Fatal Circle

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.”

“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 make 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!”