Vicious Circle

Chapter 4

I sat in my silver Avalon, a car bought more because of the Arthurian reference than the gas mileage, and gently banged the back of my skull against the headrest. What are you doing? An’ it harm none, you witch! An’ it harm none!

In addition to following the Rede, witches and pagans believe that what you do comes back to you “threefold.” If you shoplift and harm a store financially, the Fates will see that you’re harmed back in triplicate. If you’re kind and good, you get kindness and goodness back in triplicate. “Pay it forward” isn’t a new idea at all.

I groaned. I was so screwed.

How could I have just agreed to kill someone for money? My next life was going to be a bitch. Talk about karmic suicide.

With trembling hands, I started the car and cracked the windows open. Fresh air helped me think, but the city air stank like a tire shop. I cranked up the radio and drove until the air smelled cleaner and deep breaths helped me feel calmer. By then I was halfway home and had pondered—yet again—the “wære problem.”

The conspiracy theorists were probably right—some top secret military experiment to create super-soldiers using wære DNA had run amok—but no one had come close to proving it. I doubted they ever would. How could the government admit responsibility for the chaos that had followed?

It wasn’t as bad for witches. Outside of fairy tales and the minds of religious fanatics, we were usually seen—accurately—as humans with a different sort of knowledge and the skill to use it. A great deal of what we did was no different than what other humans did—like meditation.

The crisp air had cleared my head. I’d made it a point to know the locations of all the area parks, and I proceeded to the closest one. Taking the blanket and a bottle of water from my backseat, I walked to a spot where I’d meditated before and spread out my blanket. I stepped into the middle, sat, and closed my eyes in the soothing presence of old trees. The sun was warm, though the breeze remained chilly. I listened to the branches rustling, the leaves dropping. Cleansing breath in, out. Center and ground.

Focusing on the music of shade crickets and the lyrics of birds, I popped the flip top on the water bottle and gave a flick of my wrist, squirting a circle of water around me.

“Mother, seal my circle and give me a sacred space.

I need to think clearly to solve the troubles I face.”

Meditation was second nature to me. I could slip into an alpha state as easily as changing channels with a remote. It was just like breaking into the chorus of a song you’d known all your life: you took a deep breath and you sang.

What I visualized, when I meditated, was a grove of old ash trees beside a swift, clear river. My totem animals and spirit guides visited me there. A buckskin mustang frolicked in the fields, but she never came close. I didn’t know her name or why she let me glimpse her, but I knew she was there, and I guessed I’d find out why when I was ready. That was how this place, this meditation of mine, worked.

Today I visualized myself sitting and putting my feet in the so-clear river water. I cleansed my chakras and imagined all my worries and doubts sinking down through me and flowing out of my toes, released into the rushing water.

“Mother, guide every step that I’m about to take.

Direct every thought and deed, every choice I make.”

A flock of geese flew overhead, honking. I wasn’t sure if it was a real sound from the world around my body or just a sound within my meditation.

“Your heart is heavy.”

I turned in the meditation, pulling my feet from the water. A gray-and-tan jackal stood three feet away from me. My current totem animal, his name was Amenemhab. Before he had taken up the role, a lizard named Shoko had been my totem. They changed when I’d learned what they had to teach. Amenemhab had introduced himself a few weeks ago. I knew a life change was coming when the totems changed, so I’d consulted my Tarot. The cards concurred about the change and warned me that it had something to do with Nana. Silly me, I’d been afraid she’d die. Somehow, her moving in with me was almost as bad. “Yes. My heart is heavy.”

After glancing upriver, then downriver, the jackal sat. “You appear relaxed on the outside, although inside you are not.”

“That is true.” Agreeing with totem animals kept the meditations smooth and quick. Denial wasn’t something they let you get away with. I reclined on the soft grass of the grove, feeling my feet drying in the warm air.

The jackal lay down too, his muzzle on his paws, nose pointed toward my head. “What is it that worries you?”

I told him about Lorrie being murdered and about meeting with Vivian.

“Why do you think you agreed?”

“I have a justice streak a mile wide. Even as a kid, I stood up to bullies on behalf of smaller kids and protected kittens from cruel little boys. Convinced by a school counselor that all this was due to my mother leaving me, I found it logical that in some mental way, every time I opposed someone, I was confronting my mother. But teen angst fades, and I’ve gotten over her betrayal.”

Amenemhab gave me an unconvinced look.

“Truly, I have. And now, with the desire to ‘right the wrongs’ still evident, I believe I was born with this programming.”

“Righting wrongs is not a bad thing,” he said.

“I know. I like helping people fix things, especially if I can help them fix things for themselves.”

“Tarot is perfect for that.”

“Right. But people aren’t perfect. Even with the answer staring them in the face, they often can’t take action, or at least they can’t take the right action. Or just won’t. That gets frustrating.”

“Then there are the people who’ve been wronged without provocation.”

He meant Lorrie, but I also thought of another friend, Celia, my college roommate. I had started college determined to earn a law degree. After Celia and her boyfriend, Erik, had been attacked during a camping trip, nearly died, and ended up turning wære, I had seen firsthand just how ineffectual lawyers could be. Nothing was done about it. When the newspapers picked up the story, though, people took action. A campus group was formed to provide valid information about wæres. It helped promote awareness of the dangers of the marauding wæres and publicize facts about the conscientious majority. I realized then that journalists sometimes had more power than lawyers and changed my major from pre-law to journalism.

“Has this desire to right wrongs diminished as you’ve grown up?”

“No. If anything, it’s grown stronger. For instance, last week, some teenage thug cut the grocery line, stepping in front of an elderly couple I was standing behind. I tapped him on the shoulder and told him that cutting wasn’t nice and that the line started behind me. I’m only five-six, and he was like six feet tall and three feet wide. He looked at me like I was a maggot, sneered, and said, ‘Sucks to be you.’”

“What did you do?”

“I calmly put down my half-gallon of skim milk and loaf of whole-grain bread. Hands on hips, I smiled sweetly. I said, ‘Last chance.’ He smirked and asked what I was gonna do.” I stopped, grinning at the memory. “Maybe it was because I’d caught the end of a Stooges show that morning, but in a flash I had him by both the ear and the nose. I walked him beyond the end of the line. He didn’t say another word, though he did a lot of sniffling trying to resettle his sinuses.”

Amenemhab laughed.

“Granted, this trait has gotten me into trouble most of my life. I know this, and still I can’t help but act when I know I can make a difference. That being the case, I should’ve known to offer Vivian my condolences on her situation and get the hell out of her office. But I couldn’t. I’d felt the nudge to act on Beverley’s behalf already, and…”

“Go on.”

“She’s such a great kid. It’s so awful that this has happened, and more so because it happened to her.” It was easier to keep from crying in meditation. “The picture of her from the front page keeps floating up in my mind. The anguish in her expression, the fear and loss, moved me. I have no idea how to get in touch with her, yet I want to call her.”

“What would you say?”

I swore quietly. “I knew you were going to ask me that.”

He laughed, ears perking. “And still you came.” He cocked his head. “So. What would you say?”

I took a deep breath and imagined it. “‘Uh. Hi, Beverley. It’s me, Seph. I miss watching movies and eating popcorn with you. I heard about your mom.’ No. Maybe, ‘I saw the newspaper’ would be better. No, maybe she’d feel all embarrassed and put a wall up before I started—”

Amenemhab cleared his throat. It was a signal. I put myself back on track.

“‘I know how you feel, Beverley. Really, I do. I was…’” I stopped. I felt tears pushing at the corners of my eyes and fought them by grinding my teeth until I’d mastered myself.

“Say it.”

“‘I was left by my mama too. No, no, my mama wasn’t murdered. She left. Literally. But I wish she’d died. It would have been easier to take her absence if I hadn’t known she’d chosen to leave me behind.’” The bitterness of my voice startled me. I stopped talking until I felt control return. I thought I was over all this. It made me angry to realize I wasn’t. “‘I’m left hating her. At least you can always remember loving your mom.’”

Amenemhab did not respond at first, then asked, “What does that tell you?”

“It tells me that I’m drawn to Beverley’s pain and loss because I’ve shared it. I think I can offer her some guidance through this awful time. I want to offer it.”

“And?”

I knew he wouldn’t let me go without admitting it, so I stopped fighting it and blurted, “And I’m not done hating my mother for leaving me.” Damn it.

“Good,” the jackal said. “Now that we have an understanding about the burden on your heart, tell me about this other weight that’s heavy on your conscience.”

The light on the river glowed; the sun was setting here because I wanted to go, to avoid this conversation. My gut was twisting with guilt and realizations I didn’t want. Realizations I had to face, regardless. “I agreed to take Vivian’s money and dole out the justice that other humans won’t.”

Silence. Then, “Your hands are shaking.”

“I think my victim may be a Council member. A High Elder or maybe someone protected by one.”

Amenemhab cocked his head. “Victim? Don’t you mean ‘target’ or ‘mark’?”

Wasn’t he going to lecture me about the Rede? “Whatever. I may be writing my own death warrant.”

“Your fear, at least, is justified. Your pain, however, confuses me. It is not all pain for Lorrie’s death and Beverley’s loss. You also feel pain for yourself.”

I stood, wiped my damp palms on my jeans, and wrapped my arms around myself. “Nana has a saying: ‘Once is a mistake, but twice is a habit.’ I’ve never had much use for most of her sayings, but this one…this one hurts.”

“Why?”

I stared across the field, not wanting to face him as I said, “I’m mentally trying to justify this, but I know that worming my way around the Rede is wrong.”

“Persephone.”

His tone drew my attention to him.

“You are overthinking. If all this is true, if he has killed, then he has already broken the Rede.”

“Me breaking it back in retaliation isn’t right.”

“And what if you are not acting out of vengeance, as the word ‘retaliate’ suggests, but as an instrument of justice?”

I squinted. “Mind-set does not change the action.”

“It doesn’t?” he asked.

“No matter how much I validate this situation, no matter how much this guy deserves it, I’ve allowed myself to become an assassin. Even before the deed is done, the intent to do it brands me.” After a pause, my hands fell limp and empty at my sides. “That’s not who I ever wanted to be.”

The jackal rose too. “The flower sprouts up from the ground when the sun and the rain give the seeds cause to grow. In the right environment, the stem will grow strong and produce a bud that will bloom when the time is right. A rose is a rose, Persephone, and a lily is a lily. They do not choose what color they are or what their petals will look like; they are what their roots have made them. And they can be nothing else.”

A chill crawled up my spine.

The jackal turned and loped away.