Linda Robertson - Wicked Circle

I’d known this argument was brewing. Resigned to it, I said, “She dove in front of those bullets. I didn’t make her. I wasn’t even in the circle with her.”

“The doctors could have saved her arm if she hadn’t stayed to finish the spell.”

“She made that choice too! Or have you forgotten her threatening Zhan with a knife to keep the medics back?”

He pursed his lips, then snapped, “Saving your boyfriend from a spell or two was more important to you than saving her arm! She did it for you.”

“Yeah. She. Did. It.”

“It wouldn’t have happened if not for you. You don’t have any sense of responsibility, do you?”

I dropped my head down. If you only knew.

He read my lowered chin as some kind of concession. He pushed away from the car. “Get going. Take this.” He shoved something at me. I dropped it and had to pick it up.

He was three paces away before I had a grip on the little book. “Lance.”

He kept walking. “Got no time for you, sis. Mom needs help.”

“Yeah. As long as you do everything for her she won’t learn to do anything for herself.”

He spun back at the bottom of the stairs. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? If I quit helping her? That would punish her good, right? Well, one of us needs to physically help her. Maybe I can’t buy her a big-ass apology truck, but I can be here.”

“You’re absolutely right.” That shut him up. I continued. “And in a few years, Lance, what then? What happens when you meet someone you want to spend your life with? What happens when you’ve made Mom dependent on you and you want to leave?”

“Like you’re leaving her now? Is this a good enough payback for her leaving you, sis? Are you satisfied now?”

“This isn’t about me, Lance. It’s about her. You’re not helping her if you don’t help her learn to do things for herself.”

“You are so twisted! Maybe she abandoned you, but she’s always been there for me. I won’t leave her.”

It seemed he had mastered the snotty little brother routine. “Of course you won’t leave her. Not tonight. Not next week or next month, either, but unless you are ready to give up your whole life and have yourself surgically attached to her, you’re not her new right arm either.”

“I’ve got nobody else,” he snapped and pointed at the book. “You do.”

As he stormed up the metal stairs, I examined the book in my hands. It was a small photo album. Inside were pictures of my father.

On our way out of the city Zhan asked, “Why did Menessos call us back?”

I shut the photo album. It was too dark to see it clearly and my head was reeling anyway. I was glad to have her distract me. “Heldridge met with the Excelsior.”

She didn’t know I had mastered her master, but she knew we’d been hoping Goliath found Heldridge before he made it to VEIN. “Oh.” Her reply wasn’t a light, airy vowel sound. It was the kind that was launched in a normal tone but dropped into the lowest of her alto tones, transforming it into an Oh-ewww. “Did he elaborate?”

“No.”

Zhan checked the rearview mirror again and changed lanes. It was nearly eight o’clock on a Thursday evening. Luckily the Steelers’ game was an away one, so traffic was light. I could guess the information I’d just given her had put her into alert mode. She would be aware of the vehicles behind us, maybe pull off a few times to see if we were being followed.

She understood the kind of bad things happening to cause our sudden trek home.

She was silent for several heartbeats. “We should find a restaurant, since you haven’t eaten all day.”

“Wonderful idea.” My stomach growled at the thought of food. “Afterward, I want to go home and shower, then head to the den.”

“Does Menessos know that? He may intend for us to—”

“ I intend to see Johnny before I go downtown.”

I didn’t need to say more; she would do what I said. As the Erus Veneficus of his haven—the fancy title of a court witch—I outranked her and could make such decisions. Good thing, too. It was best if no one at the haven knew I was farther up the chain of command than they thought.

We arrived home just after midnight. Lingering over dinner and staying away from major highways—a tactic Zhan claimed would make it easier to tell if we were being followed—made the trip take almost twice as long as it usually would have. It also meant I slept in the car for the ninety minutes it took us to reach my farmhouse in rural Ohio south of Cleveland.

The first thing I did upon arriving home was stash the photo album in my desk drawer. I’d looked through it at dinner, but I wanted to snatch all the pictures out and see if anything was written on the backs. I’d deal with that later.

Despite the nap, after a hot shower I was ready for bed, but that was a luxury I couldn’t afford. The night was far from over. I donned a fresh pair of jeans and layered two tank tops, white and peach, under a black scoop-neck sweatshirt that had the habit of slipping over one shoulder. My hair would be dry by the time we arrived at the den. “Let’s go.”

Zhan chose a direct route to the Cleveland Cold Storage building (CCS), the giant, mostly windowless structure at the heart of the disputes of the new I-90 project. The real reason the old building continued to exist was that it secretly housed the Cleveland wærewolf pack. The advertising painted on the sides made it a big money-maker for them; they refused to sell and relocate. The city couldn’t afford to forcefully tear down the one place that kenneled ninety percent of the local wærewolves. Bad things would happen if they didn’t have a den.

Apparently, bad things were happening anyway. It was one thirty in the morning and the parking area underneath the structure was packed like a Best Buy at dawn on Black Friday.

“There’s nowhere to park and the moon isn’t full for another twelve days.” Zhan stopped the Corvette in front of the rickety freight elevator.

“Wait for me over by the University Inn,” I said.

“No way. You don’t know what’s going on up there.”

“Wæres aren’t fans of Offerlings.” The term referred to a twice-marked member of a vampire’s court, and that’s exactly what Zhan was.

“I’m not a spy.”

“I know that. I’m not comfortable pulling E.V. rank on you, but if you need a direct order to remain behind, consider it given.”

She crossed her arms. “Text me that you’re fine in ten minutes or I’m coming up.”

“Deal.”

Having little trust in the elevator, I headed up the stairwell as the Corvette rolled out of the parking garage. The wæres had increased the security, and though there was no one seen here, that didn’t mean they weren’t watching. They should all be familiar enough with me that they weren’t alarmed by my presence.

A young man and an older man were waiting atop the first-floor landing. I hadn’t seen either of them before. “Miss Alcmedi,” the older man said. “I’m George. This is Renaldo.”

“Hello.” I paused halfway up and out of reach. “I called earlier, and Johnny said I could meet him here, but he didn’t mention there was anything going on. Has something come up? Can I see him, or is he too busy?”

“He said to bring you up when you arrived,” George said.

Renaldo added, “And he said to tell you the elevator’s safe.”

Johnny knew I was leery of that elevator; that he’d thought to tell them to assure me helped me believe these strangers—but not totally. “Lead on,” I said.

Without hesitating, Renaldo proceeded to the waiting elevator. It could have transported a car, but I wouldn’t have dared such a thing. George held the gate for me. The second-floor gate wasn’t as bad as the termite-damaged garage-level gate. Still, small pieces of wood splintered to the floor.