Persephone Alcmedi 00 - Wicked Circle

not keep an immortal from leaving, but it would cause him or her to linger within.
    Risqué lit candles around the bed where the two dead shabbubitum lay, then called a circle encompassing Menessos’s large bed.
    Crawling onto the bed, Risqué sat straddling Ailo’s corpse. She lifted Ailo’s head, put the necklace under her neck and replaced her head on the pillow. Laying a heavy welder’s glove across Ailo’s throat, Risqué hooked the open link atop the glove, satisfied that it was a tight fit. Donning protective goggles, the half-demon fired up the small torch. Clasping the link with long-nosed pliers in one hand, the torch in the other, she chanted, “I bind you Ailo to Menessos and Persephone.”
    When the link was secure, she did the same to Talto. By the time she had taken up the circle, the iron was cool enough that she could retrieve the gloves that had protected the sisters’ necks. She removed also a few hairs from each of their heads.
    Crawling onto the bed between them, she tied the strands together in knots, chanting, “Ailo and Talto, you are henceforth bound to Menessos and Persephone.” When the hairs were well knotted, she dropped them into a thin cotton pouch. She clipped the sisters’ fingernails and toenails and added these trimmings to the pouch. After she cut a fingertip of each and squeezed out blood to stain the sides of the pouch, Risqué left the rear chamber.
    She let the candles continue burning; the undead liked to awaken with a dim light waiting.
    Returning to the altar, she burned the pouch on charcoal, then gathered the ashes. She put half in a glass vial. The other half she stirred into a lotion she’d made with oil, beeswax, a few drops of water, orrisroot and buckthorn bark.
    After lighting candles all around the outer chamber, she opened the door to Menessos’s closed bed. She repositioned a pedestal to be nearer and placed a candelabrum on it so the black tapers could light her endeavors. The glass vial, an ink pen, surgical gloves, a knife, a needle with two colors of thread and the little bowl with lotion from the altar were placed with Menessos, then she undressed and crawled inside.
    Sitting atop his body, she opened his sightless eyes and murmured lovingly as she drew symbols on his forehead. She drew symbols on his cheeks and down his sternum. Still chanting, she drew an ankh on his throat. Donning the surgical gloves, she rubbed the lotion where she had drawn, chanting, “Ailo and Talto are yours to command,” following it with the seething words of a far fiercer language in a voice that was not entirely her own.
    What flicker of energy she felt as she worked she believed to be of her own making, and she did not know that a hooded man had appeared in the chamber, standing on the other side of the enclosed bed. She did not know he placed his palms upon the wood and spread his fingers wide. She did not know how he smiled, listening to her.
    When the symbols were smeared and all of the lotion absorbed into Menessos’s skin, Risqué clutched the knife. The words of her staccato chant had a dark cadence as she placed the tip of the blade just lower than his sternum. With an ecstatic cry and a flick of her stubby tail, she cut a deep, three-inch line.
    Wedging the gash open with the knife tip, she poured the ashes from the vial inside her master’s body. As she sewed black and red stitches into his skin, she chanted, “Sealed within you, their binding will never be undone.”

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

    T oni’s words didn’t sink in at first. When they did, Johnny’s lungs expelled all oxygen, as if he’d just been kicked in the gut and a terrible weight had crashed onto his shoulders. His bones felt too fragile to bear it.
    “I remember the first time I ever saw you. You and my daughter were teamed up for a class project. I’d just gotten home from work, and you arrived shortly after. I’d passed you on the road and thought, ‘What’s that kid doing out now?’ It was cold and night was falling. Then you showed up on my porch. My daughter brought you into the kitchen to introduce you, and I thought, ‘That poor kid.’ You’d walked in the snow in your sneakers. Your jeans had holes in them and were wet from the knee down. Your hair was a mess—it still is, I see—and you barely made eye contact. I set out some cans of soda and a bag of chips and started dinner. You finished off the chips and paid very little attention to the project.”
    Johnny’s