Following the call, Persephone found Marcella in the front room. She was studying the girls’ pictures and smiled to Persephone when she saw her walk in.
“They’re beautiful-your eyes...Hill’s hair,” she laughed. “I can’t believe he cut it.”
“He wanted to make an impression when he went in to observe his family before we got the lead on Shelanon.” Persephone moved alongside Marci to observe the picture she studied.
“You had to keep them from him,” Marci didn’t look away from the girls’ pictures.
“Eva.” Was Persephone’s only and most accurate explanation.
“Is she dead?”
“They hit all her properties at once. They think they got her.”
“Good.” Marci moved on to observe another picture of the girls. “People like Shelanon and Eva… they need to destroy people like they need to breathe. If only we could get rid of everyone like them.”
Persephone moved close to Marcella again. “One at a time,” she said.
A sudden smile came to Marci’s face. “I didn’t even ask. What are their names?”
“Leeya and Layah.”
Marci nodded. “Beautiful names for beautiful girls.”
“Their middle name is the same-Marcella.”
Gasping then, Marci turned to Persephone.
“I never forgot my friend.” Persephone gave a decisive shake of her head. “I gave my girls your name, so I’d always have a reminder of what pure sweetness was.”
Marcella took Persephone’s hands and then
pulled her into a fierce hug.
***
It was a happy reunion, Persephone and Marcella spent much of the first day and night talking and laughing with much of the second day spent sleeping off the prior night. They were finishing up a late breakfast when Tammy returned...along with Maeva.
The initial emotion was tension accompanied by a great deal of fury on Marcella’s part. Maeva kept her distance, making a hasty exit from the kitchen where she and Tammy had walked in from the patio. Marci hadn’t screamed, instead she went after Mae brandishing an iron skillet. It took Persephone ten minutes to talk her friend down and another ten to convince her to put down the pan.
From there, conversation was devoted to
explanations once Persephone had introduced her mother...and her
sister. Another forty-five minutes passed before Marci was able to
move from the kitchen and stand in the same room with Maeva.
~~~
“Why would you go there, Mae?” Persephone was asking.
An uneasy truce had settled by late afternoon. The scene appeared civilized enough. The women gathered in the den, Persephone and Marci on one side of the big room. Tammy and Mae on the other. Everyone was fixed up with coffee, tea or; in Maeva’s case, a big cooler of milk.
Beyond the room’s retracting glass walls, the day had become overcast. The sky grew more active as the minutes passed. Persephone studied the intermittent glow of lightning behind the clouds and tried to ignore the sense of foreboding they carried.
She looked back to Maeva, who had yet to explain her motivations for returning to the scene of hers and Eva’s first crime. Mae carefully set aside her milk and pressed her lips together as though she were putting the words in place mentally before speaking them.
“What you did, Perry, it worked. I remembered something-something about that day. The day Mr. Cleon died.”
“Sweetie, why?” Tammy leaned over to rest a hand on Mae’s forearm. “Why would you want to upset yourself with that? It was such a long time ago. Nothing can change anything now.”
“I have to know why.” Maeva’s voice was thin, almost childlike. “Why it happened.”
“But Eva could be dead,” Marci looked to Persephone, “in the explosion, they may find her.”
“What’s this?” Tammy’s delicate brows drew close and her gaze shifted between Marci and Persephone. “Dead in an explosion?”
“It hasn’t been confirmed,” Persephone shook her head.
“They won’t find her. She’s too smart,” Mae’s voice was still child-like soft.
“We’re smart too, Mae,” Persephone left her chair to answer the ringing house phone perched on a high black table beneath a landscape mural. She was putting the receiver to her ear when another guest walked in from the corridor leading back to the kitchen.
“That’ll be your security folk calling to let you know they found two of their own along the outskirts of the property.” Evangela Leer’s tone and demeanor were nothing less than confrontational.
“I was hoping for full dark before I visited, but well…” Eva took a scan of the room. “Tell them to stay away from the house and then hang up and pull the cord from the back of the phone,” she gave Persephone the instruction as though it were an afterthought but nodded satisfactorily when she saw her younger sister obeying. Intrigued, she observed the den. When she turned to face her audience again, Persephone was there to greet her with a backhand fist that split Evangela’s lip upon impact.
Evangela stumbled back, blinking as she cupped a hand to her mouth. She gasped at the sight of blood coating her fingers when she pulled away her hand. “You bith-” she tried to mouth the word while spitting out the blood that had collected behind her lip.
“That’s nothing, cunt,” Persephone’s voice was a brutal hiss as she advanced. “I was hoping to loosen a few teeth.”
Evangela took a few more stumbling steps backward, fumbling then with the weapon she’d brought along.
She was armed with a Micro SMG machine gun, same model as the ones arming Persephone’s guards. “Let’s not lose our heads, Perry.” She spat once more on the floor and flexed her jaw as if to test for lingering damage. “I want your full attention for what I’ve got to say. I hadn’t planned to start shooting ‘til later.” She waited for Persephone to halt her advance and then trained the gun on Maeva. The carved hilt of a bowing knife peeked out from a brown leather sheath strapped at the waist of skin tight black leather pants.
“This is cozy…” Eva marveled still testing her jaw for damage while strolling the room. Thunder rolled in the distance as if to add some dark accompaniment to her words.
