by Jenna Black
“You’re in no shape to work right now.”
Another yawn forced its way up my throat, no matter how hard I tried to stop it. Not the best way to convince Anderson I was fit for duty.
I could have argued with him some more, could have tried to insist he let me work. But in the end, I didn’t need his permission. The data I needed was no doubt either on my laptop or at least available from it. All I needed was for Anderson to go away, and then I could do what I pleased.
“Fine,” I said with a huff, pulling back the covers and sliding into bed. “I’ll sleep. But I’m getting to work the moment the sun rises tomorrow, so make sure Leo sends me anything he’s dug up.”
Anderson raised an eyebrow. I doubt he was used to being given orders. But he didn’t call me on it, instead issuing a murmured “good night” and slipping out of the room. I suspected he might be hovering outside the bedroom door waiting to make sure I did as I was told, so I lay down and turned off the light. I even closed my eyes, in case he did a Columbo and came back into the room for “one more thing.” And that was a mistake.
When I next awoke, it was after midnight. Someone had left a plastic-wrapped sandwich, a bag of chips, and a bottle of water on my bedside table. I guessed that was my dinner, though whoever had left it probably hadn’t counted on it sitting there that long before I got to it. I was ravenous, and I couldn’t die of food poisoning, so I stuffed down the sandwich and the bag of chips in about sixty seconds.
I opened the bottle of water and washed down the remaining salty goodness of the chips, then slid out of bed and gave a tentative stretch. I still felt weak, and despite the six hours or so of sleep I’d just gotten, I had the feeling if I let myself fall back into bed, I’d be out for the rest of the night. Still, I felt a whole lot better than I had for a while, and I was all too aware of the clock ticking. If I couldn’t track down the killer before Friday night, someone else was going to die horribly.
What we were going to do if and when I tracked down the killer was a whole other question. How do you capture someone who’s immortal and has a pack of rabid phantom jackals at his beck and call? Sure, I was back from the dead, but I was not at all up for another face-to-face with those damn jackals.
I told myself not to think about that part, then made my way into my sitting room. I debated going downstairs to get a cup of coffee while my laptop was booting up but decided against it. I was definitely still pretty washed out, and while I was sure I could make it down the stairs, making it back up afterward might be a challenge.
Despite his distaste for being given orders by a worker bee like me, Anderson had obviously talked to Leo, because there were a bunch of new emails waiting in my in-box. The first one I opened purported to be about the latest victim, and though I honestly wasn’t sure what I could hope to learn, my instincts told me it was important.
My mind wasn’t exactly firing on all cylinders. I had read all the way through Leo’s dossier, learning more than I wanted to know about the victim’s life, before something finally struck me. I minimized the email so that only the victim’s picture was visible, then fished through the rest of my emails and brought up pictures of the previous two identified victims.
One of them was lean and athletic-looking, and had olive skin with dark hair and a beard and mustache. Just like the latest victim. The other was clean-shaven, although he did have olive skin. I also remembered that he was the one whose picture in the newspaper was obviously at least a decade out of date.
I searched Google for a more recent photo and found one in no time. And wouldn’t you know it, he had the black beard and mustache, too. He wasn’t as athletic-looking as the other two, but he was certainly lean—to the point of looking unhealthy.
I only had three victims to go on, since the first was still unidentified, but the resemblance couldn’t be a coincidence. Lean, dark hair, olive skin, beard and mustache … all three bore more than a passing resemblance to Konstantin.
And that meant Phoebe was lying when she told us the Olympians had no idea why the killer was hunting in D.C.
The attacks were personal—and aimed at Konstantin.
And that meant Konstantin knew damn well who the killer was.
TEN
I sat back in my chair and stared at the three photos on my computer screen, wondering if I could be making something out of nothing.
No, I didn’t think so.
Who was this guy? What did he have against Konstantin? And why had Phoebe and Cyrus lied about it? The obvious conclusion was that they were hiding something—no doubt on Konstantin’s orders—but I had no clue what.
I didn’t have answers to any of these questions, and I knew that the next logical step was to have a heart-to-heart with Konstantin. Maybe now that the jig was up, he’d be more forthcoming about what was going on. He might not care how many people Dogboy killed, but he did want him stopped. I couldn’t help wondering if Phoebe’s “vision” had been any more truthful than anything else she’d told us. Was Konstantin really trying to keep the killer from being captured by the government, or was he just using us to clean up his mess?
I wanted to question Konstantin right away, but I knew better than to think that was an option. I wasn’t getting an interview with him at nearly two in the morning. Not that I believed I was capable of getting the truth out of Konstantin, anyway. I had no leverage over him, no way to make him talk to me if he didn’t want to—which I already knew he wouldn’t.
Anderson, however, might be able to manage it. He planned to kill Konstantin someday, and they both knew it. Unless Konstantin was clinically insane, he had to be at least somewhat afraid of Anderson, even if he’d never admit it.
I briefly debated venturing into Anderson’s wing to wake him up and get him on it right away, but there was no point in it. Anderson wasn’t going to be able to get hold of Konstantin at this hour any more than I could. Besides, waking Anderson meant waking Emma, and that struck me as a bad idea.
I knew I should go back to bed and get some more sleep. I was far from fully recovered. But as drained as my body felt, I no longer felt sleepy, and I was afraid that if I lay down and closed my eyes without instantly falling asleep, I’d end up lying there remembering the suffocating darkness of death.
Even letting my mind brush against the memory made me shudder.
I didn’t think there was much else I could do to help the case along at this point, but I needed to keep my mind occupied. I decided to brave the rigors of the stairs after all. Despite the old-fashioned formality of the mansion, there was a fairly comfortable den/media room on the first floor, and I figured I could either find something bearable to watch on cable or I could pop in a movie. Something mindless enough not to require much energy but engaging enough to absorb my attention and keep me from thinking.
I stopped by the kitchen first to make some coffee, then found myself having to sit down to rest before I could manage the trek from the kitchen to the den. Anderson had told me I should feel much better tomorrow, but at my current rate of recovery, I doubted I’d be at a hundred percent. Of course, my refusal to crawl back into bed and sleep the rest of the night probably wasn’t helping, but there was no way I was climbing all the way back to my room on the third floor now.
Carrying a travel mug of coffee, because with my shaky legs I was afraid I’d spill with a regular mug, I made my slow and steady way to the den. I didn’t bother turning lights on as I went, so I noticed the flickering glow emanating from the den as soon as I stepped into the hallway. There was a faint murmur of voices in the background, but it was the TV, rather than a bunch of people. Either someone had forgotten to turn the TV off before going to bed, or I wasn’t the only one up at this ungodly hour.
I was doing exactly what Anderson had warned me not to do: overtaxing myself. My legs felt like overcooked spaghetti, and there was no way they were carrying me back up to my room, no matter how much I didn’t want company. Putting my hand against the wall for a little ext
ra support, I continued down the hall until I could see into the den.
The den was about as masculine as you could imagine, with a pool table dominating one half of the room while a huge flat-screen TV with all the fixings dominated the other. A dartboard hung on one wall—well away from the precious TV—and the furniture was dark wood and leather. The only obviously feminine touch in the room was on the built-in bookshelves, where Maggie kept her collection of romance novels. In a relatively good-natured battle of wills, Maggie liked to pull out the books with the most lurid covers—classics from the seventies and eighties were a favorite—and prop them on the shelves facing out. Whenever she left the room, someone always tucked the books back into their places, spines out.
The guys had been remiss in their duties, because there was a nice collection of covers facing out, including a couple of more modern erotic romances, which featured naked guys discreetly blocking their best features from view. It made me smile. Maybe she’d finally worn the guys down. Or maybe everyone had better things to do than fight the battle of the sexes.
I didn’t see anyone in the room at first. The program on the TV was a nature show about penguins, but the sound was so low I couldn’t make out what the narrator was saying.
Fighting the fatigue, which was getting worse with each step I took, I set my sights on the couch, planning to collapse there. It wasn’t until I’d put my hand on the back of the couch and started to move around it that I realized I wasn’t alone after all.
Jamaal was slouched so low the top of his head hadn’t shown over the back of the couch. Considering he was about six foot three, that was a lot of slouching. He was wearing a wife-beater and a pair of faded jeans, his bare feet propped on the coffee table. He was facing the TV, but there was a blank look in his eyes that said he wasn’t actually watching it. He was spaced out enough that he didn’t even seem to have heard me enter.
“Jamaal?” I said softly, hoping I wouldn’t startle him. Startling a man who can crush you like an ant isn’t good for your health.
He blinked as if coming back to himself, then turned his head slightly toward me. He made a soft grunting sound, put his feet on the floor, and pushed himself up into a normal seated position. If I’d been sitting like that, my back would have been hurting, but he seemed fine.
“What are you doing up?” he asked, his voice gravelly like he’d been sleeping. That was when I noticed the whiskey bottle on the floor by the side of the couch. I didn’t know how much had been in it when he started, but it was almost empty now.
“I was going to ask you the same thing,” I said, then let myself collapse onto the far seat of the couch before I ended up doing it involuntarily. My head spun for a moment, and I had to close my eyes. I was still holding the travel mug of coffee, but I didn’t feel particularly inclined to drink it.
“You should be sleeping,” Jamaal said, ignoring my question entirely. “I know how … draining it is to die.”
I shivered and opened my eyes, to hell with the dizziness. Seeing the room spinning around me was better than seeing the darkness behind my eyes, a darkness that reminded me too much of the complete sensory deprivation of death.
Jamaal had three times surrendered himself to death to win back the right to stay in the mansion after Anderson had kicked him out. Perhaps the first time, he hadn’t known exactly what he was getting himself into, but he knew after that—and he’d done it anyway. I didn’t think I could ever voluntarily allow myself to die again. Not that the first time had been particularly voluntary.
“How could you …?” The words died in my throat as horror threatened to choke me. I wanted to burn the memories from my head, but I was stuck with them, and I wasn’t entirely sure they weren’t going to drive me mad. “You knew what it was going to be like, and yet …”
Jeez, I couldn’t even get a full sentence out. I’d come down here hoping not to think about death. I guess it was just my bad luck that Jamaal was the one I bumped into.
“It’ll get better,” Jamaal said, and maybe I was already crazy, but I could have sworn I heard something like compassion in his voice. “I’ve found that the memory fades with time. It feels almost like a bad dream now.”
I nodded and swallowed hard, hoping like hell he was right. I’d barely brushed on the subject, and yet my pulse was racing, my skin clammy. If I wasn’t careful, this was going to devolve into a full-scale panic attack.
There was a rustling sound, accompanied by the telltale clicking of beads, and to my shock, I realized that Jamaal was scooting closer to me on the couch. His proximity did an admirable job of distracting me from the panic. He took the travel mug from my unresisting fingers, popped the lid off, and poured in most of the remaining whiskey. Then he put the lid back on and handed it to me.
“Booze makes it all better?” I asked with a nervous laugh. He was still sitting intimately close. I could smell the faint hint of whiskey on his breath, along with the faded remnants of clove cigarettes.
“No. But sometimes it helps.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so instead, I took a sip. The coffee was only lukewarm by then, and the whiskey was pretty overpowering, but I didn’t care. Beside me, Jamaal raised the bottle to his lips and drained the last little bit. He didn’t strike me as being particularly drunk. Just … mellow. Which is not a word I’d ever have associated with him before.
“I’m sorry,” he said, staring at the empty bottle like it was the most fascinating thing in the world. “I fucked up. Again.” He let out a sigh and set the bottle down on the coffee table. Then he didn’t quite seem to know what to do with his hands. “If I hadn’t lost my shit, I’d have been there when the jackals attacked. Maybe you wouldn’t have gotten bit.”
I took another sip of coffee, mulling over his words. “I think if you’d been there, we’d both have ended up with mutant rabies. It’s not like either of us would have known how important it was to avoid being bitten.”
He shrugged. “I dunno. I think if I’d been there, it would have been me they went after. No offense, but you don’t look like much of a threat.”
I reached out and patted his knee before I thought about it. “Yeah, well, I don’t think I’d want to be around you if you came down with super-rabies,” I said as my cheeks heated with a blush. I was not the touchy-feely sort, but this was not the first time I’d found myself touching Jamaal when I shouldn’t.
He gave a snort of something that resembled laughter, blessedly ignoring my faux-pas. The hint of laughter faded between one breath and the next.
“I still shouldn’t have run off like that.”
I wasn’t about to disagree, despite my doubts about how useful he’d have been.
“Why did you run off?”
He shook his head, the gesture accompanied by the almost musical clicking of his beads. “I knew I was losing it. I didn’t trust myself not to …” Another shake of his head. “I don’t know what I thought I might do, just that it would be bad. I meant to run back toward the cars, but somehow that wasn’t what I ended up doing. I went right into the heart of the cemetery, where the call of the magic was even stronger.”
I could hear a wealth of remorse and self-loathing in his voice. He’d done some pretty shitty things to me in the past, things I could easily hold against him even though I felt a little too much kinship with him to condemn him. But this I was pretty sure wasn’t his fault.
“Why did you come back?”
“I heard the gunshots. I meant to come back and help you, maybe save whoever the killer was after.”
“And ended up killing the victim instead.” Despite all of my empathy for him, there was still a hint of accusation in my voice. I knew he hadn’t exactly been present when he killed the guy, but still …
“He would have been dead in a few minutes anyway,” Jamaal said.
“You don’t know that. Modern medicine can do miraculous things.”
“I do know that,” he said more firmly. “Believe me, Nikki, I
know death when I see it. Comes with the territory. The poor bastard wouldn’t have lived long enough for modern medicine to reach him. Look what happened to you.”
“So that makes it all right for you to kill him?” I asked with a definite edge in my voice. He’d sounded pretty damned guilty about having abandoned me, but it didn’t seem like he felt bad about having killed a guy. Maybe I was being judgmental, but it seemed to me he should feel at least a little sorry.
“I wasn’t in control. I couldn’t have stopped myself if I tried.”
“But you didn’t try, did you?”
“No.” He met my eyes, and there was both a challenge and a plea in his gaze. I noticed irrelevantly that he had absurdly long, thick lashes. “When it gets to a certain point, trying to stop it just makes things worse. I was already well past that point.”
I felt tempted to poke at him some more but managed to shut myself up. He wasn’t showing a lot of overt remorse, but he wasn’t sitting here at two in the morning drinking whiskey and staring at a nature show because of his callous indifference to what he’d done. I remembered Anderson telling me that he was “struggling,” and I had to admit, he didn’t look like himself. Despite the alcohol, there was a tightness to his jaw and an almost haunted look in his eyes. I very much doubted he liked the feeling of being out of control, and I couldn’t blame him.
I wondered what he’d been like before he’d become Liberi and realized with a bit of a jolt that I knew next to nothing about him, despite having lived in the same house with him for a few weeks. I didn’t know how he’d become Liberi—he had to have killed someone to do it, and I had no idea who or whether he’d known what he was doing. I didn’t even know how old he was. Anderson had made a comment once about how Jamaal had only had “a couple of decades” to learn to control his death magic, but I had to wonder how good a sense of time Anderson had, seeing as he’d been around for thousands of years.
“So that’s my sob story,” Jamaal said into a silence that was becoming uncomfortable. He seemed to have muted the TV without me even noticing. “Now, why don’t you tell me why you’re down here talking to me instead of in your room fast asleep?”
