Menessos faced her after a mildly distasteful glance at her hand on his arm. “Vivian. Vivian murdered your mother, child.”
Beverley became utterly still. I wanted to touch her, comfort her, but she looked so fragile, it seemed any touch might shatter her. She whispered, “They gave me to her. My mom trusted her!” She turned slowly to the house.
Johnny and I shared a look. We didn’t know what to say or do. Were the vampires lying? Maybe. But if not, I wanted to turn Vivian over to them now and be done with it. Beverley couldn’t be expected to stay in the same house as her mother’s killer—
Beverley had slipped away from us and was already halfway to the house. “Beverley, no!” I shouted. Johnny ran after her, but even with his long legs and speed, he couldn’t get to her before she dashed inside.
I followed, Erik behind me. It wasn’t that I was faster than he, just that he kept himself between me and the vampires. Inside, I stopped in the kitchen beside Johnny. Beverley was standing before Vivian, hands clenched at her sides as she glowered at our prisoner. Slowly she reached up and took down the gag.
“I know what you did,” the little girl whispered. “You murdered my mother.” As she spoke, she wrenched the bandanna-gag in her hand, tightening it around Vivian’s neck. I moved to step in, but Johnny put an arm out to stop me. Nana and Celia had stopped what they were doing when the girl had run in. They now sat staring, shocked silent at what she just said.
“I was sleeping in the next room while you painted the wall with her blood!” Beverley continued. Vivian’s mouth worked soundlessly; she was turning purple. “You were supposed to be her friend!” She let go of the bandanna and hit Vivian hard with a balled-up fist. “And you took me in! Why? Why would you bother to take me in if you hated my mother so much?”
Wheezing, Vivian slowly brought her head around. For a second I thought of The Exorcist and wondered if that evil-looking face was going to go all the way around. Vivian said, “It would have been suspicious not to.”
Beverley slowly backed away, then turned and ran.
Even after Menessos’s claim, I had expected Vivian to deny it. She started laughing.
I stalked over, put the gag back, and left. Upstairs, I went to Dr. Lincoln. “Fix me a dose of morphine, enough to knock Vivian out and keep her out.”
He gaped at me, dumbfounded.
“Now,” I said, teeth clenched.
He moved into action, started filling a syringe. “I’m not sure of the dose.”
“Your best guess, Doctor.”
“Here.” He handed me a syringe with triple what we gave Theo.
“Thank you.” In the kitchen, I jerked the safety cap off and threw it. Taking a handful of Vivian’s hair, I steadied her head and jabbed the needle viciously into the vein in her neck.
“Shit, Seph!” Celia whispered.
Vivian sucked air sharply through her nose.
“I thought you’d be used to having sharp, pointy things in your neck,” I snarled as I depressed the plunger slowly.
She’d revealed to everyone that I’d taken her money to assassinate a vampire. Now everyone knew she was the killer.
“I agreed to kill for justice—there’s at least some merit in that. But you—you killed for jealousy and spite. Now I can’t wait to give you to them.”
Vivian’s eyes went wide and she tried to complain or plead or something, but her head just dropped forward.
I threw the empty syringe into the trash and turned to leave.
“You’d better empty out your room,” Nana said. “So there’s space to make the circle.”
Her words made my stomping steps halt. One life had already been taken, and justice would be served one way or another. But a second life waited. I’d forgotten that. “Yeah,” I agreed, anger washing out of me. “I want to check on Beverley first; then I’ll see to it the room’s ready.”
“I’ll check on the girl,” she said, rising stiffly from the table. “You tend to your room.”
Johnny put a hand on my shoulder. “Let us move the furniture—you just supervise,” he said. A mere mortal with substandard strength, I would only be in a wærewolf’s way. And since I couldn’t eat until after the ritual, I was feeling sleepy and low. A glance at the clock told me we had about an hour and fifteen minutes to go. Johnny and Erik followed me to my room and asked, “Where do you want everything?”
“Everything” included a dresser and side tables. “In Nana’s room or the hallway.”
They moved the dresser out into the far end of the upstairs hall. Then they came back and Erik went for the far bedside table while Johnny unplugged the lamp on the nearer one. He picked up my side table with everything on it.
“Hey. Be careful with that picture. The hinge is loose on the back.”
“Right,” he said, assessing it. “Who is it?”
“My dad.”
He started to say something but stopped. Nana came in. “The child is resting.”
“Goddess, she’s been through so much.”
Nana patted my arm. “Don’t worry so much for her. Children often cope better than adults.” She paused as Erik excused himself around her. “They have the ability to accept things more easily because they’re growing and learning and everything is always changing with them anyway. It’s when we stop growing and stop learning that we start forgetting how to ride with the changes.”
“I understand what you’re saying, Nana, but she lost her mother. It’s not like she’s just changing schools or some individual thing is changing. It’s everything.”
Her hand withdrew slowly. “I suppose you know what that’s like.”
Focusing on her steadily, I said, “I do.”
“I can see inner strength burning bright in that young girl’s eyes. She’s going to be just fine.”
“I hope so.”
“I’m sorry I missed it in your eyes. I’m sure the evidence of your strength was there, I just…I wasn’t looking.”
I didn’t know what to say.
Nana smiled. “I better get back to my own preparations.”
I strolled to Theo’s right side, where I would stand for the ritual, and looked up through the skylights. Not yet. My attention turned to Theo, and I took her hand. “I’ll do all I can,” I whispered.
Erik and Johnny came back in.
“You’re sure this won’t make the rest of us change too?” Erik asked.
“I’m sure.” My voice sounded weary.
“It’s not that I don’t trust you, Seph. I do. We all do, or we wouldn’t be doing this. It’s just that I can’t seem to wrap my head around how witches do what they do.”
“It’s not any different from how you guys change back and forth. I mean, the light of the sun shines on the whole surface of an orbiting heavenly body, which reflects that light, triggering something inside of you, and your entire physical body changes. Not because of a Jekyll-and-Hyde potion, not because of technology or a spoken power word. Because of the volume of sunlight reflected into the darkness. It is magic.”
“I gotta write that down,” Johnny whispered. “I can make lyrics out of that.”
“Why doesn’t it initiate partial changes, then, when it’s not full but still shining?” Erik asked.
“Because it’s not the whole surface, it’s not magic. Moonshine isn’t enough to change you or even start a change. But there is a universal reaction, an elemental and magical reaction, when the entire face of the lunar surface is reflecting. It’s like it amplifies a hundredfold because everything is in place to allow it.”
“When you put it like that, I do kind of get it,” he said.
“Persephone,” Nana called from the bottom of the stairs.
“Yeah?” I went into the hall, my thoughts for her knees. I hoped she wasn’t climbing the stairs again, especially this late. We were all so tired.
“We have a problem. You better come down here.”
It didn’t surprise me when Johnny followed me. Nana returned to the kitchen dinette and sat before the book. Her finger traced over a section and she said, “I was going through the ritual one last time to determine everyone’s position. There are differences depending on what the change is meant for—defense, offense, other purposes. In this instance, as it is meant to heal, I thought this said”—she followed the lines with her fingertips—“‘The one who is familiar with the situation asks the injury to be given favor.’ But your veterinarian walks through as I’m talking to myself, and he says I’m wrong. I asked him to look over the passage and he interprets it as—” She gestured for Dr. Lincoln to take over.