“Persephone,” Menessos interrupted before I could go further. “Half of my objective has been accomplished. Will you allow me to make it a complete success? Let me keep watch so that you may rest and know all in your home are safe this night.” Something in his voice pleaded with me. “Please, rest. Sleep.”
I had been about to tell Johnny that Menessos wasn’t the master here. If the vampire could read my thoughts he might be keeping me from telling so he’d remain one up on Johnny. Male ego games weren’t meant to be understood by women. Menessos was also being very courteous and wording things as if to ask permission. It was unlike him and I was suspicious, but this was preferable to a pissing contest that would sooner or later develop into fisticuffs. Johnny could be told tomorrow. “But you have to go before dawn,” I insisted to Menessos.
“I know where I belong, Persephone.”
I pivoted on my heel and was ready to leave, but Johnny stopped me with a gentle clasp of my shoulder, turning me to face him, studying me and searching for any sign I was being given a mesmerizing vampire command. To reassure him that wasn’t the case, I stroked his arm. “It’s okay.” I moved toward the steps. “C’mon.”
Menessos added, “And you, Johnny. You need your rest, as well.” He didn’t use a dog reference. My suspicions were soaring.
Johnny reiterated, “I can protect her.”
“Yes, and you will protect her, if this war is fought. In the meantime, if you want to be foolish enough to claim no rest in my presence, so be it, but do not be foolish enough to let your place at her side grow cold.”
Because my senses were amped up by the binding with Menessos, I could smell things like never before and, just then, the vampire’s insinuated threat riled the waere. A musky testosterone scent filled the cellar. Luckily, neither did more than glare at the other. As for me, the mention of war had knocked all thought of sleep from my mind.
Johnny took my hand and preceded me up and out into the night. Menessos extinguished the candle and tugged on the pull chain to turn off the light. He followed us, pausing to shut the cellar door behind us.
We walked silently around the house to the front porch. November’s eager fingers had chilled the air. A mist was settling in. The bannerlike leaves of the fodder-shocks rustled lightly at our approach, sounding like stiff paper scrubbing together. The jack-o’-lanterns’ tea lights had burned out hours ago and their dark faces seemed sad. Yup. Hallowe’en’s over.
Johnny opened the door for me. Menessos came around the corner slowly, intently staring across the cornfield.
Inside the house, my feet headed directly for the stairs, but I lingered with my palm on the newel post’s ball finial. I didn’t want to go to my lonely room and climb between cold sheets and sleep alone. What I wanted was Johnny’s warm body next to mine, and the security of his arms around me.
A few days before, I had felt overwhelmed because it seemed impossible to balance my new life with all its myriad complications, let alone being the Lustrata and somehow bringing balance to the world. Now my own actions were the catalyst for a war.
How the hell am I going to fix this?
“Stay with me on the couch, Johnny?” I asked.
“You bet.” Johnny lifted my hand from the finial and led me into the living room. We’d left an end table lamp on, and he sat near it, on one end of my tan corduroy slip-covered couch. Johnny and I had made love there. Once.
This room. This couch. Our first and, so far, only time.
Shortly after the intimacy, I’d been confused and hurt that he might have betrayed me with some women at a gig. He hadn’t, but at the time his supposed unfaithfulness had been such a concern. Not that we’d discussed exclusivity with each other or anything, but it was the kind of thing I expected and thought was understood. Now, infidelity seemed pretty insignificant compared to war.
When he sat, my hand fell away from his. I turned in a slow circle. This space was my sanctuary, filled with all my Arthurian books and posters. Over the mantel was Waterhouse’s painting Ariadne. A very impractical thank-you-for-not-staking-me gift from Menessos. The security system for the valuable artwork was supposed to be installed this Friday.
So many things had changed in such a short amount of time.
“Wanna put your head in my lap?” Johnny asked teasingly.
Some things, like Johnny’s constant innuendos, weren’t likely to ever change.
My exhaustion was reaching complete and the weight of my worries filled the room, threatening to suffocate me. Johnny could probably feel it too. He was trying to ease away the heaviness with humor.
I faced Johnny with a genuine smile. “You wish.”
“I certainly do.”
I gave him a mock scowl.
“Okay, okay.” In one motion, he turned out the lamp and moved the couch pillow onto his lap. “Now?”
I laughed and it felt good. “Now.”
As my feet carried me forward, a silhouette crept across the picture window behind Johnny. It was Menessos taking a sentinel’s position on the porch, but I could feel his presence, feel how he yearned to be the one inside comforting me.
CHAPTER TWO
It was nearly dawn. Freshly showered, wearing clean blue jeans and a long-sleeved creamy yellow T-shirt with some beaded embellishment around the scoop neck, I crossed to the edge of my porch, yawning. Even with the chill in the crisp air, the mist had held on, giving the morning a sense of magic.
The ground was wet with cold dew that soaked the hem of my jeans as I went to check the cellar door. Not to verify Menessos’s presence—the warmth caressing the underside of my sternum assured me he was still here. As expected, the door was secured from the inside as if people were huddling down there to escape a tornado. There were no people down there, however, only one insatiably obstinate vampire. There might be no storm to shelter from, but the cellar offered protection from the even more dangerous, for him, daylight.
Johnny’s footsteps shushed through the grass as he rounded the corner.
“He’s locked himself in down there,” I said.
“Wolves in your attic and corpses in your cellar.” Johnny’s hands rested on the black denim at his lean hips. “Just another glorious day in ‘Ohio: The Heart of It All.’ ”
I scanned over his long fingers, up the heather gray of his long-sleeved jersey to the black waves of tousled hair and the dark lines of his Wedjat-tattooed eyes.
My arm slid around his waist and directed him toward the front of the house. “I have a nagging feeling that this is going to get ugly before it’s over, and we’ll be appreciating any break we can get. Even if Menessos is the one giving it to us.”
He hung his arm across my shoulders.
When we rounded the house, I could see the east. There were thick clouds promising rain overhead, yet the first glimmer of true sunlight glistened on the less-cloudy horizon, and reflected off every damp particle floating in the air like a haze of glitter.
In that enchanting moment, six broom-riding witches in a V formation drifted down from the sky to land in my yard. It’s not every morning a girl sees Elders in street clothes. Xerxadrea, the eldest, was in the lead position and, apparently, a red, white, and navy blue velour jogging suit was the flying outfit of choice for ancient Eldrennes.
Every one of the witches wore some type of dark jogging suit and white sneakers. All wore goggles that any steampunk fan would love.
It made me want to race up to my closet and throw out the few jogging suits I was guilty of owning. Mine were solid pastel colors, though, stylish and cotton, and I’d never once considered wearing them with Red Baron goggles.
Johnny leaned close to my ear and whispered, “I never would have believed those old ladies could sit a broom. At least not without stirrups, handlebars, and broad bicycle seats attached.”