Wicked Circle (36 page)

“Lance.”

He groaned exasperatedly and stomped away. A second later, music blasted from his room.

Embarrassed that he would
act this way in front of his grandmother, Eris shoved the cards into a pile, disregarding that they weren’t all facing the same direction. “I pushed him hard. He’s way ahead of his peers, in college at only seventeen. Some days he doesn’t appreciate that.”

Demeter sat back and propped her leg on the chair adjacent to her. “You abandoned Persephone—”

Eris stood abruptly, her chair squealing on the floor. “Mom. Not now.”

“If not now, when?”

Eris stomped over and switched the television off. It was awkward working the remote with her left hand.
I didn’t ask for this.

“Never? If that’s your answer, that’s too late.”

“Fine. You want to do this to me now? Have at it.” Eris flopped down on the couch. The force of the action resonated up into her sore shoulder and she tried to keep the pain from showing.

“
That
is exactly what I’m talking about. If ‘I want to do this to you now.’ Do you think I’m out to get you?”

“Feels like it.”

Demeter hobbled over to the opposite couch. Again, she propped up her leg, using the length of the cushions. “All this self-pity you’re wallowing in—”

“I’m not—”

“Yes, you are!” Nana shouted. “And you’re pressuring Persephone, trying to guilt her into loving you. She doesn’t love you, Eris. You’ve given her nothing but abandonment, and followed that with a guilt trip.”

That’s ridiculous.
“I’m her mother. And I saved her boyfriend’s life!” She had expected her actions would buy her daughter’s love. That her sacrifice
hadn’t simply filled Persephone with compassion and devotion pointed out a flaw in Persephone’s character. Eris had begged Frigg, the Norse goddess of motherhood, to prod Persephone into recognizing that fact . . . but it seemed Frigg was not inclined to aid her.

“Yes. You saved his life,” Demeter said. “And you could have saved your arm if you had gone to the hospital with the medics.”

At those words, Eris’s stomach formed a molten ball.
I didn’t ask for this!
But Eris knew in her heart that she had. No one knew about the countless times she had thought to herself,
I’d give my right arm for another chance. . . .
“The spell needed finishing.”

“It
could
have waited. You were impatient for the benefit, eager for Seph to see you as not giving up. You chose not to go. You chose to threaten Zhan’s life in order to stay and finish. Did you think that would erase the past? Do you think Persephone owes you now for those choices you
freely
made?”

Yes.
The word almost slipped out, but Eris bit her tongue. Demeter was twisting it all around just like—“You’ve been scrying!” That’s where the opals had gone. Her mother had always been perceptive; her scrying ability was unmatched. Growing up with her had been a nightmare. Demeter could use the magical properties of opals to combine scrying with a form of astral projection. This was a skill Eris had never completely understood, but it busted her in lies, skipping school, underage smoking . . . so much more. Demeter could use it to pick up information that was, for lack of a better term, psychic.
She knows. Frigg help me, she knows.

Demeter didn’t deny it. She put her
leg down and sat forward. “You saved a life, Eris. You’re a hero. So act like a hero. Not a martyr.”

Tears welled up and fell before Eris could think to fight them. Demeter sank onto the couch next to her. She squeezed Eris’s hand. “There’s a boy in there who loves you and needs you, and he’s afraid he’s losing you to a sister who’s never been a part of your lives until now.”

Eris sniffled. “He told you that? Or did you scry that up too?”

“Neither. It’s written all over him. You’re not seeing it because you’re so wrapped up in Persephone. I know your daughter. She won’t be pressured or pushed into your life. Focus on Lance now and let her go. I promise she’ll come back.”

Risqué worked by candlelight at the altar table in Menessos’s private rooms. She was unperturbed by the fact that his corpse and Meroveus’s lay in closed beds nearby. Her makeup case was on the floor at her feet. Another case, similar in size but filled with magical miscellanea, was beside it.

Her master had inspected the items she’d brought to fulfill his list. He’d explained what he wanted her to do with them. It was a difficult task, brilliantly plotted and full of risks.

Risks. Perfect for me.

She began,

Necklaces two, I now make,

With spell-work meant never to break.

With carnelians and malachites,

The wearers are stable
in their human hides.

Birch, iron, and silver wire,

This spell will never expire!

Iron lockets open wide,

These I now place inside:

Dragon’s Blood, powdered fine,

Mandrake root, and turpentine.

One dark hair from the Lustrata’s head,

This binding you can never shed.

Vampire wizard’s blood—two drops!

Now this binding cannot be stopped.

Sealed with fire, hot as the sun,

This binding cannot be undone.

Each necklace was placed into a basket. She laid the jewelry carefully, as one link in the chain of each was yet open. Carrying the basket and a bucket with welding supplies, Risqué stepped to the back chamber door. She declared her mortality and opened it without trouble from the spell her master had placed upon it. Still, she felt the compulsion he’d placed. The seal would not keep an immortal from leaving, but it would cause him or her to linger within.

Risqué lit candles around the bed where the two dead shabbubitum lay, then called a circle encompassing Menessos’s large bed.

Crawling onto the bed, Risqué sat straddling Ailo’s corpse. She lifted Ailo’s head, put the necklace under her neck and replaced her head on the pillow. Laying a heavy welder’s glove across Ailo’s throat, Risqué hooked the open link atop the glove, satisfied that it was a tight fit. Donning protective goggles, the half-demon fired up the small torch. Clasping
the link with long-nosed pliers in one hand, the torch in the other, she chanted, “I bind you Ailo to Menessos and Persephone.”

When the link was secure, she did the same to Talto. By the time she had taken up the circle, the iron was cool enough that she could retrieve the gloves that had protected the sisters’ necks. She removed also a few hairs from each of their heads.

Crawling onto the bed between them, she tied the strands together in knots, chanting, “Ailo and Talto, you are henceforth bound to Menessos and Persephone.” When the hairs were well knotted, she dropped them into a thin cotton pouch. She clipped the sisters’ fingernails and toenails and added these trimmings to the pouch. After she cut a fingertip of each and squeezed out blood to stain the sides of the pouch, Risqué left the rear chamber.

She let the candles continue burning; the undead liked to awaken with a dim light waiting.

Returning to the altar, she burned the pouch on charcoal, then gathered the ashes. She put half in a glass vial. The other half she stirred into a lotion she’d made with oil, beeswax, a few drops of water, orrisroot and buckthorn bark.

After lighting candles all around the outer chamber, she opened the door to Menessos’s closed bed. She repositioned a pedestal to be nearer and placed a candelabrum on it so the black tapers could light her endeavors. The glass vial, an ink pen, surgical gloves, a knife, a needle with two colors of thread and the little bowl with lotion from the altar were placed with Menessos, then she undressed and crawled inside.

Sitting atop his body, she opened his sightless eyes and murmured lovingly
as she drew symbols on his forehead. She drew symbols on his cheeks and down his sternum. Still chanting, she drew an ankh on his throat. Donning the surgical gloves, she rubbed the lotion where she had drawn, chanting, “Ailo and Talto are yours to command,” following it with the seething words of a far fiercer language in a voice that was not entirely her own.

What flicker of energy she felt as she worked she believed to be of her own making, and she did not know that a hooded man had appeared in the chamber, standing on the other side of the enclosed bed. She did not know he placed his palms upon the wood and spread his fingers wide. She did not know how he smiled, listening to her.

When the symbols were smeared and all of the lotion absorbed into Menessos’s skin, Risqué clutched the knife. The words of her staccato chant had a dark cadence as she placed the tip of the blade just lower than his sternum. With an ecstatic cry and a flick of her stubby tail, she cut a deep, three-inch line.

Wedging the gash open with the knife tip, she poured the ashes from the vial inside her master’s body. As she sewed black and red stitches into his skin, she chanted, “Sealed within you, their binding will never be undone.”

T
oni’s words didn’t sink in at first. When they did, Johnny’s lungs expelled all oxygen, as if he’d just been kicked in the gut and a terrible weight had crashed onto his shoulders. His bones felt too fragile to bear it.

“I remember the first time I ever saw you. You and my daughter were teamed up for a class project. I’d just gotten home from work, and you arrived shortly after. I’d passed you on the road and thought, ‘What’s that kid doing out now?’ It was cold and night was falling. Then you showed up on my porch. My daughter brought you into the kitchen to introduce you, and I thought, ‘That poor kid.’ You’d walked in the snow in your sneakers. Your jeans had holes in them and were wet from the knee down. Your hair was a mess—it still is, I see—and you barely made eye contact. I set out some cans of soda and a bag of chips and started dinner. You finished off the chips and paid very little attention to the project.”

Johnny’s legs had become gelatin. He staggered into the pew and sat.

“It was a subject she struggled with, and she was frustrated with your half-ass effort. I remember her words exactly. ‘Maybe nothing matters to you, but this grade is important to me, so either man up and help or go home.’ You stood up to leave. As she saw you to the door, I heard her tell you that she was going to do something with her life, she was going to college and needed a good high school record. She
said she wouldn’t let you ruin her GPA so she’d just do the whole thing and put your name on it, too. You answered with a sarcastic ‘Gee, thanks.’ She said you should thank her, because it’d be the best grade in your whole high school career.” Toni shook her head at the memory. “I didn’t like the idea of you walking home in the snow when you’d barely just arrived, but I was so proud of her, standing up and fighting for something she wanted.

“You see, after her father died . . . she’d been lost for so long. But she’d fought above her sorrow and depression, and she had goals again.

“I told her how proud of her I was. She said you were a loser anyway.” Toni tilted her head. “Then the doorbell rang.”

“I came back?”

“You did. You promised you’d man up. I could have cried, because I knew whatever you had at home, it was worse than the wrath my little girl had just poured on you. The next time you showed up to work on the project, you had nicer jeans on, though still wet to your knees, and your hair had been combed. The time after that I gave you a ride home and was appalled at how far you had to go. You said it was shorter to go through the woods. It explained why your pants were wet up to your knees.”

“What kind of house did I live in?”

“A modest older two-story on the side of a hill. It was an odd little place, kind of in a hairpin curve of the road. There were no houses around it, and the woods stretched right up to the back door.”

She knows where I lived.
“What city? What state?”

“Saranac Lake, New
York.”

He shook his head. “I don’t remember. Even hearing it, it sounds foreign.” He paused. “What’s your daughter’s name?”

“Francine. Her daddy called her Frankie from day one, and I always said he would have gotten such a kick out of the two of you, Frankie and Johnny.”

“Do you have a picture of her?”

Toni flipped into the book again, offered him another photo. This one was not from school. It was of a girl curled up in a recliner with a book. She was looking into the camera as if to say,
You’re interrupting a good part.

Frankie was beautiful. Her light brown hair was straight; it hung to her shoulders, and wisps curled lazily under her chin. Her skin was pale, and her blue eyes were like deep seas. “Where is she now?”

“She’s dead.”

“Dead?” Johnny repeated, head snapping up.

“Three years ago, some of her high school friends had come home from college for the weekend. They were about to graduate and wanted to go out for Cinco de Mayo. Frankie wasn’t going to go—”

“Wait, her friends came home? Wasn’t
she
in college?”

Toni shook her head. “She didn’t go. She was hired as a cashier at the grocery and stayed home to raise Evan.”

Johnny swallowed hard.
Evan.
His gaze fell to the picture of the boy.
His name is Evan. . . . He’s . . .

“She wasn’t going to go,” Toni said. “You see, she always thought about you on Cinco de Mayo.”

“Why? Am I Mexican?”

Toni almost smiled. “Not that I know of. Eight years ago on Cinco de Mayo I was
working late. You weren’t supposed to be at my house, but teenagers don’t listen to those kinds of rules when a school project has blossomed into first love. Shortly before I was expected home, you left . . . your usual route of going down the road then crossing into the woods as always. You were attacked, and somehow, you made it back to the driveway and collapsed. That’s where you were when I pulled in. We called an ambulance. You were in the hospital for three days. Frankie was guilt-ridden because she hadn’t known you’d been lying there in front of our garage—injured. She wouldn’t leave your side. They said it was a wild dog or a wolf. It was too soon to do a check for the virus, but they had you tested for rabies and signed you up to get tested for the wære virus before the next full moon.”