I looked up from scrubbing my face. Scrap showed up as a dim outline of wavy lines reflected in the bathroom mirror.

Six very long weeks of sleeping on sofas and cots, I hadn’t fully adjusted to having my own room and private bath back.

No word from Lady Lucia since the furniture delivery this morning. Her guilt gift. But Scrap informed me she had hired a new nanny and was running her empire from a second suite in her hotel.

I’d made a little progress assessing what the girls could and could not do academically. A mixed bag of skills. Math went no further than the girls painfully copying the numerals in order. They read the classics beautifully but could not write, not even their own names.

“You know I’m awake, Scrap. What’s wrong that you felt you had to ask?”

“I asked you to do that days ago. But we’ve been a little busy since then. What did you do with it?”

“Will I need it?”

“Why will I need it?”

“Huh?”

Then he told me about the power leakage from every corner of the Universe. He held something back. He always did.

“Scrap, I’m not likely to need to get out of my bargain with the Powers That Be.”

“We haven’t gotten that far.” I wasn’t going to jump into a serious relationship after the last three disasters. “How come you aren’t pushing me to renew my relationship with Gollum?” My heart sank. If Scrap gave up on us, then there really was no hope.

“Yes, I know that.”

I sighed. “Yeah, I know. If he only needed to protect her, he’d have set up a trust fund and divorced her. She probably wouldn’t know the difference while she was in the asylum.”

“It’s probably going to take both of those and then some to separate him from her. If she is Squishy’s new lover, I’m not sure even that will separate them. So, do you think Sean and I might make a go of it?”

“Good advice. If he can’t survive two days at the local con, he’ll miss out on a big part of my life. He won’t know what makes me tick, why I need the stimulation and support of that community. He’ll already miss big chunks of my life because of his job commitment.”

“Is he really reading and enjoying them, or just skimming to please me?”

Scrap gave an impish shrug.

“He calls me and talks about the books as if he has a passing acquaintance. And he is cute. And sexy. And intelligent. But he keeps worse hours at work than I do. It’s a little difficult to base a relationship on telephone calls.”

“I don’t know yet. Do we have to do anything?”

“But will they ever make that decision, or just let it ride, holding it as a carrot in front of the applicants to force them into obeying their rules?”

“Phonetia suggested the forest elf might need the crystal ball to heal the wound I gave him.”

“We can’t allow the Nörglein to get near it. I won’t let the little bastard live to rape another woman.”

“I’ll reserve judgment to see if they are redeemable. Are you sure they can’t fish the crystal ball out of the river?”

No.

“Then move it again. Keep it moving so no one with the talent to sense it can hone in on it. What about the freeze-dried garbage dump of the Universe?”

“I wish I knew someone I could entrust it to.”

“I said, someone I trust!”

I slapped my forehead then pounded it into the desktop. I’m an idiot. And then some.

As Sean so aptly pointed out, part of my depression and self-destructive tendencies stemmed from my isolation. I’d grown too used to having to work on my own, without any guidance from the source of my status as a Warrior of the Celestial Blade.

I needed to reconnect with the Citadel. Deep in a lost ravine between here and there, part of the twilight world that forms a barrier between light and dark, good and evil, I’d stumbled on the place in a fever delirium.

Sister Serena, the physician, had cut the otherworldly infection from my body, leaving sickle shaped scars from my right temple to jaw, beneath each breast, and across my belly. Because the infection originated outside current reality, the scars remained partially outside normal sight as well. Only another Warrior could see them. Or Gollum—I still hadn’t figured out how he could. All Warriors bore at least some of those scars.

I needed to reconnect with my origins.

With Scrap perched on the windowsill watching for danger, I propped myself up against the headboard with extra pillows and relaxed.

Meditation requires stillness within.

Not an easy task for one as restless as me. If I’m uncomfortable in an exotic yoga pose I might as well forget even trying.

I went through a ritual of progressive muscle clenches and releases, working from brows to toes, letting the energy flow more readily. Once my body felt as if it melted into the quilted coverlet, I visualized a bright tornado of tension spiraling down from my mind to my feet and out into the world.

My subconscious took over, relaxing me to almost sleep, and brought new energy into me. I visualized it creating a bubble around me. A bubble that would transport my thoughts on a direct line north by northeast to the home of my Sisterhood.

Past midnight. The Sisters slept the sleep of the just. Their routine demanded long hours keeping the Citadel mostly self-sufficient along with harsh training in the military arts. During my year there, I had collapsed in my bed every night, too exhausted to dream.

But someone was always on watch. The Citadel sat atop a portal to a demon world. We could not allow our enemies to breach it while we slept.

“Who?” a weary mind answered my gentle probe.

I flashed an image of myself to the woman on guard. Telepathy isn’t so much an actual conversation as a series of images and impressions, it’s just easier to transcribe in words.

“Oh, Tess. Greetings.”

“Tess, where are you?” Gayla, the senior Sister interrupted. I’d been the one to admit Gayla to an overcrowded Citadel when she burned with the imp flu. I had cut the infection from her.

She had defied the previous leadership to send me backup when I faced an entire horde of rampaging Sasquatch.

We’d been close ever since.

“Home. Why?”

“Ginkgo said that Scrap said we needed to talk. I called just a bit ago. Your line was busy.”

“Huh? Scrap, who’s on the phone?” I searched my tentative connection to the girls. Both slept soundly in their room.

Line’s clear now. Scrap sat a little further forward, alert.

Previously, I’d have defaulted to calling Gayla, since she was obviously awake.

Having sunk deep into meditative mode, I decided to stay there. Less chance of eavesdroppers.

“I have an artifact of power that needs to disappear for a while, but still be accessible to me,” I said as I showed an image of the crystal ball as I’d last seen it, resting in my hand, inviting me to gaze deeply into the swirls of milky minerals, losing myself in the power and the other worlds it tapped.

“Wow! You aren’t kidding, that’s an artifact of power. I’d give up my claim on the Goddess Brooch for that.”

“I claim both as gifts of fate!”

Me, territorial? Just look at how long it took me to come to the practical solution of giving up my office.

“Acknowledged,” Gayla said formally. “Where should I put it?”

“At the bottom of the midden. I don’t care, just so long as it doesn’t get near the portal. It might totally dissolve the barriers.”

“Agreed. Have Scrap drop it off to me and me only. There are a few malcontents—overachievers actually—we’ve recruited recently. They want to storm the portal and slay anything they can find on the other side.”

“Are they candidates to go rogue?” Technically, I was rogue since I fought the forces of evil on the outside. We used to be rare. With shifting portals, changing power dynamics, and Donovan’s half-breeds agitating for a home world, we needed more people on the outside than in the past six centuries.

I wondered if the crystal ball had something to do with these changing times.

It needed to go to someone powerful enough to control it. Not yet.

“Not yet,” Gayla echoed my thoughts. “I don’t trust these new Warriors on their own. They’d go looking for trouble without backup.”

“Been there, done that.” We both chuckled.

“You, I trust to have common sense eventually. These gals, I don’t. So what have you been up to?”

“Too much.” I uploaded the rescue of my daughters from their abusive father in a series of tableaus, carefully editing the aftermath of Lady Lucia’s spell.

I hadn’t come to terms with my demon ancestry enough to entrust that knowledge to even a dear friend.

Gayla whistled through her teeth. “I’d offer to train the girls and keep them isolated but they’d meet opposition right, left, and sideways.”

“Which is why I didn’t ask.”

“Ginkgo just dumped the crystal ball in my lap. I’d better do something with it quick, while the boys are off for some quick cuddling.”

We signed off with proper telepathic protocols, an image of a good-bye wave, then a gray wall that faded to black. I slowly withdrew from the meditation.

When I opened my eyes, both Phonetia and E.T. stood in my doorway staring at me with eyes wide in awe.

“We thought only Father could communicate that deeply,” Phonetia whispered. “Did Lady Lucia’s spell give you that power?”

“I’ve always been able to contact my Sisterhood this way.” But never so easily or completely.

I didn’t want to think about how or why.

“Practice. It just takes practice.”

“We can’t do it and we’ve practiced,” Phonetia insisted. “Same with our brothers. We just have this general awareness of where you are and what your mood is. Like we used to have with Father and the boys.”

“Why are your eyes glowing red?” E.T. asked.

My heart sank.