by Jenna Black
“So what exactly are you hoping to accomplish at this meeting?”
After what Emma had tried to do to me, I should have been screaming for her blood. I should have been begging Anderson to kill her. But despite the horrors I’d seen in the last few months, becoming Liberi hadn’t stopped me from being a bleeding heart. I wanted Emma to pay for what she’d done—and tried to do—and I wanted her not to be able to hurt me again, but I didn’t want her to pay with her life. If she were tried in a court of law, she might well get a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity. Confinement in a mental institution might be the most appropriate sentence, but I was under no illusion that it was an option.
For the first time since he’d set foot in my sitting room, something stirred behind Anderson’s eyes. I couldn’t have said what it was—the expression was gone almost before I had a chance to notice the change—but it made my heart skip a beat in primal terror. I dropped my gaze to the floor, an instinctive gesture of submission, and held my breath. I didn’t like this lifeless talking shell of his, but even that one tiny glimpse of what lay beneath had told me in no uncertain terms that the shell was the lesser of two evils. If and when Anderson unleashed everything he was suppressing, I didn’t want to be anywhere near him.
I felt his eyes boring through me for what felt like forever. I kept my own gaze pinned to the floor, and my lungs started to burn with the pressure of holding my breath.
I didn’t give in to the need to breathe until Anderson had left the room and closed the door behind him.
I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep on Saturday night, despite my exhaustion. When I lay down to try to relax, I kept obsessing about what had almost happened to me. Just thinking about it flooded my system with adrenaline. And to make matters worse, when I closed my eyes I was immediately transported into the memory of the darkness of death.
I knew from previous experience—and from talking with Jamaal about his own experiences—that my fear of the darkness would fade over time. Every night, it would be just a little bit easier. But that didn’t help me much on this first night. I wished Jamaal would come up to my room and sing me asleep as he had the first time I’d died, but it wasn’t going to happen.
Eventually, exhaustion won out over terror, though it did so not when I was lying comfortably in my bed, but when I was on the couch in the sitting room playing solitaire on my laptop. I remember waking up briefly hours later, when there was a roll of thunder so violent it made the whole house shake. My laptop slid off my lap and onto the floor, but I wasn’t awake enough to bother picking it up.
I’d fallen asleep sitting up, and during that brief period of wakefulness, I stretched myself out on the couch, clutching a throw pillow under my head. I had the brief, hazy thought that it was unusual to have violent thunder in the midst of a snowstorm, but the phenomenon wasn’t interesting enough to keep me awake. I drifted back into sleep and didn’t wake up until the sun had risen.
I was stiff from spending the night on the couch, and I didn’t exactly feel well rested. I checked my laptop and found, to my relief, that it had survived the fall. I’d have followed my morning ritual of making coffee in my room while perusing the news, except my stomach was growling at me that my granola-and-candy meal last night had been woefully inadequate.
Though the mansion felt more and more like my home every day, I didn’t feel at home enough to go downstairs in my bathrobe, so I showered and dressed before heading down to the kitchen. I’d slept in enough that for once I wasn’t the first person up and about, which meant there was already a pot of coffee brewed. I poured myself a cup, then frowned when I noticed someone had left dirty dishes in the sink. There were drawbacks to living in a house with so many other people in it. I put the dirty dishes into the dishwasher, then made myself some scrambled eggs and toast. And cleaned up my own damn mess when I was finished.
I sat down at the kitchen table with my food and coffee, taking a moment to admire the view through the windows. It looked like it had snowed about four inches all told, and the back lawn was a pristine white carpet that glittered in the light of the sun. A dark blot was moving across the snow, and the glare was bright enough I had to squint to make out Jamaal’s form as he tromped toward the house. At a guess, I’d say he was coming from the clearing.
I’d have thought after our make-out session yesterday he’d have waited until I was out of the house before summoning Sita again, but apparently not. Maybe he thought the fact that he’d ultimately rebuffed my advances was enough to calm Sita’s jealousy. Or maybe I’d ruffled his composure so much he felt he needed to vent the death magic immediately, whether he wanted to or not.
I had wolfed down half my eggs and all of my toast by the time Jamaal made it back to the house and into the kitchen. The first bite had proved to me that I was starving, and I’d started shoveling it in as fast as I could chew and swallow. Jamaal nodded at me in greeting before turning his back on me to pour himself a cup of coffee.
Even in that one brief glance, I’d been able to see his turmoil, so when he turned as if to leave with his coffee, I paused between bites to ask, “Did Sita give you a hard time this morning?”
He reluctantly turned back toward me. “No.”
If he thought he was going to put me off with one-syllable responses, he had another think coming. There was a haunted, troubled look in his eyes that worried me.
“Then what’s wrong?” I asked.
He took a couple of steps closer to me, though he leaned against the end of the kitchen counter instead of coming all the way into the breakfast nook. “I went to the clearing to practice this morning.”
“Yeah, I gathered that.” My remaining eggs were getting cold, and my stomach was far from satisfied with what I’d eaten already, so I went ahead and shoved another forkful into my mouth while Jamaal paused to give me a dirty look. “Sorry,” I said with my mouth full. Dying had not had a good influence on my table manners. “What happened?”
He shook his head. “Finish your breakfast. I’ll show you.”
The words sounded ominous, and the expression on his face made them even more so. I wanted to ask him to explain, but he was obviously not in a talking mood, and I didn’t want him to get annoyed with me and wander off. I finished my eggs in two big bites, then loaded my dishes into the dishwasher.
“Okay,” I said, closing the dishwasher, “time for show-and-tell.”
I snatched my parka from the coat closet. Jamaal waited for me impatiently, his edginess making me nervous. What the hell had he seen out in the clearing that had rattled him so much? And was I going to regret going to get a look for myself?
The snow was a little deeper than I’d thought, and I wished I’d run up to my room for boots as my feet sank into it. Of course, I doubt Jamaal would have waited for me. He was agitated enough that he lit a cigarette and puffed on it steadily as we made our way out to the clearing, following the narrow path his shoes had already left in the snow. The air bit into my cheeks, and snow trickled in around the edges of my shoes. I buried my hands in my pockets and shivered.
The first thing I noticed as we approached the clearing was that there were a bunch of trees down. I certainly hadn’t thought the storm was violent enough to take down trees, especially not as many as I saw. I glanced at Jamaal, wondering if this was what he wanted to show me, thinking that he could just as easily have told me a bunch of trees had fallen.
Jamaal looked grim and kept walking. I followed, and the closer we got to the clearing, the more fallen trees I saw, lying like discarded children’s toys among the ones left standing. We had to weave our way around the trees to get to the clearing. Most of the trees were pines, and they were all green and healthy looking.
When we stepped around the last set of branches that were obscuring our view, I finally got a good look at the clearing, and I gasped.
There wasn’t a flake of snow anywhere in the clearing, as if someone had come out here and gone to work with a snow blower, d
oing such a thorough job of it that all you could see was grass. That was weird as hell, but it wasn’t what took my breath away.
Mouth gaping open, I continued forward until my feet left the snow, blinking a couple of times as if that might make what I saw go away.
I said there were “a bunch” of trees down. Now that I was in the clearing proper, I could see that there were dozens down. Some had been torn up by the roots, and some had snapped in two. Not a single tree that had fronted the clearing was left upright. And the weirdest thing of all? They had all fallen away from the clearing. Almost like a bomb had gone off in the center.
Jamaal stood beside me, his arms crossed over his chest as he surveyed the sight. He must have smoked that cigarette in record time, but I had to admit, if I were a smoker, I’d have been diving for the cigs myself.
“What the hell happened here?” I whispered, my words steaming in the brisk air.
Jamaal swallowed hard. “There was a loud noise in the middle of the night. Woke me up and shook the bed under me.”
I remembered. “I thought it was thunder,” I murmured.
“I did, too, at the time.”
I was pretty sure I had at least a clue of what had happened. Or at least who had happened. Anderson had made himself into a walking, talking automaton in his effort to contain his fury over what Emma had done. He had promised me he would be more like himself when we met with Cyrus today, and the only way that was possible was if he let out some of that repressed fury. I had the distinct feeling we were looking at the results right now.
Jamaal didn’t know what I did about Anderson’s origins, but his mind was obviously traveling similar paths.
“No one knows who Anderson is descended from,” he said. “I don’t know why he’s so mysterious about it, but he is. I’ve never seen him do anything other than that trick with his hand. I have no idea what he’s capable of. What I do know is that none of the rest of us are capable of this.” He indicated the clearing with a sweep of his hand.
I didn’t know what Anderson was capable of, either, although I knew more than Jamaal. “If he has a power that lets him do this, I’m just as happy he keep it and any other powers he might have under wraps.”
Jamaal grunted something that might have been an agreement.
“You think we should ask him about this?” I asked.
Jamaal gave me a look of disbelief. “You go right ahead. Just tell me when you’re going to do it so I can arrange to be in the next county over.”
Okay, it had been a dumb question. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know that Anderson would not be open to discussion about whatever had happened out here. And even if he had vented some of his fury last night, he wasn’t exactly going to be in a good mood in the foreseeable future. Asking him questions he didn’t want to answer would be a poor survival tactic.
“I don’t want to be there when he confronts Cyrus,” I said. “Not that I have a choice.”
I wished he’d at least given himself a couple of days to absorb everything and calm down as much as he could before squaring off with someone who could start a war that could kill every one of Anderson’s Liberi if he wanted to.
“He’ll keep a lid on it,” Jamaal assured me, not very convincingly.
“Uh-huh.”
I sure as hell hoped he did, despite my skepticism. Because if Anderson let loose whatever it was he’d let loose in this clearing, I didn’t think anyone near him, even immortal Liberi, would survive.
NINETEEN
As a general rule, Olympians seem to have a taste for palatial homes set on acres of land in the most upscale of neighborhoods. Cyrus, however, lived in an impressive brownstone in Georgetown, perhaps too much of a city boy to enjoy the comforts of a country estate. I had driven by the place before when I’d been investigating Olympian properties, but now I was going to have an up-close-and-personal look at the interior. I wasn’t what you’d call thrilled at the prospect.
Because of the sensitive subject matter we’d be discussing, a neutral site with witnesses was deemed unacceptable. Anderson was apparently through with letting Olympians set foot within the borders of his own personal territory, and so we were meeting at Cyrus’s house instead. Walking into the lion’s den and making accusations didn’t seem like the best idea to me, but Anderson hadn’t asked my opinion. He seemed closer to normal than he had the day before, able to speak in a natural tone of voice, but I still felt like I was in the presence of a bomb that could go off at the slightest provocation. All I had to do was think of what I’d seen in that clearing, and my desire to question Anderson’s decisions melted away.
Anderson didn’t have any pet Descendants he could take with him to keep the Olympians honest, but he was wary enough of them not to walk into Cyrus’s house completely “unarmed,” so Blake had the pleasure of coming with us. He couldn’t kill anybody, but he could make it so that all the bad guys were so overcome with lust for each other there wasn’t room in their brains for thoughts of attack. I didn’t get the feeling Blake was any happier to be going than I was, but he wasn’t stupid enough to argue with Anderson’s decisions, either.
Thanks to the snow, which showed no sign of melting anytime soon, we had to leave extra early if we hoped to make it to Cyrus’s house by our scheduled three o’clock appointment time. Anderson knew that as well as anybody, but he wasn’t ready to leave until almost two thirty. There was no question in my mind the delay had been deliberate and that he was making some kind of power play by making Cyrus wait.
I didn’t trust Anderson’s mood, but when he announced he was driving, I once again didn’t feel up to arguing with him. Blake and I shared a doubtful look as we followed him out to the garage; then we both shrugged our acceptance. It wasn’t like a car accident would kill us anyway.
The drive was excruciating. All but the main roads were a mess, and there was the usual collection of idiots out who mistakenly thought they knew how to drive in the snow. We did a lot of stopping and starting and threading our way around stranded motorists, then had the always-enjoyable situation of being stuck behind a salt truck.
The ride was made just that much more unpleasant by the tense silence in the car. Anderson was in no mood to make conversation, and his presence was like an oppressive blanket, weighing us down. Blake dealt with the tension by incessantly cracking his knuckles until I turned around and gave him a pointed look. I don’t think Anderson even noticed the effect he was having on us.
Parking on the street in Georgetown is a pain in the butt on any day, but it was well-nigh impossible with the snow. The streets in the heart of the city had been cleared, but that meant there were mountains of dirty snow lining the curbs, blocking off a large percentage of what would ordinarily be parking spaces. Anderson didn’t even bother cruising in search of one, instead pulling into a garage.
Blake was out of the car almost before it had come to a full stop. I took my life into my hands and touched Anderson’s arm as he was turning the car off.
“Are you going to be all right?” I asked him softly.
He looked at me and blinked a couple of times, as if he didn’t quite know what I was talking about. Then he frowned. “I’m in control of myself, if that’s what you’re asking. I’m still angry, but I’m not going to do anything rash. Come on. I think we’ve kept Cyrus waiting long enough.”
We were back to uncomfortable silence as the three of us walked from the garage to Cyrus’s house, now more than a half hour late. Anderson rang the bell, and moments later, the door was opened by a middle-aged man in a stuffy suit. I should have known better than to expect Cyrus to answer his own door. Even having grown up with the ultrarich Glasses, I’d never visited a house that had a butler before, but I guess there’s a first time for everything.
“Mr. Galanos has been expecting you,” the butler said with just a touch of reproof in his voice. “May I take your coats?”
Anderson hadn’t bothered with a coat, making do with a weathered-looking s
port jacket. Blake handed over his stylish wool coat, and I handed over my not-so-stylish, but probably much warmer, parka. When the butler laid the coats over his arm, I caught a glimpse of a trident-shaped glyph on the inside of his wrist. I made an educated guess that he was a mortal Descendant whose divine ancestor was Poseidon. I also guessed that since he was middle aged and working as a butler, he was never going to be given the honor of becoming a Liberi.
Coats still draped over his arm, the butler led us to a two-story library that would make any reader drool. I don’t know how many books, both modern and antique, were on those floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, but it was a lot. I breathed in deep to take in the comforting scent of ink and paper, even as I mentally rolled my eyes at the rest of the decor. The room would have fit right in as the set of some period drama taking place in one of those British men’s clubs the aristocracy was so fond of, all dark colors and manly leather-and-wood furniture. It seemed awfully formal and stodgy for someone like Cyrus.
Cyrus was reclining in a forest-green leather armchair, holding a highball glass filled with something amber colored on the rocks. His pet goon, Mark, had been sitting on the arm of the chair when I first caught sight of him, but he rose to his feet and stood at full bodyguard attention when Anderson, Blake, and I entered the room. He had an enormous, angry-red hickey on his neck, and I had the immediate suspicion that Anderson wasn’t the only one who was already playing mind games. Either Anderson had told Cyrus he was bringing Blake, or Cyrus had guessed his old flame would be joining the party.
I stole a quick glance at Blake out of the corner of my eye, but he gave no indication that he’d noticed Mark one way or the other. He and I hung back just a little as Anderson stepped forward.
Smiling, Cyrus put down his drink and rose from his chair. “So nice of you to join us,” he said, holding out his hand for Anderson to shake. “I was beginning to worry you’d had an accident. I hear the roads are terrible.”
Cyrus had to know that our late arrival was deliberate, but he didn’t let it show in either his voice or his face. If I didn’t know better, I would have sworn that he actually meant it and had been worried. Anderson paused just long enough for it to be noticeable before he shook Cyrus’s hand.
