Hallowed Circle (30 page)

“Oh, fuck.” I shut the phone and pushed it away.

Nana squealed, “Language, Persephone Isis!”

Before I could utter a word in my defense, the phone rang again.

Nana reached for it, but I was faster. I didn’t answer it, just frantically turned it over and pushed buttons hoping to make it stop. It rang on and on.

“What is wrong with you?” Nana asked loudly.

“No,” I groaned. “Why him?”

“You know the spirit?”

“Unfortunately.” The phone was still ringing. I shoved it under my legs to deaden the sound. “It’s the spirit of the man who came to collect the stake from me after Menessos helped with Theo.”

“That pompous-ass preacher whose head ended up in your fridge?”

“Yeah.” There was a mental flashback I didn’t need. “Shit!”

“Persephone!”

I whispered hotly, “I vowed to investigate this spirit’s murder and avenge him!”

The phone stopped ringing. My shoulders relaxed some.

“That’s the trade-off you bargained for?”

“That’s what he asked for. I thought that with me being the Lustrata it would be … okay,” I said dully.

“You thought it would be easy.”

“No, I didn’t. I thought it would fit right in with my other tasks.”

“And be easy.”

“I never thought that word!”

“Definition’s the same.”

“Nana.”

“I forget, which one was actually to blame?” she asked pointedly. “Menessos for actually killing him or Johnny for the deception that brought it all about?”

“Nana.” Did she have to rub it in?

She pointed a finger at me. “You should know better! Witchery is natural; it asks the universe to align things as you will. Slow and steady, in good time, laying groundwork for what is to come. But sorcery’s immediacy alters what
is
. Its cost is equally immediate! After the protrepticus is sealed, it’s too late to change the terms of what you agreed to do.”

I sat there feeling grouchy, then, “And what if his own stupid, brainless actions—and attacking a master vampire qualifies—brought about his death? What if no one is to blame but himself?”

Nana just stubbed out her cigarette. I could tell she had more to say—

The phone rang.

This time it wasn’t the twitter of bells. This time it was some rap song about booty.

I flipped the phone open and dropped it on the table, disgusted.

“Hey, now. Not so rough.” Samson stumbled around inside the square display screen. “Holy Moses! You’re sweet as pie at first, but soon as something’s not going your way,
pow,
you go sour as a wet cat.”

That probably was his true perspective, as far as my encounters with him went. “What can I say? You bring out the best in me, Sam,” I replied. Assuming he could see me, I added my I’m-being-polite-but-I-hate-you smile. Rev. Kline had seen it before.

“Women.” He rolled his eyes; but being a spirit, he could literally roll them all the way back so the irises and pupils came up from the bottom. It made my stomach churn a little.

“I suppose your attitude is well earned,” I said, employing a little psychology, “because this is how women have treated you all your life?”

“Not at all.” He smoothed the lapels of his jacket. “Some women in my life were downright nice to me.”

“After you paid them, right?”

“It’s always a trade-off of one kind or another. Everything and everyone has a price. One way or another, what you want always has a cost; what you’re willing to pay for it defines you.”

My fingertips galloped irritably on the tabletop.

“Now,” he went on, somehow managing to make that a two-syllable word, “you’re not the first woman who can’t understand men. And,” I knew as he made that
conjunctive monosyllable into a polysyllable, that he was going to drive me crazy with this diction. He grasped his lapels as if the gesture affirmed his right to analyze me, and finished. “Because of your lack thereof, you default to anger for your responses.”

I said, “If you think starting off with ‘You’re going to rot in Hell, little girl’ is getting things off on the right foot and isn’t something that would make anyone ‘default to anger,’ then I think it’s you who needs the lesson on understanding people, Sam. An insult and a veiled threat is always wrong.”

“I’m a preacher, Ms. Alcmedi. Telling people the status of their soul is my job.”

“Not anymore.”

He glared at me.

Maybe I should drop the phone in the grove and run like hell, to break the binding. Let the Eldrenne know. Let her make me do another. It couldn’t be as torturous as this. “Why aren’t you and your soul in heaven, Sam? Why are you here in this phone, if your soul was so sanctified?”

Samson laughed. “Already figured that out, girly. The afterlife is different if you’re murdered. And pondering the how-and-why of my being here doesn’t change that I am here and you’re stuck with me.” Glowering, he continued in a prissy tone, “
I
can’t go anywhere. Where you go, I
have
to follow. We’re in this together.”

He was right. Damn it.

“Good-bye, Sam.” I shut the phone and shoved it into the back pocket of my jeans. Nana wasn’t going to be able to keep quiet much longer. I started counting in my head. I got to four.

“Persephone, Johnny stopped in yesterday morning,”
Nana reached across the table and wrapped her warm old hand around my wrist.

Having anticipated she’d go on about the phone, I wasn’t ready for the shot of regret her words left ricocheting around my heart. I stared at her hand, the skin like parchment, and wondered what, if anything, Johnny had told her.

She squeezed my wrist. “He took his things with him.”

Some secret part of me had hoped there was some logic in Johnny’s actions, something I didn’t understand. Just then, that part of me shattered. And I realized that I wouldn’t have been more stunned by Nana’s words if she’d pulled out a gun and declared herself Jesse James.

“Persephone?”

“Good,” I said.

With her other hand, she put the cigarette in the ashtray, then reached into her pocket. She pulled out an envelope and pushed it across the table toward me. “He said to give you this.”

I stared at the rectangle of white. My heart wouldn’t beat; it felt like a cold rock in my ribcage.

Ripping open the envelope, I removed the paper. It read:

Lustrata you are … and yet not.
You’ve come so far!
You are what I’ve sought.

Lustrata you see and are blind.
Your answer won’t be inside your mind.

It’s inside your heart.
It’s in knowing yourself.

It’s inside your heart.
Recognizing yourself.

Seein’ it.
Believin’ it.

You create your bound’ries. Will they be lines?
Lines you won’t color outside of? Do you have a spine?
Lines you can step across? Can you not redefine?
You create your bound’ries. Will they be walls?
Walls to keep you safe within? Locked inside lonely halls?
Walls that must be scaled to escape? Don’t fall. Don’t fall.

Lustrata, you choose the limit.
The scope of your truths and your mental intent.

Disclaim it or acclaim it!
Blame me or reclaim me!

But know yourself … see yourself.
Know yourself … trust yourself.

It’s inside your heart.
It’s in knowing yourself.
It’s inside your heart.
Recognizing your Hell.

Seein’ it.
Releasin’ it.
Seein’ it
… and letting it go, letting go.

There were little marks, chords and notations, to the right of the page. It was a song. It was how he expressed himself best.
Musicians.

Eyes burning, I folded the paper and replaced it in the envelope.

Nana was watching me intently. “You okay?”

No. Nope. Not at all.

I felt the hurt churning, turning. My heart burned and began to beat again. Angrily. Those shattered pieces, those fragmented shards melted and ran together, congealing and hardening like one big scab over a wound I’d never admit having. This song indicated I needed to rethink my perceived self. How
I
saw things? My boundaries were fine; his needed to be reexamined.

So what if he’s supposed to teach me about fighting. I’d find someone else.

I was not about to cry over him leaving. After what he did, why would I even want him around? He
better
have gotten his shit and left. He saved me the trouble of throwing it out by the road.

“Persephone?”

“Yeah. I’m fine.”

“You sure?”

I faced Nana squarely. “Yes.”

“What happened, Persephone?”

“I don’t want to talk to you about it.” I kept my tone even and polite.

“Fine. I’ll do the talking,” she said cheerily. “Earlier, you said the only thing you can’t do is keep a boyfriend. You knew he was gone, or was planning to go, before I gave you that letter. You’re thinking about him, and whatever was in that letter. Am I right?”

I frowned at her. “He went wrong. It’s not fixable.”

She opened her cigarette case and lit another. “I need you to tell me what happened.”

“I already know what went wrong, so
we
don’t need to analyze it.”

She took a long draw on the cigarette. “And?”

“And it’s done.”

“What’s done?” Beverley asked, coming to the doorway.

I stammered. Nana said, “Her column. What do you need, honey?”

“I want to take Ares outside.”

“Stay in the back,” Nana said.

I watched Beverley head for the garage door, Ares fol
lowing closely. “Still wearing your necklace?” I asked.

“Yup. I love it.”

As soon as the door shut, Nana said tersely, “So long as you’re thinking about him, it isn’t done.”

“He left, Nana. Whether or not I think about him, whether I’m glad he saved me the trouble of hauling his shit to the road, or whether I regret it, it’s done.” I left the table and carried my mug to the sink. I rinsed it out, wishing I could wash him from my mind and heart by turning on the tap. I smirked; I could try crying him out. But I hated crying.

“He’s a wolf, Persephone.”

I turned to her. “Duh.”

“So stop thinking of him like a man. He isn’t
just
a man. Even when he’s not furry. He’s still part wolf.” She half-rose in her seat, checking on Beverley through the window. “And not just any wolf,” she added.

I crossed my arms over my chest and leaned against the counter. “What does that mean?” I hadn’t told her about the at-will partial change. Wait—the morning after we changed Theo, he and the other wolves had a discussion that made him uncomfortable. Had Nana overheard? “You mean his maintaining his human sensibilities while in wolf-form?”

Nana got up and shuffled over to open the refrigerator, and started rambling around. “You know so much about wæres. They tell you much and you’re perceptive, you see a lot. But it’s just the surface of things. The surface that the world, such as it is, can accept. They still haven’t let you in. Not with your column.”

“What about my column?”

“You’re helping them. With things as they are.” She set ground beef and vegetables on the counter.

My column created sympathy and humanized wæres despite much of society wanting to make them monsters. “Are you saying the wæres are using me?”

She pulled a deep pot from the low cupboard and a frying pan from the stove drawer. “No more than you use them to make your living.”

“Now wait just a darn minute—”

“Persephone, the time for being naive has passed!”

My jaw clamped shut, teeth grinding tight to keep in the angry words wanting out.

What was wrong with me? Was my anger amped-up from the stain as well? If it was, then all my emotions were affected.