Hallowed Circle (31 page)

Aw, hell! Why wasn’t there a
You and Your New Stain
handbook? Or a “Ten Things to Know about Your Stain” pamphlet?

Nana dumped the meat into the pan, then turned to chopping the peppers and onion. Her old fingers went through the motions methodically, dicing the vegetables precisely, deftly. It made me reflect and wonder: was she preparing me as deftly?

Maybe this was one of those times when I should just shut up and listen to her.

She put the lid on the meat, drained a little of the grease off into a second skillet, then added the pepper and onions to that one and stirred. I prompted her. “What do I need to know?”

Nana tapped the wooden spoon on the side of the pan and put it in the spoon rest. She shuffled back to the ash
tray and lifted her cigarette. “I went to Columbus while you were gone yesterday. Beverley went with me and we did some research on the Lustrata.”

“I thought we were talking about the wæres—wait. You went to the Archives?” There were dozens of witch archives across the country; Columbus was the closest one. “You drove all that way?”

“Oh, it’s right down I-71. Straight shot.”

“No one’s going to be suspicious of me, are they?”
So much for me shutting up.

“Don’t worry. I told them I was pulling up the old legends to tell Beverley stories.” She shrugged. “It’s true.”

Even if I wasn’t certain that would negate any suspicion, it was already done and I couldn’t change it. “And? How does that fit with me being naive about the wæres?”

She blew smoke at the ceiling and put the cigarette back in the ashtray. Shuffling back to the cupboards, she sorted through the variety of spices Johnny had bought. “Regardless of what else has happened, you need to get Johnny back over here. As soon as possible.”

I held off saying it as long as I could, then, “I can’t, Nana.”

“You can’t or you won’t?”

I looked away.

Nana proceeded to open two cans of garlic-and-herb spaghetti sauce. She dumped them into the pot and added more chopped garlic. I resolved to wait for her to expand on her words, but she didn’t. She stirred and stirred, leaning over the mix.

“Why? So he can cook?” I asked, hoping this was going to be that simple and knowing full well it wasn’t.

“That would be another reason,” she said, adding coarsely ground pepper to the mix before facing me with a critical expression. “But not the main one.”

She checked the simmering meat and veggies, poured off grease again, then added them to the pot and stirred more. When she finally tapped the spoon off and laid it in the spoon rest, she adjusted the burner.

“If you want me to consider trying, you need to tell me why first—and it better be a hell of a reason,” I said. When her critical face hardened with disapproval, I added, “What did you find?”

Nana returned to her cigarette and stared out the window. Her eyes darted this way and that, following the girl and the dog racing around the yard. She didn’t answer.

“What does that have to do with the wæres not ‘letting me in’? And why is this not the time for me to be naive?”

She sank back into her seat, ran a hand over her beehive hairdo. Only then did she face me.

“Sit down,” she said, gesturing to the bench across from her. “You’re not going to like this.”

I sat.

“You’ve seen a coven, seen people come to a sabbat. Just regular people seeking a spiritual connection, a moment of solace, or a party. Whatever they are searching for, they can find it and go home and on about their way happily. You knew from the stories that the council was convoluted, but now that you’ve seen WEC Elders at work, do you think you’ve seen the deepest depth of their complex machinations?”

“Hell, no. With the lengths Desdemona and Vilna-Daluca went to simply to test a high priestess, I can’t
imagine what they do to certify an Elder, let alone an Eldrenne.”

“Yet those ‘practitioners’ who simply come to sabbats to worship the Goddess … most of them never aspire to know more, never seek to see what you have seen.”

“What’s your point?” If spirituality was their goal and they received it, that wasn’t a bad thing.

“You’ve glimpsed the
wyrd
of the Witch now, and you’ve come to know a little of the intricacies of the vampires.”

“More than I want to, actually.” I thought of Menessos making blood oath to Xerxadrea. Their history could be a part of those intricacies.

“You go in the light of day and peer into a stream and you’re going to see your reflection. But you go in the dark of a moonless night and all you’ll see is the stream bed. You’ve been exposed to the dark, so you’re seeing below the surface, now, Persephone. You’re seeing the beauty in the smooth stones and feeling the slime covering them. Slime that, if you’re not mindful of your footing, will cause you to slip and plunge under the surface with them.”

My thoughts turned to my namesake and her descent into the underworld.

“Do you think, Persephone, that the world of the wærewolves is any different?”

Sitting there, speechless and feeling small, my fingers gripped the edge of the bench seat. “I hadn’t given it any thought.”

“Celia and Erik were turned how long ago?”

“Five years.”

“They were camping, so it was summer, right?”

“Late spring.”

Nana’s fingers twitched as she calculated. “Last year in the late spring or early summer … I assume they took a six-week vacation, right?”

How’d she know? My breath caught. “It wasn’t a vacation?”

Nana shook her head. “Every wære I’ve ever known of started a six-week vacation that encompassed their fortieth and forty-first full moons, or the beginning of their fourth year as a wære.”

“I thought you avoided wæres.”

She rolled her eyes. “Doesn’t mean I didn’t know of things going on with the wæres other witches knew and befriended.”

“Okay. And?”

“And, as we have covens, their kind have dens. Like us, they have a network much deeper than the surface shows and they must be indoctrinated in it. So, they maintain a ‘normal’ life, being guided and prepared by their den-keeper. It makes the surface reflect wæres as they would have themselves seen. It’s no different for us. Witches want the non-magic-using humans to see us as beautiful and spiritual when young and as sweet, cookie-grannies when we grow old. But you and I know the truth is more complicated. The wæres want to be seen as average folk, but stronger and”—her voice mocked casualness—“oh, so what if they shed their skin for fur once a month? They kennel, so all is well.”

Tone back to normal, she went on, “The vampires want to be seen as intelligent and gorgeous, as
the wealthy elite, and they buy their blood to stem the slaughter. It’s just business and everyday humans benefit, of course. While the fey, they’re tooth-fairy delicate and harmless.”

She poked her cigarette at the ashtray, pushing the ashes into a mound. “Even the non-magic-users. They puff up against us all like they have the law on their side. But it’s not truly the laws that have kept the rest of us at bay. They’re organized and we aren’t … or weren’t.” She took a raspy breath. “We’re people with power or wings or fur or fangs. But they’re the people with weapons of mass destruction. The balance is so tenuous.”

I was thrust back, to the memory of the vampire protocol test at the Eximium. When Heldridge asked, “Does your Goddess never cause harm?” I’d thought to myself that by allowing unpleasantness to transpire in small doses, a tenuous balance would be maintained
.
After spending a few heartbeats arguing with myself that this couldn’t mean I was supposed to tolerate what Johnny had done and see it as “unpleasantness in a small dose,” my voice came softly, if irritably, “What does this have to do with getting Johnny back here?”

She stubbed out the cigarette. “Bear with me; I have to set the stage a little. The Lustrata legend has two ancient documents to support it, but neither are whole. The Stellatus Tablets are broken, and the Lux Scrolls partially burned. The information is not complete and it is not perfect. Elders dispute over the translations and the guesses made concerning the fragments and the missing parts. They’ll never know so they’ll never agree because their agendas are all different.”

“Okay,” I said. “Your disclaimer is noted. What
do
we know?”

“There have been two previously documented Lustratas.”

“Only two?”

“Are you going to interrupt every point?”

My mouth shut and my expression turned beatific.

Nana continued. “Stories are told, updated, and retold through bards, like Johnny. Though such references are few and mostly nonfactual, they remain far more numerous than the actual relics. Much of what bards and storytellers have told has come to be taken as fact, although it shouldn’t be, as such folks do take liberties. Poetic license. These bard-stories mostly romanticized the Lustrata. Johnny, a wære, wrote of you as an enemy of the vampires. His lyrics went something like:

Impurity rising from under the world,
Dead above ground, diseases unfurled.

“But the vampire bards see you as the enemy of the wære. I found one who said:

Lustrata walks,

unspoiled into the light.

Sickle in hand,

she stalks through the night

Wearing naught but her mark and silver blade.
The moonchild of ruin, she becomes Wolfsbane.

“They see what they want to see, do you follow? They see you as the justice they want, not
true
justice. It’s not
simply these two either. I even found fairy references! And as I said, the Elders have conflicting takes on it—and Xerxadrea won’t be oblivious to either side.”

“You mean not even the witches agree?”

“They all have their own motives, their own agendas.”

“So you’re saying the different sides will try to get the Lustrata to choose them over another side or other sides?”

Nana made an uncomfortable face. “Yes and no.”

“Nana.”

“It’s not that simple. It’s not like two or three or five different factions will toady to you to gain your service. I mean, after they see the sign, some will, but—”

“But?”

“Some witches think the Lustrata is the enemy.”

Of course. Can’t be a simple, smooth path I must walk. “When you say some, how many do you mean?”

“I don’t have a head count!”

“A percentage?”

She considered. “A third.”

“That’s a lot.”

She waved off the idea. “Less than half and nothing you can change yet. Now listen.” She rubbed her knee. “Even the regular mortal humans have a few obscure references that, in my opinion, are veiled links to the Lustrata though they’ll never admit it. Bottom line is, we’re
all
in this. We’re
all
at risk.” She stopped, turned her cigarette case over and over in her hands.

Something occurred to me. “Wait, wait! It’s not just some witches either. When you say the wæres and vampires each have their ideas of justice, you mean that if I, as the Lustrata, don’t agree with their purposes or if I act
against them, then they will renounce me and become my enemy, right?”

Nana gave me a sheepishly sorry smile. “I hadn’t thought that far into it.” She rubbed her knee again. “I’ll look into it.”

And the truth that I hadn’t seen hit me. “You’ve been using the scrying crystal.”

Her expression turned stern but scared.

“Your door was open; I saw it sitting on your dresser.” Now it all made sense. Why it was there, why her knees hurt. Scrying, like any other power, has a price. I was willing to bet the universe taxed her in the arthritis department. “What did you see?”

“Everyone’s different agendas—and not just where the Lustrata is concerned—work against each other.” Her wrinkled hand rose to her neck and her fingers worked as if she’d loosen a tightly wound scarf. But she wore no scarf. “You must find a way to maintain the balance,” she said. “With the numbers the normal-humans have, and the technological destructibility at their fingertips, if you fail, the consequences will be insurmountable destruction.”

My mind refused to acknowledge the mega-ginormous weight of her words.

Synapses filed it away as
Bad Things that Could Happen
instead of
End of the World.
“Okay,” I heard myself say calmly, meanwhile thinking:
Why am I not running to hide under my bed?
“But still, what does that have to do with Johnny coming back here?”

“You need him.”

“The hell I do.”

Her mouth went crooked. “If not now, you will soon.”