Fatal Circle

He cocked his head. “Ah. As I recall, the last time we spoke feelings were at issue then, too.”

“This time people have died. Good people.”

“I told you the hurt you felt over Joh

“Yes.” I’d been reeling, thinking Joh

“And how did you choose to feel about it?”

“I let it go. I suppose you’re going to tell me to do the same thing this time?”

“Did you? Or did you deny it?”

“I denied it the ability to hurt me. It’s faded.”

Amenemhab watched me.

I searched my heart. He was right. “Fine. I wanted to dish out some just ‘desserts,’ as in Retaliation Pie, when I knew it was Cammi confronting me at The Dirty Dog. She was challenging me. Sure, her motive had been Joh

“You have accurately accounted for her motive. What was yours?”

“I didn’t seek her out, but when I had the chance, I was glad to give her some comeuppance.”

“What had she done?”

I knew what the jackal was digging for. To shorten this conversation—there was no avoiding it anyway—I gave it to him. “She challenged me. Not a challenge to the Lustrata, but a challenge to me personally, a challenge to my heart.”

“Just making sure you recognize it. We’re likely to do a lot of work on this before we’re through.”

I swallowed, hard.

“And where are you now?” he asked.

“By a lake.”

He waited, ear pricked.

It hit me: a bigger body of water. “A larger pool of emotions.”

“This lake is fed by mountain streams. By old water. It is not dammed, but it is surrounded by wilderness.”

I looked around me more closely than I had before.

“You were given a trial by fire,” Amenemhab continued. “You fought for who you are, saved the core of yourself from being burned at the stake. I daresay that was the moment the fire forged your iron will.” He put a paw on my thigh. “Now, you have experienced a trial by water. The mirrorlike surface shows us what we know, what we are conscious of. But that water can be deep under the glassy surface wherein lies the subconscious. You broke the dam. You dove in. You chose to drown in your negative emotions rather than to let them pull you along. You made quite a statement.”

My attention fell to the branch in my lap. It was perhaps nine inches long, finger thick and tapered at the end. I reached to clear the moss off it.

“Don’t.”

“Why?”

“Moss is protective. Do you know its other name?”

He wouldn’t mean the scientific name, he’d mean the witch name. I could think of no such name for Spanish moss. “Bat’s wool refers to the short green kind of moss.”

“There’s still a mental moss co

“They reveal secrets. Through those revelations, initiation and transition occur.” That was how it was worded in my Book of Shadows.

His paw lifted from my thigh to gesture at the branch I held. “The very essence of magic lives in willow wood, a wood strong with the element of water—”

My thoughts flashed on Aquula.

“—and of the element of spirit. This tree has honored you because you honored yourself and matured beyond your old emotional stream, to be born at her feet into a deeper emotional world.”

When I roused, still in the tub, I instantly raised my hands so I could gauge how long I’d been in here by how pruny my fingers were. I forgot all about the time, however, seeing I held a willow wand with moss coiled around the length.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

I woke up to Joh

Fog lifting slowly, I sat up. “I couldn’t sleep so I took a bath. Then”—after I’d stashed the wand in the bed table with the spell items Beau had given me—“I had the thought that it would be rude to climb into bed beside you with wet hair.” I unwound the towel from my head and finger-combed my hair. “What time is it?”

“Just after nine.”

So my three hours of sleep had expanded to about six. That should be enough.

Joh

“What is it?” he whispered, fingertips stroking the line of my jaw.

“The place I had to go yesterday. Wolfsbane and Absinthe. Beau, from The Dirty Dog, he runs it.”

“I thought you were going to a witch supply shop?”

“It is a witch supply shop.”

Joh

“Well . . . not exactly.”

“What does that mean?”

“He used to be, but he isn’t anymore.”

Joh

I studied his Wedjat tattoos with an all-new wonder. What was that ink keeping from him? “Beau was Bindspoken.”

“Bindspoken,” he repeated, rising from the floor. I bent my legs up to make room for him on the couch. “Still. Why would a Bindspoken witch hang with waeres?” His warm hands rubbed down my lower leg and tickled across the top of my foot, then slid upward again.

“The witches can’t associate with him; my touch had a shocklike effect on him. Maybe it’s camaraderie, a sense of being a social outcast he shares with waeres.”

Joh

“Yeah. More than I thought I would.”

He gri

Spoiling anyone’s good mood first thing in the morning was terrible, but I had to tell him. No delays. “Joh

“What?”

I sat closer to him, wrapping my arms around my bent legs, trapping his hand under mine. “He said someone long ago must have figured out that you were the Domn Lup. He suggested that this person had you tattooed as a means to make your magic relinquish its power into the art and colors of the pictures, thereby locking that power up. He said we’d have to find out who did it and persuade them to unlock it.”

He let that sink in.

“Is my memory locked up, too?”

“He didn’t mention that specifically, but it seems logical to think so. If all of this is unlocked, it could come back along with your ability to change at will without the struggle and pain.”

“Why didn’t he tell me?” His voice was clipped.

“Beau said that, being Bindspoken, he knows what it’s like to have your power cut off from you. He said it was pointless to tell you until someone who could help you, someone like the Lustrata, showed up.”

“He knows that’s you?”

I nodded. “I’m supposed to be able to help you figure this out.” Gripping him tighter, I went on. “He said there’s a spell in the Codex that we must do.”

“A spell?” he echoed indignantly.