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we’ve had to stop these bastards just walk out our front door? Damnit. I have to get him back.
    She chewed the tip of her pen. Sibyls used pen and paper instead of computers to help their thinking process through the meditative act of writing. Also, notebooks couldn’t be hacked from distant locations—and supernatural energy tended to play hell with electronic devices anyway. Low tech just worked better, except for Internet searches and retrieving other public-domain information.
    Cynda leaned over and smacked her arm. “Quit eating the equipment.”
    Riana dropped the pen on the table next to three or four other previously chewed pens and pencils. “Okay. Action. Merilee, we need current information on Senator Latch. Everyone in his family. Everyone he knows.”
    The Greek historian and archivist blew her a kiss. “I’m the broom. It’s my job to know everything, to sweep it all up and pile it in neat little stacks.”
    Before Cynda could say something about pestles being able to crush brooms, Merilee got up and hurried up the stairs. The third floor of the brownstone was entirely her domain. It was higher than everyone else, of course, where wind-lovers liked to be—though hardly a breeze could stir up there with all the shelves and stacks of books and notebooks, and the impressive array of computers.
    Riana stretched, feeling tired though it wasn’t even noon yet. “Cynda, can you let the Mothers know what we’ve got so far?”
    “Sure.” She smiled as she stood. “You going to test the skin while I ring the chimes?”
    Riana nodded, then felt the weight of her next words. “After that, we’ll figure out a plan for our new friend Creed.”
    “Oooh. Good.” Cynda wiggled her butt as she hurriedly cleaned off the big round wooden platform that doubled as a worktable. “I hope it involves full physical examination.”
    Irritation surged through Riana, catching her off guard.
    “I bet you do,” she managed clumsily as Cynda took off her shoes and climbed on the platform.
    Riana’s hands shook as she picked up the folder from the floor and removed the bag of trace skin evidence. Her crescent pendant bounced against her sweater as she straightened herself again, and she thought of Mother Yana.
    A waxing moon, she had told Riana in Russian the day she gave it to her. Small, yes, but growing stronger every day . Trust yourself. Believe in your instincts. Leave behind your losses, your tragedies, and you, too, will grow to banish darkness.
    It had been a long time since Riana almost lost control of her emotions, even for a moment. If an earth-loving Sibyl let her feelings get away from her, the results were invariably disastrous. Damage from wind and fire could be extreme, but only an earth Sibyl could break the foundations of the ground itself. Early in her training, Riana had been made to visit chasms and pits that once boasted cities, not to mention caves and faults that once were solid mountains. Imagining that level of destruction drove home the need for rigid self-discipline.
    “I am the mortar,” she whispered to herself. “The stone bowl that holds us all.”
    Merilee and Cynda needed the stabilizing force of her earth energy. She couldn’t fail them. She couldn’t fail the Sibyls—her only family.
    Motherhouse Russia graduates always worked with the earth, always chose and led the triads. She would not allow herself to be distracted by a strange creature with black flame eyes. Not now, with Asmodai activity coming into the open in her city, and the Legion changing tactics for the first time in the century they had been tracked and engaged by the Sibyls.
    Cynda apparently hadn’t noticed Riana’s consternation. The Irish communications expert had raised her arms and started her chant to reach the Motherhouses. She danced a circle slowly on the table, her image reflected in their collection of projective mirrors, as the wind chimes rang softly over her head. At first, her movements produced