Hallowed Circle (12 page)

“Truthfully, Demeter, I hadn’t thought that far ahead.” He approached her. “With the wards reinstated, though, I guess there’s no worry of that vamp or his flunkie coming back.”

“That vamp” again. And by “flunkie” he meant Goliath, Menessos’s emissary.

“I suppose I could move back to my apartment.” He shot a glance my way to see how I reacted to the idea.

How
did
I feel about it? Goddess help me, I felt
incapacitated by my indecision. I needed to talk to Amenemhab and sort my feelings out.

“Are you tired of my cooking already?” Johnny asked Nana.

“Oh, hell no! I just thought the broken wards were the only reason you were staying. They’ve been fixed for a week now, so it must be something else.”

She
knew,
or she caught the glance, or something!

“Yeah,” he said naturally. “You’re right. I probably should get out of the way.”

“You’re not in the way. Not mine, anyway.” Nana tapped her cigarette into the ashtray, then took another drag, watching me. “I was just wondering if your reason had changed.”

The sound of Beverley’s feet on the stairs came again, this time in conjunction with Ares’s paws as they clamored down together, rumbling like a herd of elephants. It was, for once, a welcome noise. “Gotta get her to school,” I said, grabbing my purse and keys as I hurried out.

I sat in my Avalon staring at the garage. The motorcycle was gone again.

Facing Nana alone, not knowing what she and Johnny might have discussed, made me uneasy. I fully expected her to start in on me again about the Eximium, the stain, the vampires, Johnny, and anything else she might have thought of. She’d probably bombard me with all of it in order to wear me down. Worst part was she could claim Johnny said this or that and I wouldn’t know if he actually had or if she was playing me.

Stay blank. Unreadable. Don’t be goaded
.

I planned to busy myself getting a start on the next column and running errands today. Then I could get to meditation and discuss things with my totem animal and spirit guide, Amenemhab.

I got out of the car and slammed the door.

“I’ve decided something,” Nana called as I came through the garage door into the kitchen.

“What’s that?” Doubtless she had a great plan that I somehow figured into. I walked through the kitchen into the dining room.

There was a pause. I took off my coat, hung it on the back of my desk chair, and then I heard the sound of her slippers shuffling on the linoleum. “I’m going to call my auto insurance man,” she appeared in the doorway, “and have him add Johnny to my policy.”

I refrained from reacting visibly, sat down, and flipped my laptop open. “That’s very sweet of you, Nana.” I wondered how Johnny had reacted to the notion of driving Nana’s old Buick Le Sabre with the AARP sticker in the back window.

“I told him that I thought having him around was nice and that he should stay.”

Her sneaky thinking during sewing must have paid off in a devious and complex trap she was laying for us.

“I said he could take my car to work this winter. If I need to go somewhere, you can take me in your car.”

Aha. That was how I figured into it. Probably safer for other drivers on the road if my hands were on the wheel anyway. “Okay. That’s a great idea.” I started to check my email.

The phone rang. Nana reached for it. “Hello? Oh hi.” Pause. “Yes.” Long pause. “Okay. I’ll tell her.” Pause. “Bye.” She hung up and said, “That was Johnny. He said he’s going to stay at Erik and Celia’s tonight.”

“Oh,” I said.

She headed back into the kitchen.

Shit. Was he mad? Or what?

“Did he say why?” I asked casually.

“No,” she said.

I squinted at her back and wondered if that was the whole truth. She had paused on the phone long enough to get some details.

“Guess we’re cooking for ourselves,” she grumbled.

Nothing important in email. After sorting through sticky-notes with ideas for my next column, I selected one and stared at my little desk statue of Seshat, the Egyptian scribe-goddess, while I mentally considered the points I wanted to make in this week’s column.

I made a good start—so good that the morning got away from me. And, miraculously, Nana never interrupted. No hounding. No browbeating. Nothing.

I got my grocery list, grabbed cash from the duffel under my bed, put my coat on, and left. At the superstore, I gathered my groceries and impulsively added a digital camera to the list. I’d have to get photos of Beverley’s Hallowe’en costume and school events and such, right?

I managed a stop at the bookstore to pick up the national papers so I could see my column in print, and to buy that children’s joke book, before it was time to pick up Beverley at school.

I hid the joke book and put the groceries away while
Beverley did her homework. Then she and I made dinner with the radio on, dancing around the kitchen singing into wooden spoons. We snapped a few pictures of each other and laughed at ourselves. During dinner she told Nana and me about recess with her friend Lily and a science project involving weather.

After cleaning up the kitchen, we went out to finish up the pumpkins.

“Aren’t we waiting for Johnny?” she asked.

“Something came up and he won’t be here this evening. I’m sure he won’t mind if we finish without him.”

I probably would have given more thought to why he wasn’t coming back tonight, but Beverley was eager to handle a knife. That kept me well grounded in the moment. Remembering my youth and my first experience handling an athame in ritual, we had a serious knife safety discussion, then started stabbing into the dotted-lines designs we’d poked into the orange hulls.

When we placed the finished pumpkins on the porch, with tea-lights glowing inside, we oohed and ahhed for a while, congratulating ourselves on the fantastic carving we’d done. When we went inside, Nana joined us for warm cider and cinnamon-pumpkin muffins I’d bought at the store.

“These taste wonderful,” Nana said after a bite. “I bet Johnny could make muffins even better, though.”

Was I being baited? I didn’t know, so I simply replied, “I bet you’re right.”

Nana and Beverley soon headed upstairs to begin their routine. I had a pumpkin-carving table to clean, and a totem animal to consult.

• • •

I went out to the garage and cleaned up the pumpkin mess, folded up the table, and stored it. I pulled a clean rag rug from the storage shelves and laid it in the middle of the garage floor. Squirting water from a plastic bottle, I made a wet-line circle around me and sat down on the rug inside.

“Mother, seal my circle and give me a sacred space.
I need to think clearly to solve the troubles I face.”

Meditation being second nature to me, I slipped into an alpha state almost as easily as I flipped a light switch. Visualizing the grove of old ash trees beside a swift flowing river, I imagined myself walking to it, taking my shoes off, and sticking my toes into the cool water. Cleansing my chakras, I thought about the last time I’d spoken with my totem animal, the jackal Amenemhab, here.

He’d told me I was a big part of the Goddess’s plan. I hadn’t known a Lustrata from an Electrolux at the time and since we were discussing my dilemma with Vivian, I thought he meant the Great Mother wanted me to be an assassin. He even had me wondering if perhaps my absentee father was a killer for hire.

In retrospect, however, it seemed the jackal must have been smoothing a path into the whole Lustrata thing. If I were willing to justify being an assassin in the name of justice, then I couldn’t shy away from being the Lustrata, right?

“Hello, Persephone.”

The gray and tan jackal sat on the rocks beside me.

“Amenemhab.” I wanted to call him M&M or Ah-min, or something shorter and easier to say, but it irritated me when people read my name and called me Percy-phone, so I always made the effort.

He panted, then closed his mouth. One side twitched up in a dog smile. “Never a dull moment with you, is there?”

“Not anymore.” Pulling my toes from the water, I allowed the warm sunshine to dry them.

“Tell me.”

“Johnny and I … well. We …” It was difficult to even imagine myself saying it aloud. “We had sex,” I blurted.

“Oh. And?”

That question could have meant any of a dozen things. Totem animals are wily, and Amenemhab was very effective at getting things out of me. If I hadn’t been feeling so shy and embarrassed about the issue I might have just answered with the first thing that came to mind. As it was, I decided to ask a question in return. “And what?”

“Was it good, how do you feel about it, and is that genuinely why you are here?”

Of course he’d cut to the heart of the issue. Exasperated, I said, “Fabulous, don’t know, and yes.”

“All right then.” He stood and leapt from the rocks to the softer grass. He rolled around as if scratching his back, then twisted onto his stomach and seemed completely comfortable. “Go ahead. I am ready.”

“For what?”

“For either the long story you tell about how
fabulous
it was and why that makes it wrong or bad or difficult in some way, or the torturous version of the same story where I have to ask questions and drag the details out of you.” He crossed his front paws and held his ears pricked curiously. “Go ahead.”

I groaned. How to sterilize the tale and break it down into the most necessary pieces? “It was not like it ever was before.”

“Oh, you are getting very good at this! How so?”

“Multiorgasmic good.”

“Congratulations.”

Being congratulated about a sexual accomplishment felt weird. “Thank you.”

“And how exactly are you trying to analyze this into being a wrong, bad, or difficult thing for you?”

“It was that good because of the stain.”

“Are you certain?”

“When I’ve had sex before, it wasn’t
that
amazing and I wasn’t stained then, so yes, I’m certain.”

“Mmmm. A very effective position to take, if you insist on turning the good thing into a bad thing.” He paused to consider it. “This could be the root of all your problems, you know.”

“What could be the root of all my problems? ’Cause if there is one single thing at the root of all my problems, I’ll get a shovel right now and dig until all the roots are exposed, then hose them down with weed killer.”

Nonplussed, Amenemhab said, “You can see others in black and white, you know right from wrong. You’re willing to make a judgment call and are capable of act
ing on it, but when your notice is not on others; when it is only yourself you must judge; when it is your life, your intimacy, and your comfort zone being scrutinized by those judgmental eyes of yours, the black and white smear until all becomes gray.”

I considered that. He could be right. “Okay. So help me see things clearly.”

“A binding like yours will amplify a libido, but that mark isn’t the only new part of the experience. Your partner was new.”

“You’re right,” I conceded.

“Isn’t there another part of these sexual circumstances that was unique?”

“Huh?”

“Have you ever been with a wære before?”

“No.”

“Have you ever had intercourse in the position the two of you chose?”

“Are you seriously asking me
that
?”

“If you are going to overanalyze something new, then you have to be open about all the aspects that were new. Was it a new position for you?”

“When we started, no, by the end, yes.”

“Hmmm.” Amenemhab cocked his head. “What if it is as you fear? If it is due to the mark? What if it is all of these things? What if it is simply the chemistry between the two of you?”

“If it is the stain, I can’t do that again; if it’s our chemistry, I can.”

He shook his head as if disappointed. “How do you ascertain this?”

“If it’s the stain then it’s controlling me. I have to find a way to stifle it, period.”

“But you enjoyed it!”

I spread my arms. “Enjoyed it so much I’m here.”

“So you won’t repeat something you already did once and enjoyed”—he scratched a paw down his brow and over his muzzle—“because you think the mark might be making it feel better?”

“Don’t be condescending.”

“I’m not.”

“You are. You make it sound silly.”

“It
is
silly.”

I made a face at him.

“Of all the things that have happened to you and changed in the last month, very little of it has been under your control. One thing you can control is your relationship with Johnny. Perhaps you are conflicted simply to exert some control because you can?”

“You’re a little furry to be going Freud on me.”

He sat taller. “You enjoyed sex so much it disturbed you and you’re here. I’m obligated to ‘go Freud’ on you.”