Persephone Alcmedi 00 - Wicked Circle

Add combat boots and a handgun on each hip, and the zero-percent-body-fat military bodyguard ensemble was complete. Her muscular shoulders and bulging arms dominated her appearance. She had a single backpack and a stuffed GNC bag.
    It was shitty of me, but I couldn’t help wondering if she’d ever been part of some Russian super-soldier experiment.
    “Erus Veneficus Persephone Alcmedi, this is Ivanka Chernov. Ivanka, this is your E.V.”
    Ivanka set her bags on the floor, lowered herself to one knee and bowed her head. Then she stood and mimed shooting a gun. “I have ninety-eight-point-four percent accuracy with revolver.” Her accent was thick. “I have black belt and run mile in three minutes, forty-two seconds.”
    “That’s all very impressive, Ivanka.”
    She pointed at the nutrition store bag. “I fix own meals and clean up. I sleep little, talk less. All I ask is three personal hours every day for strength training. This work for you?”
    “Yes. You’ll do just fine.”
    After Zhan ushered Ares out to Mountain’s trailer, Ivanka drove us downtown in my Avalon. She remained in the parked car.
    Once we were on the sidewalk and headed for the Cleveland Arcade, Zhan casually inquired, “May I ask you something personal?”
    “Sure.”
    “Is Johnny okay?”
    “Yeah, why?”
    “He seems . . . different since Pittsburgh.”
    I didn’t know what to say. He was different. Responsibility changed people, or at least when they accepted that burden onto their shoulders it did. And Johnny had accepted a burden much heavier than most. Not only had he just been confirmed as the Domn Lup—meaning he would have to step into a global spotlight—but he also had access to all the power formerly bound in his tattoos. That wasn’t something I wanted to point out to Zhan, though. Saying he seemed edgy or unlike himself would imply that he was having trouble dealing with it all.
    I couldn’t do him that disservice.
    Yet Zhan was just being my friend. After the commanding vibe Johnny had exuded in the kitchen this morning, any good friend would say something. Celia would have mentioned it sooner than this had she witnessed it.
    But Zhan had shown she was willing to bend the rules. If I treated her like a confidante, like a good friend, that would put her in more danger. Not that I thought she would disclose girl-talk to her master, but if Mr. Manipulative wanted “the dirt,” she could be a source of it.
    Ability to see the bigger goal or not, her first and foremost loyalty isn’t to me or Johnny. She serves the vampire.
    We arrived at the Arcade before I had decided on an answer. Zhan hurried ahead of me to open the door. “I’m sorry, she said. “It’s not my place to ask things like that. I shouldn’t have.”
    I halted in the doorway. “Zhan, I’m grateful that you care. Answers are just sometimes hard to give these days.”
    “Answer or no answer, milady, don’t let a beast dominate the Lustrata.”
    That she addressed me by my larger title, not as E.V., didn’t evade my notice. Neither did the fact that she’d obviously heard us in the shower. Darn paper-thin walls. Warmth flooded my cheeks. I entered the Arcade.
    The witch supply shop was located just inside the grand, glass-topped mall. According to the faded black and gold letters underneath the name—and the clock on my satellite phone—it should have opened five minutes ago.
    I scanned around and saw no one in the balconies. The Arcade was not the shopping powerhouse it had been a few decades ago. All the warm bodies that were present were milling around in the lower-level food court.
    Among them, a short man clutched a lidded coffee in one hand and a Plain Dealer in the other as he trudged up the stairs. His long gray beard and curled moustache identified him as much as the Ivy driver’s cap of brushed twill and the bulky gray cardigan he wore over a beige button-down shirt. He’d teamed it all with khaki pants and loafers.
    Maurice. Beau’s hired help.
    He neared the summit, and I saw the blurriness created by the hefty prescription in the wire-rimmed glasses that perched on his round nose. The crack in the left lens that I’d noticed when we’d first met was still there.
    When behind the store’s counter, he had the “mystical wizard” act down pat, but he was a total fake. Anyone who had real power could tell. I didn’t exactly like Maurice, but Beau was clever to have him here. It was a means to identify the clientele and