Fatal Circle Read online

  To spare Nana’s knees, I’d promised to have the dining room renovated into a downstairs bedroom and add a bath. However, if, as a member of the lucusi or as the Lustrata, I was going to have pow-wows around my table with any regularity, not having this space might be a problem. Maybe I’ll ask Xerxadrea to teach Nana that mist-magic thing.

  About that time, Nana, Beverley, and Ares came down from the second floor. Herding the Great Dane puppy out the front door to do his morning business, I stopped them there in the hall and asked, “I thought you two were going to sleep in today?” Last evening Beverley had been kidnapped by fairies. They had tried to kill her, but Menessos’s quick action had saved her. To me, kidnapping and attempted murder were definitely grounds for a day off from school. “How about we call the office and say you have a tummy ache from eating too much candy? Then you can stay home.”

  “But I want to go.” Beverley’s smile was bright.

  Before I could even try to dissuade her, Nana assured me, “We talked about it upstairs.” She was trying to see into the dining room; the chatter was drawing her attention.

  “I won’t say anything to anyone, Seph,” Beverley chimed in. “I promise.”

  Beverley was dressed and ready. Insisting she skip school would sound ludicrous, so I let it go. Ares came back to the door. I let him in and held his collar so he didn’t take off and knock little old witches from their chairs. “All right,” I conceded to Beverley. “Take Ares to the garage and feed him so he doesn’t bother our guests, please.”

  Because Beverly kept saying “kibble,” the growing-into-a-behemoth animal allowed the child to guide him down the hall and past the strangers he unmistakably wanted to sniff.

  Taking Nana to the dining room through the living room, I said, “Nana, perhaps you’ll remember Xerxadrea?”

  “It has been a long time, Demeter.” They shared a polite word or two. Then, “If I may introduce the rest?”

  “Please do.” I remembered their names, but allowed the Eldrenne to continue the introductions because I wanted to gauge Nana’s reaction to Lydia.

  Xerxadrea indicated the high priestesses as members of her lucusi, then lastly said, “And this is Lydia Whitmore.”

  Until then, Nana had been consummately playing the crotchety old crone with a bit of elderly befuddlement, busily digging her cigarette case from her robe pocket, giving the effect of barely listening, fostered by halfhearted nods as each name was spoken.

  But at Lydia’s name, she stilled. Slowly, stiffly, Nana turned. She squinted as if her eyes were going bad, but they weren’t. This was her expression of contempt. It was usually reserved for the mention of nursing homes, bingo, and antismoking laws.

  The painful silence wore on, as fragile as a soap bubble.

  “Hello, Demeter.”

  Nana lifted a cigarette to her lips and lit it without taking her stern stare from the last-arriving guest. She took a drag and, from the corner of her firm-lined mouth, blew smoke at the ceiling. I was convinced that just then she could have chewed up tin cans and spit out nails.

  “Lydia Whitmore,” Nana whispered, not having removed the cigarette, “is speaking to me?” Her whisper was a lit fuse. A short one. “After fifty-six years?”

  Lydia stood slowly. “I’ll go.”

  Nana jerked the cigarette from her lips and gestured with it as she spoke. “Oh, no, Lydia, sit! Stay! Eat the food from my granddaughter’s table.” There was sarcasm and a threatening, seething rage in her gravelly voice. Nana shuffled into the kitchen, glaring at Lydia all the way.

  A second later, I followed, speechless.

  Because Beverley was standing at the counter eating, I didn’t ask Nana the obvious. The kitchen was filled with the smells of breakfast, and Johnny was moving pancakes onto a platter. To the kid’s delight, he flipped one through the air to land on her plate.

  In minutes, all the food was ready and Johnny shoved a platter of scrambled eggs at me. He lifted the other serving dishes, piled with pancakes and sausage links, and headed to the table with a nod for me to follow. As he placed them before the wowed assemblage of witches, he swiped a hotcake from the top and rolled it around a link. “I’m going to run Beverley to school.” He bit into the food even as he left the room. “I’ll be right back,” he added from the hallway, just before the two of them went out.

  “Thank you,” I called, glancing at the clock. It was eight-twenty-five already. The sunrise was so late in the fall!

  He’d gotten me out of the kitchen and back to my guests, but I was a hopeless hostess. I didn’t know what to say or do. Apologize to Lydia? Apologize to Nana? Around me, the women were filling their plates and digging in. They weren’t waiting for me to fix something; I hadn’t done anything wrong. “Sit down, Persephone. Eat with us,” Vilna-Daluca said.

  I sat. I heard the engine of Nana’s LeSabre cough and rev. I should be taking Beverley to school. Already, this was upsetting our routine. While I was sure Johnny had made Beverley a lunch, I doubted he had included one of the sticky-notes from the joke book in the cupboard. She’s my responsibility.

  “Is it even safe?” My voice was soft, but it was enough that the movement and chatter around the table ceased.

  “Is what safe?” Vilna-Daluca asked.

  “For Beverley to go to school today? After all she’s been through, losing her mother and with what happened last night. Maybe she should stay home.”

  “She has the necklace on,” Nana answered from the kitchen. “The fey cannot touch her.”

  I twisted in my chair to see her. “But should she go? Did she sleep? Is she—”

  “I spoke with her,” Nana reassured me again.

  I left the table. My stomach couldn’t tolerate food right now anyway. Drawn to the kitchen where I could be almost alone, I opened up the joke book. The sticky-notes had joke questions on the front, answers on the back. I should have remembered before they’d gone out the door. Such a small detail, but it had become clear these meant something to Beverley. She read the joke to the other kids at the lunch table. It was winning her friends.

  “My life is getting in the way of her life being normal.” It was never my intention to see how much this child could be expected to tolerate, but damn, she seemed to be taking it in stride better than I was. Maybe I’m not good enough to be a parent.

  “Persephone.” Nana’s voice was soft.

  Stuffing my despondency deep down and plastering on an “I’m okay” expression, I grabbed the carafe because it was the only thing within reach. “Coffee?”

  She snorted and said, “Sure,” then came and leaned on the counter beside me. I poured two cups, and neither of them was my favorite Lady of Shalott mug. We drank in silence, side by side, listening to the chatter that had picked up again in the next room.

  Before I’d finished the coffee, Johnny returned. He entered by the front door, passed through the living room and dining room, checking on the gathered witches and inquiring if they’d had enough to eat. They claimed they had and complimented him on his culinary skills. Someone remarked, “Your pancakes are as fluffy as a cloud.”

  “Well, you would know,” he replied, “flying around on brooms like you do.”

  He came into the kitchen and, seeing Nana and me, wagged the empty platters and whispered, “They didn’t leave a crumb,” before stacking them in the sink. “I thought only waeres and teenage boys had claim to the appetite crown, but damn, those seven little old ladies can chow down!”

  “There’s still coffee.” I lifted the carafe again.

  He took it and poured himself a cup. Derisively, he asked, “So what are we going to do about the corpse in your cellar?”

  “Corpse?” Nana echoed, voice hollow.

  “He means Menessos.”

  “He’s here?”

  “Yes.” The chatter in the other room had stopped.

  Xerxadrea appeared in the doorway. “You must make Menessos tell you the truth.”

  “Finally!” Johnny e
xclaimed.

  “Huh?” I asked.

  “I’m not the only one who thinks Menessos is a liar.” Johnny grinned over the edge of his mug.

  “Do not add implications to my words, young man,” Xerxadrea snapped. “I insinuated nothing of the sort.” Though her patriotic velour jog suit was quirky, her formidability was undeniable. “Menessos is many things,” she went on, her voice firm but without the condemnation. “He embodies things you fear, things you envy, and things you cannot comprehend, but he is not a liar.” Before Johnny could protest, she raised a hand and added, “Oh, you can argue he twists facts to suit himself, but what he truly does is so much more than that. He can instantly take all the information he’s acquired and accurately discern which words—and what order—will produce the best advantage for his purposes.”

  “My bad,” Johnny muttered. “He’s not a liar, he’s a manipulating ass.”

  Again, I couldn’t intervene because Xerxadrea was quicker.

  “Omitting the unaccommodating words doesn’t make him a liar or an ass. It makes him a master.” She pointed at Johnny. “Perhaps you would learn a few things if you would but try to see beyond your own conflict, and see his.”

  Johnny’s silence couldn’t disguise the fact that he resented her scolding. It was conveyed in his raised chin and rigid spine.

  Xerxadrea continued. “His perception has been transformed by eons of blood. He has worn the fabric of this world for so long it’s threadbare and holds no mysteries for him now. He has mastered the patterns. Whatever moment in time you’re bitterly clinging to and trying to alter … it’s merely a thread to him. He can sever it as easily as he can fray it into a hellish and frantic existence for you. Or he can reweave that thread, making those seconds produce an outcome to fit the necessary and inevitable truth he uniquely sees, and it is that truth of which I spoke.”

  She gestured to me, and held out her arm.

  “Take me to him, Persephone. We must speak with him privately, you and I.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Being that she was an Eldrenne, I didn’t argue with her or point out that talking with a vampire during the day should be impossible. She’d have a way around it or she wouldn’t have suggested it. So, though I shared a glance with Johnny, I simply obeyed. As I led Xerxadrea carefully off my porch, Ruya cawed softly. Xerxadrea whispered back something I couldn’t understand.

  “He’s locked himself in down there, Xerxadrea.”

  “I can tend to that.”

  So could I, but she was the one wanting in, so I’d let her do the unlocking.

  At the cellar door, we halted. While the clouds overhead warned a cold rain could fall any second, I could feel his presence like a warm summer sun kissing the skin of my chest.

  Xerxadrea’s strange eyes shut and her hand rose before her, gnarled old fingers quavering as she mimed feeling along the underside of the door. Her face pinched up, and she whispered a single, sharp word. I felt a snap of ley power just as she sliced through the air like a sideways karate chop.

  She nodded at me. “Now.”

  I threw open the newly unbarred door then reached for her arm, but she had mist drifting around her ankles. I held back while she glided down the precarious steps. I followed, seeing the strange vapor dissipating when her feet safely met the cellar floor. Nana definitely needs to know that trick.

  I jerked the pull chain on the overhead bulb. Menessos had lain in the spare cage to die. He was utterly still.

  Xerxadrea approached him, pausing at the open door. I watched, guessing she would tap the ley line to somehow make the vampire awaken in the day.

  “You found her,” Xerxadrea said grouchily.

  Menessos sat up. “And before you did.” He stood, brushing straw from his tailored suit.

  I was shocked. My senses had not detected her tapping the line at all. I hadn’t heard her whisper magic words or anything else. Maybe she’d multitasked when opening the door.

  “She’ll give me the hanky back and I’ll transfer Ruya to you.”

  He exited the kennel and placed his hands lightly upon her frail shoulders. “That bet was made decades ago! I demand no payment. You need Ruya now.” He tenderly stroked her white hair and part of her long braid. “I named her as the prize only to hurt you, then. And now I have no interest in hurting you.”

  “Your wounds have healed better than mine,” she whispered.

  “Which is why there is no need to hurt you now. I am … sorry, Xerxadrea.”

  They had a bet about finding the Lustrata? And the hanky was a means for him to collect his winning? “You outed me as the Lustrata to her during the Eximium?”

  Xerxadrea spoke over her shoulder. “I didn’t know which contestant it was. At first.” A thought seemed to occur to her. “I told you he fancied me once, as he fancies you.”

  I’d thought she had been implying they were lovers or that he’d wanted her for his court witch. I’d mistakenly believed her lofty position in WEC signified her resistance to him. That wasn’t what she’d meant at all. “He thought you were the Lustrata.”

  “Long ago,” he said, caressing her wrinkled cheek.

  “Better you than me, Persephone.” She turned back to Menessos. “I wagered and I lost. Promise you will be good to Ruya.”

  “I burned the hanky, Xerx.”

  “Why?” she demanded.

  “I didn’t want to risk the fairies claiming it.”

  Xerxadrea pulled away from him. “That was an accident.” For the first time since I’d met her, she sounded as old as she truly was.

  “I know.” His tone was gentle, blameless.

  Xerxadrea made no reply.

  Into the silence that had enveloped us, I asked, “How did those fairies come to be bound to you?”

  “It is a very long story.”

  “I’m patient.” That was a lie, but he was going to tell me, one way or another.

  “Do you know the story of the curses in the Codex?”

  “Yes. Una was a priestess who had two lovers. Some new guy came to town telling of another god, fell in love with her, then cursed the three of them when she wouldn’t have him.”

  “There’s much more to it that was not in the Codex. Una and her lovers sought a way to break their curse,” he said. “With their magic, they searched—” He stopped, obviously looking for the right words to explain something I probably wasn’t going to understand anyway. “They searched various astral planes and eventually discovered the fey race. The fey were seeking a new world to inhabit.”

  “Why?”

  “The fey had made some bad decisions in their own world and were trying to correct them.” He waved it off like a minor detail.

  “Don’t be vague, Menessos. I have a war to stop. What bad decisions did they make?”

  “Truly, it does not matter.” The vampire began to pace. “Una and her lovers agreed to let the fairy-kind into this world—but, in return, they wanted their curse broken. The fey did not know how to take the curse off, but promised to teach the trio higher magic, sorcery. As part of the bargain, the fairies also agreed to protect their magic rites. The four fey royals were bound to Una and her lovers personally—the most powerful protecting the most powerful—until such time as they discovered a way to break the curse.”

  That ancient “curse” had actually resulted in a pair of highly infectious viruses—vampire and waerewolf. The science stole the story’s mystical flavor. I said, “And there is no cure so …”

  “The irony of it all,” Menessos said, continuing with the story, “is that Una and her lovers also had a secret. It was unbeknownst even to them. They were not aware of the full extent of their curses; they only came to know as the years passed. You see, the fey believed their binding to the three would end when the mortals died … but one of them was no longer mortal.”

  “The vampire,” I said.

  The elusive explanation hit me. The question that had surrounded him since we’d met, was answered. I ga
ped blankly at him, thunderstruck.

  Menessos was able to perform sorcery. He didn’t stink like other vampires. Xerxadrea hadn’t used the ley to rouse him when he should be “dead” while the sun was up.

  “You.” I breathed the word more than said it.

  His foot scraped along the cement floor as he shifted his stance, but he said nothing.

  “You were there? You let them in, you—” I could hardly breathe, and my heart was pounding in my chest. “You were the first! And you never … never died.”

  Menessos was still alive.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Thousands and thousands have given their lives to share my curse with me, but none among them know what the two of you now know,” Menessos said.

  It was incomprehensible. Almost. Xerxadrea had said he’d worn the fabric of this world until it was threadbare. She’d said eons. I hadn’t taken it literally.

  “The fairies who were bound to me are their royalty, Persephone. They have sought to break their ties to me as eagerly as I once sought to break my curse. When the witches agreed to use elementals as their magical protectors instead with the Concordat of Munus forty years ago I vowed not to call on them myself. The Concordat had no bearing on me but my promise was a gesture … It helped keep peace.” Menessos looked at Xerxadrea. Something unspoken passed between them.

  Peace. Balance. What I—as the Lustrata—was supposed to bring. One way or another my role was to act as the catalyst through which humans, witches, waeres, and vampires would learn to accept each other and coexist in peace. Not that anyone had told me specifically how I was supposed to do this.

  Destiny sucks.

  Menessos turned to me. “I kept my vow, Persephone, until the night I joined your magic circle to save your friend Theodora. They would have sensed my use of sorcery. They mistakenly assumed it meant I would start calling them again. Now they will stop at nothing to break their binding to me.”