Amazon Ink

Chapter Sixteen

While Dana finished her pie, Mother agreed to help me carry her bags upstairs.

“Which room did you give her?” Mother asked.

“The one by yours.” I jerked a bag out of the compact’s rear seat and hurled it toward my loving parent.

“When’s the baby due?”

“Eight months give or take, and before you ask, no, I’m not switching with you. We have thick walls. You’ll be fine.”

Mother grunted, and I didn’t think it was from the weight of the duffel.

She looped her arm through the handles of three more bags. “Does Alcippe know?”

“That she’s pregnant? Yes. That she’s here?” I shrugged.

Mother shot me a look. “She isn’t going to like it.”

“See, a silver lining already.” I stacked another duffel onto Mother’s pile and started chugging up the sidewalk toward the front door. Mother passed me in two strides. I did a jog step to catch up, but only managed to drop two of the duffels I was attempting to warrior-handle onto the ground.

“What’s up?” Peter scooped up the bags and tucked one under each arm.

I thought about going all Amazon and insisting he hand over the bags, but in the interest of being more broad-minded, thought better of it. “There are more in the car.” I jerked my head back toward where the compact sat-the hatchback wide open.

As I did, my newest employee, Nick, wheeled into view on a skateboard. In a graphic T-shirt and torn jeans he looked a lot less like the clean-cut boy I remembered and a lot more like trouble.

I swallowed the thought. Same kid, different clothes.

He stopped by Dana’s car, glanced from it to Peter and me and our loaded-down arms. I dropped my bags at Peter’s feet, hoping he’d pick up my clue-and the bags.

“Nick, you’re earlier than I thought you’d be.”

He flipped the board up and grabbed it by the tip. “Sorry, I have somewhere I need to be.”

“You aren’t staying?”

He shook his head. His attention wandered past me. I turned, thinking Mother had reappeared, but there was no one there.

“You look busy,” he said.

“We are.” Again I looked at Peter, but he hadn’t moved, and seemed fascinated by my conversation with Nick. “But you’ll need to do some paperwork.”

“Sure, not a problem. I’ll stop by later.” Nick’s gaze was on Peter now.

Realizing I had committed some kind of etiquette faux pas, I introduced them. Neither jumped forward to greet the other. They just stood there, each sizing the other up, like two dogs whose paths had crossed in a neutral field. Neither declaring the territory, but neither backing off either.

I rolled my eyes and retrieved the bags I’d dropped. Nick wheeled off, and I didn’t bother to turn around to watch him leave, or to see if Peter was following me as I continued down the sidewalk.

I didn’t get far; Pisto in all her golden glory stepped out of the cafeteria door. Her gaze went first to Peter, then the car, then locked onto me. “Is that Dana’s car?”

“Could be.” I kept walking. There was something about Pisto’s stance I didn’t like. That was a lie. There was something about Pisto I didn’t like.

She stepped in front of me. “Is it?”

I heaved out a breath. Why did this have to be so hard? “You’re in my way.”

She crossed her arms under her chest. “What’s she doing here? And where are you going with those bags?”

I considered not answering again, because, seriously, she was getting on my last nerve, but again, in the interest of having a broader mind…“You’d need to ask her. And upstairs.” This time I shoved my way past her. The shocked look on her face as I bumped her from the sidewalk was beyond rewarding.

Unfortunately, the feeling only lasted about two seconds-the time it took for her to drop her hand on my shoulder and pull me back.

I dropped the bags and turned. I didn’t have a plan and I’m not sure what I would have done, but even in a flash of anger I couldn’t miss Peter’s six-foot-four frame looming up behind us or the unmarked police car pulling into the parking lot.

Pisto wasn’t as preoccupied as I was. She grabbed my hand as I raised it from my side. “I’m not taken in by you,” she murmured. “You may have Zery conned, but not me.”

A fan. How nice.

I wanted more than anything to knee her in the groin…thigh…whatever I could reach, or suck in a big lungful of air and blow her back to northern Illinois, but with my growing audience, neither was an option.

“There a problem?” Detective Reynolds and friend stepped onto the sidewalk. His tone was casual, but I could see the tension in his body.

Pisto tensed, a small move that no one but I noticed. “You knew we had company, right? A well-trained warrior like you wouldn’t slip like that…” I murmured the words, for her alone.

She pulled back her lip, showing her teeth. From a distance, it might have looked like a smile. Up close there was no missing the threat.

I pulled my wrist from her grip. “No problem.” I turned my back on the Amazon. I didn’t want to introduce her to the detective and hoped she’d be too dense to realize that’s what he was. Pretending she wasn’t glowering at my back, I moved forward, as far as the basement steps. “We can go in this way.” I motioned to the stairs. I wanted Detective and friend inside my shop, hidden from the Amazons as quickly as possible.

Reynolds arched a brow. “Aren’t you in the middle of something?” He glanced behind me. I followed his line of sight, hoping he wasn’t referring to Pisto. He wasn’t. The Amazon was gone, and his gaze was only directed to the duffels I’d left on the sidewalk.

Peter stepped forward and scooped them up. “I’ll get them.”

I looked back at the detective. He wandered forward, but his partner hung back.

“You can both come,” I prompted.

Reynolds looked behind him as if surprised to see someone there. “Blake’s not feeling well. He needs some air.” Then he glanced at Peter.

I was done with introductions. I turned on the ball of my foot and tramped down the stairs. I could hear Reynolds tap his hand against the metal railing a few times, as if deciding whether to follow-or maybe it was some secret police signal. Whatever, in a little while he stepped through the basement door behind me.

Bubbe’s door was wide open. I tried sidling past, but Reynolds came to an immediate halt next to it.

“What’s this?” he asked.

I stopped, turned, and immediately hoped Bubbe hadn’t left any wild woodland critters tied to the table.

The detective had half his body in the room. I walked over and pulled the door closed. He had the good grace to step back before it whacked him in the nose. “My grandmother’s business.”

He raised both brows in question.

“She tells fortunes.” I didn’t wait for a reply, just started walking.

I lost him outside Mother’s workout room.

“Some pretty heavy duty equipment you have there.” This time he was all the way in. I’d have had to put him in a headlock to get him out gracefully.

I ground my teeth together at the sheer annoyance of having him control our progress, but then realized something. As long as Bubbe didn’t stroll past, Mother’s workspace was probably the safest place for our chat.

He glanced around, apparently realizing I didn’t have a bowie knife tucked under a stack of weights, and turned to leave. I, however, had already plopped myself down on a weight bench.

“So, did you find another body?” The thought had just occurred to me. I didn’t really think he had-he would have approached me differently, but a piece of me almost hoped he had. Not that I wished another girl dead, but I definitely wanted to believe the killer had severed whatever tie he or she felt to me.

“Should we have?”

I pulled back, too surprised to hide my reaction. “That was aggressive.”

He took a step forward. “You haven’t seen aggressive.”

I almost laughed. I could say the same thing to him.

“Is something funny?”

I could see I’d tripped his trigger. I had to get better at hiding my expressions. I stood up. “No. Nothing about this is funny, especially the fact that you seem to suspect me of killing two girls. I told you before. I didn’t do it.”

“I never accused you of being the killer.”

I made a pfft sound with my lips.

“If anything, I accused you of knowing something about the girls, of doing their tattoos.”

“Well, I didn’t.” As far as I was concerned, our talk was over-or should have been. He wandered farther into the room, picked up a medicine ball, and tossed it in the air as if testing its weight.

“So, why were you at The Tavern?”

“Lunch? How about you?”

He smiled, a not-so-sweet stop bullshitting me turn of his lips. “It had nothing to do with the dead girls?”

“I like fried cheese curds.”

He laughed. “And I like brats with mustard. You didn’t answer my question.”

I hated to lie, but I’d served my time as a teenager-I knew how. “No. It had nothing to do with the dead girls.” I held his gaze, didn’t let mine waver, even when he took a step back toward me. Less than a foot away, he stopped and smiled again.

“You’re good.”

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.