Johnny shifted, and my attention went to him. He smiled at me, his focus flicking between my face and the stake in my hands. “Lustrata,” he said.
“Lustrata,” Nana repeated, breathlessly. “Yes. Sweet crone, yes!” She stared at me like she was seeing me for the first time ever. It creeped me out.
“Okay, everybody wait.” I put my hands up, the stake too, and looked directly at Johnny. “You have to explain this word to me right now.”
He hesitated, and it was the doctor who said, “Latin lustro, ‘purify.’ The nominative singular feminine form would be lustrate. The ancient Romans had the lustrum, a purification of the people…”
“Getting close, Doc,” Johnny said. “More precisely, in this case it’s a woman who cleanses by sacrifice, as in purifying the vampire body by sacrificing it.”
“You mean vampire assassin?” I said flatly. “Thanks, but the regular English words will work for me. I don’t need to candy-coat things with archaic Latin terms. Besides, my conscience won’t be tricked into thinking it’s okay.” When I finished, Johnny and Nana shared a telling glance. I didn’t like it.
She said, “Not ‘a’ Lustrata, Persephone. ‘The’ Lustrata. It’s not a candy-coated term; it is a title.”
“Oh, you guys are so full of shit,” Vivian said. “She cannot be the Lustrata.”
Nana flipped the gag back into Vivian’s mouth.
Everybody knew what we were talking about but me. “More information, please!” The note of panic in my voice bugged me, but I was sure it was only there because of the lack of sleep and fading adrenaline. I hadn’t gotten much coffee either.
Johnny let his crossed arms drop, and he stopped leaning on the counter. “I wrote a song about her. The lyrics are:
A pure-blood witch, a caster of spells
An element master and ringer of bells.
As impurity rises from under the world
The dead above ground, diseases unfurled.
Call upon her, upon the witch of old,
Delivering justice, voicing truths untold,
Fauna and flora’s mighty daughter
The Purifier! The Lustrata!”
Hearing Johnny saying the words, sincere as any poet reciting his own work, was beautiful. It touched me. But…“So, the Lustrata is some kind of glorified vampire killer?”
“There are legends…aren’t there always?” Nana said quietly, the croak of her voice softer than usual. “Legends about the beginning of time, the ending of it. Every culture, every religion has their stories about it—ours is no different. And there are always secret societies, keepers of knowledge hidden from the general populace. There are enemies. There are heroes. The pendulum of power swings.” Her focus sharpened on me, and I felt it like a cold blade at my throat. Nana stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray. “She who can maintain the balance despite the swinging is the Lustrata.”
I didn’t know what to say. I felt buried under all the responsibility I already had: a live-in Nana, a growing puppy, a terribly injured friend, a grieving little girl, and a newspaper column with a weekly deadline. Add maintaining the balance of the world, and whose knees wouldn’t be knocking? It seemed an alarm went off in my head, one more substantial than the triggered wards had been.
“Dr. Lincoln!” Celia cried from the top of the stairs. “The EKG monitor’s alarming!”
Chapter 17
It had not been an alarm in my head warning about the news I’d just been given, but a real warning that Theo’s life was in danger. The doctor scooped up his bag and hurried off before Celia had finished shouting. Johnny followed him. My focus stayed on Nana, but the question in my eyes changed. She understood, but said, “No. You need time to prepare to do this spell.”
“Then let’s do it! What do we need?”
“Persephone, this isn’t elementary witchcraft; it’s sorcery.”
I fled from her, angry that there was nothing I could do to help Theo right then. I took the steps two at a time. I had to do something. Standing in the doorway, I scoped out the scene.
Theo was wheezing and sweating, and her skin looked ashen. The doc was listening to her chest with his stethoscope. It seemed so rudimentary what he was doing, so passive. My panic rose. I wanted him to act, since I could not. “What’s happening?” I demanded.
“Pulmonary embolism,” he said calmly, “if I had to guess.” He dug into his bag, pulled a hard-shell case out, opened it, removed a vial, and started prepping a syringe.
“What does that mean? What are you doing?”
“She must have had a thrombus—a blood clot—because of her fractured leg or pelvis. It’s come loose and hit her lung.” He pushed the syringe into the IV. “This should break it up.”
“Should?”
Celia wrung her hands and shifted her weight over and over. Behind her, Beverley stood stock-still, face pale, staring at Theo as tears flooded silently down her cheeks.
“Beverley,” I said, maneuvering myself behind her and guiding her with firm hands on her shoulders. “This way.”
In the hall, I turned her toward the room we were to share and shut the door behind us. She took a few steps more after I released her shoulders. With hardly any sound at all she said, “She’s going to die, isn’t she?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “We’re doing everything we can for her.”
Goliath had done all this, caused so much pain. How did Beverley know him? I wanted to ask, but this wasn’t the right time. “You better get some sleep.” It sounded stupid: Someone in the next room is dying, but you just shut your eyes and sleep. Dream something nice while you’re at it. I couldn’t be that condescending to Beverley. “I’m sorry. I know this isn’t a time for sleep. I just…I don’t know.”
Beverley sat beside her box and started pushing things around inside of it. “Why do you think Goliath hurt Theo?”
“On the trip from the hospital, Theo woke up enough to tell me he ran her off the road. Vivian claims he killed your mom too.”
She stiffened. “No. He wouldn’t do that. None of that.”
“Theo saw him, Beverley. She identified him.”
“He wouldn’t do that!”
I sat in the middle of the room. Maybe now was as good a time as any. “How do you know him?”
She turned away and pulled a pair of sweatpants and a sweatshirt out of the box. “He was dating my mom.”
It was a good thing she wasn’t looking at me. I winced hard enough to give myself whiplash. “What?” I just barely managed not to sound as stunned as I felt.
“Whenever he came to the apartment, he was always nice to me. He actually talked to me like I mattered. Always brought me something too. Not like he was trying to buy me off or anything like that, but like he was thoughtful.”
Every fiber of me said that was impossible, but at the same time, I didn’t think Beverley would lie.
“He told me once he loved my mom and asked me if I was okay with that. Only a guy who really cares about a woman would bother to ask her kid something like that. He wouldn’t have killed her. I know it. I don’t believe that he and Vivian were lovers either. I like your nana, but she’s got to be wrong about that. Vivian is so mean, and she’s just saying mean things.”
“I don’t understand so much of this, Beverley.” We sat in silence for a few minutes.
“I’m going to change into these.” Beverley moved for the door.
“I’ll step out,” I said. I didn’t want her to go to the bathroom to change, it’d mean she would have to walk past the room where Theo was.
“Okay. But don’t leave.”
“I won’t.”
In the hall, I heard Celia say, “Blood pressure’s still dropping!”
Dr. Lincoln responded tersely, “I know!”
My eyes squeezed shut and I whispered another prayer. Finally, the door opened and Beverley said, “I’m done.”