by Anna Windsor
“And one of them married him.” Bela wasn’t snickering because her husband, Duncan, had faced a similar gauntlet of tests and procedures from the Mothers before he was declared safe for human consumption. So to speak.
“Whatever,” Andy grumbled. “Just because we know good half-demons doesn’t mean they’re all good. I think Strada’s essence may turn out to be more powerful than we understand. He could hurt you, Camille.”
“Point taken.” Camille kept the fingers of both hands locked together so she wouldn’t fidget like a first-year adept. “It’s a risk, and it’s one I’m willing to take whether you want me to or not, but I’d rather have—”
She broke off, not sure what word to choose. Judging by the protective, suspicious look on Andy’s face, it wouldn’t really matter anyway. With the biggest brooding projective mirror over her red hair and serious frown, Andy looked almost like a fire Sibyl Mother ready to pass judgment.
“It’s not that I’m not taking you seriously, Andy.” Camille couldn’t help herself. She fidgeted, then stared down at her hands to keep herself from trying too hard or crying or clamming up because she was intimidated by Andy’s disapproval. “It’s just that I’m not sure I can slow down my emotions, even if I know I should. I started off by touching his soul—literally. We’re working backward from there, but how am I supposed to undo what that felt like?”
Nobody said anything, and when Camille made herself raise her chin again, Bela, Dio, and Andy wore almost matching expressions of worry, but also understanding. Above their heads, the chimes tinkled as the energy in the room flowed through them.
“When you put it like that, it’s hard to keep giving you shit,” Andy admitted. “So what do you want, our blessing or something?”
Blessing. That was a good word. Camille looked at Andy and waited.
“Oh, hell.” Andy raised her hand and did a fast, idiotic mash-up of painting a rune in the air with two fingers. “Consider yourself blessed. If you wind up eaten, don’t come bitching to me.”
Camille quit squeezing her own fingers to death. “Will you all give him a chance? Seriously?”
“He’s ex-military with a lot of experience, and yeah, okay, he kicked a god’s ass for us, like you all keep reminding me.” Andy folded her arms like she didn’t really want to be saying all of that, but Camille knew better. Andy gave credit where credit was due. “Maybe he’ll prove he’s worth something in the long run.”
Dio’s overly relaxed posture never changed, but she piped up with, “I still want to know where we’re going to keep him. Not literally, like your bedroom and stuff, Camille, but during patrols and Sibyl business.”
“He’s got skills and he’s the expert on Rakshasa.” Bela always sat straight in her chair during meetings, but that didn’t translate into personality stiffness, thank the Goddess. “I say we take him.”
Andy’s mouth came open. “We have no idea what’ll happen when we come across an actual Rakshasa demon. What if Strada knows his own and comes straight to the front and takes over?”
“Running into Rakshasa won’t be a problem,” Camille reminded them, going back to fidgeting with her fingers. “It’s already happened. The night—well, one of the nights I was out hunting alone. When you came to rescue me in the alley. We were on Tarek’s trail, only I thought it was Strada’s.”
“Let’s give him a try at least,” Bela said to Andy, more a request than she needed to make it, since she was the quad’s mortar. “We need all the help we can get against these things, and with what John knows, we might finally get the upper hand.”
Andy seemed to consider this, and she finally gave in with a shrug. “I’ve fought with demons before, I guess, and newer, weirder ones than him. Okay, yeah. Let’s see what happens. If he freaks, we’ll all be there to deal with it.”
Deal with it …
Camille shivered, but Bela was already moving on to the next topic. “And you and Maggie, Camille. What’s with the two of you?”
Camille leaned back against the leather cushion. “Old battles—and I’m so sorry I brought them into the present. She and I used to slug it out when we were little. All the other adepts at Motherhouse Ireland had issues with the fact I couldn’t make fire. I won’t let it get in the way again.”
“Oh, let it get in the way,” Dio said, probably because she’d gotten her own ration of shit from air Sibyl adepts and Mothers over her sort-of-illegal weather-making abilities. “If she gets too far out of line, we’ll help you kick her ass.”
“Tempting.” Camille sighed. “But no. We don’t need to fight with other Sibyls. I promised myself I’d leave all that crap between the stone walls of the Motherhouse when Alisa claimed me, and I did. I made the same vow to myself when Bela gave me a second chance.”
“I didn’t know you had such a temper,” Andy said. “Kind of makes me feel better, since all the rest of the fire Sibyls I’ve known have been first-class bitches. Loveable, but, well, flammable.”
“Goes with the territory.” Bela gestured to the wall behind them, where the projective mirror that opened on Motherhouse Ireland smoked and swirled with more vigor than all the rest. “Working with such an unstable element. But Camille, if you’re really pissed off inside, why don’t you show it?”
Camille felt her words go cold like all the flames inside her had just fizzled away. She did an in-depth study of her knuckles, tried to find the words, and came up absolutely empty.
Damn, damn, damn.
This was important, so of course she was whiffing out like she always did when she tried to light her blade in battle. When nothing came out of her open mouth, she finally closed it and shook her head, tears blurring the image of her own clenched fingers.
For a few seconds, the room went as quiet as the endless warrens under Motherhouse Ireland, only Camille felt like she didn’t know all these new stone corridors and blind corners in her life by heart.
Out of place.
Out of my element—in all possible ways.
“You consider yourself a liability already,” Bela said. “You hold in your anger to keep from making more trouble for us.”
Camille gulped back a sob. How did she do that? Were all earth Sibyls born psychic? She knew she should look at Bela, but right that second, she would have put the effort required to pull that off on par with willing herself to implode.
Bela’s hands closed over hers, warming up the cold parts as Camille stared straight down at the floor. “You probably did the same with Alisa and Bette—kept everything to yourself so you wouldn’t bother them.”
Camille was crying too hard to answer her.
“You’re no more a liability than the rest of us.” Dio’s bouncing foot made a whoosh-whoosh noise against the well-conditioned leather. “We’ve all got our shit, but we kick ass anyway, right?”
Right.
Camille wanted to say it, but the words still weren’t there. It was getting time to go. Downstairs. Out the front door. Anywhere. Not for long, maybe just a few minutes. She had to—
“You being here with us”—Bela gave her fingers a squeeze—“that’s not contingent on how much trouble you do or don’t cause.”
Camille’s lips trembled, and her words left her again, because yes, this was almost as important as the last thing. Maybe … maybe more important.
My staying here—what is it contingent on?
She remembered the awful feeling she’d gotten after her mother died, that time when Maggie’s crowd threatened her with the Mothers putting her out. It was something like this, mixed with a kid’s terror—a fear, it seemed, that had never really left her.
Bela’s voice broke through the fear like the first hint of sunlight after darkness. “I didn’t take you on a trial basis, Camille. I chose you because you were right for me and right for us. Nothing changes that. This commitment is for keeps unless you choose to break it and run away.”
She really is reading my mind. Not that I’m such a big mystery.
&n
bsp; “This is home now,” Camille finally managed to mumble, right about the same time she made herself quit counting the lines and little hairs on her fingers and Bela’s, too.
“Glad to hear it.” Bela’s smile came through as even more sunlight, and she turned Camille’s hands loose.
“Oh, goody.” Andy was smiling now, hinting that she might say something worthy of another pillow hit. “So now you’ll make more trouble? Fire Sibyl trouble’s always so much fun.”
“John Cole might be plenty of trouble,” Camille said, not feeling nearly as defensive and terrified.
Dio rolled her eyes. “So was Duncan.”
“What are you going to do if Motherhouse Ireland pulls that whole if-you-get-with-him-we’ll-kick-you-out shit?” Andy asked. “They’ve done that before when fire Sibyls showed an interest in loving half demons. Remember Cynda and Nick?”
Rage blasted upward from Camille’s toes, heating her so completely she felt something hard cracking down the middle inside her—or was it something hard forming, growing in new ways? She glared above Andy’s head at the projective mirror linked to the valley outside Connemara. “They so don’t need to go there with me.”
Bela raised her hands to her cheeks in mock horror, then looked a little stunned.
“You’re, um, smoking.” Dio gestured to the fog gathering around them.
Camille glanced down at her elbows.
Son of a bitch.
She was letting off steam.
Literally.
No flames broke into life along her shoulders or arms, and the smoke didn’t last long, but still, it had been there, and not in the depths of some life-or-death battle or because she’d used the dinar to magnify her abilities.
The surprise lingered even as Dio plunged ahead. “So, who is this Ona character? She’s not even in the Archives of the Mothers.”
“She’s not a Mother.” Camille was still looking at her elbows, at where the smoke had been, amazed that she had actually seen it. Despite the leftover haze, the alcove seemed so much brighter all of a sudden, like it was fresh and full of new energy.
“Ona has to be a Mother,” Andy said. “She’s—well, she’s really, really old.”
Camille scooched around on the couch until she got her legs up under her, relaxing as much as she could now that the worst had passed. “She may be the oldest Sibyl alive, but she’s always refused to take the title or duties of Mother.”
Bela’s eyebrows came together. “Why?”
“No idea,” Camille said. “She just sort of appeared in my life when I was younger, showed up in a tunnel one day and spoke to me. Later, she made the older girls knock off pounding on me, but I don’t even know why she did that.”
“Maybe because it was the right thing.” Bela’s fingers curled into fists, and she smacked one of those fists against her knees. “Damnit, the other Mothers should have taken care of that for you.”
“They thought all the conflict might, you know, spark me or something.” Camille shrugged even though the gesture felt a little too casual for how much all that had pissed her off and wounded her when she was a kid. “They thought it might make me tougher.”
“Or run you off,” Dio said.
Andy was shaking her head. “I still don’t get why she’s not a Mother.”
“Because when I was your age, I learned I didn’t have the constitution for it. Nor did I deserve the honor, then or now.”
Ona’s voice made them all jump. Camille and Bella and Dio had to turn to see her where she was standing, in her usual black breeches and matching tunic, right in front of the swinging kitchen door. The swinging door wasn’t moving.
Andy, however, had been staring straight at Ona when she did whatever it was Ona did with the channels.
“How do you do that?” Andy pointed toward the hardwood at Ona’s feet, which still had a sort of puddly look, though it was drying up fast. “I swear I saw you this time. You came through the floor.”
Ona’s tone and expression stayed unreadable, except for the slightest twitch of her mouth as she averted her gaze from Andy’s. If Camille hadn’t known better, she’d have thought Andy’s presence startled Ona or bothered her.
“Your eyes deceived you,” Ona said, and now Camille knew she was bothered. Ona never deferred to anyone for any reason, but her tone sounded absolutely submissive.
“They did not.” Andy’s face flushed, and one of her hands clenched into a fist.
“You saw what you saw,” Ona told her, still not looking her straight in the face. Her words were confrontational, but her voice was literally shaking. “Your interpretation wasn’t correct.”
And Ona was gone. Back through the floor, or into thin air, or whatever the hell she did. Camille had been looking at her intently, paying attention, and she still had no idea where Ona went.
Andy jumped to her feet like she was about to stalk down to the lab.
“Give it up.” Camille waved Andy back to her seat. “She could be back in Ireland—and she’s always like that with questions. That’s why I don’t know much about her. She only tells me what she wants to, when she wants to.”
“What do the other fire Sibyl Mothers say about her?” Bela asked, still gazing at the spot where Ona had been.
“Not much.” Camille watched as the hardwood went back to looking like hardwood again. “To stay away from her. That she’s trouble. I think they’re scared of her, especially Mother Keara.”
Bela, who was very close to Mother Keara in an adversarial love-your-best-enemy sort of way, grinned when she heard this. “Then I think I like Ona. She can stay.”
Laughter popped out before Camille could hold it back. “Good, because if you wanted her out of here, I couldn’t do anything about it.”
Gradually Bela shifted her full attention back to Camille, and when she did, she asked, “Are we finished with secrets?”
Camille swallowed, relieved that her words didn’t take a quick hike again. “I think so.”
“We need to be,” Bela said without changing her expression from its usual calm kindness. “I’m to the point where I need your word on that.”
“You have it.” Camille lifted her hand like she was pledging to the flag. “I promise I’m not holding anything else back. Nothing I’m aware of, anyway.”
Bela accepted this, then looked briefly worried. “And you trust us enough to tell us if anything else comes up?”
“Yes. I promise.”
“Good,” Andy muttered. “Because I can’t take much more of this serious meeting crap. It gets on my nerves.”
The chimes above her head gave a soft ring, then a harder, jangling warning.
Camille’s heart surged, and she was on her feet with everyone else before she fully registered the message. “Friendlies. OCU. Nick sent the message, but he’s not coming. He’s meeting an informant in Central Park. It’s Saul Brent and—”
She stopped, feeling flickers of surprise. “And Jack Blackmore.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful.” Andy flopped back down in the leather chair under the Motherhouse Ireland mirror. “Just what I need to make my fucking day. Another meeting, and with the world’s biggest puckered asshole.”
“Come on, Andy,” Dio said as she took her seat again, too. “Tell us what you really think.”
Bela looked tense, but she went to answer the door as Camille once more took up residence on the end of the couch closest to Dio.
“If she starts a tidal wave,” Dio whispered to Camille, “lend me whatever energy you can and I’ll try to keep him from breaking any bones.”
Camille nodded and snuck a peek at Andy, who was rubbing her eyes with her thumb and forefinger like she was warding off a migraine.
With Blackmore and Andy in the same space, even after a year of separation, rogue waves were a distinct possibility. The two had only known each other a few weeks before Blackmore went on sabbatical at the Motherhouses—but it was a few weeks too many.
The first man throu
gh the door was Saul Brent, wearing jeans and a Giants jacket like he usually did. He was so frigging tall he had to duck to get inside, and his long brown ponytail was loose and flyaway from the cold fall breezes. Saul looked a lot rougher than his older brother, Cal, thanks to years working undercover in narcotics. Cal was clean-cut, polished, and professional, while Saul had gorgeous brown eyes full of humor—and a lot of tattoos. The ones Camille had seen were way sexy, and she was willing to bet he had more under his clothes. She had always liked the tribal markings on his hands, and she could just make out the top of the Greek cross on his neck.
“I should get more tattoos,” she said out loud, mostly to break the tension, but also because she thought it might suit her, that it might help her break out of the mold she had set for herself so long ago when she started failing at Motherhouse Ireland. “Maybe a Celtic knot—or what about a Greek cross like Saul’s?”
“Do the barbed-wire armband,” Andy said, pointedly keeping her attention off the doorway. “I dare you.”
Jack Blackmore came in after Saul, and Bela closed the door behind him. Camille studied him from top to bottom. Coal black hair, nearly black eyes—yep. Not much different there. He was also wearing “the suit,” as Andy called it, a dark ensemble that could have escaped from the set of Men in Black.
Doesn’t that just scream Fed? Andy had been fond of asking last year, usually followed by her favorite epithet, Flaming Bunch of Idiots, even though Blackmore wasn’t really FBI.
Right now, Andy just flicked her gaze toward Blackmore, looked briefly at the ceiling, and went back to staring at Camille.
Blackmore, however, let his gaze linger on Andy.
Camille twitched on the sofa.
Poor guy was probably weighing the odds that he’d get back out of the brownstone without having to go to the emergency room.
Yeah. Good luck with that, big guy. Or maybe I should say, big mouth.