Linda Robertson - Shattered Circle

“Yes. I have a meeting in”—I checked my watch—“about twenty minutes.”

“You must stay.”

“Why?”

“It is order of Haven Master. Erus Veneficus is not to leave premises.”

“Menessos said I couldn’t leave?”

“No.” Her eyes narrowed angrily. “Because of you, Menessos is our master no more.”

Right. Suspicious, I asked, “And who is?”

“Goliath.”

A sudden fear gripped me. If he had made claim to the people of the haven, then maybe they weren’t “essentially” mine at all. I thought it through. Goliath belonged to Menessos, so unless they had done some kind of separation, he was mine as well. By default, things should still be kind of the same as I had expected.

I moved to step around her.

She blocked me.

“I have to go, Ivanka. I’ll come straight back afterward.”

“Return to your quarters.”

Setting my stance and unlocking my knees, I said, “Make me, if you dare.” I lifted one hand and wiggled my fingers. “But be warned: I set the Domn Lup of the wærewolves on his ass with my hands. I defeated Liyliy with my hands. You”—I looked her up and down—“don’t stand a chance. Not even with a gun.”

Her mouth opened, then shut.

“Move aside.”

She retreated one step, out of reach, but angled into my path. “I wish to not lose rank.”

“You won’t.” I brushed past her. She wisely didn’t try to stop me. As I climbed the steps and headed for the entrance, however, she was right behind me.

“I go with you, to ensure your return.”

“Not necessary.”

“I go anyway.”

I stopped and spun. “No. This is private.”

“Menessos would not want you outside of haven unprotected.”

I wiggled my fingers at her again. “I’ll be okay.”

Being assertive like this was a double checkmark in the plus column. One, because it made me feel good about myself. Two, because affirming my power to someone else reinforced it to me.

As I rounded the turn near the old ticket booth across the lobby from the entrance, an older man with a cane rammed through the plywood-covered door.

Beau. His eyes locked on me and he barreled right toward me. This Bindspoken witch was the owner of Wolfsbane and Absinthe, the local pagan supply shop. He wore his trademark plaid flannel with the sleeves rolled up to expose the white thermal underwear beneath. The cigar perched at the corner of his mouth was also typical of him. However, his hurried, irritated gait and the lowered position of his bushy white eyebrows weren’t.

He pointed at me. “It’s all your fault!”

The anger in his accusation hit me like a slap. “What’s my fault?”

He stomped faster in my direction, but was still slow because of his prosthetic leg.

Even so, I had to fight the instinct to back up. “What’s wrong?”

He shouted, “William is catatonic!”

William was his son, and also a wærewolf. Somehow, he’d gotten too close to a witch doing magic and it caused him to go into a partial shift. He’d been stuck that way for a long time, housed and cared for in the upper floors of the local pack’s den. When I’d done the forced-change spell for Johnny and his men, Beau had asked that William be included.

Since Beau had given me a powerful charm that had saved my life, I owed him a favor. I’d agreed to have William in the spell. Someone from the den had sedated the wild, half-formed creature in order to move him and keep him still during the spell. He’d transformed fully into a wolf like everyone else. The fact that he had been drugged beforehand meant that when he did not regain consciousness after the transformation, I wasn’t alarmed.

“I thought that spell was supposed to give them their man-minds,” Beau growled, still advancing, “but somehow it took his away!” He wasn’t slowing down to just verbally confront me. He was a freight train about to run me over.

Suddenly, Ivanka shot forward, grabbed his arm, and thumped her cast across his chest in restraint. “Keep back.”

“The man-mind doesn’t come until the next regular cyclical change,” I explained. That was how it worked with the others. But then the others hadn’t been mindless beasts for years prior to the spell.

Beau struggled with Ivanka and drew his cane up as if to cudgel her. Even with a broken arm, she was dangerous.

Both were distracted.

I made for the front doors and the last thing I heard as I pushed through them was Beau shouting, “You’ll pay for this, Persephone Alcmedi!”

My escape revealed, I sprinted away.

Living in a haven is like living in a movie theater; sometimes when you emerge, the brightness of the world is stunning. Sure, it was presently an average afternoon in late November, but the waning light on the buildings opposite pierced my retinas like high beams. I nearly ran over an elderly black woman. Shouting back my apologies, I ran east on Euclid Avenue, squinting and sometimes pushing my way along the sporadically crowded sidewalk.

If the complaints rising from behind me were any indication, Ivanka was pursuing me with more intent than was socially acceptable. So, I jumped in the nearest cab and gave the driver the address of the coffee shop.

Out the back window I saw Ivanka stop on the sidewalk, her cheeks flushed in anger, and she shouted something in Russian I didn’t understand.

Settling into my seat, I tried to take in Beau’s news.

William is catatonic.

The spell could not have taken his mind, but then it was after that spell that Johnny had tried to kill me. I thought back, recalling my wording, considering the placement of the candles, the stones. I analyzed every detail but could not identify a misspoken phrase or anything that was obviously out of place. I could look at the charts, compare planetary positions of the first spell to the second, but I doubted that would make this kind of difference.

That was the only plan I had when I arrived at the coffee shop. Since I’d taken a cab instead of walking, I was early and there was time to talk to the girls before Johnny arrived.

Inside, Mandy looked up from the netbook she had behind the counter and grinned. “Hey, Seph! What are you doing downtown?”

“Meeting a friend here. How’ve you been?”

She flashed her name badge at me.

“Manager? You got promoted!”

“Yeah. Just last week. Like a show, the business must go on.”

The witch who formerly owned this shop had abruptly disappeared. I knew more about that situation than I ever wanted anyone to know, so I meekly nodded and said, “Congratulations.” Besides working here, Mandy was an apprentice witch who gave some of her free time to Venefica Covenstead as a volunteer secretary. She was a good kid, a college freshman, and she deserved the advancement.

“So what can we get you?”

“Spiced cider.” While she rang me up on the register another girl stepped away to make my drink.

Mandy handed me my change.

I leaned in closer. “Can you get astrological charts online on your computer?”

“Of course!”

“Could I possibly compare a couple dates?”

“Sure.” She started typing. “I’ll log into the astrology subscription the Covenstead maintains. What date did you want to look at?”

Goddess, she talked so fast it was easy to think she must have been drinking double shots of espresso. I told her the two dates in question.

She typed and handed over the little netbook before the cider was finished. “You can take this to your seat and check it out. I have to fill out an inventory list anyway. The first tab is the first date, the second tab is the second date. Who are you meeting?” The last question was accompanied by a sly little smile.