"No." My voice lacked the strength needed to give the word real weight.
"We will see to it that she is loved, attended, and nurtured in ways her mother is currently incapable of handling. We have many options." He gestured to the other vampires who indicated their agreement. "I know of couples who are childless, but do not wish it to be so."
I thought of Celia and Erik. Did he mean waeres? He was suggesting they would—in theory—foster this hypothetical child into a home of waeres! But in exchange for what? "You will deliver her to a life of servitude to the undead."
"You would have her stay in a life with no future. As good as dead!"
"You would make her a pawn—"
"No! Her mother made her a pawn," he snarled. Heat flared on my sternum. "I would make her wealthy and her every need would be met."
"Still a pawn," I countered coolly, "just a classier version of the game."
"This game will be played regardless, Persephone. What version would you choose to have this child play?"
My stomach churned. "Merciful vampires" administering a fate free from wont… this was brutal to my conscience. My only consolation was that this was a hypothetical situation. Not real. Not real.
Or was it?
Could this kind of deal-making have been behind Goliath's kidnapping? Had a family secret been covered up by the payment of a child?
"As above, so below, witch," Heldridge shot in. "Does your Goddess never cause harm?"
"She would choose to harm least," I whispered. By allowing unpleasantness to transpire in small doses, a tenuous balance would be maintained.
My secret hint was that her mother was dying anyway. There was no mention of extended family to adopt the girl. Could I make this decision? As high priestess, I would have authority and would be expected to use it, even when unpleasant for me. The job is what the job is. But if this kind of thing was under the jurisdiction of a high priestess, it was news to me.
Neither option was good. Still, I had to make a choice…
Make a choice. May… catch… oyster—! May-ca-choys-tereclat. Make-a-choice-directly.
I knew what this was all about. I knew what to do.
"Fine. I will agree to look the other way while you take the girl on the following conditions: One, she is fostered with a waere family of good conscience and a history of secure kenneling—a family of whom I approve. Two, you may take blood from her only in safe amounts and only without her knowledge. I'm sure you have ways of doing that. Three, on the full moon just prior to her eighteenth birthday, you return her to me, where she will remain for no less than two cycles of the moon. She will yet be mortal, human, and alive. I expect to find her healthy, both mentally and physically; to be well educated, socially adjusted, and happy. I will perform a rite of passage. If she chooses not to return to your fold, if she chooses to remain away from you and not become an offerling, she will be rescinded. You will count your debt paid and allow it."
Heldridge's unyielding glare was icy. "You ask us to become foster parents so in the end you can convince her not to become an offerling?"
"If you've sold her blood, taken in non-health-threatening amounts, the cost of her rearing should be less than your profit. In fact, that should be part of the deal. A complete annual accounting, verified by an outside source, of what you have earned from her blood and what you have spent on her upkeep."
The vampires exchanged glances.
Before anything could be said, however, the door to the room opened. Desdemona stood beyond it.
"Well done, contestant. Your performance will be evaluated,
And you will proceed to the next round if you are thusly fated."
The test was over. I'd shown that I could and would make a decision, even when all the options were flawed.
I moved immediately toward the door. I was so out of there, so gone before something else happened with the stain.
Menessos caught my arm and held it, keeping me from leaving. I wanted to jerk away, to huff angrily, defiantly. But the instant his flesh touched mine, this first touch since I'd chosen to keep the stain, since I'd destroyed the stake, he sent a heated caress deep inside me, sinking through skin, through muscle, and deep into bone, warming me as if I'd swallowed the summer sun—
Menessos jerked his hand away.
Was that the vampire version of the jolt Hunter had given to everyone in the contest?
He stared down, studying me. His scrutiny was not unlike that he'd given earlier to the art in the room, but suspicion lurked under the surface of his cold-steel irises. Even as I stared boldly into his imprisoning eyes, I felt no draw from them, no threat, but saw they were paler, icier than I remembered. "That was brilliant," he said. "Manipulating us into attending properly to the needs of a child whose parent wronged us." He paused, a wicked twist claiming his lips. "This concept, I will have to consider all possible applications. I can utilize such arrangements immediately." The menace in his tone was unmistakable. "Can't you, Heldridge?"
I suddenly remembered the pain that Menessos felt when I'd tended the wound where Samson tried to stake him. Angered he would manipulate my ideas to his devious aims, and more so that children might be involved, I gave in to an impulse: I grabbed his raven-scratched arm and squeezed. But this time I anticipated the heat of our contact and threw my witch-jolt out to shield against it, effectively diminishing it. I felt his ridged and torn flesh squirm under the pressure of my grip.
In a blink, his eyes had gone nearly white. His fanged mouth opened in an indication of pain, but he made no sound.
The fingers of his uninjured arm suddenly snatched onto my shoulder and he jerked me close. Heat billowed around me, between us, without passing my shield. His wicked expression returned and his voice came low and threatening, "Whatever the outcome of this Eximium, I will see you again, witch."
As I brushed past Desdemona in the reception area, she put one of the tea light lamps into my hands. Outside in the hall, I paused for a deep breath to cleanse my aura of the fear and feel of Menessos. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to wait for the Elder or Lydia or a policeman to escort me, but I wasn't going to wait either. Forcing myself onward in the dark, I hoped the outage didn't reach all the way to my more rural home. Nana would wake up to a cold house. It wouldn't help her knee.
Going with that thought to keep the vampire from my mind, I promised myself I'd get right to work getting a contractor out to start work on renovating the dining room for her.
As I started down the hall, I heard a sound from the darkness ahead.
It was a sound like the susurrus of fabric as someone walks along.
I stopped. "Hello?" Holly?
Nothing.
I held the lamp behind me. The space darkened, but my eyes adjusted slowly. I saw nothing.
Without further incident, I made it to the door of the newly designated holding room. It was an office supply room. The three cots barely fit—each was pushed tight against the shelves and boxes of the three doorless walls. There was an iron stand with a platelike top just inside the door, the two pillar candles placed on it provided soft light. Maria was on the cot to my right, snoring. She was alone.
Hunter and Amber must have gone to the restroom or something. Hunter would have to come back here to retrieve her scroll before she went to Desdemona's test. Still, leaving Maria alone seemed rude. I sat down on the left-side cot, placing the lantern beside my feet and my scroll on my lap. The others' scrolls rested under their respective cots.
In the dark, as my ears grew accustomed to Maria's regular snores, I gave in to my fatigue and lay down, clutching the rolled paper scroll to me.
The sound of voices in the hall brought me sitting upright, just as Hunter and Amber stepped in. "You're back," Hunter said as they neared.
Something seemed different about her. I couldn't put my finger on it. "Yeah."
"Was it terrible?" Amber whispered, placing a third pillar candle on the plate.
I hesitated, yawned. "I
t wasn't easy."
"At this point, it can't be easy," Hunter whispered. "Any of it. Or there would be no point." She slipped the scroll from under my cot and headed back to the door. As she placed her hand on the knob, there was a knock. Hunter quickly stepped back to allow space for the door to open. Lydia stood in the doorway.
"Are you ready, Hunter?"
"Yes."
"Good luck," I said. I handed her my tea light lantern.
"Sure. And thanks."
Again, she seemed quite happy. Odd.
"I'm going to see if I can copy her," I said to Amber as I pointed at Maria.
"Don't blame you." She sat on the vacant rear cot.
My eyes were shut before I'd fully stretched out on Hunter's cot.
Moments later, as I was again beginning to doze, I heard Amber sit up, stand. My head lifted and my eyes opened. "Where are you going?" I whispered.
"Restroom."
"I thought you just came back from there with Hunter?"
"She had to go then. Now I do."
"Let me go with you."
"No, rest. I'll be fine." She retrieved the pillar candle from the stand near the door.
"Alone?"
"I was just there." She rolled her eyes at me. "It's just the other side of the stairs. Besides, the policemen are still around. Don't worry." She left.
My toes twitched in my shoes; I felt torn. Let Amber go alone, or leave Maria alone. Again with the no clear choices. So I stood and went to the doorway, determined to stand there with the door open, listening, waiting.
The hall was so dark. My ears strained for a sound, any sound other than Maria's snoring.
A minute passed. And another. Too many.
I took another candle from the stand and left Maria, walking down the hall. Pillar candles are unhandy to carry and not very bright.
"Amber?" I called softly. The shadow of stairs lay ahead. She'd said the restroom wasn't far past this. "Amber?"
A shadowed alcove in the wall held the restroom door. Amber would be in there.
I heard movement inside.
My hand slid around the chilled metal handle, pulled.
Amber stood there, one hand on the counter not far from where her pillar candle sat. The other hand clutched at her chest. Her eyes were wide. She fell to her knees. Her hand dropped from her chest, red spreading down her shirt. Her mouth opened and moved, but no sound came out. She leaned, falling.
I shot through the door, rushing toward her, candle dropping from my grip as I reached to catch her. I managed just enough to keep her skull from bouncing on the floor. "Amber! Amber, no!"
My hand went to her chest. Blood welled over my hand. Amber clung to my wrist. Then her grip went slack. "No! No!"
"Yes."
I turned.
Holly, in the doorway of a stall, held a knife. In the light from Amber's candle on the counter, the blade's edge gleamed black with blood, dripping to the floor. Her face was flecked with dark spots, as was her hair, her V-neck tee, and her hoodie. The essence of a life, taken, in drops.
My first instinct was to rage at her, to scream and demand answers. To beat the shit out of her. But my mouth opened and what came out was, "This is what would make your mother proud?"
Her mouth became a firm line. "Yes." Her eyes gleamed as she stared down at me.
"I don't understand."
"She was murdered by scheming witches like her. And like you." Instantly her knife hand shot up, dripping blade-point down, and she came forward.
Chapter 21
In one swift motion, even as Holly's arm started stabbing down, I rose and used my momentum as I kicked out, knocking her knife hand up and away. She turned her face toward her arm, surprised, and I punched her hard in the jaw. She fell and the knife skittered away.
Holly was young, small, and clearly inexperienced as a fighter. She could have killed her victims only by surprising them. I felt bad for her as I pounced on her and took her by the hair. I whacked her head on the stone floor to daze her. Then, still sitting on her, I jerked one of her shoes off, ripped the shoestring out, and tied her hands behind her back, tight. I took her other shoe and unstrung it; then I bound her ankles, pulled them up, and knotted the ends of the strings together.
"Oh my god!" she groaned. "Oh my god! That wasn't supposed to happen."
"Yeah, I bet." I stepped toward the restroom door.
"Holy shit!"
It wasn't Holly's voice. Slowly, I turned.
Amber was sitting up, staring at Holly. Amber began to laugh.
"You're okay?" I stammered.
"Yeah." She ripped open her shirt and pulled an elaborate fake «chest» away from her own. As she turned it around, she revealed it was some bizarre device with plastic tubing all through the back.
Over her shoulder, she said, "I didn't invoke my stone!" as if talking to the toilet in the stall behind her. She giggled again, turning back to me. "And I'm so glad I didn't. I would've missed the show. Somebody finally kicked your ass, Holly! Goddess, you should see your face."
I stood there, dumbfounded, motionless. What the hell was going on?
The back of the restroom—both the floor and the wall itself—rolled open like a garage door and the fourth Elder stepped into view, eyeing me suspiciously.
"For twenty years, I've been re-creating this test in some fashion for every Eximium I've been a part of. Never have I seen the like."
"All right already," Holly exclaimed. "Untie me! I think she chipped a tooth!"
"What the hell is going on?" Realization began to seep into my brain, but I couldn't believe it.
"I love this part!" Amber said, getting up and stepping to the open doorway. She pulled out a half-full gallon jug of red fluid and began refilling the chest mechanism. "No one died here tonight. Not Suzanne, not Lehana. Not me." She grinned. "We are all part of the fourth test."
I blinked rapidly. "The paramedics, the police—"
"Part of our group."
"Then… Suzanne and Lehana… you and Holly… aren't real contestants?"
"Never were." She capped the mechanism's well, put the lid on the gallon jug. Removing her shirt, she replaced the chest mechanism, attaching it to her bra with Velcro. From a hanger, she took a shirt identical to the one she'd been wearing—except this one had no bloodstains—and put it on.
"Excuse me!" Holly protested.
"Oh!" I dropped beside her and worked at the knots, but they were too tight from her straining against them. I reached for the knife, hesitated.
"Here," Amber said, handing me a pocketknife. "That one's a fake."
I cut the strings and Holly immediately went to inspect herself at the mirror. "Sorry," I mumbled.
"Do not apologize, child." The Elder, leaning on her staff beside her, was grinning at me. It was unnerving. "I am Vilna-Daluca. Your solution to our play is one I will have to ponder before I can decide how to judge it."
"Damn," Holly said, fingers poking at a bruise swelling on her cheek. "You're going to have to start asking contestants if they know judo, Vil."
Vilna-Daluca laughed heartily. "I'll personally drive you to the dentist tomorrow if it is necessary."
The Elders drive? Why did that stick out to me as ludicrous in this moment?
Probably because everything else was tripping my weird-o-meter into the red zone, my thoughts centered on that trivial thought. What kind of car did Vilna-Daluca drive? Did she wear the robes—no, no, that was just silly. I'm sure even the Elders were like normal old women when they weren't doing witchy things. Probably played bingo and dominoes and everything.
"Fear not, Holly, you will heal," Vilna-Daluca said, but her interest was centered on me.
Oh, shit. I showed them I could—and was willing to—fight. I went for a subject change. "What normally happens?" My voice conveyed meek innocence.
"You should have cowered, or screamed, or fled," Holly said. "Fighting back is unheard of. Detrick?" she called.
The police officer
opened the door and poked his head in. "Yeah?"
"He would have been blocking the door," Holly pointed at him. "So you couldn't escape."
"It's over?" he asked.
"Duh," Holly said.
"How'd she do?" Detrick asked.
Holly pointed to her swelling cheek. I'd punched her and whacked her head on the floor. That was going to swell a lot.
"She decked you? All right!" He gently punched my arm. "Slugger! Were you filming, Vilna?"
My eyes went wide.
"Yes."
"I'll mop up the fake-blood mess in a minute; I wanna see." He shuffled past us to the area behind the wall.
"Yeah, I bet," Holly retorted.
"You're bleeding," Vilna-Daluca said to me. She indicated my hand.
I had a cut on my knuckle. It wasn't bad; I grabbed a paper towel to wipe it.
"Yeah, worry about her," Holly mumbled. To me, she continued explaining, "After you'd tried to run and couldn't, I would have moved in. If you had broken down and cried, I would have scolded you for being weak and trying to lead a coven. If you tried to talk me down—which I thought you were starting to do—I would have reconsidered killing you, we would have talked a bit more and seen where you went with it."
"Oh-ho!" Detrick hooted from the back area. "That had to hurt!"
Holly went to join him. I dropped the paper towel into the trash and eased across the space to peer into the back. This was a classroom like the others, but the «restroom» facade had been constructed around the door to facilitate the setting. There was a whole production room set up back there! The paramedics, Lehana, and Suzanne lay sleeping on cots farther back in the room. "It's incredible," I whispered.
"C'mon," Amber said. "Time to go get Maria."
As we walked back to the holding room, Amber explained, "We each have a stone, we're supposed to invoke it when it's our time to 'play dead. It gives that appearance to anyone who's checking us. Lehana is new to the troupe and played with hers; Hunter picked up on it. That surprised me. But she thought it was a vinculum. I guess that is the most obvious guess, what with Holly planting her seeds of mistrust with WEC and all."
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