Captive Heart Read online

  Andy grabbed her yellow Mother’s robes off the rock where she had draped them. “For starters, I hate yellow. I think it’s a stupid color for water Sibyls.” She pitched the robes back into the waves, feeling satisfaction as the annoying sun-colored cloth whipped under the surface and darkened as it moved out to sea. The nervousness inside her wound tighter even though she was gazing across an endless vista of water and ornate islands. Most people thought the Ionian Islands were perfection itself, but right now they just bugged the hell out of her.

  “I don’t know who’s on the boat,” Andy added, fishing for any explanation that might turn out to be the truth about why she was so jumpy when Elana’s only purpose in life seemed to be helping her learn to relax.

  Elana cocked her head like she was listening to something. “Yes. There’s disruption onboard the approaching skiff. I won’t deny that.”

  Andy squinted toward the mainland and sighed. “I hadn’t picked that up. Thanks. Do you sense more tension now?”

  Elana ignored her sarcasm, as she usually did. “What bothered you when we left the waves?”

  The cranks in Andy’s depths turned again, ratcheting her muscles. She sensed rushing and overflowing in her own essence, but at the same time, her emotions choked inside. She felt like a river battling beaver dams at every bend and juncture. She needed to kick out some logjams before her brain flooded.

  “I don’t know. I don’t … well, the building. The Motherhouse bothers me. You can’t see it, but I’ve told you it’s freaky.” Andy smeared water out of her eyes with both hands, then remembered she could absorb it and dried off her face. “It’s crowded here, and too public, and I’m worried more adepts are on the way. What if one of them makes a mistake and we flood half of Europe?”

  Elana’s lips curved at the edges like she might be trying to smile. “Keep going. Let it flow, Andy.”

  “Flow. Right. That’s supposed to be my job.” Andy glanced at the tattoo that had marked her right forearm since her Sibyl talents manifested. Earth, fire, air—mortar, pestle, broom—in a triangle around a dark crescent moon. Sibyls worked in fighting groups, with earth Sibyls as mortars, responsible for protecting and leading the group. Fire Sibyls worked as pestles, handling communications, and air Sibyls served as brooms, cleaning up messes, archiving events, and researching information on just about everything. When Andy joined their ranks, Sibyl tattoos all over the world had changed. The lines connecting the symbols went from straight to wavy, symbolizing the role of water Sibyls in a fighting group.

  Flow.

  She was supposed to attend to the emotional flow and growth of her group.

  Whatever the hell that meant.

  “I’m a cop and a warrior, Elana.” She lowered her arm, lifted her chin, and blinked at the sudden glare of sunlight off the too-blue sea. “I shoot things. I don’t flow.”

  “The longer you live in water, the more water will live in you. Release, Andy.” Elana put her paper-soft hands on Andy’s bare belly. Her dark, damp skin seemed to glitter in all the sunlight. “Tell me all of what’s bothering you. Don’t think. Don’t censor. Just let yourself flow.”

  Andy closed her eyes. The beat of the tides swelled in her mind, the gentle pressure of Elana’s hand focused her, and she was able to come up with the next pain on her list. “I miss my quad.”

  “Bela, Camille, and Dio are brilliant fighting partners.” Elana’s voice seemed as hypnotic and rhythmic as the waves. “I’m sure they miss you these summer months when you have to be away. What else?”

  Andy listened to the water around her, tried to let it wash through her and break free everything crammed in her chest and throat. The air smelled like evergreen and fish and brine. “The beach bothers me. Stupid as this might sound, it feels wrong.”

  Elana said nothing. Andy kept her eyes closed, listening to the waves dance with the beach. “The trees bother me. They don’t … they don’t speak to the water like I want them to.”

  Andy wondered if Elana was thinking she was screwy, but the old woman just asked, “And?”

  And …

  Great. She was starting to relax a little more, but only because she didn’t have the energy to fight with more than one emotion at the same time. Gently, she moved Elana’s fingers away from her and opened her eyes. “It’s everything, okay? It’s the whole place. I sort of hate it. No, I actually do hate it. I’ll never get peaceful here without regular shipments of Valium, coffee, and all the chocolate I can eat.”

  Elana’s hands came together like a young child clapping. “Good. I agree.”

  Andy wasn’t sure she heard that right. “What?”

  “This is not the right location for our Motherhouse.” Elana’s white eyes brightened with emotion. “The Motherhouse we water Sibyls build for ourselves—it won’t be here.”

  Andy stared at Elana. It had felt like a miracle, finding a single surviving water Sibyl from time before time, fully trained and able to really teach her what it meant to live with water in her soul. Now she was worrying that Elana’s ancient mind might be running dry after all.

  Warm breezes teased Andy’s stained hair and underwear, and the afternoon sun baked her freckles. “Build a Motherhouse,” she said. “You and me?”

  Elana gestured toward Motherhouse Disastro. “We have the adepts. They’ll help.”

  Now Andy’s mouth came open. “We have five teenagers, twenty-two kids, and three infants. Think the babies can hammer a nail?”

  “And we have Ona,” Elana said like she hadn’t heard a word Andy spoke. Her robes and hair were completely dry, and she seemed enraptured by whatever she could see in her mind.

  Desperate to make Elana talk sense, Andy said, “Ona’s a renegade fire Sibyl who barely talks to anyone but you. And she sort of destroyed the last Motherhouse. And fire Sibyls burn shit up and want everything made of rock. And, and—she’s as old as you are!”

  Elana held up two fingers. “Two years older.”

  Andy smacked the side of her own head, sending a spray of water over the sand and rocks. “Does that matter when you’re a thousand, for God’s sake?”

  Elana paused. “It’s still surprising to hear you call on God instead of the Goddess.”

  “I’m from the American South and I didn’t grow up a Sibyl. The whole Goddess thing—I’m ambivalent.” Andy dried off her hands and legs in sheer frustration, soaking the water into her essence and firing it back at the ocean in a fast, arcing plume. “Assuming I go for the insanity of believing we can build our own Motherhouse, where would we put it?”

  Elana faced her, her scarred face serious but kind, with that ever-present relaxation she seemed to have when they visited any beach. “Where our hearts take us.”

  “That really helps.” Andy drew in more water and shot it out over the sea, using her palm to target the stream. Aquakinesis. She needed a lot more practice with that ability, but she felt a small release every time she did it. Nothing like a little violence to get a girl’s pulse back to normal.

  “When the time is right, the place will call to us,” Elana said. “We’ll both know.”

  Just the thought of moving her Sibyl training facility to some new and unknown location, never mind building a Motherhouse—Andy wasn’t sure how she was supposed to ever find any peace now.

  “Don’t die,” she told Elana. “There’s no way I can fight alongside my quad in New York, figure out all this crap, and build a Motherhouse by myself.”

  Elana’s shrug made Andy want to bury herself headfirst in the sand. “I’ll live forever if nothing kills me.”

  Andy grimaced because Elana was referring to the fact that not only was she one of the oldest Sibyls in the world, she was also the only half-demon Sibyl … ever. Tiger-demons known as Rakshasa had attacked her and infected her a long time ago, but she had survived and lived to help drive the bastards off the face of the planet—twice. Andy felt like she had to protect Elana at all costs, but that would be damned hard if Elana didn’t quit
putting herself on the front lines of demon battles.

  “Our disruption has arrived.” Elana pointed in the direction of the docks, and Andy saw a man striding toward them.

  Weird.

  Usually the locals who knew about Motherhouse Salvador Dalí’s Worst Nightmare wouldn’t let anybody approach this end of the island unescorted, much less march right up their private beach to bang on the front door. Which, for the record, was as ugly as the rest of the place, though Motherhouse Russia was quite proud of the carved wolf’s-head door handle.

  How had some guy managed to—

  Andy looked closer.

  The man had coal-colored hair and stoic, handsome features almost too perfectly aligned to be real instead of some Renaissance painter’s fantasy. Those features were familiar, but what she really recognized was his scowl. And who could miss the totally out of place Men in Black suit and the dark sunglasses?

  Him.

  Here.

  Of all places.

  Oh, yeah, this was really going to help her relax and focus on learning healing and flow and all that other water Sibyl crap.

  “Fuck me.” Andy put her hand on Elana’s shoulder. “It’s Jack Blackmore. Think anybody would care if I drowned him?”

  The temporary director of New York City’s under-the-radar Occult Crimes Unit walked straight toward Andy like he owned the whole damned island. The man had existed outside of mainstream society for so long he had no idea how to deal with real people. After his stint in the Army, he’d gone federal, and most recently he had been working for the FBI on special assignment to New York City to fight the Rakshasa. Since the first Gulf War, Jack Blackmore had been helping military and civilian law enforcement establish and run units like the OCU, and he was used to being in charge and giving orders.

  Andy was used to plotting Jack’s death every time he spoke.

  Just the sight of him made her blood come to full boil. How could she hate somebody just for the way he walked? No. No. It was the suit and sunglasses. Or the tight way he held his athletic body, like he was always ready to fight with something.

  Maybe it was the way he breathed.

  Or the fact he breathed.

  Truth be told, in the year or so she had been forced to be around him, she’d never had a real conversation with the bastard because they always started screaming at each other after a few sentences. Her palm itched like it was getting ready to slap him.

  “Your sister Sibyls told me Mr. Blackmore spent time at all the Sibyl Motherhouses last year to improve his manners with the Sisterhood,” Elana said. “I take it from your surge of stress that you don’t believe his tutoring was sufficient?”

  Jack was thirty feet from them and still coming. Andy glanced at the water on her right. Okay, okay, drowning him might be extreme—but what about washing him out to sea for a few hours? “Believe me, Elana, this jerk is beyond teaching. He doesn’t want to learn.”

  Elana responded by moving off a little ways and seating herself on a rock. She turned her face to the sea, and Andy had to make herself stand still as Jack Blackmore steered himself to a stop directly in front of her.

  She looked up to see his face. Otherwise, she would have been staring straight at his muscle-bound chest. So he was an arrogant shithead in a Flaming Bunch of Idiots suit—but she had to admit the stupid getup fit him like nobody’s business. Did the guy hit the gym twice a day or something?

  Blackmore’s typical all-business expression remained in place for about three seconds. Then it faltered. For a long moment, he stood motionless, his mirrored lenses reflecting sunlight. His face softened and he pulled off those ridiculous glasses, but he still didn’t say a word. He just looked at her like he’d traveled a few thousand miles to have a chat this afternoon, then completely forgot what he intended to say.

  His dark brown eyes seemed almost black in the sunlight, and Andy could have sworn the man brought a host of fresh, warm breezes with him. He smelled like cedar with a hint of something earthy, which she had never noticed before, probably because every time she had ever gotten near him she had been in the process of doing him serious bodily harm.

  Her damp hair stirred, blowing across her cheeks. Right about the time she reached up to brush it out of her eyes, she saw the purple streaks on the damp tips. Then she remembered she was wearing nothing but lacy, purple-stained underwear.

  Oh …

  Shit …

  Heat splashed through her, and she knew her face had just gone the color of a bad sunburn. Her eyes darted to the waves, but her yellow robes were long gone. Every swear word she had ever known—in any language—cycled through her mind, but she refused, she absolutely refused, to cover herself up or make excuses or do anything at all to let this man know she felt humiliated.

  Somehow, she stood there. Just sort of hung out like it was no big deal, being almost naked on a beach with the biggest jerk on earth.

  Jack folded his sunglasses and slipped them into his suit pocket. His throat moved, but his mouth stayed closed and not a sound slipped out. Andy saw his eyes dip, then snap back to meet hers again.

  He wants to look at me, but he’s trying not to. Good for him. He might live to get off the damned beach.

  “I—ah—hello. You—” He gave up again. Rubbed his hand across the back of his neck. “Saul and I tried to call ahead, but your phone’s not working.”

  Andy held his gaze, amused and surprised by his reaction to her. “A Motherhouse full of Sibyls does that to technology. There’s not a stable digital signal or a functioning computer within five miles of this beach. You could have had yourself transported directly here instead of going to Motherhouse Greece and making Saul ferry you over to the island.”

  Jack rubbed his neck again. “Didn’t think that would be … polite.”

  Nervous, Andy’s cop brain informed her, and her Sibyl instincts agreed. Well, that was an emotion she was familiar with, but what was getting to him? Was it her—or her underwear?

  He managed to get himself under control enough to say, “Besides, I thought since you could use a phone, maybe water Sibyls were different about the whole killing-electronics thing.”

  Whatever was bugging the guy, Andy didn’t feel inclined to help him get more comfortable. Maybe if he hyperventilated, he’d leave faster. She stayed casual, like she was in no rush for him to get to the point. “I think I can still use electronic stuff because I didn’t become a Sibyl until after I was an adult. Just different, I guess.”

  “Yes, you are.” Jack looked at the sky like he was cursing himself, then quickly added, “In a good way. What I mean is—just … look.” He met her eyes again, though he didn’t seem to be having an easy time with that. “I came here to make peace and to ask you for a favor.”

  Okay, this was rich. Jack Blackmore coming to her for a favor? Andy really didn’t care anymore about being almost naked. She folded her arms and watched, enjoying the warm beach breezes as he squirmed in his no doubt hot-as-hell suit. “Make peace? Are we at war?”

  Jack’s face slid through a few near-expressions, from irritation to surprise to something like determination. “We’ve been fighting since I came to New York City because—”

  “Because you’re a pushy, arrogant dickhead who gives orders instead of listening to people who know more than you do.” Andy made sure her smile was sweet even though she wished she could grow fangs like some of her demon friends.

  Jack kept his determined look, but he seemed at a loss for a response.

  Andy waited.

  He cleared his throat. “Pushy. Arrogant. I’ll accept that—but I’m trying to learn more about working with Sibyls as equals. I spent time at every Motherhouse except yours, and I was hoping to remedy that.”

  “You want to stay … here?” This struck Andy about as crazy as Elana’s announcement that they needed to build a new Motherhouse. She would have laughed, but she couldn’t believe he meant what he was saying. “I’m sorry. We don’t have any regular Assholes Anon
ymous meetings. You might fall off the wagon.”

  Jack looked away. Looked back. Was he actually smiling at her? Oh, she had no idea what to do with that or the ice water shock of seeing what that smile did to his obnoxiously handsome face.

  Chills broke along her very exposed skin, cold at first, then warm, then hot. Her body ignored her common sense and vibrated under the force of his gaze.

  “Yeah. Definite possibility.” He was still smiling and she wanted him to stop, but she really didn’t want him to stop, either. Ever. “Maybe some other time, then.”

  When pigs marry donkeys and fire Sibyls stop letting off smoke. That’s what Andy wanted to say, but she couldn’t really say anything because she was too busy being freaked out by a weird disappointment that he’d given up so easily.

  “About that favor,” he said, the smile slipping away until Andy actually felt the loss.

  This wasn’t quite as fun as she’d thought it was going to be. “Okay. Let’s have it.”

  Jack raised one eyebrow. “You probably won’t like it.”

  “Big surprise.” Andy made sure to tamp down her elemental energy. If she blasted him with a wave here on the beach, she really might wash him out to sea. His boyish nervousness and that damned smile had earned him a few minutes without the risk of homicide. Maybe.

  After a few moments of hesitation, Jack said, “Come home to New York City, either right now with me or as soon as you can work it out, Sibyl-fashion.”

  Surprise made Andy’s eyes widen. “I’m not due back until September—I have duties here since I’m the senior water Sibyl Mother.” Her gaze drifted to Elana. Was that really true anymore? She and Elana had never formally discussed Elana taking her position as a water Sibyl Mother, but they should. Elana should rank as the eldest at the Motherhouse. “I can’t come back with you, but why would you want me to?”

  Jack pulled some folded papers out of his jacket pocket and handed them to her. She glanced down at them and realized they were copies of crime scene photos. The snapshot showed a pile of bodies with legs in jeans sticking out in every direction. Bloodied arms flopped out of the stack like they were trying to point at whoever had shot them so full of holes.