Bound by Flame (27 page)

17

Cynda gave up using her pyrosentience and pulled back her fire-awareness as she scuffed her bare feet against the townhouse’s cool gym floor. She tried to ignore the room’s vinyl-oil-sweat exercise smell as she stared down at the items Jake had given her in the tunnel. The “dishes,” as Nick and Merilee called them, were arranged on an exercise mat directly under one of the lights, so they almost glowed from the brightness.

Merilee and Riana stood to either side of her, staring just as hard. Cynda felt the rush of Merilee’s ventsentience as she explored the items. Riana’s terrasentience made forceful ripples on the ground, too.

Nobody said a word.

At least Nick had already implemented strategies to make sure they didn’t have any unwelcome visitors. Five officers wearing polycarbonate lenses and carrying elementally locked nets had swept the gym and declared it clean. The whole place was demon-free, at least as far as they could tell. Cynda was relieved no Astaroths could spy on her while she failed to understand the message she had almost died to receive.

Even as the Sibyls worked to identify the booty Jake had delivered, OCU was meeting upstairs in the conference room, with Nick and Creed and several Sibyl triads, planning shifts to patrol inside and outside the townhouse. Until the Astaroth issue got resolved—which meant indefinitely—they would need guards with demon-hunting lenses to protect HCQ from intruders. Sibyls were already figuring out how they could install chime alarms in their personal residences, keyed to let them know if invisible demons snuck inside.

I wish Jake could sneak in now, though. I need a word with him.

Cynda shook her head.

She just…didn’t get what the demon wanted to tell her.

The first item, a bowl, seemed larger and flatter than most salad plates, but too small to be a serving dish. When Cynda had handled it, she’d noticed how smooth and heavy it was, made of distinctive green stone with subtle white streaks. No doubt it was Connemara marble, mined near where she had been born.

“Are you sure you’ve never seen that bowl before?” Riana asked, arms folded, eyes tracing the outline of the bowl.

“Positive. But I’ve seen bowls like it…somewhere.” Cynda smacked her forehead as if that would knock loose the information buried in her skull. “Connemara marble isn’t rare. Pieces made of it, they’re all over Ireland—and exported frequently. I guess Jake wanted us to know J. C. Downy’s Irish by birth? Maybe from County Galway, near Motherhouse Ireland.”

“That would make sense, since she’s targeting fire Sibyls.” Merilee pointed to the crystal cup, which had a golden handle across the top, so it could be carried like a pail. The wand inside had a stem and rounded tip, and the tip was full of holes. “Reminds me of a mortar and pestle, but it isn’t. Is that Irish?”

“It doesn’t scream ‘Ireland,’ no.” Cynda shook her head. “And it’s not a mortar and pestle. Herbs and poultice rubs would get stuck in the wand’s holes.”

“Maybe it’s to stir liquids,” Riana suggested. “Some kind of fancy beaker?”

Merilee rolled her eyes at Riana. “Beakers belong in labs like yours, not in tunnels with weird demons. I doubt it’s a beaker. I’ll do what I can to hunt it down on the Internet, if I can get the computer to turn on tonight.”

Cynda dug and dug at her own thoughts, but came up with nothing. “It’s a crystal cup with a handle and wand. That’s all I know. No, I haven’t seen it before. But instinct tells me I
should
know what it is. That Jake thought I would know.”

Riana’s teeth clicked together at the mention of Jake’s name, and the room gave a little shake.

Flexing her knees to keep her balance in the sudden burst of earth energy, Cynda decided to change the subject. She gestured toward what she initially had taken for a broken stick. “That’s a crucifix made out of Irish bog oak, snapped into two pieces. Jake left the bottom sliver in the fieldstone house’s dining room door to get my attention.”

Merilee swiped a shock of blond hair from her eyes. “Have you seen
that
before?”

“Not that I know of, but Ireland’s lousy with crucifixes.” Cynda studied the lines and details of the religious artifact, but no bells jangled in her head. “They’re everywhere—eighty or ninety percent of the population is Catholic. Some people have crucifixes on every wall of their home.”

“So it’s possible you’ve run into this one before.” Riana knelt and touched the dark, smooth wood below the silver figurine of Jesus dying on the cross.

“Possible, yeah.” Cynda scuffed her foot against the stone floor again. “How the hell am I supposed to remember one specific crucifix?”

Jake thought I would. He gambled his life—and mine—on my memory. And I’m blowing it.

Cynda’s stomach ached. So many things she couldn’t get straight, much less keep straight. And she had let herself get taken hostage. That stung worse than anything. She had always prided herself on carrying her own weight, especially in a battle—and she was so not the oh-rescue-me type.

“So we’ve got a weird chick from Connemara who probably owned crosses with little silver Jesuses on top.” Merilee didn’t move to make a note, and Cynda figured she had decided she could remember that much without writing it down. “I wish Andy were here. Sometimes when I talk things over with her, she gives me the best ideas. It’s raining and flooding in Florida anyway. Last time she called, she said she might try to rent a car and drive back.”

Riana, who looked way tired from the day’s excitement, abandoned her examination of the crucifix. “A bowl, a crucifix, and a cup with a wand.”

“Big friggin’ help.” Cynda wanted to throw something—like the crystal cup—against the stone wall and listen to it shatter. “An Irish Catholic woman with dishes and a crucifix. That narrows it down to what, four million people? What am I missing? How is any of this important?”

“Maybe it’s not.” Riana’s expression darkened. “Maybe Jake’s leading us in circles. Just blowing smoke up our asses and using you to do it. Damnit, that
pisses
me off!”

Earth energy rolled in every direction.

Cynda fought not to stumble as mats shook on the townhouse’s gym floor. Weights clattered. Exercise balls trembled and knocked against each other, along with the dishes. The air took on a heavy, earthy scent as dust swirled around stone and mortar.

“Give me a good reason why we shouldn’t hunt that demon to ground and chop off his dick.” Riana folded her arms and glared at Cynda as the earthquake continued. “He scared us witless, snatching you like that—and if something had gone wrong, he could have killed you!”

“Ri, slow it down.” Merilee held up one hand and managed to look nonchalant even though her sweatpants and sweatshirt jiggled from the force of their triad leader’s temper. “You might be overreacting.”

“I don’t overreact,” Riana snapped.

Merilee gestured to the room around them. “If the floor cracks, we get to disagree.”

Cynda walked away from Riana and Merilee toward the back of the room and wished with every last drop of emotion that she could burn something down. She scrubbed her palms against her jeans and blouse and glanced at the ceiling as the rumbling earth subsided.

This has to mean something.

It drove her nuts that she had no idea. Almost like the information lay behind some curtain in her mind, some wall she couldn’t kick down.

Failure of any sort didn’t sit well with Cynda. She wanted, expected—no, demanded more of herself. If she just tried harder, reached deeper, surely she could get this.

Her triad stood in a triangle now, mortar, pestle, and broom, with Cynda farthest from the door. She cursed her brain’s drag-ass functioning, and knew she was completely messed up. No way to deny it now.

The tattoo on her wrist felt lifeless and flat. Her fire was already waning again after that brief burst of energy during the raid, and she didn’t know how to explain any of it to her triad sisters. She only knew she had to discuss the situation, because the problem had almost cost her today, big time.

Fire-absorbing or not, Jake never could have snatched her or kept hold of her if she had been in top form. She would have found a way to free herself.

“I’d rather we not hunt Jake, because he’s Nick’s brother,” she said to Riana, opening both arms, pleading. “And he’s under Downy’s control because of his talisman. He can’t do anything about that.”

Riana, dressed in a stylish green jogging suit, olive cheeks flushed from her fit, started to pace and interrupted. “Maybe. All right. But that doesn’t give him a pass to terrify us. We thought we’d find you dead like Maura, that fast, that brutal. It was awful, Cynda. Those minutes in the tunnel—some of the worst in my whole life.”

Cynda sighed. “I know that, and I’m
so
sorry. But Jake did everything he could to keep me safe, to hand over things that might tell us J. C. Downy’s identity so we can figure out what she’s got against fire Sibyls, and maybe find her. It’s me that can’t figure out the puzzle.”

Riana’s cheeks turned deeper red. “Creed went after Jake in the tunnel because the Astaroth was hunting you, for the sake of the Goddess. Like some kind of rabid panther. What the hell were you doing lingering in that tunnel with him? And why didn’t you stay closer to us so he couldn’t have grabbed you in the first place? Do you have any idea—” Her voice broke, then got louder as she wound up. “I don’t care what Downy told that demon to do. I don’t care about the talisman. If I’d found Jake, I would have brought the tunnel down on his head.”

The ground gave another brief shake.

Cynda realized Riana needed to let go of the horror she must have felt when she found Cynda missing, but she was beginning to hit too close to home with her questions.

“Jake is Nick’s brother,” Cynda said more slowly, feeling a stubborn twist in her chest—but no fire. Barely even a spark.

Did they notice? She hated feeling so empty and cold.

“You didn’t see what it did to Nick to aim a gun at his brother, Ri.” Cynda closed her eyes and reached as hard as she could for her inner heat. And found absolutely nothing. Her voice dropped in volume even as she tried to keep it steady. “You don’t know how the stuff with his parents still tears him up.”

“I’m sorry if I’m being unreasonable, but Jake attacked you.” Riana’s response was quick and forceful as she kept up her frenetic walking. “That means he attacked us. Merilee and I
do
have a say in whether or not we beat him to death for giving us heart attacks. And you—you’ve never been anyone’s hostage. Did you fight him with all you had? Did you even try to get away?” Tears glistened on her cheeks. “Triad first, above all else.”

The mistrust and hurt in Riana’s tone wounded Cynda in ways she couldn’t explain, much less ignore. “Don’t you dare talk to me like I didn’t try—like I’m disloyal. I’d die for both of you right now, if that’s what it took.”

She clamped her teeth together. Smoke should have billowed from her shoulders, but she didn’t feel
any
elemental heat inside her. Only pain. Only despair. And unreasonable fear that Riana and Merilee would suddenly realize she was defective and walk out of the basement gym, leaving her alone and wondering if she still had any family at all.

I can’t have Nick.

I can’t please Mother Keara anymore.

Now I’m letting my triad sisters down, too. I can’t think. I can’t keep myself safe. I’m losing my fire.

If I can’t fight, what good am I to anyone?

Since her family abandoned her, her life had been built around her warrior skills. She didn’t know if she could live without the ability to burn, couldn’t imagine what she would do if she couldn’t get a handle on whatever was happening to her.

Merilee eyed Cynda, gaze moving from her arms and legs to her shoulders and hair, and Cynda wondered if she was catching on. Dread pooled deep in her insides. She kept trying to find the words to blurt out the truth, but every time she got close to opening her mouth about it, she couldn’t.

Still, when Riana kept up her glaring and pacing, Cynda’s own fear and temper rose, fire or no fire. “This isn’t just about Jake and today, is it? You’re still mad at me for going to the Mothers over Creed being a demon, back when you first fell in love with him.”

Seconds passed then, with nothing but a low whistle of surprise—cheering?—from Merilee.

“That did hurt.” Riana stopped pacing and faced Cynda. “The fact you didn’t believe in me, in my judgment as the mortar of this triad. How would you feel if I almost broke us apart by going to the Mothers about you falling in love with Nick?”

“I’m not in love with Nick,” Cynda argued before she could stop herself. “And
you’re
not wanting to trust
my
judgment about Jake, are you? Sometimes it’s hard.”

Why was she lying about her feelings for Nick?

Why couldn’t she just spill out everything inside her, good and bad, bright and dark, and get it all out in the open like she was supposed to?

Because she didn’t want to bother the people important to her.

That answer was easy enough.

She didn’t want to hurt them in any way.

I don’t want to burn down the house, do I? Make so much trouble they haul me off and drop me somewhere far away, and leave without ever looking back.

She was so scared of losing Riana and Merilee, she was being a friggin’ coward, and she despised herself for it.

“You’re in something with Nick, Cynda.” Merilee used her wind energy to breeze away dust left by Riana’s tantrum. “Infatuation. Lust. Love. You better decide before it drives you nuts, or gets Ri and me baked like little Sibyl dinner muffins. Except, you’re not smoking much, are you?” Her face got deadly serious. “You’re not burning at all.”

Cynda’s jaw ratcheted so tight she couldn’t have responded if she wanted to. It took all her strength not to sit right down on the cold stone floor and just…give up.

“When you sleep with him, we promise we won’t go to the Mothers,” Riana said, still moving, oblivious to Cynda’s problem and even Merilee’s comment.