“Red,” he said, grabbing my hands as the collar slipped over his face. He took in our positions and my exposed shoulder where the robe was ripped. His eyes glanced over my breasts, saw the rise and fall of my chest from heavy breathing. The look he gave me was all male and—
Erik groaned, waking, and suddenly Johnny was scrutinizing the room, surely remembering what had happened.
I gestured at Vivian. “Put her in a chair and tie her up.” I opened my catchall drawer and found the bundle of “Braided Cotton Premium Clothesline No. 7” that Lydia had left along with other household odds and ends.
“What’d she do to us?” Erik asked, yawning. “Where’re our shirts?”
“She used a natural, if magically boosted, sleep aid, I think.” I handed Erik the rope and went down the hall to get the bottle. “I took your shirts off so you could wake up. Don’t put them back on without washing them first.”
When I came back, they had positioned Vivian in a dining room chair. I stared, mesmerized, at Johnny’s bare back as he worked to tie her up. It was almost entirely covered by an intricate tattoo. A red Chinese lion-dog and a black dragon battled across his shoulder blades. The movement of Johnny’s muscles made the creatures seem to fight or dance.
“What’s with her?” he asked as he bound her feet together. “You think she came to steal the money back?”
“What money?” Erik asked.
I shrugged at Johnny and ignored Erik, turning to set the water bottle on the counter.
“Some kind of witch-fund thing,” Johnny said.
This was going to be touchy; I was grateful he would try to cover for me. Caffeine might help me think clearly enough to avoid telling them the horrible truth. “I need coffee.”
Just as I got the coffeepot going, Ares bounded in, and Nana followed. She assessed the shirtless men yawning contentedly and stretching like cats sunning themselves. Next she noted Vivian, bound to a chair with her head lobbed forward uncomfortably. The tied ends of a dishrag flipped up from her hair, revealing that we’d also gagged her. The rotten side of me had wanted to use the damp and soapy rag hanging over the faucet, but my conscience wouldn’t hear of it, so I’d decided to use a clean one.
“What is going on down here?” Nana demanded, eyeballing my ripped robe and exposed undies. Her shocked expression made me tighten my robe properly around me. “Well, I can guess. This kind of debauchery is typical of wæres, but I’m ashamed of you, Persephone Isis! This isn’t what I had in mind, and you know it. It’s…it’s even upset my Ares.” His ears pricked at his name, and he licked her hand.
“Debauchery?” Johnny elbowed Erik. “Debauchery. That’s what I’ll call that song I wrote and couldn’t think of a title or chorus for.” He grinned broadly and said it again. “Debauchery.”
Celia and Beverley came into the kitchen behind Nana. Apparently, bedhead was contagious. It was official: we’d awakened everyone.
“This isn’t what you think it is, Nana. This is Vivian, the High Priestess. She broke into the house. We stopped her.”
“Broke in?” Nana shuffled over to Vivian. “She doesn’t look like a burglar.” Nana sank onto the bench across from Vivian and glowered at me. Ares sat beside her.
I shrugged. “She said, ‘It’s mine and I’m not leaving without it,’ but I don’t know what ‘it’ is.”
Into the silence that followed, Beverley meekly said, “It’s my fault.”
Everyone turned to her, leaning in the doorway.
“You know what she came for?” I asked.
“Something I took from her house.”
I winced. “You took something of hers?”
“She said such mean things! It made me mad. She stomped around shouting at me for so long, then she told me to pack all my stuff. She threw the box at me and told me to be quick, that she’d be waiting in the car and if I wasn’t out there in ten minutes she’d make me walk.” Beverley swallowed hard. “So I packed my stuff. And since she was in the car, I packed her spell book under my clothes. I wanted to get back at her. She must’ve figured out I took it.” Her head dropped down. “I’m sorry, Seph. I shouldn’t have taken it. I’ll go get it.” Beverley walked away.
“Gutsy kid,” Johnny commented just as the coffeepot beeped to signal it was done brewing. “Java’s ready. Who’s drinking?”
A chorus of “me’s” answered him, and he started getting out mugs.
My hand ran over my hair. Vivian would wake eventually. If we ungagged her, she’d tell them all about our contract. How much guilt could I take without snapping?
Beverley came back with the book held in her enfolded arms. It had a wooden back with iron workings like a very old book or one made to appear so. She laid it on the countertop and pushed it at me, her expression ashamed.
I knew how she felt; if Vivian started talking, I was going to feel shame too.
The cover of the book had a triskelion secured to it with iron nails that looked like horseshoe nails. It seemed like something Arthur might have found on a quest.
“Lunar crone!” Nana exclaimed. “That book! Where did you get it, child?”
Beverley leaned against the pantry door and pointed at Vivian. “From an altar table in her bedroom.”
Nana rose, moving Ares out of the way, then grabbed a handful of Vivian’s hair and jerked her head up to see her face. With her other hand she touched, tentatively, Vivian’s forehead. With a shout, Nana jerked away as if burnt. Ares rushed to put himself between her and Vivian. She stumbled over the big pup; Erik caught her, steadied her.
“Nana?”
“Sit, Ares,” she said. He did. Nana took a step past him and stumbled again, but this time it wasn’t the pup’s fault.
Again, only Erik’s intervention kept her from going down. “Let’s get you back on the bench, shall we?” he said.
When she was safely at the table, Nana stared at the book fearfully. “I tried to see into her mind. She has some protection wards about her person.”
I remembered the jolt I felt. “I injected her with the morphine—I got a jolt too, but it wasn’t that bad.”
Nana asked, “Your wards connected to you?”
After thinking through the words I’d said, my answer was, “Yes.”
“They absorbed the brunt of it for you, then.” She gestured at Vivian. “It’s probably jewelry.”
Going around the counter to the dinette, I lifted Vivian’s head by the hair. A chain hung around her neck, down into her shirt. With a nod toward the butcher-block knife set, I said, “Kitchen shears.” Celia handed them to me. Lifting the chain with the edge of the scissors, I maneuvered it around, pulled it free, and cut it loose. The chain and the little wire-bound stones attached to various links tumbled to the floor. I kicked it away.
Nana gestured at Erik. “Help me.” He gave her his arm and she returned to Vivian and repeated the forehead-touching maneuver, then returned to her chair. She said nothing as she moved, and when she sat she remained silent. The rest of us traded glances. The tension thickened the air in the room until breathing felt difficult.
“What did you see?” Johnny finally asked.
Still, my melodramatic Nana took her time answering, and the longer she was silent, the more worried I became. Could she have learned about Vivian’s and my business deal that quickly?
“Demeter.”
“She didn’t write that book. And it’s not even hers; she stole it from another. Let me see it.”
I slid it from the counter and placed it on the table. Nana pulled the wooden binding closer to her. That surprised me because she’d seemed afraid of it just minutes before. She reverently opened the first page. “Ahh, Latin,” she whispered.
Her melodrama made me weary.
“Do you know what this is, Persephone?”
I crossed my arms. “No.”
“This is the Trivium Codex.”
I shut my eyes to keep from rolling them. I had enough to worry about.
Nana caug
ht my annoyance anyway. “I’m serious, Persephone.” Ares sulked under the table to lie at her feet, probably because her tone had changed.
“What does she mean?” Celia asked.
Nana’s head lifted. “It’s a legend among witches.” She turned back to the first page, ran her fingers over the page. “It is a Latin translation, of course…”
My arms lowered, slowly. She wasn’t being melodramatic at all.
“The original would have been in Akkadian. The Akkadians used Sumerian as a religious language, you know. They called their goddess Ishtar, but their sacred writings were in Sumerian, so she was called Inanna in hymns and the like. But the author of this book was not writing a prayer. Not at all. She would call her goddess Ishtar.”
“Ishtar?” Celia asked.
“Goddess of love and war,” I said, feeling a bit guilty.
“And fertility,” Johnny added.
Nana said grimly, “This is no ordinary Book of Shadows.”
I hesitated, trying to figure out why Vivian had this legendary book and how she might have gotten it. “I know, Nana.”
“You don’t look like you believe me.”
“I do, I just—” I didn’t finish.
“Just what?”
“Are we going to have to safeguard it now too?”
She closed the cover again, caressed the triskelion. “We could learn much from this book, you and I.” Her voice shook. She leaned in, then angled the book up to the light, moving her finger as she translated the words carved in a circle around the triskelion. “One cursed by the sun, one cursed by the moon, one cursed by her heart.”
“What fun. Curses all around,” I muttered sarcastically and turned to go back around the counter to my coffee.
As I sipped, Nana regarded Johnny, then Erik and Celia. “You carry the curse of the moon. Like your friend upstairs.”
Celia grabbed Erik’s arm. “Does that book have a cure?”
Erik took her hand, clearly surprised. “Would you want it if it did?”
A breath escaped her. “Of course! We could be normal and have babies, Erik. A family.”
Celia turned back to Nana, her eyes glistening. “Does it?”
Nana’s expression turned sad. It seemed that for the first time she saw my friend not as a “filthy wære” but as a woman who longed to be a mother. “There is no cure.”
Celia’s hand slipped from Erik’s. It was clear in her eyes that in the instant it had taken for her to ask the question, years of hopes and dreams had sprouted, and Nana’s words burnt them up just as fast. It hurt me to see Celia that hurt; it reminded me of Nancy. I asked, “Then what is in the book?”
“It’s a compilation of spells, of course. I’ll have to look through them to see exactly what they are.”
“Then how do you know there isn’t a cure in it?”
“Because of the legend of this book. If there were a cure, the writer would have used it.”
“The writer was a witch, right?”
“The writer loved a wære.” Nana faced Celia again. “And she would have wanted to have his babies.”
Ares leapt up and ran to the front door, barking. “He probably needs to pee,” Nana said. It was funny to hear an old woman say “pee,” but the hour was too late and the moment too serious for any humor to be appreciated.
“I’ll let him out,” Johnny said, following after Ares.
A second passed and I called, “Wait, he’s paper-trained. He should go in the garage.” I started after them.
“You’re paper-training a Great Dane?” Johnny called back, incredulous.
“Not me, his former owners.” Ares was scratching at the door to get out. My first thought was to scold him; then another thought hit me. Johnny was just reaching for the knob. “Johnny, don’t!”
He stopped. “What?”
“Ares knows to go in the garage. It’s the only place we’ve taken him to”—I couldn’t say “pee”—“to do his business.” I finished quickly, “I don’t think he has to go.”
Johnny looked at Ares.
“Vivian wouldn’t have walked here,” I said. “Where’s her car?”
“Would she have brought someone with her?” he asked.
I shrugged, peering out the window. Her car sat at the far end of my driveway.
“Got a leash?”
“Huh?”
I expected an innuendo in answer, but all he said was, “I’ll take him out and see.”
“Johnny.”
He flashed a grin and tweaked my cheek. “Aw, you’re worried about me.”
I released an exasperated sigh and got him the leash. He looked it over appreciatively and wiggled his eyebrows at me.
“Erik,” he called. “Come out with us.” As soon as his feet hit the porch, Ares went to barking again and pulled for the end of the planking. Johnny held tight to a post, keeping the dog back as he sniffed the night air and surveyed the dark yard. Erik went out then, and he began smelling the air as well.
“What is it?” I asked from the doorway.
Johnny swiftly tied the leash around the pole and growled, “Beholders.” He ran. Erik followed him. Both of them were fast, lean shadows in the dark.
“Beholders?” I called after them. Ares whined and strained against the collar and leash, trying to follow them. “What are beholders?”
* * *
It wasn’t easy, but I dragged Ares back inside and crated him for his own good. Nana poured a second cup of coffee and parked herself right in front of the Codex. Beverley looked on with her. Vivian stirred, lifted her head slowly, and moaned. Blinking, she looked about, trying to focus and having trouble.
“Should she have come out of that so soon?” Celia asked. She’d brushed her hair and was presently working on Beverley’s. “It was a full dose, right?”
“Full for Theo. Dr. Lincoln kept them small, since drugs affect wæres so readily.”
“You’d think it’d be the opposite, that it’d take more to do anything to us,” Celia said. She gestured at Vivian. “But she’s not a wære.”
“No, but she’s stained,” I said.
“Stained?” Celia asked, concern in her voice.
I approached Vivian. “That’s right, isn’t it?” I let my disgust show in my face. “You’ve got a vampire’s mark.” It seemed dirty in a contaminated way, like having lice or something.
Vivian squinted at me and tried to talk through the gag. Though garbled, her intended words were clear enough: “Fuck you.”
Since most of her cheek was covered by the gag, I smacked her temple, hard. “Don’t talk like that, even muffled, in front of my nana and Beverley. You understand me?”
Vivian glared.
“Do you understand me?” I asked again, this time with a handful of her hair pulled tight.
She shut her eyes.
“Where did you get the Codex?”
Having previously forgotten, she remembered it now and foggily scrutinized the room until she spotted it on the table in front of Nana. She strained against the cords. I moved to stand behind her but didn’t release the handful of her hair. With one finger against her cheek, I pushed the gag free of her mouth. “Where did you say you got it?”
“That book is mine.”
“Not anymore.”
She laughed. “You’re an idiot. He’ll take it from you, and he’ll kill you just for having seen it.”
“Who?” I asked, but I thought I knew. I mean, she was stained, yet free, living a good life, working at a coffee shop—which still made no sense to me. “The one who marked you?” Her glare turned positively malicious. “It’s a good security blanket, huh?”
“The best,” she said through gritted teeth. “And unless you’ve made good on my little contract, you-know-who will be coming for it.”
“Little contract?” Celia asked.
I tightened my fist in Vivian’s hair, a warning. I needed a minute to think of an answer that would avoid—
“She didn’t
tell you?” Vivian blurted. I jerked her head back, but before I could reach for the gag she said, “Not even after her friend’s little car accident?”
I looked at Celia. She looked at me. A deer caught in car headlights must feel like I felt then.
Johnny and Erik came in the front door. Both were breathing like marathon runners after a race. It gave me reason to pause and an instant to think. After they closed and locked the door, the men came quickly to the kitchen. “They got away. But more are sure to come.”
“What are beholders, anyway?” I asked, hoping the diversion would make everyone else forget what they’d just heard.
Johnny started to answer, but Vivian growled, “The beholders have been here already?”
“You knew?” he asked.
“Go to my car. Inside it is a wooden box—pray they haven’t taken it already. Bring it into the house. Now.” She barked orders as if she was going to be obeyed despite having been tied to a chair after breaking and entering. “Do it, or we’ll all be killed!”
Johnny asked me, “What is she talking about?” His urgency and tone dropped as his attention flicked back and forth between me and Celia. He smelled the tension between us. “What did I miss?”
I jerked the gag up and into Vivian’s mouth.
Everyone was staring at me except Vivian. I glanced around the room. My friends, Nana, and Beverley were all waiting for me to say something, to explain. The wolves shifted closer to each other, a pack trait for certain. I felt like I was standing at the wrong end of a loaded gun. My heart pounded in my chest.
They’d all put so much faith in me, come here to help me. Did I have enough faith in their friendship to tell them the truth?
I thought of Nancy. She’d had enough faith in friendship to tell me and Olivia and Betsy her truth, enough love for us to want us to have what she’d found. And we had helped her right out of our lives for it. I didn’t want to lose the wærewolves—I realized then how much I valued them. And not for the money kenneling brought in either—I spent most of it on their treats anyway. They were the only outside connections I had to the world. I’d holed myself up, alone, in this saltbox farmhouse for two years. Just a computer and me, with me denying that I needed anyone or wanted anyone in my life. If not for the wærewolves, I’d have no one. Nana would be it. I didn’t want Nana to be “it” for me.
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