Linda Robertson - Vicious Circle

Bitch. “She was on the news.”

“Okay.”

“Okay? That’s all you have to say? It looked like reporters were mobbing her!”

“Her mother was killed. Of course they want her on camera. It makes people tune in.”

“Vivian,” I said through gritted teeth.

“Oh I get it! You’re calling to give me parental advice! How many pups have you squeezed out for your pack friends? That’s right. None.”

All the way to the gas station I’d thought about how to say what needed saying without being judgmentally “you should this” and “you should that.”

“Ignoring her won’t work,” I said bitterly. “Grief doesn’t just go away after a certain amount of tears have been shed. She needs help. Being her guardian obligates you to see that she gets it. And letting reporters mob her at school isn’t going to cut it.”

“You’re so responsible, Miss Alcmedi. What with all your commendable hobbies, column-writing, kenneling, killing. This is just one little girl. I think I’ll manage.”

“It doesn’t look like it.”

“Looks can be deceiving.”

“I know Beverley. And I know grief.”

“Thank you for your advice. If that’s all—”

“It’s not. You didn’t tell me my mark was a vampire.”

Vivian laughed condescendingly. “Goddess, you are a novice if you think I’d offer you two hundred thousand for a mortal.”

“You could have warned me. I had someone gather background info for me and that person nearly paid for it with her life.” Vivian didn’t need all the details.

“That’s so sad. You don’t even know how to do your own work and friends are paying for it. You must feel awful.”

Why had I agreed to help this bitch?

“I clearly made a mistake in hiring you,” Vivian whispered. “I realize that now. You can back out of our deal, Miss Alcmedi. Because I, too, have erred; I will allow it. Just return the cash—”

“Shut up.” She was pissing me off. And I didn’t want to talk about the cash because I’d spent a tenth of it on Theo, who was out a vehicle as well. Not that she’d be driving any time soon, but I owed her. “I’m calling because of Beverley. I told you I’d be watching you. Now I’m telling you: you’re fucking up. If you like, you may think of me as Social Services, without laws to restrain me…but then, you know how loose my interpretation of the Rede is.”

“Don’t threaten me, Miss Alcmedi.” There was a thin thread of fear in her tone.

“Then do the right thing by that child and don’t give me cause to feel another face-to-face meeting is in order.”

“Nana, are you even listening to me?”

She sat in her rocking chair and listened to my brief description of what I had said to Vivian about Beverley. Her rocking never sped up or slowed, and her attention remained focused on the wooden hoops that had locked together the fabrics of the quilt she was sewing. Though I’d closed the door behind me, lest the wæres hear and ask questions I didn’t want to answer, I was now unsure she even knew I’d come in. Could her hearing have gone that fast?

“What business is that of yours?”

I rose from her bed and paced. I didn’t want Nana to know details. “I saw Beverley bombarded by reporters on the news. Vivian’s not helping that little girl, and she needed a wake-up call.”

“Again, what business is that of yours?”

I stammered, “I care. I seem to be the only one who does.” I had to get Beverley out of Vivian’s house.

“Leave it to the authorities.”

“You mean the same system that would have sent Theo to a State Shelter to die? I can’t do that.” I snorted. “I won’t do that.”

“You called and threatened this Vivian, didn’t you?”

I didn’t answer.

Nana stopped rocking and let the hoops rest in her lap, and only then did she glance up at me. “I’ve raised a bully. How in the name of Athena’s sweet justice did I do that?”

I could’ve given her a list. She had been a hard-as-nails authority figure in my youth. If I reminded her of that now, though, she’d just deny it. I stopped and crossed my arms. “I’m not a bully.”

“I suppose you have another name for it? Like Public Attitude Manager. You young people make everything so difficult.”

Where had that come from? My anger slipped a little toward worry. What had Nana done now? “Make what difficult?”

Nana put her quilting aside and picked up her cigarette case. “You’re either overanalyzing or overemphasizing. Can’t you ever oversimplify anything?” She put a cigarette to her lips and readied the lighter.

I eased down on the bed, rubbing my forehead. “What are you talking about?”

She took a long draw off the cigarette and released it slowly. She crossed her legs and started rocking again. “You know, you probably wouldn’t be so rash and dramatic if you put your passions where they were supposed to be and let that young man smooth you out a little.”

“What?” The shriek leapt out of me as I stood.

“It would do you good, you know. Goddess knows he wants to.”

“Nana! I’m trying to talk to you about the safety of a little girl I was getting rather attached to before her mother moved to the city! What Vivian’s done is totally against the Rede—damn! I wish I’d thought of that when I was on the phone!”

“Go cleanse your chakras and meditate. You’ve got it so bad you can’t think straight.”

“Got what? What do you think I’ve got, besides the insanity in my gene pool?”

She just rocked and stared at me. Her usually expressionless face had changed. Her cheeks rounded just a little, narrowing her eyes in the scariest way—she was amused. At me. At the thought of me having a boyfriend. It made me feel embarrassed and small.

“He’s a wære, Nana. He’s probably the one who tossed the trash you griped about on my lawn. What happened to the ‘witches and wolves aren’t meant to mingle’ bit you always preach at me?”

“They don’t make good friends, but it’s my understanding that for an occasional tryst they’re all right.”

I walked out. Nana encouraging me to have a tryst with a wærewolf caused my creep-o-meter needle to spike.

I was on watch with Theo.

The regular creak of Nana’s rocker told me she was still quilting. Celia and Johnny were in town getting groceries. Erik was sleeping on the third floor—I could hear his regular snores faintly through the ceiling.

The wæres had the IV bag—changing down pat; I wouldn’t have to do it on my watch. I checked Theo’s toes. They were cold, and the greenish color now had some yellow to it. Still swollen.

She was damn lucky to be alive at all. And very unlucky to be my friend.

I washed her face and cleaned dried blood from between her fingers and from the cuticles of her nails. The professional shaping and painting of them had been ruined in tearing her dashboard apart.

Guilt overwhelming me, I sat in the window seat, as far from Theo as I could be while still being in the room. I drew a small circle around me in the air and meditated. Cleansing my chakras, as Nana had suggested, would have entailed energy work, and that wasn’t safe around Theo. A full transformation would cure her and save her life, but a partial transformation would doom her irreparably. So I kept this meditation to a mental exercise and refrained from sticking my toes in the stream. I didn’t need to wash the negative energy away immediately; I could do that later. Besides, my guilt over Theo’s condition was tightly wound up in that energy, as it should be. I deserved to bear that guilt.

“Let it go.” Amenemhab padded to the water’s edge, a few yards upstream, and began to drink. After a moment, his ears pricked forward and his head came up. Water dripped from his muzzle. His attention focused across the stream.