“Persephone.” Nana’s voice was soft.
Stuffing my despondency deep down and plastering on an “I’m okay” expression, I grabbed the carafe because it was the only thing within reach. “Coffee?”
She snorted and said, “Sure,” then came and leaned on the counter beside me. I poured two cups, and neither of them was my favorite Lady of Shalott mug. We drank in silence, side by side, listening to the chatter that had picked up again in the next room.
Before I’d finished the coffee, Johnny returned. He entered by the front door, passed through the living room and dining room, checking on the gathered witches and inquiring if they’d had enough to eat. They claimed they had and complimented him on his culinary skills. Someone remarked, “Your pancakes are as fluffy as a cloud.”
“Well, you would know,” he replied, “flying around on brooms like you do.”
He came into the kitchen and, seeing Nana and me, wagged the empty platters and whispered, “They didn’t leave a crumb,” before stacking them in the sink. “I thought only waeres and teenage boys had claim to the appetite crown, but damn, those seven little old ladies can chow down!”
“There’s still coffee.” I lifted the carafe again.
He took it and poured himself a cup. Derisively, he asked, “So what are we going to do about the corpse in your cellar?”
“Corpse?” Nana echoed, voice hollow.
“He means Menessos.”
“He’s here?”
“Yes.” The chatter in the other room had stopped.
Xerxadrea appeared in the doorway. “You must make Menessos tell you the truth.”
“Finally!” Johnny exclaimed.
“Huh?” I asked.
“I’m not the only one who thinks Menessos is a liar.” Johnny grinned over the edge of his mug.
“Do not add implications to my words, young man,” Xerxadrea snapped. “I insinuated nothing of the sort.” Though her patriotic velour jog suit was quirky, her formidability was undeniable. “Menessos is many things,” she went on, her voice firm but without the condemnation. “He embodies things you fear, things you envy, and things you cannot comprehend, but he is not a liar.” Before Johnny could protest, she raised a hand and added, “Oh, you can argue he twists facts to suit himself, but what he truly does is so much more than that. He can instantly take all the information he’s acquired and accurately discern which words—and what order—will produce the best advantage for his purposes.”
“My bad,” Johnny muttered. “He’s not a liar, he’s a manipulating ass.”
Again, I couldn’t intervene because Xerxadrea was quicker.
“Omitting the unaccommodating words doesn’t make him a liar or an ass. It makes him a master.” She pointed at Johnny. “Perhaps you would learn a few things if you would but try to see beyond your own conflict, and see his.”
Johnny’s silence couldn’t disguise the fact that he resented her scolding. It was conveyed in his raised chin and rigid spine.
Xerxadrea continued. “His perception has been transformed by eons of blood. He has worn the fabric of this world for so long it’s threadbare and holds no mysteries for him now. He has mastered the patterns. Whatever moment in time you’re bitterly clinging to and trying to alter . . . it’s merely a thread to him. He can sever it as easily as he can fray it into a hellish and frantic existence for you. Or he can reweave that thread, making those seconds produce an outcome to fit the necessary and inevitable truth he uniquely sees, and it is that truth of which I spoke.”
She gestured to me, and held out her arm.
“Take me to him, Persephone. We must speak with him privately, you and I.”
CHAPTER THREE
Being that she was an Eldrenne, I didn’t argue with her or point out that talking with a vampire during the day should be impossible. She’d have a way around it or she wouldn’t have suggested it. So, though I shared a glance with Johnny, I simply obeyed. As I led Xerxadrea carefully off my porch, Ruya cawed softly. Xerxadrea whispered back something I couldn’t understand.
“He’s locked himself in down there, Xerxadrea.”
“I can tend to that.”
So could I, but she was the one wanting in, so I’d let her do the unlocking.
At the cellar door, we halted. While the clouds overhead warned a cold rain could fall any second, I could feel his presence like a warm summer sun kissing the skin of my chest.
Xerxadrea’s strange eyes shut and her hand rose before her, gnarled old fingers quavering as she mimed feeling along the underside of the door. Her face pinched up, and she whispered a single, sharp word. I felt a snap of ley power just as she sliced through the air like a sideways karate chop.
She nodded at me. “Now.”
I threw open the newly unbarred door then reached for her arm, but she had mist drifting around her ankles. I held back while she glided down the precarious steps. I followed, seeing the strange vapor dissipating when her feet safely met the cellar floor. Nana definitely needs to know that trick.
I jerked the pull chain on the overhead bulb. Menessos had lain in the spare cage to die. He was utterly still.
Xerxadrea approached him, pausing at the open door. I watched, guessing she would tap the ley line to somehow make the vampire awaken in the day.
“You found her,” Xerxadrea said grouchily.
Menessos sat up. “And before you did.” He stood, brushing straw from his tailored suit.
I was shocked. My senses had not detected her tapping the line at all. I hadn’t heard her whisper magic words or anything else. Maybe she’d multitasked when opening the door.
“She’ll give me the hanky back and I’ll transfer Ruya to you.”
He exited the kennel and placed his hands lightly upon her frail shoulders. “That bet was made decades ago! I demand no payment. You need Ruya now.” He tenderly stroked her white hair and part of her long braid. “I named her as the prize only to hurt you, then. And now I have no interest in hurting you.”
“Your wounds have healed better than mine,” she whispered.
“Which is why there is no need to hurt you now. I am . . . sorry, Xerxadrea.”
They had a bet about finding the Lustrata? And the hanky was a means for him to collect his winning? “You outed me as the Lustrata to her during the Eximium?”
Xerxadrea spoke over her shoulder. “I didn’t know which contestant it was. At first.” A thought seemed to occur to her. “I told you he fancied me once, as he fancies you.”
I’d thought she had been implying they were lovers or that he’d wanted her for his court witch. I’d mistakenly believed her lofty position in WEC signified her resistance to him. That wasn’t what she’d meant at all. “He thought you were the Lustrata.”
“Long ago,” he said, caressing her wrinkled cheek.
“Better you than me, Persephone.” She turned back to Menessos. “I wagered and I lost. Promise you will be good to Ruya.”
“I burned the hanky, Xerx.”
“Why?” she demanded.
“I didn’t want to risk the fairies claiming it.”
Xerxadrea pulled away from him. “That was an accident.” For the first time since I’d met her, she sounded as old as she truly was.
“I know.” His tone was gentle, blameless.
Xerxadrea made no reply.
Into the silence that had enveloped us, I asked, “How did those fairies come to be bound to you?”
“It is a very long story.”
“I’m patient.” That was a lie, but he was going to tell me, one way or another.
“Do you know the story of the curses in the Codex?”
“Yes. Una was a priestess who had two lovers. Some new guy came to town telling of another god, fell in love with her, then cursed the three of them when she wouldn’t have him.”
“There’s much more to it that was not in the Codex. Una and her lovers sought a way to break their curse,” he said. “With their magic, they searched—” He stopped, obviously looking for the right words to explain something I probably wasn’t going to understand anyway. “They searched various astral planes and eventually discovered the fey race. The fey were seeking a new world to inhabit.”