Arcane Circle

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The agents put us in the back of their gray Chevy Impala. The black upholstered seats were clean and the new car smell was pronounced. Into the formal silence that descended as Napier typed an address into the GPS device, Johnny asked, “You guys don’t get anything better than an Impala?”

“No,” Special Agent Brent answered flatly.

Johnny seemed to have touched a sore spot.

The men up front didn’t engage us or each other in conversation so it became a tedious ride. Thank goodness it wasn’t long. Shortly after he turned onto US 303, I knew where we were going. Evidently SSTIX, although a federal agency, didn’t rate space in the Homeland Security offices in Cleveland or with the FBI in either Cleveland or Akron.

When we arrived at the little station, however, Brent glared at Napier. “This is the local law enforcement facility?” he asked quietly.

“It’s the closest one. I called and confirmed we’d be using it as a field station.”

Brent got out and slammed his door.

“He keeps that up,” Johnny said to Napier, “and he’s gonna slam this little bucket of bolts apart.”

Napier ignored him and got out.

In sync, the two agents opened the rear doors for Johnny and me.

Brent wasn’t happy with the rural cop shop. The brick façade was approximately two feet wide on either side of a white, single-car garage door that took up the bulk of the building’s front. The rest was a white door with two full sidelights. The roof peaked in the middle and had a niche. Someone had filled the niche with cement and finished by shoving a black clock into the mortar.

At our approach, the door opened and the part-time sheriff of these parts waved in greeting. He wasn’t much older than me, and he was lean in a bookish way. A scientist’s lab coat would have suited him better than a badge. “Howdy,” he said. “Are you the fellow that called about using the room?”

“We are,” Special Agent Brent said. Polite introductions followed and I learned that our part-time law enforcement was the township mayor’s nephew, Robbie Carter. The only action he was likely to see out here was a paper cut.

“This way.”

We followed him inside, passing through a small waiting area with four dusty folding chairs in it—no butt prints, even. In the hall, we walked past a room with a door where Officer Carter’s desk sat to our right. At the end of the hall were two more doors. The left one, I assumed, led to the garage area where his patrol car must have been parked. The one straight ahead opened into a nine-by-nine room with a table and four more folding chairs. A file and a tape recorder rested on the table. Beyond it was a countertop with a microwave, a small sink, and a tiny refrigerator.

“It doubles as the break room,” Officer Carter said proudly. “I laid out our local forms for you, and the tape recorder you requested. There’s some bottled water in the fridge. Help yourselves.” Robbie let himself out and disappeared down the hall.

“Agent Napier, Mr. Newman, wait out front, will you?” Agent Brent said.

I sat down and dropped my purse onto the floor, feeling grateful I hadn’t ended up in one of those narrow rooms with a one-way mirror. Still, it was an interrogation room: a windowless box with one stretch of overhead fluorescent lighting. On the ride over, I’d pondered several angles to explain how my kidnapping occurred without implicating the Omori or the Zvonul, but I hadn’t come up with an answer. Where had I been held? I was going to have to lie and say I didn’t know, claim traumatic memory loss. I hope they don’t want to examine the knock on my head since it’s gone now.

Special Agent Damian Brent shut the door then removed his jacket, exposing his shoulder holster. From his jacket pocket, he removed a few of those drive-thru packages of salt. He snapped the end and shook the granules around the room.

Have to give him credit for trying to protect his ass from magic. But his information was somewhat flawed. Salt could be used to cleanse sacred spaces, counteract magic in motion, clear old magic away. It wouldn’t have stopped me from starting a new spell and it certainly wouldn’t hinder me from calling on the ley line.

He pushed the record button on the device, checked to see that it was running. After speaking a perfunctory intro—our names, location, the date and time, he said, “There’s a few things you need to know.”

“Like?”

“If you so much as make a move or give a hint that you are using magic, I am authorized to use my weapon.”

“Understood.”

“Secondly … I believe you went to a different grocery on Thursday and bought a cake.”

They had me followed? “Yeah. Didn’t much feel like going back to the Lodi Grocery. What’s that got to do with me giving a statement about what happened to Maxine?”

“We’ll get to that homicide in a moment. You picked up a package of decorated cookies in the bakery.”

“So?”

“My agent bought the cookies you’d handled and we lifted your prints from the packaging.”

“Okay.”

“We also printed the Glass House of the Cleveland Botanical Gardens after Xerxadrea Veilleux’s body was discovered there. A bit daunting that, being a public place and all, but our team has been cataloguing all of those prints this week, and when we got yours yesterday …”

He let that dangle for a several seconds. I resolved not to say anything. Then I did anyway. “So you brought me down here to question me about the incident at the Botanical Gardens, not about the death of Maxine Simmons, as you led me to believe.” I wanted that on the tape.

His little victory made him smile. “We have your prints on both doors exiting the Glass House. No matter what Maxine Simmons claimed, you were there. And we can prove it.”

I thought back. Menessos and I had left through the doors in the mirrored section, where people are supposed to make certain no butterflies have landed on them and are about to leave their protected area. I had touched both doors. Shit.

“Did you kill Xerxadrea Veilleux?”

“No!”

The door opened.

“My client will answer no more questions.”

I couldn’t believe who I saw.

It was Vilna-Daluca.

Damian Brent rose from his seat, hand politely extended, and introduced himself. “You are?”

“Vilna-Daluca Veilleux.” She did not accept his hand, though she did give his extended appendage a look that said she found the notion repulsive. “I’ve been appointed by WEC to represent Ms. Alcmedi.”

My shock had to have been apparent. Not only was I stunned that this self-professed “enemy” of mine was here acting as my defender, but her last name was the same as Xerxadrea’s. Were they sisters?

Brent hadn’t missed it either. “Veilleux? Are you a relation of the deceased?”

“A distant cousin.” She waved off any inference he might have been reaching for. “Come, Persephone.” She opened the door.

“You can’t leave,” he protested.

“Do you intend to arrest her?” Vilna asked pointedly.

“I can. Her prints were found among those at the scene.”

“That’s your probable cause? A public place where anyone can visit? I’m sure you found plenty of prints.”

“And an eyewitness saw her fly away on a broom, through the hole torn in the Glass House roof.”

Vilna opened the file under her arm, flipped through some of the pages. “The report says the officer observed a red cape flapping as someone flew away on a broom. He could not identify this person.”

“She was on TV in a red cape.”

“Circumstantial, Agent Brent. Little Red Riding Hood has been seen on television.”

“Her prints were found on two doors exiting the Glass House. It puts her at the scene of the crime.”

Vilna shook her head sadly. “Young man, she lives here. She could have been a visitor to the gardens anytime. And if your witness saw her leave through the ceiling, why would her prints be on the exit doors?”

Brent sneered at her. “The prints and the witness are enough to place her at the scene of the crime.”

“And the murder of the one person providing her with an alibi will lend credibility to the notion that she was set up. I have many character witnesses who can and will testify to the profound love my client had for the deceased. There is no motive for her to have perpetrated such a crime.”

“Motive? Ms. Veilleux, your client had just become the Erus Veneficus of the Regional Vampire Lord.” His syllables were clipped and curt, voice deepening just enough to make sure we all knew he was getting pissed off. “That’s a position that puts her at odds with WEC, reason enough for an Eldrenne to confront her.”

Vilna-Daluca wasn’t fazed by the anger brewing around him. “Not if Ms. Alcmedi was planted there for purposes of espionage.”

Damian Brent’s face blanked in surprise.

“You’re not the only special agent in the room, young man. And I can assure you that my client did not murder the Eldrenne. If we doubted that, I wouldn’t be here. And,” she added ominously, “neither would she.” She tossed a business card into the air and it flipped and floated down onto the table where it skittered directly in front of him—guided by sorcery. “Please have your people send me the full disclosure paperwork as soon as possible. I have found it is always illuminating.” She may have been old, but she showed him an evil-granny smile that nearly made me shiver. The wicked-witch expression trumped human anger every time. “Good-bye, Agent Brent.”

I followed her down the hallway. Agent Brent called out, “Do you represent Mr. Newman as well?”

Vilna spun, incensed by the idea. “A wærewolf?” She gave him a single-noted derisive laugh. “Did you catch the part about me being from WEC, Agent Brent? We don’t represent wærewolves.” She stomped out.

I waited long enough for Johnny to give me a nod, then followed her.

“What really happened?” she demanded as we proceeded along the sidewalk.

“The fairies poisoned one of their own, a mermaid fairy named Aquula, and killed her,” I said. “Xerxadrea and Menessos were burying her at the Botanical Gardens. After she was laid to rest, the fairies attacked.”

Vilna-Daluca stopped dead. “That’s a very neat explanation, now that you’ve sealed the doorway and the fairies cannot be questioned.”

“Menessos and Goliath can corroborate my story!”

“Vampire words are worthless in a witches’ court.”

“Vilna, I swear to you. The fire fairy was the one throwing the fireballs. Xerxadrea dove in and …” I swallowed hard. “She took a fireball to save me. Then she crashed. She died inside. Menessos had been accompanied by Goliath and we gave him my red cape and my broom, thinking he’d draw off the fairies while we made an escape. Goliath waited until the last moment to buy us time to get out. We took a cab to The Dirty Dog, then returned to the haven.” I left out the part about Menessos mesmerizing a police officer. That was definitely illegal.

Vilna-Daluca shook her head. “A vampire piloting a witch broom alone?” She thrust her finger at me threateningly. “I know better than that.”

“I awakened it to life and commanded it to carry him as he bid that night. It did.”

“Impossible.”

“It did ! Goliath was taught the ways of magic before he was turned.”

She walked away from me, grumbling. I hurried after her. “Vilna! Wait!” I caught up to her just as she was joined by Celeste and Ludovica, who had stepped out of an antique shop. In street clothes the lucusi members could have been average older citizens out for a stroll, but their malign mugs made me keep my distance as I added, “I can’t believe you showed up here. Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me,” she snapped. “I came to ensure I get the disclosure files, not to hear your lies.”

“But—”

“WEC takes care of our own, Ms. Alcmedi, and in this case, that’s the Eldrenne. WEC’s punishment won’t be doled out by human courts. I will see you Bindspoken yet.”

No you won’t. “Vilna,” I said softly, almost pitifully. She said nothing; the gleam in her eyes was pure hate. “Will there be a Crossing Ceremony for Xerxadrea?”

For a split second, her gaze softened. In one blink, though, all the severity resurfaced. “We’ve had it already. You weren’t invited.”

As the three of them marched away, leaving me standing on the sidewalk alone, my heart sank. Tears spilled.

To make matters worse, Johnny was still inside the police station.

Adjacent to the station was the Town Hall, a quaint and tiny brick building with a more formal flavor to its façade. I settled on the steps there and dried my cheeks with my sleeve. I’ll perform my own remembrance ceremony.

Head in hands, I waited for Johnny to come out.

Though Vilna had gotten me out of the station, this wasn’t over. She made me out to be an undercover witch in Menessos’s court. That didn’t seem like the kind of information that would make someone like Agent Brent back off, now that I thought about it. It seemed more like the kind of challenge that would add fuel to his fire.

The chorus of Judas Priest’s “Breaking the Law” erupted from the flannel’s left breast pocket.

I didn’t recall bringing the protrepticus, but I grabbed it with such haste I nearly ripped the pocket. Even as I opened it I blurted, “Sam? How are you doing this?”

“Ha ha ha, little girl. Wouldn’t you like to know? Zhan’s bringing a car. Almost there.”

The light on the protrepticus faded out again.

I pushed buttons. I opened and shut it. I removed the battery pack, shook it, and put it back. The lights didn’t even flicker on the dead little scrap of technology.

A familiar Audi sidled up to the curb. Zhan waved. All I could do was nod and get in.

And wait for Johnny.