Wicked Circle

“Do you see her?” he whispered hotly. “All that she’s already suffered for you isn’t enough. Because of you, her stitches were ripped. Because of you, she went into the damn river! Fully under the surface! She came in here shivering cold. What if she gets pneumonia? Her wound was open in the river water. What if it gets infected?”

“Lance—”

“Save it. The doctor gave her specific orders, and because of you, all that’s blown to hell. Just leave before you do her any more damage.”

He left the kitchen, plastering on a fake grin as he shunned me. “Hey, Mom, I told Seph she could take the ’Vette. It’ll save them some time. You don’t mind, do you?”

With arms crossed, I trailed him into the dining/living room area. Eris, chewing on a piece of pizza, said, “Not at all.”

I was glad that Lance continued on to his room. I hugged Nana good-bye. “You’re going right this second?” she asked. “Don’t you even want to wash up and eat?”

“I’d love to, but this is critical, Nana.” I raised an eyebrow and hoped she’d understand I didn’t want to say too much. Of course we could easily have stayed longer, but between Lance’s anger and my mother’s inquisitiveness, it was best to leave immediately. Zhan and I could grab some dinner once we were on the road. Then I embraced Eris.

When I stood up, Lance was back. “I’ll carry your bags, sis, and get my hug by the car.”

Sis? He was laying it on thick. He swiped the bags from Zhan’s arms and exited first.

“Persephone,” Nana called.

Please have understood I don’t want to talk about Menessos in front of Eris. “Yeah?”

She opened her mouth, then shut it. “I don’t need to wish you luck. You always work things out.”

Zhan was just outside the door. “How about I drive, Seph?”

I gave her the keys. I’d left it unlocked, so Lance had already shoved the bags into the mini-trunk and was leaning on the car, arms crossed, waiting for me.

“Why did you stop calling her Mom?”

“Because she started with the guilt trip.”

“Well, it is all your fault.”

I’d known this argument was brewing. Resigned to it, I said, “She dove in front of those bullets. I didn’t make her. I wasn’t even in the circle with her.”

“The doctors could have saved her arm if she hadn’t stayed to finish the spell.”

“She made that choice too! Or have you forgotten her threatening Zhan with a knife to keep the medics back?”

He pursed his lips, then snapped, “Saving your boyfriend from a spell or two was more important to you than saving her arm! She did it for you.”

“Yeah. She. Did. It.”

“It wouldn’t have happened if not for you. You don’t have any sense of responsibility, do you?”

I dropped my head down. If you only knew.

He read my lowered chin as some kind of concession. He pushed away from the car. “Get going. Take this.” He shoved something at me. I dropped it and had to pick it up.

He was three paces away before I had a grip on the little book. “Lance.”

He kept walking. “Got no time for you, sis. Mom needs help.”

“Yeah. As long as you do everything for her she won’t learn to do anything for herself.”

He spun back at the bottom of the stairs. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? If I quit helping her? That would punish her good, right? Well, one of us needs to physically help her. Maybe I can’t buy her a big-ass apology truck, but I can be here.”

“You’re absolutely right.” That shut him up. I continued. “And in a few years, Lance, what then? What happens when you meet someone you want to spend your life with? What happens when you’ve made Mom dependent on you and you want to leave?”

“Like you’re leaving her now? Is this a good enough payback for her leaving you, sis? Are you satisfied now?”

“This isn’t about me, Lance. It’s about her. You’re not helping her if you don’t help her learn to do things for herself.”

“You are so twisted! Maybe she abandoned you, but she’s always been there for me. I won’t leave her.”

It seemed he had mastered the snotty little brother routine. “Of course you won’t leave her. Not tonight. Not next week or next month, either, but unless you are ready to give up your whole life and have yourself surgically attached to her, you’re not her new right arm either.”

“I’ve got nobody else,” he snapped and pointed at the book. “You do.”

As he stormed up the metal stairs, I examined the book in my hands. It was a small photo album. Inside were pictures of my father.

On our way out of the city Zhan asked, “Why did Menessos call us back?”

I shut the photo album. It was too dark to see it clearly and my head was reeling anyway. I was glad to have her distract me. “Heldridge met with the Excelsior.”

She didn’t know I had mastered her master, but she knew we’d been hoping Goliath found Heldridge before he made it to VEIN. “Oh.” Her reply wasn’t a light, airy vowel sound. It was the kind that was launched in a normal tone but dropped into the lowest of her alto tones, transforming it into an Oh-ewww. “Did he elaborate?”

“No.”

Zhan checked the rearview mirror again and changed lanes. It was nearly eight o’clock on a Thursday evening. Luckily the Steelers’ game was an away one, so traffic was light. I could guess the information I’d just given her had put her into alert mode. She would be aware of the vehicles behind us, maybe pull off a few times to see if we were being followed.

She understood the kind of bad things happening to cause our sudden trek home.

She was silent for several heartbeats. “We should find a restaurant, since you haven’t eaten all day.”

“Wonderful idea.” My stomach growled at the thought of food. “Afterward, I want to go home and shower, then head to the den.”

“Does Menessos know that? He may intend for us to—”

“I intend to see Johnny before I go downtown.”

I didn’t need to say more; she would do what I said. As the Erus Veneficus of his haven—the fancy title of a court witch—I outranked her and could make such decisions. Good thing, too. It was best if no one at the haven knew I was farther up the chain of command than they thought.

CHAPTER NINE

We arrived home just after midnight. Lingering over dinner and staying away from major highways—a tactic Zhan claimed would make it easier to tell if we were being followed—made the trip take almost twice as long as it usually would have. It also meant I slept in the car for the ninety minutes it took us to reach my farmhouse in rural Ohio south of Cleveland.

The first thing I did upon arriving home was stash the photo album in my desk drawer. I’d looked through it at dinner, but I wanted to snatch all the pictures out and see if anything was written on the backs. I’d deal with that later.

Despite the nap, after a hot shower I was ready for bed, but that was a luxury I couldn’t afford. The night was far from over. I donned a fresh pair of jeans and layered two tank tops, white and peach, under a black scoop- neck sweatshirt that had the habit of slipping over one shoulder. My hair would be dry by the time we arrived at the den. “Let’s go.”