Persephone Alcmedi 00 - Wicked Circle

I wasn’t going to mention the red flash. “But Ivanka needs to get to the hospital.”
    “Da,” she repeated. “Sooner is good.”
    “After what just happened, I’m not leaving you,” Zhan declared. She told Mountain, “You take her,” then asked me, “would you like me to call Celia and tell her all is well?”
    “Yes, please.” Zhan was as good a sentinel as I could hope for. Better, even. She felt like a friend. That made what I knew I had to do even harder. “I need you to stay here.”
    “Menessos gave direct orders that you were not to go anywhere unescorted.”
    “They could be at the ER a long time. I don’t want the elementals to be here alone.”
    “The perimeter guards—”
    “The animals don’t know them. They know you.”
    Zhan unhappily capitulated. Mountain backed slowly away, saying, “I’ll get my truck.”
    “Guardians of the element of water, I consecrate these items.”
    Standing before my bedroom altar, I dipped a pine sprig into a bowl of hallowed water and let my trembling hand shake drops from the leaves over the items I’d been given this morning at Wolfsbane and Absinthe. I’d already said the verses for earth, air and fire. “Banish the energies of previous owners or those who have made or touched these items. Purify them with your fluid force. Charge them with your liquid energy that these tools may now be sacred.”
    Some items were best blessed under certain moons, but since Johnny wanted me to do the spell in about an hour and a half, the current waxing moon phase would have to do. Palms hovering above the items on my altar, I added, “May all astrological correspondences be correct for this working.”
    I thanked Hecate and the elements, and then extinguished the candles.
    In ritual, concentration is key. Being in full control of the conscious mind and silencing the random thoughts, the doubts and worries, is essential for successful magic. Not surprisingly, self-discipline is one of a witch’s best assets. I’m usually pretty good at maintaining concentration. Today, however, that proved a struggle. I’d paused and put a barrier up with my ritual circle to help keep anxiety out of the magic working. As I released the circle, all my worries flooded back into the forefront of my mind.
    The shabbubitum will be here in a few hours.
    I have to do the forced-change spell on the roof of the den and get Beau’s half-formed son back to normal.
    Menessos sent Creepy here, and now Zoltan is a five-clawed emperor dragon.
    I was eager for Menessos to rise so I could interrogate him, but there was a whole lot of magic to be done between now and then.
    My satellite phone rang. I checked the display. It was my mother calling.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

    E ris snorted as Persephone’s voice rattled out a standard “please leave a message” recording. She hung up and immediately went to her “woogie room,” her magical supply room. She kept her ritual gemstones in stacked compartmented plastic cases, in alphabetical order. Setting them aside until she had the right case, she put it on the table and opened it. The case wasn’t easy to open, but only because her thumb wasn’t accustomed to the dexterous little flick that it required. She reached inside for the petrified wood and noticed her opals were gone.
    Puzzled, she selected the stone she was after and shut the lid. She replaced the cases as they should be. She rummaged through her runestones and chose Dagaz—the one like a letter X between two bars, and Ehwaz, the one like an M.
    Spiritually, the former rune was associated with awakening and awareness, and the latter with movement and change for the better. The petrified wood was ruled by spirit, by Akasha. Eris dropped the stone and runes inside a small plastic cup, added a white candle and a lighter and carried them to her room. Persephone didn’t have to answer her phone, but Eris was going to enlist some help getting Persephone to come to her senses.
    Johnny sat in a white office with his hands in his lap. It felt like being in a principal’s office. But he was on the wrong side of the desk—as in behind it.
    The wide mahogany desk had lots of drawers. Matching filing cabinets were positioned conveniently behind him. There was a computer, a planner, stapler and a blotter. A metal cup contained a dozen ink pens. All the stuff a desk-jockey would need.
    But the worn leather seat he occupied had long ago conformed to someone else’s body.
    Ignatius.
    This was