camp was on our side, we needed a place we could stay hidden as much as possible.
Jack suggested we check his neighbors. Apparently one of the reasons he liked the location was that his closest neighbor, the man we'd seen getting his mail, spent most of the summer in northern Wisconsin and most of the winter in Texas. Remembering the camping trailer I'd seen parked in the drive during my last visit, I sent Lao and Tess to check out the house.