Arcane Circle

CHAPTER SEVEN

Stop!” I shouted.

The woman nearest me kept her weapon aimed into the garage as she shouted to me, “You are the Erus Veneficus? Persephone Alcmedi?”

“Yes.” I couldn’t imagine what kind of exchange Nana had instigated to provoke these women, but my Great Dane pup, Ares, was barking his head off inside. “Put your guns away.”

“My lady, there’s a creature in your garage.”

A creature? My jog accelerated into a sprint. The woman who’d shouted at me abandoned her position behind her car door and for a moment it seemed she intended to tackle me to keep me safely back. “Whoa,” I commanded, hand up and out to stop my well-meaning defender. She pulled up short but spread her arms to block me. I demanded, “Let me see,” even as I thrust past her to where I could view the trunk of my Avalon in the garage.

A feathered tiger’s tail swished at the front edge of my car.

At least it’s not Nana causing the ruckus.

“Do not shoot,” I commanded them. “Put your weapons away and stay back.” Walking slowly into my garage, I saw the injured griffon with his beak in the big plastic bin where Ares’s dog food was kept. He’d overturned the bin to get it open. His blind side was toward me. “Hey there …” I said softly from inside the garage.

His head shot up, neck feathers fluffing menacingly. His wings rose as much as the garage would allow. He opened his beak and made a noise like the rumble of distant thunder. It was the griffon version of a growl. “Whoa, there, Thunderbird,” I said softly. “Didn’t you get any deer last night?” I eased forward. His wings lowered a little and he moved to keep the Avalon between us. To the women outside I said, “Get into your car. If he leaves, let him.”

They unhappily obeyed.

For each of my slow steps toward the hood of the Avalon the griffon countered, hobbling to the trunk. When he was clear, he took to the air. I hurried outside to watch; he went back to the grove.

They were sentient creatures of magic. While they couldn’t speak, I was certain they were able to reason and think in ways that typical animals could not. Therefore, I wasn’t worried that the griffons would fly off and eat little children, but I was concerned that they might migrate to a ley line in a warmer state.

Sounds of car doors shutting brought my thoughts back to the sentinels in their Audi that Mountain thought was so terrific. The women were approaching me. The one that had been ready to tackle me was a platinum blonde; the other a lovely Asian woman with dark hair.

Being gorgeous was a requirement to be an Offerling, but they had toned that down with the stern effects of their tightly bound hair. The brunette wore her hair in a low ponytail. I was delighted that she was dressed in a suit of battleship gray with a black silk blouse and sensible shoes. She settled her gun into a shoulder holster. The blonde wore a camel-colored double-breasted suit with a black turtleneck. Her pale hair was in a prim bun.

No Menessos monkeyshines. Yay!

As the blonde walked, she lifted the jacket to put her gun into a waist clip holster. “What the hell was that thing?”

“A griffon.”

“You’re shitting me,” the Asian said.

My expression said clearly that I was not. “Right now I have many unusual animals running around here. Don’t shoot any of them.”

“What else can we expect to see?” the blonde asked.

“In the house is a fast-growing Great Dane.” Who, I remembered, wasn’t fond of Beholders. Still barking though the griffon had gone, Ares clearly wasn’t fond of Offerlings either. “Out in the back there’s … the unusual livestock.” I left it vague.

The blonde nodded, conveying that she was an accept-what-you’re-told-and-worry-about-what-it-really-means-later type. That didn’t mean she wasn’t able to think on her feet. I was willing to bet that, if I had claimed to be Mae West and asked her to set my hair on fire for me, this lady—without losing her unshakable and in-control demeanor—would have simply poured something on my head and told me it was flammable while she texted the higher-ups and ordered a psychiatric evaluation for me.

She extended her hand to me. “My lady, I’m Maxine Simmons. This is Zhan Hong. We’ll check the house, then take up our positions for watch.”

I introduced the women to Nana while holding Ares’s collar as he acquainted himself with them. They must have been carrying some residual scent of things undead, because Ares was unimpressed. I shut the garage door before any more griffons found the dog food, and let the behemoth pup help me clean up the kibble while the women satisfied themselves that no one was hiding under my bed, in my pantry, or under the sink.

I left Ares in the garage and joined Nana in the kitchen, where she was watching out the window. The permits from the manila envelope were on the table; she’d been looking them over.

“About those runes.” It was, after all, my intended goal for the day. “That wasn’t exactly a reading, and it wasn’t for me. It was for Johnny.”

“How so?” Her forehead wrinkles deepened.

“I used Great-El’s slate.” My great-great-great-grandmother had been named Elpis, but Nana had always referred to her as Great-El, so I did, too.

“Lord and Lady, I haven’t thought of that eccentric old thing in years.”

I hoped she meant the slate, not Great-El.

“What were you trying to do with it?”

“I wanted the name of whoever gave Johnny his tattoos.”

“I’m sure any tattoo artist can touch up the scars he might end up with. Look up tattoo parlors in the phone book.”

“It’s more than that, Nana.” I moved closer and lowered my voice, not sure I wanted the Offerling-sentinels to hear. “We’ve learned that his power as Domn Lup was magically bound into the art. We have to find the artist and make him unbind it so Johnny can change at will without so much effort.” I raked my fingers through my hair. “And fast.”

“What’s the hurry?”

In whispered tones I told her about the Rege coming on Wednesday. “So I tried Great-El’s slate thinking if I could tap into his subconscious—some part that remembers—and get an answer, we’d know who did this. We could start searching. Instead, I got some cryptic rune reading.”

Nana stood at the end of the dinette and twirled my note page to her. “That changes everything, and yet … the reading isn’t without truth.”

“What?” I asked.

“Because it came out like a reading, indicating reversed meanings and such, you thought of it like a reading. If you think of them like letters, though … this rune, Ansuz, may look like an F, but its alphabetical equivalent is an A.” Her finger tapped along the row as she mumbled, “Uruz is a U and Mannuz is an M …” Then, more clearly, she announced, “You got your answer, Persephone.” Nana passed me the paper. “You got a name. Arcanum.”