by Jenna Black
“I’m glad you feel better,” I said carefully. “But I hope you won’t let Sita cut you off completely from the rest of us.” Especially me. No matter how much my common sense told me I shouldn’t let him get too close.
He shrugged. “I guess we’ll see what happens. I’ve only been working with her a couple of weeks. Maybe my control will get better. And maybe she’ll stop seeing everyone else as her competition. But until then, you have to give me my space. I had a great time tonight, but I never should have let you talk me into this. Sita is going to be one angry kitty next time I summon her.”
He put the car back in gear and pulled out of the makeshift parking spot. I got the signal loud and clear: our heart-to-heart conversation was over.
I couldn’t have told you how I felt about the night’s revelations. There was good news and bad news, and I didn’t know which was bigger. But at least I no longer thought Jamaal was avoiding me because he was pissed at me. That was a step in the right direction.
THIRTEEN
On Tuesday, I had to meet Steph so we could make the apartment she’d rented for the Glasses as welcoming as possible before they arrived the next day. The place was attractive enough, with good-quality, bland vanilla furniture, but the decoration was sparse, to say the least. Steph thought coming home to a bare-bones apartment was going to make the Glasses feel worse than they already did, so we spent the whole afternoon darting around from store to store buying things like throw pillows and wall hangings, and then spent the evening and well into the night installing our purchases.
The rain was finally starting to clear when I couldn’t take decorating anymore and left Steph to finish up alone. The clouds were patchy, and at times I caught quick glimpses of the moon between them. I didn’t think it was clear enough for a hunt yet, even if I weren’t exhausted and I hadn’t agreed to Cyrus’s terms. Maybe by tomorrow night . . .
But no. I didn’t believe Konstantin was the firebug, and if Cyrus thought for a moment that I’d continued the hunt despite my promise, there would be hell to pay.
Knowing Wednesday probably wasn’t going to be any easier on me than Tuesday had been, I collapsed into bed the moment I got home.
The following day dawned bright and clear, not a cloud in the sky. The weather forecast said we’d be venturing up into the low fifties, and after the chilly rain of the last few days, it was going to feel like spring.
The cheerful weather did nothing to calm my rampaging nerves, however. Steph and I had agreed that she would pick up the Glasses at the airport when they arrived around noon. I’d have gone with her, except the Glasses had packed for a three-month trip and would need every spare inch in the car for their baggage. Steph would call when she was leaving the airport, and I’d meet them at the apartment.
I had missed my adoptive parents while they were away, and there was a part of me that was looking forward to seeing them again, whatever the circumstances. I wasn’t looking forward to seeing their lingering grief over the loss of their house, nor was I looking forward to their worry when Steph told them about the fire at my condo. On paper, they were the owners of the apartment. There was no evidence that the police had linked the two fires—yet—but you could be certain the Glasses’ insurance company would take a serious interest in the “coincidence.” And, since I was supposedly living in the condo, the Glasses would probably worry I was in some kind of trouble, especially when they factored in the fire at my office building.
What I was dreading the most, however, was the distance I was going to be forced to put between us because of all the things I couldn’t tell them.
I remembered what it had been like trying to tap-dance around the truth with Steph before she was dragged in so deeply that I had to tell her my secrets. I may be a good liar, but people who know me really well—like Steph and her parents—tend to see through me. Maybe they had enough crap on their plate that their parental Spidey senses wouldn’t start nagging at them right away, but I knew it was only a matter of time before they came to the conclusion I was hiding something from them. I wasn’t sure I could face their disappointment and hurt when that happened.
Jamaal was on the porch smoking a clove cigarette when I left the house to go meet the Glasses. I hadn’t seen him at all the day before, but considering how little time I’d spent at home, that wasn’t a surprise. He held a glass ashtray in one hand. There were three butts and a considerable heap of ashes in it already. I hoped they were old, because if Jamaal had started chain-smoking again, it was not a good sign. I tried to think of a tactful way to ask him about it, but it turned out I didn’t have to.
“I didn’t get to practice with Sita yesterday,” he told me, then took another drag off his cig. “You were out of the house, but I didn’t know how long you would be gone.”
I shook my head. “So you mean you were serious about not being willing to summon her when I’m nearby.”
He nodded as he finished off his cigarette and stubbed it out in the ashtray. “Better safe than sorry. Any idea when you’re coming back today?”
I had no clue, actually. However, I didn’t think I’d have a hard time making myself scarce for hours on end if that was what Jamaal needed.
“How about I call you before I come home?” I asked. “If I don’t get you, I’ll figure you and Sita are still at it and I’ll find some way to kill time. I’m sure it won’t be hard.”
He thought that over for a moment, then nodded his approval. “That’ll work.”
I started down the porch steps toward the garage, but paused midway down. “You know, you could have called me yesterday and asked me when I was coming back.”
His only answer was a shrug. I understood now why he was so determined to keep distance between us, but it didn’t really make me feel any better.
The Glasses had beaten me to the apartment. I closed my eyes and sucked in a deep breath as I pulled up next to Steph’s car. I hated the anxious knot in my gut, and I hoped like hell I’d be able to cover my discomfort with a convincing veneer of normalcy.
By the time I’d reached the front door of the apartment, I’d put on my happy face. When Mrs. Glass opened the door, I let my cares and worries sink into the background and allowed myself to be swept into the warmth of her hug.
“I missed my girls so much,” she said as she tried to hug the breath out of me.
“I missed you, too,” I replied, hugging her back just as hard. I glanced over her shoulder at Steph, who was smiling fondly at us. Steph nodded slightly, confirming that she had told her parents about the fire at my condo on the ride from the airport. It was hard to see anything like a silver lining in a fire that had left three innocents dead, but at least it made it easier for me to explain why I was currently “staying with a friend.”
“I’m so sorry about everything,” I said, my voice suddenly hoarse. “Everything” encompassed a whole lot of things I couldn’t talk about, as well as my condolences over the loss of property.
Mrs. Glass only hugged me tighter, holding on until Mr. Glass nudged her aside so he could take her place. He was a little more reserved than she, so my aching ribs survived his hug without greater damage.
“I just made a pot of coffee,” Steph said. “Want some?”
“Is water wet?” I retorted.
Mr. Glass released me from his hug, but kept an arm around my shoulders as he guided me to the living room. I saw that Steph had already served her parents coffee and was steeping a cup of tea for herself. The tea was looking a little dark, so I removed the teabag while waiting for Steph to return from the kitchen with my coffee. I’d have told her she didn’t have to serve me, except I didn’t think the Glasses were going to let me out of their sight quite so soon.
They both had that weary, slumped-shouldered look of people who’ve been traveling way too long. They’d had to fly in from Hong Kong, and they had to be jet-lagged like nobody’s business. Especially Mrs. Glass, who had never been able to sleep on an airplane, even in first class. I
hoped that meant that we’d have a pleasant, stress-free visit today and that we’d leave any difficult conversations for a later date.
“So tell me about your trip,” I prodded as Steph brought me my cup of coffee. Maybe if I started the ball rolling in the right direction, I could steer the conversation in the direction I wanted. In a perfect world, I’d be able to avoid talking about the fires and what they meant for my continued safety. But it had been a long time since I’d believed in a perfect world.
For a while, my strategy seemed to be working. Mrs. Glass came alive, apparently forgetting her jet lag completely, as she told Steph and me about all the exciting things they’d done and the exotic ports they’d visited. Mr. Glass provided visual aids in the form of photos, which the cruise ship had printed out for him—no doubt at an exorbitant fee. We were all aware of the elephant in the room, but at least we tried to pretend it wasn’t there.
The stop-by-stop recounting of the cruise eventually petered out, and that was when the Glasses invited the elephant in the room to join us for coffee. I spent a good fifteen minutes nonchalantly telling them the official version of the story, trying to pretend I genuinely didn’t think the fires had anything to do with me. No one called me a liar, but I could see the skepticism on their faces.
“You’d tell us if you were in some kind of trouble, wouldn’t you, Nikki?” Mr. Glass asked with fatherly concern.
“Of course,” I lied.
“Because I can’t help thinking that in your line of work, you might make the kind of enemies who would do something like this.”
I had to look away, unable to lie convincingly when he was looking at me like that. The Glasses had never once criticized my choice of career, though I was sure they’d have preferred it if I’d taken a desk job of some sort—or lived off my trust fund and dedicated my life to charity, as Steph had. There had always been an element of danger to my job, and I imagined this wasn’t the first time they’d worried about me.
“I’m not in any trouble, at least not that I know of,” I said into my cup of coffee. I was acting squirrelly, and I knew it. I just couldn’t get myself to stop, too uncomfortable with the direction of the conversation to act normal.
“And what about the rest of us?” he persisted, looking pointedly at his wife and his biological daughter. “Anything we should know about?”
Steph gave an exasperated huff, and I gathered they’d already had this discussion in the car. “It’s just a bizarre coincidence, Daddy,” she said. “If Nikki thought someone might hurt us, I’m sure she’d tell us.”
Steph isn’t as good a liar as I am, and I could see her father mentally digging in his heels. I hated the very thought that they might be in danger because of me. I was doing everything I could to protect them, but it wasn’t enough.
I received a reprieve from an unexpected source when Mrs. Glass patted her husband’s leg. “Now, Ted,” she said warningly, “I thought we’d agreed we weren’t going to give Nikki the third degree.”
My mouth dropped open, though I quickly snapped it shut. If anyone was going to press me for details, I’d have expected it to be my adoptive mother. That was what mothers did, wasn’t it?
Mrs. Glass met my gaze with a sad smile. “I’m sure if there’s something you’re not telling us, it’s for a good reason.”
My throat squeezed tight, making it impossible for me to answer. There was no hint of reproach in her voice or her eyes. Just loving acceptance and trust. How I’d been lucky enough to be placed with this family when I’d been well on my way to being a lost cause, I’ll never know. I swallowed hard, trying to scrape up my voice from wherever it was hiding, but I failed.
“This might be a good time for a change in subject,” Steph said. She drained the last few drops of tea from her cup. “You said in the car you had something you wanted to tell us.”
Mr. Glass was still looking at me as if he could read my every secret—and he wasn’t happy with what he was reading. Mrs. Glass, however, looked suddenly uncomfortable and fidgeted with her empty coffee cup. I shared a quick, puzzled glance with Steph.
“Maybe now isn’t a good time—” Mrs. Glass started.
“There never will be a good time, May,” Mr. Glass said gently, which sent a bolt of adrenaline shooting through my veins.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, my voice tight with alarm.
Mrs. Glass was still fidgety, and there was a sheen in her eyes that suggested she was fighting tears, which didn’t make me any less alarmed.
“Nothing’s wrong,” Mr. Glass assured me and Steph, who looked as worried as I felt. “We just have something to tell you.” He gave Mrs. Glass a pointed look, but her eyes were now swimming and she shook her head. He sighed. “We’re not going to rebuild the house,” he said. “Your grandma Rose is getting old, and she’s all alone. Your mother and I have been talking for a long time about moving closer to her.”
Grandma Rose was Mrs. Glass’s mother, and she’d celebrated her seventy-fifth birthday last year, three years after being widowed.
“But Grandma Rose lives in San Francisco!” Steph said in a tone that suggested San Francisco was akin to Timbuktu.
Mrs. Glass rallied her mental forces and cleared her throat. Her eyes were still shiny with tears, but her voice was firm and sure. “We’ve been talking about it ever since your grandpa passed,” she said. “And it feels like the house burning down is almost like a sign from the universe that now is the time.”
Mrs. Glass wasn’t the only one with shiny eyes now. Steph looked completely stricken. Her whole life, she’d never lived more than a half hour away from her parents. She hadn’t even left town to go to college, going to Georgetown because it was close to home. I couldn’t imagine what she must be feeling at the moment.
Actually, I wasn’t exactly sure what I was feeling at the moment. Despite the tears that shone in both Steph’s and her mother’s eyes, I wasn’t feeling inclined to cry myself, nor did I feel the kind of sinking sensation in my stomach I might have expected. My adoptive parents were moving all the way across the country from me. Instead of being able to pop over and see them any day of the week, I would only be able to see them a handful of times a year. They had rescued me from a future that had looked unbearably bleak, and I loved them with all my heart.
And yet at that moment, I felt . . . nothing.
I’d experienced this kind of emotional numbness before. It meant my psyche wasn’t ready to deal with my emotions just yet, so it had shut them down entirely.
Even numb as I was, I understood why my emotions had shut down. Despite all the many years I’d lived with the Glasses; despite the fact that they’d adopted me, and treated me in every way as though I were their biological daughter; despite the fact that even if they were living in San Francisco, I could see them as many times as I was willing to endure the long flight, I couldn’t help flashing back to the many times in my childhood when I’d been abandoned. First, my biological mother had abandoned me in a church. Then foster family after foster family had given up on me and sent me away. The small child who lived in my core felt like she was being abandoned yet again, and it was more than I could deal with.
Steph was openly crying now and had moved to the sofa to hug her mother. I should have made a similar gesture, but I sat rooted in my chair, wondering when the dam within me would burst. Mr. Glass shot me a look of undiluted sympathy as he reached over to pat Steph’s back, and I knew he understood. At least my less-than-normal reaction to the news wasn’t hurting his feelings, and probably wasn’t hurting Mrs. Glass’s, either. They both knew me well enough to understand my abandonment issues. Maybe that was even part of the reason why they hadn’t before now gotten past the stage of talking about moving.
My cell phone chirped. After the bombshell the Glasses had just dropped, I probably should have ignored it, but I dug my phone out of my purse anyway, acting more on reflex than considered thought. The caller ID announced the call was from Cyrus.
“I’m sorry,” I said to no one in particular, “but I have to take this.”
I didn’t wait for anyone to acknowledge my words, bolting from my seat in search of privacy.
It wasn’t until I was halfway to my rendezvous with Cyrus that I saw the similarity between my current situation and the series of bad choices that had landed me in my new and confusing life in the first place. That time, I’d been on the blind date from hell. I’d gotten a call from Emmitt, asking me to meet him under mysterious circumstances. My gut had been telling me something was wrong, and I’d ignored it, desperate for any excuse to get out of my date. This time, it wasn’t a bad date I was running away from, it was the turmoil of my emotions. I had left Steph and her parents with a flurry of excuses, no doubt causing them to worry about me even more. But running away was easier than dealing with the announcement, and I was all for easy.
It could be argued that running off to meet Cyrus without Anderson or any of his other Liberi to back me up might be dangerous—and stupid. I didn’t think there was any danger that he would hurt me, but he was a devious son of a bitch and could be setting me up for . . . something.
If I’d been able to put my finger on a specific suspicion, I probably would have turned around before I reached the rendezvous. However, I couldn’t think of anything Cyrus could do to me in the middle of a public coffee bar, not when the truce between the Olympians and us was still intact. He wouldn’t want to piss me off and have me start hunting for Konstantin again.
I drove past the coffee bar, trying to get a look inside before fully committing myself to the meeting, but the cheerfully sunny sky meant all I saw was a reflection of the street with a few shadowy figures moving behind it. I gave a mental shrug, then found myself a parking space. If I was walking into some kind of an ambush, then so be it.
To my surprise and relief, Cyrus was alone this time. At least, he appeared to be. I took a quick visual survey of the rest of the people milling around the coffee bar, and didn’t spot anyone with any visible glyphs. Cyrus rose from his table and beckoned to me, like he thought I couldn’t find him. I’m sure he knew exactly why I didn’t immediately rush to join him. He then shouted an order to the barista—a different one this time, but she seemed just as unflustered by his manner as the previous one—for two espressos.
