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  My shoulders tensed even tighter. “No. I’m not going to announce anything. Just because I’ve come to believe it doesn’t mean the Elders are just going to accept my word. Anyone could make that claim. Simply claiming to be something doesn’t make it true—or you’d have been a mega–rock star a long time ago.”

  He acquiesced with a grin. “You mean I’m not?”

  The glow from the candle warmed the colors of his face and gleamed on the curls of his dark hair. The Wedjat tattoos became less like art and more like shadow.

  “You’ll have to announce it sometime.”

  “Why? Why can’t I just do this incognito? WEC will probably have some test for me to take as verification or to use as a means to denounce me. Or, worse, they’ll examine me like a bug under a microscope. I don’t want that, Johnny.”

  He considered it. “How about we plan to evaluate tomorrow morning, form a plan, and just hit it? With only a few days to consider your strengths and weaknesses, what to do about them, how to approach them, our options are minimal timewise.”

  I nodded in agreement. Trying to keep the subject off me, I asked, “How do you know so much?”

  Johnny tapped his temple. “It’s in here. Don’t remember where it came from and I can’t access my past, but the part that works is filled up with rock’n’roll and the Lustrata.” He shook his head. “I’ve known every minute of every day since I woke in that park, with these tattoos, that I would find the Lustrata. That I would instruct and serve her. That I was … prepared … just for her.” His rapacious, masculine expression stole my breath. “For you.”

  He saw me, and the glistening light of the Lustrata wasn’t dimmed knowing I had a stain. Hoping my eyes shone with as much sincerity as his voice held, I said very seriously, “I hope I can appreciate that as much as you deserve.”

  A boyishly lopsided smile sprang to his face. “I know how you can start.”

  “Yeah?”

  He reached to caress my cheek. “Yeah.”

  He guided me closer as if I were floating like Aquula—

  I jerked away. “Shit!”

  Exasperated, Johnny asked, “What now?”

  “I forgot to tell you! In the grove, a water-fairy came to me. She warned me. Said three other fairies were plotting against Menessos and might strike at me to get at him. That’s who might have been out there in the field tonight.” I started to get up. “I’ll need to ask Nana tomorrow if anything in the Codex could help and I have to warn Menessos.”

  Johnny caught my arm and kept me sitting. “Why do you need to warn the vamp?”

  Staring pointedly at his hand on my arm, I let disapproval show in my expression.

  He straightened and released me, his arm sliding across the back of the couch. Twisting into the corner, he pretended to be relaxed, but his pose was too rigid. “Let the three little fairies do their worst.”

  My head dipped forward. “They’re more dangerous than you think!”

  “Not to me.”

  “They might target me, or did you miss that part?”

  “So we get you ready, I help protect you, and we ignore the threat to him.”

  “I have to tell him.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s the right thing to do.”

  In a flash, Johnny was off the couch, pacing before me. “I get the right-action-for-the-right-reason thing, Red. But this isn’t either! This is nothing but showing obedience to him.”

  “It is not showing obedience, it’s me being me! Doing the right thing. You thought the stain was gone. You don’t trust me now because you know it’s not.”

  “Of course I trust you. I don’t trust him. You’re marked, Red. Still. That’s why you can run so fast.” His arms went up as he figured it out, then his fingers ran over his hair. “Why you smelled the metal of my strings. He is here and he’ll always be here. In you.”

  “Doing the right thing for the right reason is important to me, Johnny. It always has been, and that hasn’t changed. If I don’t act when I know I can make a difference, I fail. I fail at being a good person and fail at being the Lustrata.”

  “The right thing to do would be for you to acknowledge that you feel something for me that’s remotely close to what I feel for you. I’ve asked for only a single grain of sand from you, Persephone, while I’m the whole fucking beach at your feet. You want to appreciate me but your thoughts are always turning to him!”

  What could I say? I stood, walked to a table, and blew out one of the candles. The tang of smoke hit my nostrils sharply.

  Behind me, Johnny continued in an angry whisper. “If you contact him, even to warn him, he’ll find a way to reel you in a little more, manipulate you again. That’s what fucking vamps do!”

  Johnny came toward me, motion fluid and easy. “I saw you take the stake. I saw the pain transfer back to him. He could not dump it on you anymore. He would have if he could have. How can you still be marked?”

  I didn’t want to tell him I chose to keep the stain; he’d never understand how it was bound to the parts of me I knew I would lose if I were free of the stain. “I don’t fully understand it myself, Johnny.” That was true. “Maybe he pulled the pain back to himself to trick me into getting close enough to stake him, maybe he was hoping to thrust it back at me at the last second. …” I let it trail off.

  He let out a long, slow breath. “Yeah. I can see that. But you destroyed it and he didn’t have to follow through.” He ran hands through his dark waves again as he turned and paced away. “Can’t trust vamps. Ever!” he grumbled. His motion turned into another stretch, then his arms fell to his sides, limp. His shoulders were straight, and I admired the lines and curves of his masculine strength—even if it radiated anger at me.

  Turning back to me, he asked, “Tell me the truth: do you have even a little bit of your own will to fight him?”

  He wanted me to say yes, it was evident in his question. I wanted to say yes. But, Lord and Lady, I wouldn’t lie. “I want to think so, Johnny, I hope so, but I don’t know. If what happened when I held the stake that night didn’t ruin the stain, maybe it weakened it, or changed it so I have more resistance. Maybe not. I won’t know until I’m around him again, and I’m in no hurry to find out.”

  The dim illumination of the room added to his mysterious handsomeness, but didn’t reveal anything of how he felt and neither did he. Johnny said nothing more, just turned and headed quietly up the stairs to the attic.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The following morning, Beverley sat at the dinette finishing her cereal. Her hair was in one dark pigtail high on the crown of her head. Nana, playing solitaire beside her, had tried to talk the girl into adding a ribbon and a bow, but Beverley refused. As she rose to bring the bowl to the sink, she asked, “Can we carve our pumpkins tonight?”

  I flipped to the back of the check register I was balancing and looked at its small calendar. It was the twenty-fifth; would a cut pumpkin last a week? “It’s a little early.”

  Beverley giggled. “Demeter said you’d say that.”

  Nana, who remained at the dinette, said, “And then what did I say?”

  “To tell Seph that if the pumpkins start to wilt we can soak them in water.”

  I had forgotten that trick. “If you can correctly spell all of your vocabulary words after school, and recite your timestables, we’ll carve pumpkins tonight.”

  Beverley did a victory dance and said, “Yes!”

  “Go brush your teeth and get your book bag.” Resuming the math chore, I was happy to see the checkbook a little fuller than usual for midmonth. That was one thing I had Vivian to thank for. She’d supposedly hired me to find and destroy Lorrie’s killer and I’d done just that, although not in the way Vivian had expected: it was Vivian herself who had killed Beverley’s mom. A big chunk of Vivian’s half-payment of $100,000 had gone to settle Theodora’s emergency room bill. I’d used some of the cash to buy new clothes and school stuff for Beverley, for Ares’s puppy
shots and accoutrements, for groceries and fuel. The rest remained in the duffel bag wedged under my bed. I hadn’t decided what to do with it. It wasn’t as if I were going to be getting a 1099-Misc to account for it as income. The thought of cutting into the side of my mattress and stuffing the bills in there had crossed my mind.

  I put the checkbook back into my purse.

  “She should take her coat,” Nana said, shuffling the cards. “The mornings are getting chilly.” Fixing me with her you’re-about-to-be-lectured expression, she placed the cards aside. “And speaking of that, how long is that young man going to ride a motorcycle to work?”

  Johnny gave lessons at a music store and also did sales, but that was part-time. His other job was for Strictly 7, a local seven-string-guitar maker. “I guess he used to walk. His apartment is close to the music store and it wasn’t far the other way to the warehouse where he paints.”

  “Paints? He’s an artist?”

  “He paints guitar bodies, sands and buffs them, adds the electronic parts, and solders them.”

  “He’s going to have to put that motorcycle away soon.” Nana’s surprise had faded into nonchalance a little too quickly. My suspicion piqued when she asked, “Does he have a car?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Guess he may have to move back to his apartment when the weather gets worse,” she said.

  My heart gave a little pang when she said that. I did my best to keep any reaction off my face. She was digging as carefully as a paleontologist, but she wasn’t going to find a bone to pick this morning.

  After dropping Beverley off at school, I drove to the local choose-your-own pumpkin patch and strolled about. Though I had a few already, none were big enough to carve. After finding three large carving pumpkins with good shape and color, I searched for some of different sizes. I liked the oddly formed ones; they had character. The bright morning sun made the orange globes look so pretty, I knew that against the green grass, flanked with the burnt yellow of dried fodder-shocks, it would be beautiful.

  Stabbing and gutting pumpkins and gouging designs in their hulls promised to be a constructive way to expend some nervous energy. It would be both time consuming and a good way to avoid Nana. She clearly intended to ask me questions that made me uncomfortable and follow up by expressing all the reasons I should alter my plans.

  I wondered how much the whole pumpkin patch would cost. But even with a truckload of them, I’d run out of pumpkins long before Nana gave up on her not-so-sneaky inquiries.

  I settled for the three big pumpkins, five mediums, and a bevy of smaller ones. The Avalon’s trunk was pretty full.

  When I arrived home, the motorcycle was gone; I’d missed Johnny. I wondered if he might be avoiding me. Maybe he just had to get “supplies” for our evaluation.

  I hauled the pumpkins to the garage and went in, having to push past Ares—ever an overly enthusiastic greeter and getting bigger by the day. In the kitchen, Nana sat at the table, wearing an oversized shirt of gaudy cabbage roses and brown pants with her pink slippers. It didn’t surprise me to see the binder with the photocopied Trivium Codex open on the table before her. We’d used a spell from the Codex, an ancient book equivalent to the Holy Grail as far as witches were concerned, to heal Theo. Since Vivian had stolen it from Menessos, he took it back as soon as the ritual was completed, but not before clever Johnny had secretly photocopied it.

  Nana had been translating the Codex from its archaic Latin into English, consulting with Dr. Geoffrey Lincoln, the vet who’d helped us take care of Theo and been involved in the ritual that saved her. The doc was more expert in Latin than Nana.

  The coffee smelled fabulous and I realized my usual morning dose of caffeine was late. I pulled my favorite mug bearing Waterhouse’s Lady of Shalott from the cabinet.

  Nana said, “So, I was sitting here, and suddenly I hear ‘Folsom Prison Blues’!” She chuckled. “It was Johnny’s phone singing! Said it was his boss calling. Did you know those cell phones can have anything as a ring? What did he call it?” She tapped the pages before her. “Ringtone. Yes, ringtone. Any ringtone from any song or sound ever. And different ones for different callers, so he knows exactly who’s calling by what song plays.”

  I wondered if he had a special ringtone for my number. What song would he pick for me?

  “Anyway, they got an order for a bunch of seven-string guitars for Germany. Ain’t that rich? Global business, happening in your home in the middle of an Ohio cornfield with not a skyscraper in sight.”

  Nana wasn’t grilling and badgering this morning? Maybe I’d been wrong about her. She wasn’t pressing me about the Eximium. My shoulders eased, tension fading as I savored my coffee.

  “Now tell me, Seph, how are you going to get out of this Eximium?”

  I tried ignoring her, sorted through the grocery ads on the counter. “Asparagus is on sale. Two dollars a pound.”

  “We need to talk about this.”

  “Have you come across anything in the Codex about fairies?” I asked. Maybe inquiring about Aquula would distract her.

  “No. Why?”

  “Just wondering.”

  “Don’t try to change the subject, Persephone. We were discussing you getting out of that competition.”

  “No we weren’t. You were telling me to get out of it. And I’m not. It’s the right thing for the right reason, and nothing you can say is going to change my mind.”

  I’d said it firmly enough that Nana closed the copy of the Codex with an angry flip of her hand and announced she was going upstairs to sew.

  Damn it. She does her sneakiest thinking when she’s quilting.

  I went about my normal routine and parked myself in front of the computer. Email, the first order of business, turned up a message from WEC with Eximium as the subject:

  Congratulations Persephone Alcmedi on your recent nomination to the Venefica Covenstead High Priestess Eximium.

  A nomination is a high honor and we expect your performance in this contest will prove your skill and potential. We always receive numerous inquiries as to the best way to prepare for an Eximium, but we can offer no advice except to be physically, mentally, and magically ready for any challenge.

  The Elders overseeing this Eximium look forward to meeting you.

  We expect you to arrive this Saturday at least one half-hour before the dawn.

  Blessed Be.

  While the physical training session I’d been looking forward to would keep my energy level up and work my concentration in ways that I hadn’t in a while, I wondered what Hunter Hopewell would be doing to prepare. Surely nothing that promised to chip her nail polish.

  That led my thoughts back to Nana calling me a bully.

  Defiantly promising myself that I could beat Hunter Hopewell in nonphysical ways, I got out my Book of Shadows and studied gemstones and their correlations with herbs. I reviewed poppets, runes, and astrology. By then, my coffee was cold. I dumped it out and poured myself a fresh cup.

  As I resumed my seat, the computer beeped. I had a new email. It was a revision request from Jimmy Martin, the editor for my “Wære Are You” column. Newspaper deadlines are forever tight, so I immediately tended to it, then did some preliminary Web research for the follow-up piece and left myself sticky notes.

  Thinking about wæres, however, turned into thinking about Johnny and daydreaming about his hard, lean body and how sparring with him might lend me some insight into what other kinds of physical exertions with him might be like. And I was more disappointed than ever that he’d been called away to work.

  Before I knew it, Nana was rambling in the refrigerator and making herself a scrambled egg sandwich as lunch. The day was getting away from me.

  I went outside with my broom and reset my perimeter wards so they included the bulk of the yard as well as the house. That done, I put my broom away and carried my Book of Shadows upstairs. As I passed Nana’s room, I noticed she was working with shiny green fabric. Not the type
of material she normally uses on quilts.

  Then I noticed a pattern package on the floor: Beverley’s Hallowe’en costume. A mermaid.

  Without stopping or commenting, I proceeded to my room and put my Book of Shadows in its place, but my thoughts had returned to Aquula’s warning. I still had to do more than protect myself. I had to warn Menessos. And I remembered the contact information included in the documents about the painting.

  Aha! Though I wasn’t about to call and leave a message, I could email him and not have to get anywhere near him.

  I wrote and rewrote the email a half-dozen times to be sure it was as sterile and to the point as it could be. Cursor on the send button, finger poised to hit the mouse, I re-read it one last time:

  A fairy of your acquaintance, Aquula, paid me a visit. She warned me that a certain three others of her kind are plotting against you. I thought you should know.

  Persephone

  I clicked the send button.

  I had no idea how often he checked his email—and for some reason imagining Menessos logging in to check email seemed ridiculous to me. He couldn’t possibly get it until nightfall, but that wasn’t my problem. I’d warned him. Even if my conscience murmured that I was taking the easy-cheesy way out, I’d done something.

  Beverley had accomplished her spelling and math goals so we set up the folding table in the garage, covered it in newspaper, and were just placing chairs around it when Johnny arrived. He slipped into the bathroom before I even saw him, and when he came out he was wearing a long-sleeved thermal tee, sweatpants, and sneakers. All of it was black, of course, even his socks, but seeing him in sweatpants made me think …

  When we’d done the spell to heal Theo, I’d had to rummage through everyone’s suitcases to find clothes to take down to the kennel in the cellar. The wæres had all taken wolf form and when morning came, they’d need human clothing. I remembered that there were no undies in Johnny’s suitcase. Come to think, his laundry never included them either.