by Jenna Black
“I am going to kick Jamaal’s ass,” Logan muttered, then started toward Sita with a resigned sigh.
I began edging my way toward the woods, keeping a wary eye on the tiger. She should have been focused on Logan, who was coming directly toward her, but to my dismay, she was looking straight at me.
“Here, kitty, kitty,” Logan called, and I had to admit I was impressed with his bravery. He was acting like initiating hand-to-claw fighting with a supernatural tiger was nothing more than an annoying inconvenience.
Sita flicked a glance at Logan, flattening her ears, and I thought our plan, such as it was, was working. I sped up, making sure not to get any closer to her on my way to the woods. Unfortunately, Sita dismissed Logan after that single glance, fixing her gaze on me once more and stalking toward me. I’m no expert at reading tiger body language, but the predatory glide of her movement suggested she wasn’t heading over to give me an affectionate head-butt like she’d given Jamaal. I’d thought Jamaal was being a smartass when he said Sita didn’t like me, but I was beginning to think he’d meant it literally.
“Oh, come on, you dumb animal,” Logan said, moving to put himself between me and the tiger. “She’s no threat. I’m the one you have to worry about.”
Sita roared, and I didn’t know if she was pissed off because Logan had gotten between her and her prey, or if she was smarter than your average tiger and was insulted by the “dumb animal” comment. Logan crouched, ready for the tiger’s attack, but Sita decided that was a good time to remind us that she wasn’t really a tiger and was in fact a supernatural being. Instead of attacking Logan to get him out of the way, she merely leapt over him, her ridiculously powerful haunches lifting her so high that she sailed over the point of Logan’s knife as he tried to strike at her.
“Shit!” I yelled succinctly, and though I knew running would only stimulate her predatory instincts, I didn’t have a choice.
I bolted for the door as Logan yelled again, trying in vain to distract Sita. I could have sworn I felt the vibration of her footsteps as she thundered after me, but that was probably just my imagination. I knew better than to look over my shoulder, because the last thing I needed was to lose speed.
I made it to the door and shoved it open, skidding over the threshold and practically falling flat on my face. I turned to push the door closed, and saw that Sita was almost upon me. I pushed with all my might, and this time I really did knock myself down. But the door closed before Sita made it through, and for a moment, I lay there on the floor and tried to regain my breath and slow down my frantic heart.
Until Sita gave me another nasty reminder that she wasn’t a natural tiger and passed right through the door.
There was nothing I could do to defend myself. I was lying on my back on the floor, gasping for breath, and she was practically on top of me. She roared directly in my face, so close I could feel the heat and dampness of her breath. I closed my eyes and tried to brace myself for the pain I was about to suffer, and the horrifying ordeal of death that would come shortly after.
She roared again, nowhere near as close to my face, and I opened my eyes to see that Logan stood in the doorway and had grabbed her tail with his left hand. That finally got her attention, and she turned to swat at him with one massive paw. He let go of her tail and jumped backward, moving faster than should have been possible, and she just missed him. I could almost see her moment of indecision, as she tried to decide which of us she wanted to kill first.
“Sita, stop it!”
Jamaal’s voice was about the most welcome thing I’d ever heard. Sita gave a snarl that sounded almost surly. I didn’t want to attract her attention by moving while she was still in easy swatting range, but I didn’t much like lying flat on my back on the floor, so I cautiously pushed myself up into a sitting position.
Between Sita and Logan, my vision was well and truly blocked, and I couldn’t see Jamaal.
Logan couldn’t see Jamaal, either, because he was still focused on Sita, his knife at the ready. “I am going to kick your ass six ways from Sunday,” he said with feeling, and he wasn’t talking to the tiger.
Sita roared out another challenge, this one directed at Logan, not me.
“No!” Jamaal yelled, and his hand clamped down on Logan’s shoulder and pulled him back out of the doorway. “He didn’t mean it!” Jamaal said to Sita. “It was a figure of speech.”
I blinked at him. He looked terrible, his clothes drenched with sweat, his eyes bloodshot, but at least he wasn’t passed out somewhere.
“Does she understand you?” I asked.
Jamaal nodded. “I’m not sure exactly how much she understands, but yeah, she definitely understood that.”
Yet another reminder that she wasn’t a normal tiger. “Well, maybe you could have a talk with her about the difference between the good guys and the bad guys.”
Sita snorted, and flicked her tail across my face. I took that as an insult, though if she had to hit me with something, I definitely preferred her tail to her paws.
“Enough excitement for one day, sweetheart,” Jamaal said, smiling fondly at the creature that had just almost eaten Logan and me for dinner. He reached out and scratched behind her ears. She turned to look at me once more, and I could swear the expression on her face was smug. Then, she disappeared.
Jamaal sagged against the door frame, his head lowering in obvious exhaustion. He was shivering in the cold, and there was dirt ground into the knees of his jeans. I was pretty sure this meant he had collapsed during his practice session with Sita and that was why she’d been free to wander around the property on her own.
“Get inside and sit down before you fall down,” Logan said curtly, then gave Jamaal a little shove to get him moving.
Jamaal wasn’t up to handling a shove in the back, and he pitched forward just as I was getting up off the floor. I held out my hands, both to steady him and to avoid being crushed, while Logan stepped inside and closed the door behind him with more force than necessary. I had to admit, he had reason to be pissed off, but now wasn’t the time to express it. I gave him a dirty look as I looped Jamaal’s arm over my shoulders and braced myself against his not-inconsiderable weight. It says something about the shape he was in that when he tried to pull away from me, he couldn’t.
“Come on,” I said, taking a step toward the breakfast nook, which was the closest place to find a chair, and hoping Jamaal would move along with me. After a moment’s hesitation, he did. He was still shivering, and I didn’t think his sweat-soaked shirt was helping the situation.
I helped Jamaal to one of the chairs, which he practically fell into. Logan was still behind me, and I knew without looking that he was giving Jamaal the evil eye. Jamaal tried to take a deep breath, but he was shivering too hard.
“Will you let me get you a dry shirt?” I asked.
“I’m fine,” he said with a shake of his head that rattled his beads. It would have been more convincing if his teeth weren’t chattering.
I knew without needing to be told that Jamaal had never taken his shirt off around his fellow Liberi. He was more than a little self-conscious about the wealth of scars that riddled his chest and back, a consequence of his mortal life, in which he’d been a slave. He had never told anyone but me about his background, and Anderson and the rest of his Liberi were under the impression that Jamaal was only about fifty years old.
“You are not fine,” Logan snapped, and to my surprise, he pulled off his own long-sleeved tee and threw it at Jamaal. “Put that on!”
Jamaal had never been too good at taking orders, and he gave Logan a snarl that would have done Sita proud. “I’m not wearing your fucking shirt,” he said, and threw the shirt back at Logan. Which would have worked better if he weren’t weak as a kitten. The shirt fluttered to the floor well short of its goal.
Logan snatched the shirt from the floor and held it out to Jamaal. “Put it on yourself, or I’m putting it on you. You’re in no shape to fight me.”
/> Jamaal growled, but Logan was right and he didn’t have the strength to put up a fight. He took the shirt with obvious reluctance and went to pull it on over his head.
Logan rolled his eyes. “Take the wet shirt off first, dimwit.”
Jamaal froze, a look of near panic on his face. He gave me a pleading look, and it shows just how shaken he was that he was willing to reach out to me for help.
“You think I don’t know you have scars?” Logan asked, his voice suddenly gentling.
Jamaal’s eyes went even wider, and he gaped at Logan. “How can you know?” he asked.
“I tended your body after the executions, man. I know you have a shitload of scars. You don’t want to talk about them, that’s fine with me. Just change out of that wet shirt before someone else comes in looking for dinner.”
Still shivering, Jamaal reluctantly peeled off his shirt, his shoulders hunched in a protective posture. He pulled Logan’s shirt on so fast it was a wonder he didn’t rip it, especially since he was at least a size larger than Logan.
“I’m going to run up and get a new shirt,” Logan said, “and when I get back down, we’re going to talk about what just happened.”
“That’s what you think,” Jamaal muttered under his breath, but Logan hadn’t waited to hear his answer and was already on his way out the door.
Jamaal’s head was bowed, maybe in exhaustion, maybe in shame. He’d always seemed ashamed of himself when the death magic made his temper crack, but from my point of view, he had nothing to be ashamed of. It wasn’t like the death magic was a character flaw; he’d never asked for it. But I knew he wouldn’t appreciate it if I voiced the sentiment, especially when he seemed to be studiously avoiding my gaze. I decided acting as if nothing had happened might be the wisest course of action.
“Do you want some coffee?” I asked. “Or some food? Logan made some kind of cold noodle dish that looks delicious.”
“I’m sorry Sita went after you,” he said, ignoring my question and still not looking at me.
I sighed and pulled out a chair so I could sit closer to his eye level. He met my gaze for about a millisecond before glancing away again.
“Please talk to me,” I said. “I can’t help thinking Sita’s aversion to me may have something to do with how you feel about me.” It made sense to me that if Jamaal was still pissed at me for my attempted abandonment, Sita would pick up on it and hold it against me.
“I’m not the sharing-my-feelings type.” He shoved to his feet, his balance still unsteady.
I reached out to help him, but he neatly avoided my grasp.
“I don’t need your help.”
“Jamaal—”
“Leave me alone, Nikki.”
He turned his back on me and staggered out of the kitchen. I wanted to follow him, to try again, but I knew better. He had shut himself off from me—and from the rest of Anderson’s Liberi. Everyone was relieved that his temper was so much better controlled these days. So relieved I doubted anyone but me had seen the downside yet. Sure, he was easier to live with this way, but I didn’t think the isolation was good for him. Leo might be genuinely happy to live ensconced in his room with his computers and minimal human contact, but Jamaal needed people, whether he liked to admit it or not.
Someone was going to have to chip away at the barriers he’d built around himself. I had a feeling the only someone who’d even be willing to try was me.
SIX
My appetite had fled after all the excitement, but I sat down and ate the bowl of noodles Logan had dished out for me anyway. Logan didn’t return to the kitchen, and I wondered if he and Jamaal had bumped into each other on the stairway. Logan had seemed pretty determined to give Jamaal a talking to, and Jamaal had been equally determined to avoid it. I hadn’t heard any sounds of battle, so I assumed either it was something else that distracted Logan, or he and Jamaal were talking things out like civilized adults.
I put the rest of the noodles in the fridge, then picked up the soggy shirt Jamaal had considerately left in a heap on the floor. I draped it over the back of one of the chairs to dry, then retrieved my purse and my planned itinerary for the night from my room. I thought long and hard about whether to bring my .38 Special with me. I would be within the D.C. city limits for some of the drive, and it would be illegal to carry a loaded gun when I was. I could have locked the gun in the trunk, unloaded, but that would defeat the purpose of having it with me.
In the end, as I had so many times in recent weeks, I decided to risk carrying it. I was probably in no danger just driving by Olympian properties, but I had too many enemies to feel comfortable going anywhere near them unarmed. I would have to be doubly careful to obey all traffic laws while I was out.
I got into my Mini and started the long and tedious journey. There were scattered clouds in the sky, and the moon was only a crescent when it was visible. I didn’t know how much moonlight my powers needed to be juiced up to the max—hell, I wasn’t even certain moonlight had any effect. If the moon was covered by clouds when I neared one of the properties of interest, I tried to find a way to hang around inconspicuously until it broke through. I spent a lot of time by the side of the road with my map unfurled as camouflage, but whether the moon was peeking through or not, I didn’t feel any special interest in anyplace I passed.
I didn’t have a huge amount of time until the moon set at a little before ten, but I was determined to use every glimmer of moonlight I could, methodically going through my itinerary. I was using the Beltway to carry me between locations, and the traffic was for once cooperating without any snarls or major slowdowns. The steady movement, and the sound of my tires on the asphalt, lulled me, and I went into autopilot—that state of mind where you arrive at point B and realize you have no memory of the turns and exits you took on your way from point A.
I came back to myself as I was hanging a right off the exit ramp, and I honestly had no idea what exit I had taken. I glanced at the dashboard clock and knew for sure that wherever I was, it wasn’t the exit I’d been aiming for, or I would have been there ten minutes ago. A bolt of adrenaline shot through me, banishing the cobwebs in my brain and making me feel awake and alert again. If I’d just been driving on normal autopilot, I would have gotten off at a familiar exit, but I had to consult my map to figure out where I was, which likely meant that my supernatural hunting sense had taken over.
There were no known Olympian properties anywhere close, and now that I was alert again, I felt no particular pull to go one way or the other. I tried to send myself into autopilot again, but that’s hard to do when you’re driving unfamiliar streets. I also tried pulling over and closing my eyes, attempting to tuck my conscious mind away so my subconscious could feed me some clues, but it’s almost impossible to get your mind to drift on command.
Frustration beat at me. I knew I’d been going in the right direction to get to Konstantin when I’d pulled off the Beltway, but now I had nothing. I slapped the steering wheel and uttered a few choice words as I reluctantly turned back toward the Beltway. Whatever had led me here was now refusing to cooperate, and the moon had set for the night.
Playing a long shot, I stopped by the FedEx store Konstantin had used when sending his nasty email. I luckily found an employee who’d been at work at the time Konstantin had been there. When I described Konstantin to her, she shrugged and said she didn’t remember seeing anyone meeting that description. However, she also said she could barely remember her own name when she worked the graveyard shift, so I had no way of being sure whether Konstantin had been there or not.
Disappointed but unsurprised by the dead end, I headed back to the mansion.
I slept in on Sunday morning, though I was still up earlier than anyone else in the house—with the exception of Leo. I had developed a morning ritual very similar to the one I had had when I’d been living blissfully alone in my condo. I still missed the place, and I tried to stop by on a regular basis to have some time to myself and to remind myself tha
t I had a home to go back to if and when I could ever extricate myself from these messes with Konstantin and Emma. But every time I left the condo, I found myself taking something else back to the mansion with me, moving in little by little, growing ever deeper roots.
In my condo, my morning ritual was to make a pot of coffee and a couple slices of toast, then sit on the couch in my bathrobe with my laptop on my lap and read, or at least skim, my favorite news sites. Having brought over my toaster and coffeemaker, I was now able to re-create the ritual in my suite, though I’d gotten away from it when I’d been trying so hard to avoid Anderson.
I was enjoying the leisure of my “new normal” when my cell phone rang. My gut clenched in anxiety because I feared it was the Glasses calling to tell me they had decided to come home. But when I picked up the phone, the caller ID said Cyrus Galanos. I knew Cyrus and Konstantin by first name only—very kingly of them—but I suppose it would have been legally inconvenient to go by only one name.
I stared at the phone for a good long time, wondering what he could possibly want and if it would be better to let him go straight to voice mail. But until I got around to getting a disposable phone, he could probably find me and waylay me somewhere if I played hard to get. With a sigh, I answered the phone.
“Hello?” I said, sounding tentative. Showing weakness of any kind probably wasn’t the wisest idea, but I doubted he was calling for anything good.
“Hello, Nikki,” Cyrus said, his voice warm and friendly as always. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”
“No, I was up.”
“I thought maybe you were sleeping in after your late night.”
Oh. That was what this was about. My drive-bys last night must not have been as subtle as I’d hoped. Taking the Mini had been a mistake. I should have rented a nondescript sedan that no one would notice.
“What, no clever comebacks?” Cyrus mocked, sounding considerably less friendly. “No elegant denials?”
