by Jenna Black
“I think I made that quite clear the other day: leave my father alone.”
“I’d have been happy to do that, if he’d left me alone.”
“Huh?”
I did a mental double take, because he sounded genuinely puzzled. I supposed Daddy Dearest hadn’t run his little vendetta idea by Cyrus before acting on it.
“He burned down my parents’ house, Cyrus,” I said, letting my own anger rise to the surface and color my voice. “Then he sent me an email telling me how creative he was going to be in making my life miserable without formally breaking the treaty. If you think I’m just going to sit here and take it—”
“He didn’t do it.”
There was no hint of doubt or uncertainty in Cyrus’s voice, but I had to wonder how well Cyrus really knew his father. He seemed like such a decent guy himself, it was hard to believe he could condone the kinds of things Konstantin did. Maybe his mind just didn’t work the same way and he couldn’t fully grasp his father’s evil.
“He claimed responsibility for it,” I argued, despite my own doubts.
“Really. Via email. Anyone can write an email. Ask yourself who has the most to gain from threatening you. It sure as hell isn’t Konstantin.”
“Oh, come on—Anderson wouldn’t do that,” I said, because there was no doubt in my mind who Cyrus meant. I sounded 100 percent certain, but that was only because I was pretty good at acting. I had mostly convinced myself that Anderson wasn’t behind it, but there remained a touch of doubt.
“You’ve known Anderson, what, a couple of months? I’m telling you he’s not the saint he pretends to be. He’s a world-class manipulator, and like all old Liberi, he’s deeply selfish at heart. It’s impossible not to be when you’ve lived for centuries.”
I snorted. “And how old are you?”
Cyrus laughed. “I’m selfish, too, and I’m not afraid to admit it. Just ask Blake. But my point is that Anderson might seem like he’s too good and moral to do something like that, but he isn’t. He’ll do whatever it takes to get what he wants, and what he wants is you hunting Konstantin.”
I’d have been able to put up a better protest if I hadn’t had the same thoughts myself. Instead of defending Anderson and perhaps letting Cyrus see the seed of doubt, I changed tactics.
“As far as I’m concerned, the top suspects are Konstantin . . . and Emma. She hates both of us, so she’d be happy to hurt me while pushing me into hunting Konstantin.”
There was a moment of silence as Cyrus thought that over, but he soon rejected it. “It’s not Emma. It’s true that she hates you and my father, but the person she wants to hurt most right now is Anderson. I don’t know exactly what happened between the two of them, but it was obviously a very nasty breakup.”
It certainly had been. However . . . “Emma blames me for it, though I still don’t understand why. She may complain about Anderson, but it’s me she wants to hurt.”
“I hate to contradict you, but I can guarantee you it’s Anderson she’s after. And she’s already taken her revenge.”
“Huh?” Even not knowing what he was talking about, I felt a chill.
Cyrus sighed. “I believe she’s planning to visit to explain later today.”
“Explain what? Cyrus, what are you talking about?”
“You’ll find out soon enough. Having seen her in action, I know I don’t want to get on Emma’s bad side, and she wouldn’t want me spoiling the surprise.”
“Bastard.”
“Sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up in the first place. Suffice it to say that she’s made it clear to me that you’re not her target. And what I said about Konstantin still stands. If you or any of your people harm him, it’ll be a declaration of war.”
I was too sick with dread to keep talking. “I understand,” I said, and hung up the phone.
It was hard to go back to my morning routine when I got off the phone with Cyrus, but I gave it my best shot. I drank my coffee and scrolled listlessly through the news, not really reading anything, just sort of skimming and making a show of it. As if by going through the motions of acting normal, I could actually be normal. But it was damn hard not to obsess, both about who was responsible for the fire, and about what hell Emma was going to release on Anderson in the near future.
When something finally did capture my full attention, it was an ad, of all things. There was a new exhibition opening at the Sackler Gallery next weekend. I’m not a huge fan of museums—thanks to umpteen million school trips in this museum-filled metropolis, and aided by the necessity of taking every visiting relative and friend of the family on museum tours—and normally, I wouldn’t even notice an ad like that, or care what exhibitions were in town. But since I’d set my sights on mending my fences with Jamaal . . .
You wouldn’t think to look at him that Jamaal was into museums, not with the testosterone that fairly oozed from his pores. Ask your average manly man if he’d like to go to a museum, and he’ll look at you like you suggested he wear a tutu in public. But there was nothing average about Jamaal, and the one and only time I’d been in his suite I’d noticed an impressive collection of museum catalogs displayed on his bookshelves. Not to mention the crowning glory of his sitting room, which was a tiny Indian painting of the goddess Kali, from whom he was descended. It was a bona fide work of fine art, dating from the seventeenth century.
The new exhibition opening at the museum was of Indian art, and I’d bet anything Jamaal would want to go. Maybe I should tell him I was planning a visit and invite him to come along.
Yeah, like Jamaal would make it that easy.
I had about a half hour to make and reject a number of plans to coax Jamaal out of his shell before Emma and her malice drove every other thought out of my head.
SEVEN
The window of my sitting room looks out over the front of the house, so when a candy-apple-red sports car wended its way down the long and twisty driveway, it caught my eye. I’m not enough of a car nut to guess what it was, except that it was probably something Italian and obscenely expensive. No one in this house drove anything so ostentatious, and I made an educated guess that Emma was behind the wheel, dropping by for the visit Cyrus had warned about.
I told myself it was none of my business, and that I should stay up in my suite, as far away from the impending fireworks as possible. But after Cyrus’s advance warning, my stomach was tied up in knots wondering what terrible thing Emma had done. Whatever it was, whatever Anderson’s faults, I was sure he didn’t deserve it, not from her. He’d done everything he could to take care of her after we’d rescued her, had made excuses for her and forgiven her outbursts well past the point of being reasonable. She was the one who’d walked out.
My feet carried me to the door before I’d consciously made the decision to go downstairs. I was probably being stupid. My presence was likely to throw gasoline on the fire, and though I considered Anderson a friend, of sorts, we weren’t close enough to justify me sticking my nose into his marital difficulties. But of course I kept heading downstairs anyway.
Anderson was waiting in the foyer when I reached the landing above the first floor. He was standing straight and tall, his arms crossed over his chest and his gaze focused on the front door. Emma had to have called him to let him know she was coming, or she’d never have gotten past the front gate. Anderson had changed its code the day after she’d left.
“Go back upstairs, Nikki,” Anderson said without looking up.
I stopped on the landing and blinked in surprise. “How did you know it was me?” I wasn’t surprised he’d known someone was coming, considering we had a few creaky steps, but unless he had eyes in the back of his head . . .
He glanced up over his shoulder at me, and his expression was inscrutable. “Because you’re the only private investigator in this house, and the only one nosy enough to try to eavesdrop.”
“I wasn’t eavesdropping!” I said in outrage, but the doorbell rang, and I no longer had his attention.
I
stood hesitating on the landing as Anderson opened the door. It was hard to interpret his words as anything but a direct order, and yet I was reluctant to leave him alone to face Emma. Which was ridiculous, of course. He wasn’t a man, he was a god. He could probably handle whatever Emma was about to dish out.
I was still debating what to do when Emma swept into the room, followed by another woman I didn’t know. Both women wore full-length fur coats, and diamonds sparkled from their earlobes and fingers. Clearly, Emma had embraced the Olympian way of life, where ostentation was considered a good thing.
I decided too late that I had made a foolish decision in coming downstairs. I turned to leave, but Emma had already spotted me.
“Nikki!” she cried in feigned delight, and I had to suppress the instinct to cringe. “How lovely to see you.”
Anderson shot me a steely look. “Upstairs. Now.”
“Yup, I’m going,” I assured him, holding up my hands in surrender.
“Oh, please, do stay,” Emma said, smiling up at me as malice glittered in her eyes. “What I have to say concerns you, too.”
I looked at Anderson for a verdict, and if he had told me to leave, I’d have been out of there.
“Very well,” he said. “Come on down.”
“Aren’t you going to invite us in to somewhere more comfortable?” Emma asked as I descended the last flight of stairs.
“If it weren’t so cold out, we’d be having this meeting on the front porch.” Surely Anderson was battling a severe case of mixed emotions, but he sure as hell wasn’t letting it show in his face or voice. He spoke to Emma as he would speak to any other Olympian, with no pretense of courtesy.
Emma’s eyes narrowed at Anderson’s response, whether from pain or from anger, I wasn’t sure. Maybe both. I didn’t understand what gave her the idea that Anderson’s interest had strayed to me, but I was sure she actually believed it, and that his imaginary betrayal hurt her. If she weren’t such a crazy bitch, I might even have felt a tad sorry for her.
I descended the last few steps, getting a closer look at Emma as she opened her coat. She was as beautiful as ever, but I could tell she’d lost weight. Her cheekbones looked sharper, her eyes almost sunken, and her hair seemed to have lost a little of its luster. She stroked the fur of her coat absently, and I saw that her fingernails were chewed down to nubs, a fact her glossy red nail lacquer accentuated more than it hid.
The smile on her face was cruel, and the glint in her eyes held both confidence and spite, but her body told a different story. She was not flourishing as an Olympian, no matter what she wanted Anderson to think. But leaving him to join them had been her choice, and she now had to live with it.
Emma’s companion looked far more comfortable in her own skin. She wore a skintight black miniskirt displaying legs about a mile long. Personally, I thought she was too skinny to pull off the look, and her legs looked like matchsticks tucked into expensive designer pumps. A crescent moon glyph glowed on her cheek, and her gray-blue eyes glittered with what looked to me like anticipation.
Shrugging as if Anderson’s rebuff meant nothing to her, Emma turned to me. Her gleeful self-assurance might be an act, but her hatred of me was definitely not. “Come meet Christina,” she said, beckoning. “You two have a lot in common. She’s a descendant of Selene, who’s also a moon goddess.”
I was sure that was about the only thing we had in common. “Charmed,” I said with a curl of my lip and went to stand by Anderson.
“I don’t remember giving you permission to bring a guest,” Anderson said coldly.
The calculating gleam in Emma’s eyes sharpened. “Oh, but I just knew you’d want to meet Christina.”
Christina just stood there smiling, a prop rather than a person.
“Whatever it is you have to say, just say it and get the hell out,” Anderson said.
Emma pouted. “You never did have a sense of drama, did you?”
“I’m in no mood for banter. I let you come here because you said it was important, but I’d be happy to throw you and your lovely companion out on your asses. So talk.”
The look on Emma’s face said she was genuinely disappointed Anderson didn’t want to play word games with her. She was purposely drawing out the encounter as much as she could, letting the suspense build. I wondered if Anderson knew she was here to unveil her revenge, or whether he thought something more mundane was going on.
“Fine,” Emma said with a resigned sigh. “I’ll get to the point.” She turned to me. “You remember when Kerner’s jackal bit you and you came down with rabies?”
I tried not to shudder at the memory. The supernaturally enhanced rabies would have killed me permanently if it had been allowed to run its course. Instead, Anderson had killed me himself and burned my body, and the seed of immortality had generated a brand-new, virus-free body for me. It was something I’d have loved to forget.
“It rings a bell,” I said, hoping I sounded dry and casual despite the chill the reminder had given me. “What does that have to do with anything?” I glanced over at Christina, and the lump of dread in my stomach grew tighter and colder as my mind began rapidly connecting the dots.
“Anderson was so very concerned about you that he called a Liberi who had refused to join his merry band and was living in quiet anonymity out in the countryside. He needed a descendant of Apollo to examine you and figure out what was wrong with you, and she was the only one he knew who might actually help.”
I started to shake my head, as if I could somehow stop her from finishing her thought.
“What have you done?” Anderson asked in a horrified whisper, but we were both looking at Christina now, and I think we both knew what was coming.
“I never liked Erin,” Emma said to him. “And not just because she was your lover before me. She was so bitter about you dumping her it made her quite unpleasant to be around. I’m sure it was the bitterness that made her choose not to live under your roof, where she would be off-limits to Olympians.”
Anderson stood frozen in shock and horror beside me. Frankly, I wasn’t doing much better myself, and I shared Emma’s opinion about Erin’s likability.
Emma drank in Anderson’s pain, then turned to me with another of her vicious smiles. “I have you to thank for making this so easy for me. I don’t know if I could possibly have hunted her down if she hadn’t come out of hiding to treat you. When she left, I followed her home so I knew where I could get to her if I ever had a need.”
I guess I was supposed to feel guilty about that, but there was no way I was going to accept it as my fault. Although perhaps I should have thought of it when Emma left us to join the Olympians. Maybe I should have anticipated the animosity between Anderson’s ex-girlfriend and his ex-wife and constructed a new cover identity for Erin.
“I told Cyrus where she was hiding,” Emma continued, “and he sent a squad to harvest her seed. Of all the mortal Descendants in our service, Cyrus thought Christina the most deserving of elevation, so he had her do the honors.”
By which Emma meant Christina had killed Erin, thereby stealing Erin’s seed for herself. She was no longer a Descendant, but had joined the ranks of the Liberi. With an act of deliberate murder.
I swallowed hard, horrified by what Emma had done—and by the reminder that Cyrus wasn’t really a nice guy, no matter what he liked to pretend. And then I sneaked a peek at Anderson and practically stopped breathing.
He was still firmly in his mortal disguise. There was no white light leaking from his eyes, nor was any glow coming from his hands, and yet he was still incandescent with fury. Enough so that Christina had taken a step backward, and even Emma looked just a touch less sure of herself. She glanced quickly down at his hand, and I knew she was wondering if she’d pushed him too far, if he was actually pissed off enough to use his Hand of Doom against her. Not that she knew what that hand could do if Anderson set his mind to it. Anderson took a step closer to Emma, his hand rising from his side. Her breathing quic
kened, but she held her ground.
“Do you want to go to war against all of the Olympians?” she asked. “Because if you hurt me, it will break your treaty with Cyrus, and he will destroy you and all of your people. Except for Nikki, of course.” She smiled her malicious smile again. “We’d have other uses for your new girlfriend.”
Even in the midst of the crisis, I couldn’t help rolling my eyes. Emma was descended from Nyx, the goddess of night, but if there was a goddess of jealousy—and I was sure there was, even if I couldn’t name her off the top of my head—I would swear Emma was at least her kissing cousin.
Anderson looked like he was about to choke on his rage. He was a god of vengeance, and it had to be killing him to restrain his need to strike out. I think everyone in the house was damn lucky he was rational enough to care about the consequences of unleashing his inner Fury. “I will not start a war,” he said in a low and dangerous voice. “You and your companion may leave this house unscathed. I was a fool not to see this coming and move Erin to a new location.”
It took everything I had not to burst out with something scathingly unwise. Even after all the crap Emma had pulled, Anderson was still willing to take some of the blame and put it on his own shoulders.
“But I warn you, Emma,” Anderson continued, letting more of his anger creep into his voice, “you had better not try me again. I am better at vengeance than you are, and you would not be the first ex-wife to learn that the hard way.”
Being the son of a Fury, Anderson most definitely was an expert in the vengeance business. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to mess with him. Emma was crazy, but only if she was stupid and crazy would she take another shot at Anderson after this warning. There was a sense of . . . portentousness in the air, like Anderson’s words might be more than just words. But maybe that was just my imagination running away with me because of what I knew about him.
Emma had lost her gloating smile, and I think that under her calm facade, she was actually afraid of Anderson for the first time. I know Christina was afraid, because her face was ghostly pale and her eyes too wide. I bet she’d have run screaming out the door if Anderson had said boo.
