Persephone Alcmedi 00 - Wicked Circle by authors_sort Page A

audience with the Excelsior. In a little more than twenty-four hours, I will bring the shabbubitum to serve their libations to your master.” Mero then shut the device, squeezing it until the pieces popped and cracked, crushed in his palm. He reduced the phone to dust, letting it sift to the ground.
    Let us see how you respond, Menessos. It will tell me much.

CHAPTER EIGHT

    A s Eris drove away, I jogged behind, heading for the fountain where our ritual supplies rested. The taillights weren’t out of view when my satellite phone rang from my back pocket. I jerked it free and a name flashed on the little screen to identify the caller.
    Menessos.
    Mr. Manipulator himself. Do you know what I did already? I swallowed my anger and answered sweetly. “Hello?”
    “Persephone,” Menessos said. “Are you well?” Something about his voice was different.
    “Absolutely.” I arranged the glass hurricane globes into the cardboard box I’d placed beside the fountain. “And yourself?”
    “I am fine.”
    No, he wasn’t. He was hoarse. Ever since I’d staked him and applied a second hex to him, I’d been aware of his death every morning and his regained life every evening. While he tended to die gently, his sunset awakenings were violent. I’d felt him screaming his way back to life before the ritual started. Even so, the pity I’d felt earlier was in short supply now. “Liar.”
    “You are correct in refuting my statement,” he said sullenly, “but mortals often downplay their replies to such questions. It is unnecessary for you to impugn my character over it.”
    If I could have reached through the phone, I’d have smacked him.
    “Persephone?”
    “Hmmm?”
    “Our fears have been realized.”
    Unmoving, I felt like I’d been kicked in the gut. “Heldridge?”
    “He gained an audience with the Excelsior. You need to come home. Immediately.”
    With one box of supplies on the passenger-side floor and the other on the seat, I arrived at Eris’s apartment over the Arcane Ink Emporium. The Slut wasn’t here.
    There were, however, lights on upstairs. So, retrieving my wet clothes from the narrow crevice that Corvette owners call a trunk and lifting the boxes stashed up front, I hefted it all up the metal steps.
    Going home had been my desire even before Menessos had called, and now I had a good excuse. Knocking on the door and hoping they heard me over the music playing inside, I had time to rehearse my announcement once more before the door opened.
    Zhan relieved me of the boxes. I put the Corvette keys on top. She carried the supplies toward the black door of Eris’s “woogie room,” where she kept all her magical materials.
    Nana and Eris sat in dining chairs near a table lamp missing a shade. My mother’s wet hair clued me in that she’d just showered, and she wore only sleep pants and a bra. Nana jabbed a needle into Eris’s shoulder joint, stitching the flap of skin where her arm used to be. Eris winced.
    My horror must have been evident. After a shallow but derisive snort, Nana explained, “Her stitches broke.” Eris squirmed as Nana sewed, tightened the thread, tied it off, and cut it.
    The wound was ugly enough before. I shut the door behind me and approached.
    “I felt them pop when I fell down the embankment trying to get you,” Eris said.
    Crap. Here we go again.
    Nana smeared Neosporin on a gauze pad and placed it over the wound, securing it with medical tape. “Bled all over the place, but her wet red outfit didn’t exactly show it.”
    “Did you—”
    “Sterilized the thread and the needles.” She passed Eris a T-shirt. “I’m not stupid, Persephone.”
    Nana was more than her I-need-a-cigarette cranky. That meant she was in pain. “Did you—”
    “Took Aleve. I’m icing my knee every fifteen minutes and am in the off-phase right now.” She tugged the back of the T-shirt down as Eris struggled into it.
    Zhan returned. “How are you?”
    “Knocked my head, but it isn’t