by Jenna Black
“Just a precaution,” Cyrus said, sitting back down. “I figured you probably weren’t too happy with me right now. I also figured you probably wouldn’t do anything stupid in a public place, but one can never be too careful.” He reached over and stroked Mark’s back like he was petting a dog. “I promise he won’t interfere as long as we’re just talking. You won’t even know he’s here.”
Anderson was still standing, giving both Cyrus and Mark his best scowl. I’d never had much patience for posturing, so I pulled back my own chair and sat without waiting for Anderson.
“Were you hoping we’d bring Blake so you could make him jealous?” I asked Cyrus.
He grinned and looked over at Mark in a considering manner. “Yes, there is a certain resemblance, isn’t there?” Mark looked more uncomfortable now than he had when we’d refused to shake his hand, and I felt momentarily bad for him. Then I reminded myself that he was an Olympian-wannabe, which meant he was not one of the good guys.
Anderson slowly took his seat.
“Would you like to order something before we begin?” Cyrus asked. Both he and Mark had cups of espresso in front of them, though it looked like Mark had barely touched his.
I’d have loved to have a cup of coffee to fidget with, if not to drink, but Anderson wasn’t interested.
“This isn’t a social call,” he said coldly, “and there’s no reason to pretend it is.”
Cyrus stuck out his lower lip in a pout. “We can talk business without completely skipping the social niceties.” He motioned to the barista, holding up two fingers. “Two more shots for my friends, please,” he called.
“You know, the polite way to order at a coffee bar is to go up to the register and talk in a normal tone of voice,” I said, not willing to be charmed by his genial manner.
Cyrus was hardly chastened by my rebuke. “I’m a regular, and I tip really, really well. Amazing the kind of service that buys me.”
“You don’t actually think we’re buying your good-ole-boy act, do you?” Anderson asked.
“It’s not an act. If you’re expecting me to act all stodgy and self-important like my father, you can forget it. That’s not my style.”
The barista brought over two demitasse cups of steaming, fragrant espresso, putting them before me and Anderson. “Need anything else?” she asked Cyrus with a coquettish smile. She probably thought he would make a great catch with his good looks and his propensity for throwing money around.
“No thanks, Lacy,” he said, and I wondered if he actually remembered her name, or was just reading her name tag. “We’re good for now.”
She wandered away, disappointed.
“Now, since you’re so anxious to get down to business,” Cyrus said, “why don’t you start talking.”
Anderson turned to me, and I told Cyrus about the two fires that had devastated my life over the last week. He listened in silence, and I passed the folder with the news article and the printout of the email across the table to him.
I’m not a big fan of espresso, unless it has a lot of steamed milk in it, but I was too jittery to sit still while Cyrus read, so I took a sip. Anderson hadn’t touched his.
Finally, Cyrus finished reading and tucked the papers back into the folder. He shook his head and gave me a look of genuine sympathy.
“I’m sorry you’ve had to deal with all this,” he said. “I’m sure being tossed headfirst into our world is stressful enough without adding this crap to it.” He slid the folder back to me with a sharp gesture that spoke of annoyance. “But I can assure you Konstantin isn’t behind it.”
Anderson snorted. “He claimed responsibility!”
Cyrus rolled his eyes. “As I told Nikki before, an anonymous email isn’t proof of anything.” He looked at me. “My father hates your guts, I won’t lie. But not because he blames you for his troubles. He can be petty, but he’s not stupid.”
“Oh, so he readily accepts the blame for what happened with Justin Kerner?” Anderson asked with patent disbelief.
Cyrus smiled ruefully. “Of course not. It’s the incompetents who didn’t bury him deep enough, and Phoebe, whose visions weren’t clear enough, and, hell, me because I met with you a couple of times and didn’t stop his secret from getting out. There’s plenty of blame to go around. And Nikki, he hates you, but you’re nowhere near important enough to him to warrant this kind of attention.”
I believed every word of what Cyrus was saying. For a while, I’d allowed myself to accept that Konstantin really was behind the fires, but the motive had never quite made sense. Hearing Cyrus shoot down the theory without even momentarily considering it just cemented my opinion.
Anderson, of course, saw things differently. “Did it ever occur to you that his misfortunes might have caused him to become a bit . . . unhinged?”
“No,” Cyrus said. “It never did. I’ve been in regular contact with him, and I can assure you, he’s acting like his usual, ornery, domineering self.”
“And I’m supposed to take your word on it?”
“Why would I lie?” Cyrus picked up his cup and frowned at the contents. “Mine’s gone cold. Are you going to drink that?” He gestured at Anderson’s untouched espresso.
“You’d lie because that’s what Olympians do.”
“There’s no reason to be such a dick,” Cyrus said, reaching for the espresso without Anderson’s go-ahead. “I’m telling you my father isn’t behind these particular attacks. I’m not trying to tell you he’s a nice person, and I’m not telling you he wouldn’t take an opportunity to hurt Nikki if it fell into his lap. But he’s not going to go through this elaborate bullshit in a quest for revenge.”
“Of course, you also said Emma wouldn’t do this,” I pointed out, more to give Anderson a moment to cool down than because I thought the point needed to be raised, “and she’s the only other person I can imagine wanting to hurt me. You’re wrong about someone, either your father or Emma.”
“I suppose it’s possible,” Cyrus conceded with a careless shrug. He took a sip of Anderson’s espresso. “But I don’t think it’s likely, and you didn’t ask for this meeting because you wanted to solve the mystery of who’s behind the fires, now did you?”
I think Anderson wanted to snap something about there being no mystery, but he refrained. I suspected that somewhere down inside, he had to see where the evidence was pointing, even if he wasn’t ready to admit it.
“No,” he said, wiping the emotion from his face. “I asked for this meeting because I want you to put a stop to it.”
Cyrus took another sip of espresso, as nonchalant as ever. “Can’t help you there. Property damage isn’t covered under our agreement.”
“Property damage?” I cried in outrage, pushing my chair back so I could leap to my feet. “Three people were killed, including an infant, for Christ’s sake. That’s murder, not property damage!”
And here I’d been worried about Anderson losing his temper. Mark’s hand had disappeared into his pocket, and he was watching me with studied intensity. I assumed his hand was on a weapon, and that he’d be on me in a heartbeat if I made anything that he could construe as a hostile motion toward Cyrus.
“Sit down, Nikki,” Anderson said, still calm and unruffled.
“At ease, Mark,” Cyrus said in a similar tone of voice.
I wondered if they were going to tell us to heel or fetch as a follow-up. Mark didn’t seem to mind being given commands. He took his hand slowly out of his pocket, but he kept his eyes on me. I minded a lot more, but I knew emotional outbursts were counterproductive. I wished I hadn’t just lost my temper in front of the enemy, but there was nothing I could do about it now except try not to make it worse. I sat down and tried to relax, though I was practically shaking with rage.
“Sorry,” Cyrus said with a grimace. “I should have known you’d be more upset about the casualties than about your property. I’m sure the intent behind the attack was to destroy something that belonged to you, and that doesn
’t fall under the purview of our agreement. Nor do the incidental deaths that accompanied the damage.”
This was exactly the response Anderson had warned me to expect, but that didn’t make it go down any easier. Cyrus made such a good show of being a nice guy that no matter how much I reminded myself what he was, I couldn’t ever seem to make the knowledge stick.
“So you’re okay with your people burning down buildings filled with innocents, and it doesn’t bother you in the least when those innocents die.”
Cyrus shrugged. “I wouldn’t do something like that, but I’m not going to get all worked up about it. If I got all worked up every time an Olympian killed somebody, I’d never have survived to adulthood.” He leaned forward and gave me an earnest look. “Look, I’m sorry about what’s happened. You seem like a good person, and I’d rather not see you get hurt. But unless the treaty is broken, my hands are tied.”
“Spoken like a true Olympian,” Anderson said sourly.
Cyrus raised an eyebrow. “You expected something different? I’d have thought Blake had told you all about my deficiencies of character.”
“I’m not the one who expected something different.”
“Ah.” He gave me that earnest look again as his voice dropped until I could barely hear it over the roar of the espresso machine. “I’ve stopped the Olympian practice of disposing of Descendant children. You have no idea how far out on a limb I’ve already gone. I can’t go forbidding my people to bother you just because Anderson asks me to.”
If he thought I was going to sympathize with his delicate political situation, he was nuts. He was still looking at me, this time expectantly, though I didn’t know what he was expecting.
Suddenly, Anderson gave a harsh bark of laughter. I didn’t get the joke.
“What?” I asked, looking back and forth between the two of them.
“Let me translate what Cyrus just said,” Anderson answered. “It comes down to: what’s in it for me?”
I hadn’t fully registered Cyrus’s words until that moment. He hadn’t said he wouldn’t stop his people from tormenting me. He said he wouldn’t stop them just because Anderson asked him to.
“You bastard,” I said, scowling at Cyrus.
The insult rolled off him. “I’m not running a charitable organization, Nikki. I like you, but I’m not going to go sticking my neck out for you just because I’m a nice guy. You want my help, you have to make it worth my while.”
“You’re just a goddamn shakedown artist, aren’t you?”
“Do you want to bargain with me or not?”
If it had been Konstantin offering me some kind of a deal, I’d have refused without even exploring the possibility. In fact, if it had been any other Olympian, I probably would have gotten up and walked away. But there was a part of me that still kept insisting there had to be some redeeming qualities to Cyrus. Naive? Maybe.
“All right, I’ll play,” I said. “What would it take to get you to order your people to leave me alone?”
I realized Cyrus had planned to take us into a negotiation all along, because he didn’t even have to think a moment before he named his price.
“Give me an IOU for one hunt, to be cashed in at my convenience.”
“No,” I said instantly. I knew more innocents would likely die if I couldn’t get Emma (or Konstantin, if I was wrong about him) off my back, but I wasn’t willing to actively cause someone else’s death. I’d just have to find some other way to fix things.
“I understand that you have severe moral qualms about hunting for us,” Cyrus said. “How about if I promise that whomever you hunt will not be killed?”
I’d seen how creatively the Olympians could torture someone without killing them. “Not good enough. You’d have to take rape and torture off the menu, too.”
Cyrus thought about that a moment, then nodded. “I could do that. We don’t always have nefarious purposes when we’re looking for people.”
I glanced at Anderson, wondering if there was some big loophole I was overlooking. I was pretty sure that Cyrus would be getting the better of this deal, but as Anderson had told me, we had no leverage.
“I think Cyrus is about as close to honest as an Olympian can be,” Anderson said in answer to my questioning look.
“Gee, thanks,” Cyrus said with another of his grins.
“It’s up to you whether you’re willing to put yourself in his debt,” Anderson finished.
It still wasn’t exactly a rousing endorsement. The idea of owing Cyrus held no appeal, but if that was what it took to keep the other Olympians off my back, then I’d just have to suck it up. “Just to clarify,” I said, “if I promise to hunt someone for you in the future, you will get whoever’s been setting the fires to stop?”
Cyrus shook his head. “I can’t promise it will stop. If I’m wrong and my father’s behind this, he might not listen to me. But I will warn all of my people off, and if anyone acts against you after my warning, then they’ll be disobeying my direct orders. I’m not as much of a hard ass as my father, but I will not tolerate disobedience.” He leaned forward and looked back and forth between me and Anderson. No charming smiles this time, and the look in his eyes said that he was dead serious. “And let me make this perfectly clear: if you go after my father, all bets are off.”
“What if he sets another fire after you warn him off?” I asked.
“Then I’ll have to conclude I’m a gullible idiot and declare open season on him. But that’s not going to happen, because he’s not behind this in the first place.”
Anderson leaned back in his chair and didn’t say anything. I didn’t for a moment think he was going to let Konstantin go for my sake, at least not in the long run. He would have his revenge, one way or another. But he would have to find a new way to convince me to find him if the agreement with Cyrus worked out. That was a problem for another day.
Both Cyrus and I were looking at Anderson expectantly.
“What?” he asked. “I’ve already agreed to let him be. Do you need me to agree again?”
“Yes, I think I do,” Cyrus said, and I think he was as skeptical about Anderson’s agreement as I was. After all, he’d already sort of caught me on the hunt after Anderson and I had both agreed to leave Konstantin alone.
“All right,” Anderson said. “I’ll say it again. Neither I nor any of my people will harm Konstantin as long as he is an Olympian, and as long as he commits no acts of aggression against us. Satisfied?”
“I guess I am.” Cyrus didn’t sound convinced, and I didn’t blame him. “Shall we shake on it?”
A round of handshaking followed. This time, Mark didn’t even try to participate.
I returned home from our meeting with Cyrus more than a little unsettled. I couldn’t shake the feeling that although Anderson had raised no objection, I had made a tactical error in promising Cyrus a hunt. The fact that I’d specified no violence made me feel marginally better, but I imagined there were any number of ways Cyrus could twist my promise into something I’d later regret.
I was so worried about what I might have gotten myself into that I went looking for Blake, whom I usually preferred to avoid. The door to his suite was ajar when I arrived. I rapped on it as I pushed it open and stuck my head in, but apparently Blake didn’t hear me, because he didn’t look up. When I saw what he was doing, I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or to gape in shock.
He hadn’t heard me knock because he was wearing earbuds, his head nodding along to whatever was playing on his iPod. He was sitting on his couch, one leg tucked under him, as he concentrated intensely on the pair of knitting needles he was holding. I couldn’t tell what he was making—he only had about four or five inches of fabric so far—but the yarn was a thin, silky-looking crimson, and the little bit he had done was almost lacy. He executed some complex maneuver with the yarn and needles, his forehead creasing with the effort, then came to the end of his row and let out a sigh of what sounded like satisfaction.
If you had asked me what Blake did in his spare time, I’d have put knitting somewhere at about 1,001 on the list of possibilities. He wasn’t as macho as guys like Jamaal and Logan, but despite his pretty-boy looks and his onetime romance with Cyrus, he’d never given me the impression that he might be the sort to engage in such a stereotypically feminine pursuit.
“What are you making?” I asked, loud enough that Blake could hear me over whatever was playing on his iPod.
He jumped and practically dropped his needles. He’d been concentrating so hard that I doubt there was any way I could have made my presence known without startling him, but I gave him a sheepish smile anyway.
“Sorry,” I said, as Blake pulled out the earbuds and laid his knitting carefully on the coffee table. “I knocked, but you didn’t hear me.”
He eyed me suspiciously from his seat on the couch. I guess my sudden and unexpected appearance in his suite worried him. Maybe he thought I was going to try to warn him away from Steph for the millionth time.
“I’m making a scarf for Steph for Valentine’s Day,” he said, that wary look still on his face. “I haven’t knitted for a long time, so I thought I’d get an early start.”
The admission made me strangely uncomfortable. The idea that he was making something for Steph by hand, something he expected to take him nearly a month to complete, suggested a deeper attachment than I’d allowed myself to imagine. I’d known Blake was fond of Steph, and I’d even had to admit to myself that he genuinely cared about her, but I’d hoped it was something fun and casual. You don’t spend a month knitting something for someone if the relationship is casual.
“I wouldn’t have taken you for the knitting type,” I said. My voice came out a bit tight. I’d promised not to voice my disapproval of his relationship with my sister, but that didn’t mean I didn’t feel it.
Blake shrugged. “I grew up with three sisters. I was a rebel, so when my parents told me boys don’t knit, I immediately wanted to do it.” He grinned. “I learned by unraveling a couple of my sisters’ projects so I could figure out how it worked. Strangely enough, they weren’t very happy with me when they found the piles of yarn I left behind.”
