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.

The next morning over a breakfast of apple pie, I got to hear about Harmony’s first two art classes-how utterly “crush” (I assumed that meant great) the project they were working on was going to be, how “down” (nice?) her teacher was, and most important, how “hot” (that one I understood way better than I wanted to) one particular boy was. The last part wasn’t directed at me. Actually, none of it was. Dana and Harmony had been giggling over the details for the past twenty minutes.

At the moment my daughter was acting a little too “average American teen” even for my liking. I picked up her backpack and shoved it onto her lap. “Time for school. Dana will be here when you get back.”

With an eye roll, she took my implied advice and trotted down the stairs.

I left for my office, where I barricaded myself in until lunch. Paperwork was stacked to my shoulders, and if I didn’t sign some checks, the Amazons wouldn’t be the only ones coming after me with sticks.

I’d signed my last John Hancock of the morning when there was a knock on my door. Expecting Mandy, I shouted for the person to enter.

Peter, again with the premium coffee, wandered through the door. The coffee and the cautious look on his face both warned me I wasn’t going to like the reason for his visit.