The sound of a fork hitting the hardwood floor sent all heads turning in the direction of the kitchen. A blonde woman stood in the doorway with a plate of chocolate cake teetering in her hand.
“Alex, meet Morgan,” Greer said.
Morgan looked at me like a cat that had no idea what to do with a newly acquired Milk-Bone. She was just as stunning as Leda but in a very different way. Leda was all substance. Morgan looked more like an alabaster doll without any moving parts, meant for looking, not touching. The ringlets cascading down her back were the color of pale lavender, and I wondered if her fragile skin was ever touched by sunlight.
“You’re up.” Her tone could have easily been construed as loathing, and I got the distinct impression she wasn’t the slightest bit interested in my well-being.
Rhom cleared his throat to get my attention. “You need anything”—his eyes shifted to Morgan—“you let me know.”
About the same time, Leda circled around the table to where I was sitting. “Now this blonde could be your competition,” she whispered in my ear before continuing into the kitchen.
He’s all yours.
A barely audible gasp came from Morgan’s mouth followed by a wide, triumphant smile.
Faerie wannabe.
Her smile vanished, and for an instant she reminded me of a deceptively innocuous carnivorous plant—the kind that’ll swallow you whole if you’re not careful. I’d picked a mental catfight with a Venus flytrap. Looking about as delicate as the china plate she was eating off of was a very effective illusion, one I needed to keep in mind for future reference.
“That’s it. Thank you all for an interesting evening, but it’s time for everyone to leave.” Greer looked around the room and lingered on Morgan. “Now, please.”
“Now, wait! Alex and I need to talk!” Ava protested.
He shook his head. “Another time.”
She continued with her protest as the others got up to leave. “You can’t be serious, Greer. I need to explain things. She hates me.”
“Tomorrow you can tell her anything you like. Right now, I need everyone out.”
It was clear who was running things, and no one seemed to take offense to the abrupt request to clear out. I got up, too. “Not you,” he said. “We have things to discuss.”
Something about being alone with Greer in the privacy of his home made me nervous. The place where he ate, slept, and showered held a whole new set of connotations. There would be no question about who had the upper hand, here, but I doubt he’d agree to a neutral meeting at Starbucks.
After the last person left, I grabbed a handful of plates and headed for the kitchen. I hated leaving dirty dishes till morning. I couldn’t sleep if I knew there was fork in the sink.
“What are you doing?”
“Cleaning up. Sophia’s going to have a conniption.”
“Stop.”
“Just let me do this, Greer.”
He must have understood the significance of the small act, because he grabbed his own handful of dishes and joined me in the kitchen. We spent the next fifteen minutes clearing the dining room table and loading the dishwasher in silence.
My need for food was beginning to outweigh my anger. Greer sensed it, too. He fixed a plate of pasta and placed it on the counter in front of me. “Eat.”
We moved to the library after I finished my dinner. We both had things to say, and I knew I wasn’t getting out of there until we came to a meeting of the minds.
“Tell me, Alex, what is it that you want?”
“That’s kind of a broad question, don’t you think?”
I waited for him to be more specific and tell me what this charade of an evening was all about. Why did he bring me here? He must have known how I’d react when Ava walked through that door. What did he want?
“Well, for starters, I’d like the years with my mother that were stolen.” I waited for him to say something, but he just sat motionless and listened. “Since that will never happen, I want the next best thing. I want to know who killed her, and then I want to look that thing in the eye and get my pound of flesh.”
“I didn’t think revenge was on your agenda.”
“I changed my mind.”
“Revenge is a vampire on your emotions,” he said. “It’s right up there with shame.”
Maybe so, but it felt pretty good declaring my intent to get it. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to be a kid and have no one?” Of course he didn’t. A man like Greer would always have someone. “I was eight years old.”
He continued with the silent treatment as I spilled my baggage. “You’ve never lost a thing, have you?”
He walked to the desk on the other side of the room and returned with a manila envelope in his hand. What was it with all the damn envelopes?
He pulled a picture out and ran his fingers over it before handing it to me. It was a picture of me and my mother. “That’s you,” he said.
“Yeah, I got that.”
A ball was floating above me, and I was laughing in that way you’d expect from a kid with a ball coming back down from the sky. I must have just thrown it up in the air when the picture was taken. My mother was laughing, crouching next to me with her hand extended to her left. I looked closer and noticed another hand wrapped around hers. It was a man’s hand with a very distinctive ring on his third finger—a ring I’d seen before.
I looked at Greer’s right hand and saw the same ring. It wasn’t the kind you bought out of the case. This was a ring custom made for the hand that wore it.
“Don’t presume to know what I have or haven’t lost,” he said.
I calmly placed the photograph in my lap and took a deep breath while I contemplated the question perched on the tip of my tongue. My question was too absurd, so I said nothing, hoping he’d speak and make it all congeal into something plausible. When I realized he had no intention of sharing, I asked the question. “Is that your hand in the picture?”
He ignored it.
“How old are you, Greer?”
He leaned back in his big leather chair and laced his fingers behind his head. “Old enough.”
I swallowed hard and chose my next words carefully. “If I took a picture of you fifty years from now, would you look the same?”
“Don’t be silly, Alex.”
“What are you?”
“You really don’t want to know.”
“Actually, I do.”
We hit a crossroad. Take the path to the right and we’d ignore everything that just happened. The path to the left would be a much darker trip that would reveal all kinds of secrets, altering everything I thought I knew about the world. I stepped to the left.
“I’m leaving.” I got up from my chair expecting to face some resistance, but he’d have to fight me to keep me here as his prisoner. “Tell me where I can find Ava, or I’ll walk out that door and you’ll never see me again.”
His eyes took their time moving up my face. “We both know I can’t let you do that.”
I never thought he’d actually hurt me, but there was something different in his eyes tonight that made me wonder how far he’d go to keep me in line.
“You want to know what I am?” he asked.
I lowered myself back into my chair. “Yes.”
He took a deep breath and scrutinized the situation one last time for an out clause. There wasn’t one. He knew it, and by the way he was looking at me, I got the distinct impression he was preserving my face because our relationship was about to change. For better or worse, we were about to re-negotiate the terms of our partnership.
“The people you met tonight are mine.”
I guess Greer didn’t get the memo that people no longer owned other people. Maybe he meant they were his employees, though I doubt Leda worked for any man.
“I’m the Governor of this city.” He waited for a reaction, because who wouldn’t take that bait? “Did you hear what I just said?”
“Yes, Greer, I heard you, bu
t since New York City doesn’t actually have a Governor—nor does any city—I thought it best to ignore you until you decide to stop fucking with me.”
His jaw tightened. Most people wouldn’t have noticed it, but I’d gotten pretty familiar with his mannerisms, and this one said I had him on a very narrow ledge.
“And?” I waved my hand in a meaning-what motion.
“It means I make the rules.”
“Well, isn’t that nice of you.”
The air got a little thin. I couldn’t swear to it, but I think a small earthquake rolled through the room. The kind you sleep through and hear about on the morning news. Greer’s face was a series of seismic waves warning me to tread lightly.
“Feel better?” I asked.
He relaxed deeper into his chair and gave me that okay-I’ve-got-this look. I heard the lock engage as the library door closed on its own.
“I thought we were past this, Greer.”
“Insurance.”
“Just get to it. You’re freaking me out.”
His usual air of superiority was replaced with a more democratic tone as he reminded me of all the unexplainable shit—for lack of a better term—I’d experienced since setting foot on New York soil. “Open your mind, Alex.” He was preparing me for something unpleasant, an unusual move for a man who usually let me make my own mistakes and then took great pleasure in all those I-told-you-so moments. I could feel a real shitstorm coming on.
“Someone has broken the rules.” He walked to the window and scanned the rooftops of the opposite buildings. “Smart. Damn things are smart. Organized.”
“What things?”
“Rogues.” His head whipped around like I’d said something stupid. I interpreted his look as telling me to shut up and listen.
But I’m not the kind of girl who just shuts up and listens, especially when I didn’t ask for any of this. Greer dragged me into his world, and the look on his face right now was doing nothing to sustain my confidence in his ability to keep me safe.
“Stop looking like that, Greer.”
His brow lifted. “I have no idea what you mean by that, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”
“You’re looking a little unsure of yourself, Greer. You don’t get to do that.” I gave him my best damsel look. “You’re supposed to be unflappable.”
He stared at me, expressionless, for a few seconds, and then he laughed hard enough to shake the walls. “Now you’re getting it, Alex.” His laughter abruptly stopped. “There is no safety net. We can just make it harder for the bad guys.”
“Then tell me what this bad thing is.”
“They’re males who started off on the good side but decided they liked all the things on the bad side.” He was looking straight at me, but it wasn’t me he was seeing as his right finger absently traced the tattoo on his left wrist. “You can’t work for the gods if you want to be the gods.”
“What does that mean?”
He snapped back to the here and now. His eyes darted to his wrist before looking back at me, irritation for sharing a little too much information stamped all over his face.
“Don’t worry, I haven’t figured out your big secret yet,” I said. “Although I don’t understand why these men would be such a challenge for you, with all your interesting talents.”
“Not men, Alex—males. Don’t confuse the two. The only thing a Rogue has in common with a man is the cock between his legs, something they both like to use freely on women.”
“Sounds like a typical man to me. I don’t see the difference.”
“The difference is that most men, scum excluded, fuck with mutual consent. A Rogue doesn’t give a shit about what a woman wants. No flowers, no dinner—he just zeros in like a heat-seeking missile and plants his seed.”
Greer had never been vulgar until now. A little crude at times, but never vulgar. “Really, Greer. That’s disgusting.”
He sat back in his chair and crossed his legs. A lock of hair fell over his left temple, and I waited for him to correct the imperfection. He didn’t. It reminded me that Greer wasn’t the predictable kind. I could study him every second of the day, but it would be useless. Greer changed with the seasons, becoming any color the scenario called for.
“Tell me, Alex, do you want children?”
I didn’t have to think about it. I’d always known the importance of that choice, and all the wrong reasons why some women gave birth. Maybe I was just selfish.
“No,” I said without hesitation.
His reaction to a woman being blunt about her aversion to reproduction was subtle, but I could see his surprise.
“But if you did choose to give birth, I’m assuming you’d do whatever it took to keep your child.”
Another societal assumption. “I would.”
“So would a Rogue.”
“You mean instead of running away from the kids they father, they actually want them? Hmm…they sound like real assholes.”
“They don’t father kids, Alex. They make them. They impregnate women and then wait. The kids go off to kindergarten one day and never come home.”
“You mean—” I had to rework the thought. “What do they do with them?” I wanted to take the question back, because I didn’t want to know the fate of innocent kids being plucked off the street like crops during harvest.
“They’re building a fucking army.”
“Fine. Let them have their own kids. Why do they need ours?”
Greer got up from the leather chair and grabbed a smaller side chair on his way over to me. He positioned it a couple of feet in front of me and sat, fixing his eyes on mine. I waited for a reassuring expression telling me the reality wasn’t that grim, but all I got was a neutral stare with no indication of how good or bad it was about to get.
“What?”
“These things,” he began, “they don’t have women.”
“I don’t get it, Greer. Dumb it down for me.”
“They aren’t capable of producing female offspring. There aren’t any.”
My head gathered all the information he’d given me. It wasn’t rocket science, but the idea was so absurd that I felt silly summarizing what he’d told me. “So they need human women to make more of them.” It was the first time I’d actually said it—human.
The look on his face told me I’d gotten it right. But there was something else behind that look that said this was the easy part.
“Alex.”
I looked away. “Do I want to hear this?” I whispered.
“The night you were attacked in Central Park…”
THIRTEEN
Greer delivered the shattering blow as tactfully as something like that could be delivered, reinforcing the fact that my attacker never finished what he started.
“The poison—that’s all he did to you.”
“Lucky me.” Strange to consider myself lucky that I was only poisoned that night. If I had to choose between the two, I guess poison was the winner.
“Something distracted him. Sent him running.”
“What were you doing in the park that night, Greer?” A coincidence seemed too damn convenient.
“You attract us.”
“Us?”
“All of us. Anything remotely connected to the amulet fires up a lot of radars.” His head shook while he studied me. “You’re the goddamn Pied Piper, Alex.”
He was telling me I attracted all those things most people thought only existed in movies or books. God forbid they should actually manifest outside of nightmares. I was a walking advertisement for something I didn’t even know I had, and now that I knew the price tag on the amulet, I wasn’t sure I wanted to find it.
“But I don’t have it anymore. Shouldn’t whoever stole it be attracting all the attention?”
“The scent was still fresh that day.” His eyes traveled down the length of my body and then back up. “I can no longer smell it on you.”
“I don’t have it, and I don’t want it. It’s all you
rs, Greer. Finders, keepers.”
“Alex, you are the executor.” He said it as if the fact was so obvious even an idiot could understand. “The key is useless without its executor.”
“This isn’t a will, Greer.”
He leaned in and his voice softened. “There is no out.”
I knew he was right. Even if he stepped aside and held the door for me, I couldn’t just leave. “Executor?”
“Yes. You control the amulet’s power. The key to the key, so to speak. Maeve gave it to you. Alex, you are the one and only executor.”
“Can’t I just designate someone else?”
His expression went flat. “The amulet answers to the Fitheach. As a daughter of the Fitheach, it’s your birthright. It also makes you part of the deal.”
“Deal? What does that mean?”
“It means whoever gets their hands on the amulet will do whatever it takes to get their hands on you, too.”
So now I knew why everyone had an interest in me and not just the amulet.
“If I stay,” I asked as calmly as possible, “will you protect me?”
And he gave me his word—“Always.”
After our tête-à-tête about my part in saving the universe and the hefty price on my head, we spent another hour discussing all the reasons why leaving was suicide and how I had a moral obligation to find the amulet. I relented and agreed to join Greer’s league of superheroes if we could just change the subject.
I changed it myself.
“What was your relationship with my mother like?” I’d avoided the question most of the evening because I wasn’t sure I was going to like his answer. I loved her, but I felt a little betrayed by all the things she must have worked so hard to hide from me. Like a giant onion, the layers of secrets had been peeled back, and I had a feeling Greer was the biggest one yet.
“We were both looking for the vessel and she had the key. It just made sense to help each other.”
“My mother was a beautiful woman.”
Greer closed the book he was holding with a snap. “Yes, she was. She was also a good friend.”
“So there was nothing going on between the two of you?”
The Amulet Thief (The Fitheach Trilogy Book 1) Page 12
