Persephone Alcmedi 00 - Wicked Circle

the drop of her gaze in reply. She tucked her hair behind her ear, and her cheeks rounded with a small smile.
    “Menessos,” I said, to draw his attention and keep him from picking up on what I already knew about his Offerling and his Beholder. “There’s less than three hours until you retire for the day.” I kept talking as I headed for my porch. “Do you intend to head back to the haven for that? It’ll shorten our time to plan.”
    “I will rest here.”
    I opened the screen door. “That’s good because—” My words cut off midsentence when, before my key even neared the dead bolt, the main door swung open an inch.
    “Because why?” Menessos asked.
    “My door’s already open,” I said, backing away.
    Suddenly, Johnny put himself between me and the door and was backing me off of the porch.
    Menessos hmpf ed, pushed the door open and walked inside. “All is well,” he called. The entry lights blazed.
    Johnny and I moved forward as one. And stopped as one. The moment waned awkwardly, then Johnny extended his hand chivalrously and allowed me to go first. Peering cautiously inside, I discovered Goliath Kline sitting on the staircase. He smiled maliciously and waved. Then he stood and bounced on my squeaky step.
    Taller even than Johnny, with a lanky scarecrow frame, he was intimidation incarnate in collar-to-toe black leather. Goliath’s skin and hair were like a white palette with two daubs of forget-me-not blue, and the blue was so feral and cunning that his glance seemed more like an incision. Menessos had chosen his second-in-command and security head because he was a certifiable genius whose perfect ACT score was achieved at the age of ten. Menessos had raised him and trained him as an assassin before Making him a vampire.
    And I was on this guy’s least-favorite-people list.
    His brother, a defunct Southern Baptist preacher, had once tried to stake Menessos and been beheaded for the crime. But apparently even brothers separated at a young age and with opposing opinions of vampires could be protective of each other. When Goliath heard Sam’s voice on my protrepticus, he had grabbed me and questioned me.
    At the time, I happened to have been wearing a charm that amplified my magic. He’d frightened me, and all I’d wanted was for him to let me go. In a knee-jerk reaction, I’d pulled arcs of electrical power from him through my connection to his master and Maker Menessos. I’d put both vampires on their knees.
    I’d saved Goliath’s life a few hours later, but I’d never explained Samson’s voice emitting from my phone. I was sure he thought I’d done something terrible like rip his brother’s spirit from the ever after and forcibly bind it into the device. He needed answers. He deserved them.
    Fully aware that I wasn’t wearing that charm now, I closed the distance between us, flipped on the stairway light and passed him. “Follow me.”
    “An Erus Veneficus cannot command an Alter Imperator.”
    I blinked stupidly at him for a heartbeat; I hadn’t known his official title.
    “Besides,” he added, “I’ve already rolled around on your bed.”
    At the bottom of the steps, Johnny growled.
    “Goliath,” Menessos said in a weary tone. “Our circumstances are far from typical. You will always treat both the Lustrata and the Domn Lup with respect, and for me, please give them an extra measure of tolerance.”
    “As you wish, master.”
    That was good enough for me. I resumed my trek to my bedroom. I flipped this light on too and rummaged through the luggage Zhan and I had dropped off earlier. Finding the cell phone, I held it up.
    His eyes widened slightly in recognition.
    “It’s a protrepticus.”
    “Bullshit.”
    I let him see my deadpan expression.
    “Samson hated witches! He would not deign to bind his soul into a device that put him in service to you. And,” he added, “you cannot exceed a certain distance from a protrepticus. This bag was here, while you were fifty miles away in Cleveland.”
    The latter part was true. Or it had been, anyway. I was just relieved that he knew enough about the spell to know it would require a willing spirit. “The spirit did not identify itself until after the spell was finished.”
    The vampire entered my room and angrily demanded, “Why would he do that for you?”
    “I don’t know what he found in the afterlife, Goliath, or how that may or may not have weighed in his spirit’s decision to comply with that spell, but if