by Jenna Black
I caught a flash of movement out of the corner of my eye. I stopped in my tracks and turned slowly, noticing for the first time that the wind was at my back—carrying my scent straight to the clearing. Perhaps the tiger had been aware of me all along and its roars had been warnings I’d foolishly failed to heed.
It was peering at me through the trees, way too close for comfort. It was a beautiful creature, no doubt about it, with pumpkin-orange stripes and a magnificently muscled body. Paws the size of skillets sported claws that could rip a person open with one swipe, and the amber eyes practically glowed with intensity.
I stood still and swallowed hard. I had no doubt the tiger could outrun me in about two strides if it felt so inclined. I stared into those amber eyes, trying to guess what it was going to do. The tiger snarled, showing off an impressive set of teeth, and I quickly dropped my gaze. I knew dogs and primates took eye contact as a form of challenge, but I wasn’t sure about tigers. Of course, if this one was the embodiment of Jamaal’s rage and death magic, it probably didn’t take much to provoke it.
“Jamaal?” I called softly, afraid yelling would spur the tiger into motion. “A little help here?”
I didn’t know exactly where he was, but he had to be nearby. I just hoped he hadn’t completely lost control of the animal.
The tiger stalked forward, moving with sensuous grace. I scanned the ground in search of a rock I could use as a weapon, while keeping the tiger in my peripheral vision. Even with my powers, I didn’t think throwing a rock at it would even slow the tiger down, but anything was better than just standing there and being mauled. As far as I knew, the tiger couldn’t do me any lasting harm, but it could hurt me, even kill me, in the short term. The magic of the Liberi would bring me back no matter what happened to my body, but I’d died once before and hadn’t enjoyed the experience. I wasn’t eager for a repeat performance.
“Jamaal?” I called again, louder this time.
The tiger was close enough now that I could probably have reached out and scratched behind its ears. If I had a death wish, that is. I was shaking with the effort of restraining my primal urge to run, but I was sure that was the one thing I could do to make the situation even worse.
“I don’t think Sita likes you,” Jamaal said from behind me.
I hadn’t heard him approach, but then I’d been keeping my attention firmly fixed on the tiger, where it belonged.
“Sita?” I risked a glance over my shoulder, and saw Jamaal standing a few yards away, leaning casually against a tree.
“I thought a name from Indian mythology would suit her best,” he said, and even propped against the tree as he was, he swayed a bit on his feet. I realized he wasn’t leaning against the tree in an attempt to look casual—he was leaning on it for support. “The wife of the god Rama.”
I couldn’t have cared less about the origin of the tiger’s name. Jamaal’s face was gleaming with sweat, and his T-shirt clung wetly to his well-muscled chest. He looked like he was about to collapse at any moment. It was possible Sita would disappear if he passed out. It was also possible she wouldn’t, which would be bad.
“The name suits her,” I said, rather inanely. She wasn’t creeping closer anymore, but she was still giving me the evil eye, and the tip of her tail was twitching. In a house cat, that wasn’t a good sign. I didn’t know what it meant in a tiger, but I tended to think it was bad. “She’s truly magnificent,” I continued, “but don’t you think it’s time for her to go away now?”
Sita’s lips pulled back in a snarl, as if she’d understood me and been insulted. Maybe she had.
“Come here, Sita,” he called, and she obeyed, though she kept me pinned with her eyes the entire way.
Jamaal pushed away from the tree when Sita was an arm’s length away, and I saw his legs trembling. He was pushing himself too hard, and it was dangerous as hell. Sita might not be able to do me permanent harm, but if he passed out and left her to her own devices . . . We didn’t have any close neighbors—that was part of the point of the mansion—but the tiger wouldn’t have to go very far to find more vulnerable prey.
I bit my tongue to stop myself from editorializing. The last thing I wanted to do was get Jamaal’s back up while he had a lethal carnivore under tenuous control. So instead of urging him to hurry the hell up and put Sita away, I stood there and held my breath.
Jamaal reached out toward the tiger with a shaking hand, and she finally dragged her attention away from me. She closed her eyes and pressed her head up against his hand in what looked like an affectionate gesture. She followed that gesture by butting her head against his hip. I couldn’t say with any accuracy how big Sita was, but if I had to guess, I’d say she weighed around five hundred pounds, most of it muscle. Her gentle head-butt was too much for Jamaal’s shaky legs, and he went down.
“Jamaal!” I cried, instinctively taking a step toward him.
Sita whirled on me with a roar that made my bones vibrate, putting herself between me and Jamaal and crouching menacingly. But she didn’t pounce on me, and I had the feeling she was defending Jamaal, rather than attacking me. I wasn’t about to argue with her, and I stepped back slowly, trying to give her some space without making her want to chase me.
Luckily, Jamaal had only lost his balance, not passed out. While I stood there with my heart in my throat, he reached up and touched Sita’s flank. She gave me one last snarl, then disappeared.
For a couple of minutes, neither one of us moved. Jamaal lay on his back on the ground, his eyes closed as the sweat evaporated from his skin. His breathing was deep and steady, and I might have thought he’d passed out after all if it weren’t for his bent knees, which didn’t flop to the side as they would if he were unconscious. For myself, I continued to stand still, willing the adrenaline to recede.
Unfortunately, when I didn’t have the heady rush of adrenaline keeping me warm, I noticed that I was freezing. I was as sweaty as Jamaal from my run, and I was wearing even less clothing. It was a nice day for January, but it was still January. I shivered and crossed my arms in a vain attempt to keep warm.
“What are you doing here, Nikki?” Jamaal asked without opening his eyes.
“I was running,” I answered, although surely he’d figured that out on his own based on how I was dressed. “Did you send Sita out to stalk me, or was that her own idea?” Jamaal wasn’t what I’d call the mischievous sort, and I doubted he’d have used Sita to scare me like that, but I didn’t much like the idea of a magical tiger with a mind of its own.
For a moment, I thought he wasn’t going to answer me, which was answer enough in its own way. Then he opened his eyes and levered himself up into a sitting position with an obvious effort. I almost reached out and offered him a hand, but I knew better by now. Jamaal was not the type to graciously accept help of any kind.
“My guess is she heard you running and decided to investigate the potential threat,” he said. “You might have noticed she’s a little protective of me.” He shook his head as if to clear it, and I noticed that the beads at the ends of his braids were a combination of orange, black, and white.
Jamaal was color coordinating with his tiger? I had to suppress a laugh at the idea, though I wondered if Jamaal was even conscious he’d done it. He had enough beads to wear a different color every day for a year; maybe it was just a coincidence that he’d chosen tiger colors.
“I can’t blame her for that,” I said, though I’d have been happier if he could teach her the distinction between the good guys and the bad guys. “But maybe you should go a little easy on your practice sessions. You know, stop before you’re about to drop from fatigue?”
He gave me a sour look as he laboriously dragged himself to his feet. “Venting the death magic was your idea. Don’t complain if you don’t like the results.”
Jamaal’s temper was a lot more stable now that he’d learned how to summon Sita, but he was still a pro at being surly. I tried not to take it personally, though I suspected there
was something personal about it. And maybe it was time we got whatever it was out into the open. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t think to initiate a personal conversation when I was standing outside in January in a damp set of running clothes and Jamaal was so shaky on his feet he had to concentrate to stand up, but this might be my only chance to get him alone for a while.
“Are you still pissed at me for trying to leave?” I blurted, wincing a bit in anticipation of his response. At the time, I’d thought leaving was the only way I could protect both myself and Steph. Emma and Anderson had still been trying to make a go of it, and Emma had—for reasons that mystified me to this day—decided that I was after her husband. I’d been sure that Emma and I couldn’t coexist in the mansion, and that if it came down to it, Anderson would choose her over me. And so I’d decided I should make myself disappear.
It had seemed like a good idea at the time, though I realized now that deciding to disappear without talking it over with anyone, or even saying good-bye, had been taking the coward’s way out. And I was pretty sure I’d hurt Jamaal’s feelings, though he’d never admit it.
Jamaal blinked, as if confused by the abrupt change of subject. “What are you talking about?”
I didn’t for a moment believe he didn’t know. He just didn’t want to talk about it. Like most men I knew, he wasn’t a big fan of talking about his feelings.
Actually, he wasn’t a big fan of talking, period. He was the strong, silent type personified, but I didn’t think that was particularly good for him. Even living in the mansion with seven other people, he managed to hold himself aloof, and I thought the isolation, self-imposed though it was, exacerbated his difficulties with the death magic.
“It was wrong of me to try to sneak away like that,” I said. “I was afraid that if I let anyone know I was leaving, someone would try to talk me out of it.” I’d been equally afraid of how I’d feel if someone didn’t try to talk me out of it, but I wanted to talk about Jamaal’s baggage, not my own. “And I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to force myself to leave. I—”
Jamaal shook his head, making his beads click. “Don’t make something out of nothing. I don’t care whether you stay or go.”
I couldn’t help flinching at his words, my heart clenching unpleasantly in my chest. I shouldn’t have let it get to me. I knew he cared, whether he admitted it or not. And yet the words still hurt.
Jamaal sighed and wiped some of the drying sweat from his brow. “Sorry. Didn’t mean it like that. Just meant it’s your decision, not mine. Now I need a shower and a nap, and you need to get inside before you turn blue.”
He didn’t wait for my response, turning his back abruptly enough that he almost lost his balance again and heading toward the house with a ground-eating stride. I considered running after him, trying to get him to stop and talk, but I didn’t like my chances of success. And yeah, I was still feeling pretty stung.
Trying to act as if none of what had happened had gotten to me, I resumed my run. I doubt I managed more than a couple hundred yards before I gave it up as a lost cause.
THREE
The phone call came at three thirty Saturday morning, startling me out of a deep sleep. For a moment after I opened my eyes, I just lay there and hoped the annoying ringing sound would go away, but of course it didn’t. I sat up, groping for the phone and staring blearily at the illuminated numbers on my clock. I’d had a land line installed in my room, but I rarely used it. I picked up the receiver and crossed my fingers it would be a wrong number.
“Hello?” I croaked.
“Don’t panic,” Steph’s voice answered, and it sounded like she’d been crying recently. “I’m all right. No one is hurt.”
Well, that woke me up in a hurry. I yanked the chain on the bedside lamp, blinding myself with the glare, and rubbed at the crust on my eyes.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, panicking despite Steph’s orders not to. Anything bad enough for her to call me at this hour was going to suck even if no one was hurt.
Steph sniffled. “It’s our house.” Steph lived alone, so I could only assume that by “our” house, she meant the house we’d grown up in. My throat tightened. “There was a fire . . .” Her voice faded into more sniffles.
My own eyes burned with sympathetic tears as something cold and hard sank to the pit of my stomach. “How bad?”
Steph’s more of a crier than I am, and it took her a while to get her tears under control enough to talk. “The worst,” she finally said. “It’s gone. Everything’s . . . gone.”
I tried to absorb the enormity of what had happened, but I couldn’t quite wrap my brain around it. Maybe I wasn’t fully capable of it. Until I’d moved in with the Glasses at the age of eleven, the concept of a “home” had been alien to me. Homes were just temporary way stations, interchangeable places to sleep. I’d resided in more houses and apartments than I could count. The Glasses’ house meant more to me than all the rest of them put together, but I knew instinctively that it didn’t mean as much to me as it did to Steph and her parents. After my childhood, I just didn’t let myself grow attached to places the way normal people did.
That didn’t mean I didn’t feel the loss.
I’d spent the happiest years of my life in that house, after I’d finally come to accept that the Glasses were going to keep me no matter how badly I acted out. It was warm and beautiful, decorated with exquisite taste while still managing to look comfortable and inviting. It was the Glasses’ history, Steph’s childhood, and my safe haven, all rolled into one. I was going to miss it, but my adoptive family was going to grieve for it. And I was already grieving for them.
“What happened?” I asked. I wanted to say something comforting and sympathetic to Steph, but I knew better. Steph would expect me to be as devastated and heartsick as she was about the loss of our childhood home. Comforting her when I was supposed to be equally upset would make me sound aloof and distant. I was heartsick, but not for reasons she’d understand.
“They don’t know yet,” Steph said. “The fire’s out, but they won’t be able to investigate until daylight.”
I hoped like hell it had been a freak accident of some sort, but I couldn’t help wondering . . . Emma wasn’t allowed to hurt me or my family because of the treaty between the Olympians and Anderson. But I doubted that protection applied to our property. What also gave me pause was the fact that this wasn’t the first fire that had affected me in recent weeks. Earlier this month, the office building I was renting space in had had a fire, one that destroyed my office. It hadn’t started in my office, and the fire investigator had determined that some idiot had left his space heater on by accident. Maybe it was completely unrelated, but it seemed like quite the coincidence.
“Have you called your folks yet?” I asked.
The Glasses were on an around-the-world cruise and had been gone for two and a half months already. They still had three more weeks left, and I hated the idea of spoiling it for them when there was nothing they could do.
“Our folks, Nikki,” Steph said sharply.
Oops. I’d forgotten. It was about fourteen years too late, but I was trying to train myself to think of the Glasses as my parents. Despite all the warmth and love they’d shown me, I’d always managed to keep a little bit of distance between us. It wasn’t like I was trying to do it. It just sort of happened. I didn’t feel like I was really their daughter, no matter what the adoption papers said. I think my insistence on referring to them as Steph’s parents had been bugging her for a long time, but it was out in the open now.
“Our folks,” I repeated meekly. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to get myself to call them Mom and Dad, but I could at least take a couple of baby steps. “Have you called them yet?”
“No,” she said in a small voice, and I knew she was about to cry again. “I don’t know how—” She couldn’t finish the sentence, her voice breaking in a sob.
“I’ll do it,” I told her, though it was going to be hell. Who likes breaking t
hat kind of news to people they loved? And I did love the Glasses, even if I didn’t truly think of them as my parents. But I could give them the news without bursting into tears, and I doubted Steph could.
“You don’t have to,” Steph managed to choke out, but I heard the hope in her voice.
“I’ll do it,” I repeated. “You shouldn’t have to make this phone call more than once.”
“And you can stay calm, cool, and collected when you tell them.”
I was pretty sure there was a hint of censure in those words, but I chose to ignore it. I was never going to be as open and demonstrative as Steph was, and I refused to apologize for it.
“Why don’t you come over when we get off the phone,” I suggested. “Neither one of us is going to get any more sleep tonight. We have several industrial-sized tubs of ice cream in the freezer. Maybe you and I can demolish one together.”
Steph thought about it briefly, then let out a shuddering sigh. “Okay. I’ll be there in about forty minutes.”
Dreading what I had to do next, I hung up the phone.
The phone call with the Glasses was every bit as excruciating as I expected. My adoptive mother’s heartbroken sobs would haunt me for a long time. I wished I could give her a hug, but she was halfway around the world, and I wouldn’t be hugging her anytime soon. At least Mr. Glass was there so she could cry on his shoulder. He’s the stereotypical stoic male, and though the news had to have hit him hard, he kept himself together. I hoped that when he and Mrs. Glass were alone together and he didn’t feel like he had to put up a brave front for me, he would take comfort from her as well as give it.
“I don’t know how soon we’ll be able to get home,” he said. There was just a hint of hoarseness in his voice, betraying the emotions he was trying to repress. “Even if we get on the next flight, it’ll take a couple of days.”
“There’s no need for you to cut your trip short,” I said, and my motives in saying so weren’t entirely pure. No, I didn’t want them to miss out on whatever exciting destinations were still on their itinerary, but I also hadn’t yet figured out what the hell I was going to tell them about what was going on in my life. I’d talked to them a couple of times since I’d become Liberi, but I hadn’t told them much of anything. How I was going to explain that I was now living in a mansion with seven other people was beyond me. Especially when I insisted on holding on to the condo the Glasses had bought for me. (They’d bought it for me as a gift, but I insisted on paying rent. My baggage made it hard for me to accept money or gifts from them.)
