THE PERFECT TEN (Boxed Set)

discovered about my family. But here was a chance. Maybe my only one.
    Tony stopped jawing and for a blessed moment went silent.
    Gabby paused in rocking to look up at me with curiosity swimming through her mismatched eyes. She glanced next to her at the empty spot where I stared then back at me and whispered, “You okay, Rayen?”
    Neither she nor Tony seemed able to see the old man.
    How could I answer that when I questioned my sanity at the moment? I kept my eyes on the filmy figure. “Answer me.”
    The ghost with the weathered face had been staring off into the distance. His gaze shifted to meet mine. “You know what you need to know for now.”
    Fury boiled up my throat. “Who. Am. I? Either tell me or stay away from me you old goat.”
    Tony whistled behind him. “She’s gone completely off the reservation, Gabby.”
    “Just shut up, would you,” Gabby snapped, sounding weaker than before.
    I glanced away from the vision long enough to check on her. When I looked back up the old one was gone. Fine. Like I need one more animal in this zoo?
    “So now you’re talking to invisible friends, Xena?”
    Clenching my hands into tight knots of frustration, I stepped toward Tony, determined to shut that yapping trap.
    Tony’s eyes widened in surprised. His hands curled in reaction and he came up on his toes, prepared to defend himself. “You gonna use your super juice on me?”
    “Cut it out,” Gabby grumbled. “We need to work together, not fight amongst ourselves. Doing that plays into their hands.”
    I didn’t want to listen. I wanted to do something to burn off the frustration churning my insides.
    The old man’s voice whispered in my mind. Are you a warrior or a child?
    I stopped in the middle of the hut, but couldn’t say if it was out of deference to Gabby or the old man’s taunts. “She’s right. If we allow them to divide us they’ll win.”
    Gabby groaned and bent over.
    I dropped down next to her. “What’s happening?”
    “I can’t close my hands. My arms feel like...the muscles are hardening.”
    Tony squatted on the other side of her and carefully lifted hair from her neck then hissed and pointed to gain my attention without speaking.
    Leaning closer, I saw what he was trying to keep Gabby from knowing. The red lines were climbing up and around her neck. If the muscles in her neck hardened, she wouldn’t be able to breathe.
     

CHAPTER 16
     
    Brushing the gauzy, moss-green wisps from his hair, Callan warned Mathias, “If Etoi sends me on another fool’s errand, she won’t like the punishment.”
    “But you said it might have been a serious breach in our security.”
    “If the fog had actually corrupted , it would have been. She knows the difference between a hollow eucalypoon mist that’s floated loose and a break in the fog curtain.”
    Mathias swatted a swatch of green off his shoulder. “They look similar and it was quite a large mist cloud, taller than either of us and twice as wide. She can be annoying, but sometimes you just have to overlook it.”
    “And that is why you govern and I protect,” Callan pointed out. “I don’t have your patience. Where’d you send her?” 
    “To check on the prisoners.”
    Callan chuckled. Etoi hated guard duty. She’d probably sneak off and find Zilya to gossip with, but he didn’t care as long as they were both out of his hair. “What are you going to do about the captives? We can’t keep them without feeding them, and we don’t have enough food to share.”
    “I don’t know.” Mathias sounded weary and not from just the trek to check on their defenses.
    Callan offered, “In her usual bloodthirsty way, Zilya suggested we stake out that Tony as croggle bait.” 
    Mathias’s lips quirked at that. “She does have a homicidal streak.”
    “I do, too, when it comes to TecKnati,” Callan admitted, though he’d never kill in cold blood. That would put him on the level with his enemy, lower than scum on the bottom of his boot.
    “You would execute someone without a fair judgment?”
    “No, but we’re at war and many of ours have died. If you’re right and there’s no sanction happening back home, SEOH owes us TeK deaths in return for the children we’ve lost. It’s the treaty. It’s the law . Right?”
    “Believe me, I’d like to personally enforce that law if we could use it specifically against SEOH,” Mathias muttered.
    The dire sound of his tone caused Callan to poke at him. “And here I thought only