Persephone Alcmedi 00 - Wicked Circle

sitting by the window of the middle car, hit the button to lower the window. “Well?” Johnny asked. “What did you find out?”
    “She’s a stubborn woman who is apparently not intimidated by riding in a limo surrounded by wæres,” Gregor announced, clearly frustrated.
    “What did she say ?” Johnny clarified.
    “That she will only talk to you.”
    For the entirety of the fifteen-minute ride, Johnny’s emotions had swirled. He wanted to hear what she had to say, and he feared it. Who was that woman? Not my mother, surely! She would have said something different, right? Now he intended to talk to her, and he didn’t want everyone else listening in. He opened the car door. “Then let her talk to me. Send her inside. Alone. And send the rest of the men home.” He approached the church.
    “Sire—”
    “You heard me.” Johnny kept walking.
    He pushed open the great doors, walked into the theatrical interior. Here, there was real Tiffany glass, a dome and columns as well. He sat in a pew near the front and viewed the pulpit.
    The answers I sought were locked away. I didn’t know when the phoenix taloned me that it would cost me any chance of that knowledge. Don’t let this be a hoax.
    He heard the outer door open again. Momentarily, quiet footsteps entered the chapel. The woman sidestepped into the pew just ahead of his and kept her distance.
    He observed her as she stood looking up at the dome then at other architectural details. She didn’t seem nervous; she seemed very much at ease. Her silver-blond hair was short, and she was dressed in a gray pantsuit made of a material that didn’t wrinkle. He recalled her saying she’d ridden five hundred miles on a bus. That would explain the strange mingled scents around her.
    Finally, she sat down in the pew, keeping her spine straight, shoulders squared. As she turned to face him, he noticed she’d tried—without complete success—to apply enough makeup under her eyes to hide the dark circles. She didn’t sleep well, he guessed, but she wasn’t as old as he had first thought. The preponderance of silvery white hair on her head belied age—or hardship. She did emit a profound tiredness.
    “You certainly picked a beautiful spot to talk,” she said.
    “What’s your name?”
    “You used to call me Toni.”
    He regarded her, repeating the name over and over to himself, but he had not even a hint of recollection. “Do you dislike wæres?”
    She shrugged. “I don’t know any. Or I didn’t until now. I liked you well enough before.”
    “How do you know me?”
    “Indulge an ‘old’ woman for a moment, will you?”
    He felt only impatience, having waited eight years already, but he forced the hastiness aside and unclenched the fists he hadn’t consciously made. Gregor had surely insulted her when he’d called her old. Wanting to ease that offense, Johnny deliberately relaxed his shoulders and nodded.
    “What is the date of your earliest memory?” she asked.
    Suspicion filled him. “Why?”
    “Everything else I think I know hinges on this time line.”
    “Because you’re a fraud who wants information to twist into your lies?” Johnny sat back with a tired, regretful exhalation. “Tell me what you came here to say, or get out of here,” he whispered.
    Toni fixed him with the look that cross mothers wear.
    He could force her to tell him. It probably wouldn’t take much to make her talk. A wave of shame rushed through him. What’s wrong with me? He’d lost it last night and he might have lost Persephone forever, but this impulsive carelessness wasn’t him .
    Johnny raked fingers over his scalp, as if he could harvest a good idea that way. He stood and paced out into the aisle, ready to leave before the beast inside him did something horrible.
    He couldn’t abandon this chance. Staring straight ahead into the darker depths under the choir loft, he was overwhelmed with the need to know and the understanding that this was his chance. Maybe his only chance. He couldn’t live with himself if he didn’t master himself, sit his ass down and find out.
    As he turned back, he felt more in control.
    “My first memory is of waking naked in the Cleveland Metroparks. That was actually roughly eight and a half years ago. In June.”
    “June,” Toni repeated. She scooted over in the pew. Patting the space she’d just opened, she said, “C’mon.” He sat. “What happened to you then?” The empathy she conveyed wasn’t false.
    “I ended