Fatal Circle Read online

  “So you’re confirming our suspicions that these fairy royals are devious geniuses. They did all this—invading witch turf, kidnapping Beverley, trying to steal the handkerchief—in order to involve the witches. Why?”

  “To get them to hand me over. If the witches don’t comply, the fairies will start a war.”

  “Why would they need the hanky, too? I mean, the other actions were enough to ensure their warmongering.”

  “If they couldn’t succeed through their outwardly manipulative ways, then”—Menessos spread his arms then let them fall—“with enough of my blood, they could try to succeed through covertly manipulative ways.”

  Xerxadrea cocked her head oddly. “Or perhaps it was simply opportunity. The hanky … the fairy attacked me searching for it.”

  “True,” I said. I’d witnessed it.

  “Oh my. He didn’t attack me and accidentally find something he could take advantage of. He was actively hunting for that hanky. He knew it existed.”

  My breath caught.

  The fairies shouldn’t have even known.

  “How?” Menessos demanded, voice tight with rage.

  “Someone at the Eximium must have told the fairies,” she said. “Among the contestants or Elders, there is someone in contact with them, someone we can no longer trust.” She made a fist. “We need to find out who. We cannot afford an inside menace.”

  “Xerxadrea, we weren’t to speak of the details of the Eximium. Blood was taken from each contestant to seal the spell. That can be used to find out who is talking about it.”

  “That I will do.” Xerxadrea’s mouth formed a thin, hard line.

  “I will have Goliath investigate, as well,” Menessos interjected. “He will find out who has betrayed us and silence them permanently.”

  “Hold on, Menessos,” I said. “Let the witches handle this. They have the means to do so through the blood seals. Goliath doesn’t.” Goliath Kline was, among other things, Menessos’s second in command and head of security.

  “She is correct, Menessos,” Xerxadrea said. “Moreover, with the bloody cloth gone, that threat to you is destroyed. The threat remaining within our ranks is to Persephone … and to those she must protect.”

  Beverley. Nana.

  Menessos tilted his head and raised one walnut-hued brow. “If the threat to her is in your ranks, perhaps she’d be better off in mine.”

  Xerxadrea considered it for a moment and then started nodding her head. “Now there’s an idea.”

  Uneasy, I looked first at one then the other. “What?”

  “Erus Veneficus,” Menessos said.

  I knew “Erus Veneficus” meant “Master’s Witch.” Some witches became servants of vampires, but doing so didn’t go over well with WEC because their loyalties were indisputably divided.

  “Yes,” Xerxadrea repeated. “It would force the council to cut her off.” That sounded like a very bad thing to me. “And it would reinforce the idea that you are the master, not her.”

  Menessos shot me a surprised look.

  “Yeah, I told her.” Then I asked Xerxadrea, “Why is it important to reinforce that?”

  Though I asked Xerxadrea, Menessos answered. “If we show the world that you serve me, and make even the fairies believe it, they will think I commanded you to kill Cerebrosus and blame me.”

  “Okay. Not that I’m not grateful to have them pointing their little fingers at you instead of me, but what difference does that make?”

  “To kill any fairy royalty is punishable by torture and death.”

  “Torture and death?” Cerebrosus was bound to Menessos. He was a royal. I killed him! “Oh, hell.” My gut went so cold.

  “Exactly.”

  “Going after you, Persephone, doesn’t give them what they truly want, but they’ve already used you once to put WEC in the middle,” Xerxadrea said. “If we use you, too, then the negotiations will go much easier for the witches.”

  “How so?” I didn’t like being used once, let alone willingly signing up for a second go-round.

  “What they want is me, truly dead, in order to release them from their bonds,” Menessos said. “They’ll jump on the chance to demand that WEC turn me over to them.”

  “And WEC can pressure her to deliver you in order to gain the council’s favor as the Lustrata.” Xerxadrea’s expression was delighted. “This will work.”

  “Hold on,” I said to the Eldrenne. “I’m not going to deliver Menessos to fairies who will kill him!” I turned to the vampire. “Hell, Menessos, just let them loose. Sever the binding and let all this be done!”

  “If it were that simple, I would have done so already.”

  I’d had the option to be unbound from Menessos—and chose not to be. Fear rose up like a hand around my throat. The words croaked out, “Why isn’t it that simple?”

  “They are bound in my life, Persephone.”

  As I began to feel that there was no way out of this, my panic exploded. “My life was bound to you, initially. Just do what I did—”

  “Persephone!” His soft voice calmed me. “You clung to who you are, Persephone. You couldn’t pay that price,” Menessos said. “What makes you think I can?”

  The hammer of realization finally hit. Inverting the binding would simply mean the fairies would sever it by killing Menessos. I was his master, but my ignorance showed just how unready I was to truly fill the role. I struggled to cage my fear and tuck it away somewhere deep.

  Menessos gripped my arms, a soothing gesture, sincere and innocent, but my shields were down. At his touch my body resonated and filled with warmth as if syrupy sunshine were pouring into my bones. My soul answered: mine.

  “Their deaths would sever—” I didn’t finish the sentence as I realized what that meant. “Aquula.” Menessos nodded solemnly. The mermaid fairy had acted to aid me and she was in love with Menessos. I couldn’t kill her; I couldn’t ask someone else to. Even to keep Menessos alive. My teeth clenched.

  “Persephone.”

  “No,” I said, resolute. I drew Menessos into my arms wishing I could protect him as easily. “I cannot let them take you from me.”

  Menessos savored my embrace triumphantly. I felt as if some piece of me that I’d become accustomed to having absent had just been replaced. We fit together so comfortably—

  “I am flattered you are so eager to protect me,” he whispered.

  Xerxadrea, who’d been quiet for the last few minutes, interrupted. “Come, Persephone. It is time we went above.”

  Menessos slipped out of my arms and returned to the kennel, to resume pretending he was dead. Or maybe it was true sleep he sought. He’d been up all night. This was the schedule he normally kept.

  With the cellar door shut, I led Xerxadrea around the house. She whispered, “We have to make a good show of this for my lucusi. I trust you understand your part.”

  “I do.”

  “He must make you his Erus Veneficus as soon as possible. You must leave this place to convince the fey.” She was speaking and moving hurriedly, as if in an angry huff. “And tell him he must contact the media and have them cover it.”

  “Why make it public?”

  “It gives us cause to publicly separate ourselves from you.” We started up the porch steps. “Using the media always makes things more convincing.” With a flick of her wrist she sent both of my doors slamming open. “You are henceforth ostracized!” she shouted, and pulled away from me as she entered the house. “Witches! We are leaving.”

  The chatter in the house ceased. Johnny’s footsteps sounded in the hall. Nana was on his heels.

  “Everyone must sever their ties to you now, Persephone,” Xerxadrea said irritably. “Everyone!”

  “But she’s the Lustrata!” Johnny countered, coming to my aid.

  “Perhaps,” Xerxadrea snorted. “But no witch of such lofty acclaim would sully herself as an Erus Veneficus!”

  She fixed her filmy eyes on me; I shivered and could not speak, even to m
ake a show of defending myself.

  “That vampire has a hold on you, a grip crushing tight! I believe you can fight free of it. Because of that, I will hold the Council back for as long as I can to give you time to make that fight. They normally put an EV under the Faded Shroud, but with you claiming to be the Lustrata they will not be easily pacified. My guess is they will call for you to be Bindspoken, child.”

  The lucusi were filing out between us, reclaiming their brooms and stepping off the porch.

  “Of course, once Menessos is destroyed,” Xerxadrea added, “there will be redemption.”

  “You’re afraid, aren’t you, sorceress?” Nana’s defiant, don’t-argue-with-me tone made everyone take notice. “And I know why. Facing the fey—the very creators of your beloved sorcery—you’re sure to lose. That would be too humbling for the likes of you.”

  For an instant Xerxadrea smiled; then the smile faded and she didn’t back down. “This must be, Demeter. And well your eyes know it. Even you will separate yourself from her before this is over.”

  “If your skills aren’t good enough to keep you from running away at the first sign of difficulty, you’re not worthy to stand in the presence of the Lustrata, let alone stand in her home and partake of her hospitality.” Nana waved her arms as if shooing a bunch of clucking hens. “I’d make you retch up your breakfasts if it wouldn’t make a mess. Out. Out!”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Nana’s rage was frightening, but as I sank onto the couch all I felt was numbness. Not only was I on the brink of a war, my best allies were cutting me off. I understood what was being done, and why, but still my stomach was twisting into knots that cut off all emotion.

  “Pretty convincing, don’t you think?” Nana was beaming. Smoke, left in the wake of Xerxadrea and company’s departure, swirled around her head like a nimbus of doused anger-flames. “The highlight was seeing Lydia retreat. Oh, I’ve waited years to bust her ass with a dose of reckoning.”

  I squinted at her, confused. Seemed she knew what was going on. But how? “Are you scrying again?”

  Before she could answer, Johnny interrupted. “Red, she said Menessos had a crushing hold on you.” Johnny was more sober; he’d bought the act.

  The protrepticus buzzed in my jeans pocket.

  I’d forgotten all about it. A dead cell phone turned into a magical device powered by my aural energy, it connected only to Xerxadrea and her lucusi via a spirit who lived inside it. In life, the spirit had been Samson D. Kline, the defunct Southern Baptist preacher and the brother of Menessos’s next in command, Goliath Kline. As the ever-changing ring tone sang through the denim I recognized “Renegade” by Kansas.

  Thunder rumbled in the distance and the rain began to fall. Taking the song and the rumbling sky as conclusive evidence I was about to get angry—Sam always pissed me off—I snapped the phone open. “What is it, Sam?”

  “You played that perfect!” He laughed so hard that even on the little screen I could see his stomach flab jiggling like Jell-O under his light blue polyester suit.

  “Played it?” Johnny joined me on the couch, leaning to see the screen.

  Sam smoothed his bad Donald Trump comb-over and went on. “Xerxadrea is very pleased.”

  “Like we give a shit about whether or not she’s happy!” Johnny spat. “After what she just did.”

  I put my hand on his arm. “She’s cutting me off but it’s not because of Menessos. It’s to protect me. There’s a possible inside threat.”

  “A possible inside threat?” Johnny repeated.

  Nana’s beam turned quizzical.

  I explained what had happened in the cellar the night before, although I left out exactly what Johnny and I were doing when Menessos showed up. “The hanky Menessos burned represented a blood oath he had made to Xerxadrea at the Eximium. Someone who knew of that hanky told the fairies about it. That someone had to have been present at the Eximium. It could be a contestant, or it could be one of the Elders—two of them are in her lucusi. This ‘mole’ may intend to do more damage, so cutting me off from the group protects me from that possibility.”

  Samson loosened his tie even further. “It is not a ‘possibility,’ the danger is real. Everyone here will have to cut you off, too.”

  Nana’s rage returned, but this time it was the real thing. One hand fisted and the other jabbed the air toward Sam. “You lyin’ stripe-ed-ass snake!” She pronounced words with more syllables than they were supposed to have. Her declaration was ten times more hostile with a half-burned cigarette still dangling from her lips. “That is not true!”

  Sam’s fingers mimed the motion of making a puppet talk to mock her as she spoke. “They’ll use your safety to compromise her!” He added in a quiet grumble, “You old biddy.”

  “Ha!” She jerked the stub from her mouth. “She knows better than to let worry for an old woman—whose life has been lived—keep her from her task.”

  No I don’t. “Nana. I couldn’t let them hurt you.”

  Johnny stood and paced. “They just put up new wards. And if the gestures mean what I think they mean, it’s above and below as well as around. This place must be safe.”

  “It is safe,” Sam agreed. “While you’re here.”

  “I can stay put,” Nana said.

  With a self-satisfied smirk, Sam hooked his thumbs under his lapels and his fingers galloped on his chest. “But the kid has to go to school. Outside the wards. Five days a week.”

  That made the shoulders of both Nana and Johnny slump in defeat.

  Home school, I thought. But I couldn’t confine Beverley here. That seemed cruel. She deserved a normal life. Normal, for Beverley, meant public school.

  I didn’t want to be a vampire master’s witch-at-court, and I really didn’t want the crap that came with it, such as the risk of being Bindspoken. But even more than that, I didn’t want my family to come to harm because of me. I set the phone on the table, still open, and stood. “I have to go away and be inducted as Menessos’s Erus Veneficus.”

  Nana sank into the chair. “No.”

  “That’s what the old witch said was all the trouble. Why would you go ahead and do whatever that is?” Johnny asked.

  “It means she’d be the witch at the beck and call of the vampire, before all his court,” Sam answered.

  Johnny shook his head. “No way.”

  “Johnny.”

  “She said his grip was crushingly tight on you! He’s reeling you in more! Can’t you see that?”

  My nails raked through my hair. I needed to tell him the truth now. But not in front of Nana and Sam.

  “She will be safe there, in his house,” Samson said.

  “Safe? Surrounded by bloodsuckers?”

  “Safe from the fairies,” Sam clarified.

  Johnny exuded defiance. “How is it safer there than here with the wards?”

  “The vampire’s house is surrounded by asphalt and is made of iron. Two things the fairies can’t tolerate. Here, twenty acres of rural farmland. Fairy heaven.”

  Their conversation was fast enough it kept me from interrupting. Johnny ended it by snatching the phone and smacking it closed. I think he wanted to throw it across the room, but he knew it couldn’t get too far from me. He handed it to me almost reluctantly.

  “It’ll have to be a public ceremony,” I said to Nana.

  “Oh, my god,” Johnny cut in. “He does have a hold on you!”

  “He does not! She said that to make the rest of what she said convincing. If you’ll let me explain it to you—”

  Nana interrupted, “A public ceremony is dangerous, Seph.”

  My head was reeling.

  “Sam just said she’d be safe there. Do you mean she’s not?” I could count on Johnny to jump on any angle that might keep me from Menessos.

  Nana answered, “Not all the Lustrata’s enemies are fey.”

  “Maybe we can use this,” I said, “to draw those enemies out.” I bit my lip, considering. “But Nana, as soo
n as we make the announcement, you have to go to the press and make it public that you’re renouncing me over it.”

  Before she could protest, Johnny did. “No one will care about that! What grandmother wouldn’t renounce her granddaughter when she becomes the Erus-thingy-witch of a vampire?”

  “If the fairies believe we’ve had a falling-out,” I said, “they’ll be less inclined to try any repeat kidnappings.”

  Nana snorted and crushed the filter into the ashtray. “The fairies won’t believe, ‘Oh, I’m so disappointed in her, I never want to see her again.’ It’s too simple.”

  A lump rose in my throat trying to keep me from saying what had to come next. I swallowed down. “They’ll believe it if you out me to the media.” That silenced them both. “The true identity of the Lustrata, to those in the know, will be revealed.”

  “You didn’t want that,” Nana said.

  “Which is why it’ll work.”

  “No.” Nana shook her head. “You’re not just saying, ‘Hey, here’s your chance!’ to Menessos’s enemies and human opposition in general. You’re telling the Lustrata’s enemies where to find you and opening the doors.”

  “But it’s shutting the doors on you and Beverley becoming leverage used to get at me.”

  “That’s too dangerous, Red.” Johnny’s voice was tight. “That could get you killed.”

  “Exactly. It’s not information Nana would give lightly. It should be proof enough that we are truly through with each other. She’s practically inviting someone to kill me.”

  She smacked the arm of the chair. “I won’t do it!”

  “Nana, you have to.” Goddess, I hope I know what I’m doing. “It’s the only way to buy your safety and Beverley’s.”

  “Buying our lives with yours is too high a price.” Nana sank back into the cushiony chair. “Going public is the last thing you wanted,” she croaked softly. “Now you’re giving it up to make yourself a target.”

  Her tone left me squeezing back sudden burning tears. “I’m the one taking action, it should be my risk. Not yours. I’ll give it up gladly because that’s better than you or Beverley getting hurt.” My voice had gotten husky. “The advantage of making myself the target is knowing I’m the target. Believe me, I’ll be taking down names.”