Linda Robertson - Arcane Circle

The AIE employees set about getting a new door put on their boss’s apartment. Once the police were done gathering statements, Zhan drove Lance, Nana, and me to the hospital following my brother’s directions.

I can’t believe I have a brother.

He sat up front. I observed him the entire way. He was worried about her, we all were, but I was judging him by other standards.

He’d responded to the initial threat by having his client hold the tattooing mechanism and keep it running so he could get the jump on Johnny. Had to respect the intelligence that had taken. And the courage.

“How old are you, Lance?”

“Eighteen. Why?”

“You look older,” I said.

The awkward silence that followed was broken by Nana. “You’ll graduate this year, then?”

“I took advanced courses and graduated last year. I go to the Art Institute now.”

By the time we’d arrived at UPMC Mercy, parked, and found where we needed to be, we were told that Eris was in surgery. We waited for about an hour, then I sought out the vending machines. I bought sodas and goodies that I placed on the coffee table in our midst. No one touched them. There didn’t seem to be anything to talk about. Interrogating Lance would be rude and insensitive and he wasn’t in any shape to question us.

After another hour had passed, I had to take a walk around the hospital just for something to do. I ended up in another waiting area, one with big windows and a view across the parking lot and beyond the highway to the river.

“Ever since she saw you on TV, she’s been talking about you a lot. She told me a long time ago I had an older half-sister who lived with her mother. Also made it clear she had no contact with you or her. Said it was for the best. Then she saw you with the vampire.”

Over my shoulder I saw Lance, arms crossed and holding himself. He was so young. Overwhelmed. On TV, emergency surgeries are wrapped up by the end of the episode. Waiting like this was interminable.

I should have guessed he was Eris’s son. The movies by the DVD player screamed “young man” more than “mid-life crisis.” I doubted now that there was a trucker boyfriend who’d be “home” later in the week. “I don’t know what to say.”

“She was nearly broken when she returned from Ohio a few days ago.” He walked over and stood beside me. We stared out the window together. “Say you’ll give her a chance. It’s all she wants.”

I faced him; he mirrored me. My little brother.

“My life is … complicated at best.”

“She doesn’t care. She just wants to make things right with you.” He frowned. “The guilt is eating at her. And now … after this, if you don’t …” He didn’t finish.

I wrapped him in my arms.

His arms lifted in hesitant jerks, then surrounded me and, for a long minute, he gave up the tears he’d been fighting. He sniffled and eased away. “I hate crying.”

“Must be a family trait.”

He found a box of tissues beside a stack of magazines on a coffee table. After pulling a few he blew his nose. He rejoined me at the window.

“Why does she call you ‘bitch boy’?”

He gave a half-laugh. “When I enrolled at the college I wanted to live in a dorm. She said that as long as she’s paying for my classes and books, I had to live at home. I told her I didn’t want people to think I was a bitch boy. She didn’t know what it meant. I told her it was a rich kid, spoiled, who lives with his mom. She thought that was funny and … it kind of stuck after that.” He drew a shaky breath. “Will you give her a chance?”

They hadn’t seen or heard what was said while Hecate was present. So I told him, “I will.”

When the surgery was concluded, a nurse ushered us into a private waiting room. “The doctor will be in shortly.” He arrived minutes later, his grave expression cluing me in that this was going to be bad. “Ms. Alcmedi came through the surgery fine and has been taken to the recovery area. However, I have some unfortunate news.”

The room was silent as we each held our breath.

“I was told that the emergency crew was forced to wait some fifteen or twenty minutes before Ms. Alcmedi agreed to be transported.”

“That’s correct,” I said softly, thinking of how dark her hand had been.

“The bullet that entered her shoulder”—he touched the spot on his own shoulder to indicate—“transected the medial cord of the brachial plexus—”

“In English?” Nana demanded.

He reworded, unflustered. “The nerves were severed. The brachial artery was also severed. There was no blood flow in her arm for the time that it took for the medics to arrive, none while they waited, none while they transported her here.”

“What are you saying?” Lance was rigid, his voice tight.

“The arm was dead, son.”

Hecate’s words haunted my memory: Now she will sacrifice for him.

The doctor continued, “We couldn’t save it … we removed it.”

I was stunned. Zhan maneuvered Nana into a chair before her knees gave. Lance had paled again.

“She will be moved to her room in an hour—”

“Can we see her then?” Lance’s voice cracked as he cut the doctor off. He was in tears again.

The doctor continued directly to Lance, conveying sincere pity, and I could tell he hated this part of his job. “For now we’re going to keep her sedated. She’s not going to be awake tonight.” He paused, his own voice thickening. “Go home and get some rest.”

Through gritted teeth Lance declared, “I’m not leaving.”

The doctor left.

“I can’t leave her,” he said. “I’m all she’s got. She wouldn’t leave me and … she’s all I’ve got.”

I put my arm around Lance’s shoulder. “No, she’s not.”

We stayed until Eris was moved from the recovery area to her room. Seeing her all bandaged up, with tubes and an IV, was terrible.

And yet, somehow, it was good. We all got to see her, see the new and strange shape of her without her watching us back, judging the pity and tears that inundated us. It would have been worse for us all if she had to endure our first reactions.

In time, weariness set in for everyone. I reasoned with Lance and, though he resisted at first, he eventually relented and agreed to go home. Zhan went to get the car for us.

Lance kissed Eris’s forehead and whispered something to her, then let Nana lead him slowly from the room.

I glanced from my mother to Nana walking down the hall, arm in arm with Lance.

This was the family I was born into.

Some families you join by way of vocation, location, or spiritual preference. And others are forced upon you when Fate decides to throw you into a niche societal group.

None of them are ever perfect.

I could see now that, for whatever reason, Eris had yearned to be valued by the opposite sex. She was the kind of woman whom men like the Rege chewed up and spit out. She sought her validation in the eyes of men when she should have looked inside—but she hadn’t trusted her own judgment. She wouldn’t back up and choose a different path, either. She kept stumbling forward, blindly. She chose a life that was awkward and thorny … a life fueled on nicotine, eyeliner, and alcohol … a life that made her travel the long road, the hard road, and it had quickly worn the soles right off her metaphorical shoes. But in the end—with nothing and closing in on self-destruction—she’d kept going. I had to respect that she did, if not the methods she’d used.

In spite of all that was wrong with the choices that led my mother to the brink of suicide, Fate gave her a fighting chance. And she fought.

I wondered what thoughts actually occurred to her when she had all that cash—payment for the terrible things she’d done to Johnny. I doubted reclaiming her life was the first thought, or even the second. But it had occurred to her at some point and she’d recognized it as the right thing to do.