by Jenna Black
“You think this is the place?” I asked pointlessly. It wasn’t like Jamaal had any more clue than I did.
He leaned over toward my side of the car a bit to get a better look at the house. His proximity made me want to reach out and touch him, but I resisted the temptation. Now was definitely not the time.
“Whoever lives here seems to have a green thumb,” he commented as he sat up straight once more. “Those are some pretty spectacular gardens.”
I’d been too preoccupied to even notice, but now that Jamaal mentioned it, they were pretty amazing. There were two beds of flourishing pansies, one on each side of the driveway along the sidewalk, and the entire front of the house was lined with flowering shrubs of some sort.
“That seems kind of fertility-goddess-like,” I said. It could also be the sign of an ordinary expert gardener, but I’d take any hopeful sign I could find. I used my phone to make a Wi-Fi hot spot, then dug out my laptop and performed a search on property records. Property ownership is public record, so I didn’t even have to tap into any of the databases I was still subscribed to thanks to my PI days.
“The owner of the house is named Violet Hawthorne,” I announced after a few minutes of searching. Jamaal and I shared a significant look. Rose had told us that she and her sisters had all been given flower names. “That seems unlikely to be a coincidence.”
He put the car in park, then turned it off. “Agreed. Let’s go see if she’s home.”
He reached for the door, but I stopped him with a hand on his arm. Jamaal may be drop-dead gorgeous, but he’s one hell of an intimidating guy, big and muscular with a face better suited for scowling than smiling. If Violet was who we thought she was, then she’d be in no danger from any mortal or Liberi. But she would know from the crescent moon glyph on his forehead that he was a descendant of Kali, and that might make her . . . less than welcoming.
“Why don’t you wait here for now,” I suggested. “We don’t want to spook her, and I’m about as harmless looking as you can get. You, however, couldn’t look harmless if you had flowers in your hair and were carrying an armload of kittens. And that face you’re making proves my point.”
I wasn’t sure if that harsh, guttural sound he made was supposed to indicate amusement or annoyance.
“I’m not going to wait in the car like I’m your chauffeur,” he growled.
“You don’t have to wait in the car with the nice heater going if you don’t want to,” I said. “I’m just asking you to stay out of sight until I’ve convinced Violet I’m not one of the bad guys.”
There were definite disadvantages to choosing Jamaal as my driver. He’d done an admirable job of helping me relax and not interrupting my concentration, but his temper would always be an issue. It probably would be wiser to insist he wait in the car, because if Violet balked at all about what we were asking her to do, he might explode and make matters worse. However, I knew better than to suggest such a thing when he was looking at me like that.
I was tensed and ready for Jamaal to pick a fight, and was pleasantly surprised when he took a couple of deep breaths and stepped away from the edge. “All right. I’ll stay out of sight.”
It was after eleven at night, but the house was still brightly lit, so I didn’t think we’d be waking anyone. Jamaal and I walked up to the door, and I had him stand to the side while I rang the doorbell. He had his arms crossed over his chest and looked all tense and broody. It looked like he needed a cigarette, or maybe some alone time with Sita to vent his death magic.
I didn’t hear any approaching footsteps, but the porch light turned on, and moments later the peephole darkened. There was an obvious and deliberate pause before the door swung open to reveal a beautiful olive-skinned woman with dark, pixie-cut hair and eyes that instantly reminded me of Rose. Any remaining doubt that I had found one of Niobe’s sisters disappeared.
“Let me save us both some time and aggravation,” Violet said. “The answer is no.”
Warned by her tone, I had my foot wedged in the door before she managed to slam it in my face. Beside me, I could feel Jamaal bristling, and I prayed he’d stay out of sight. There was enough tension in the air already without him looming over her.
“How do you know the answer is no if you don’t even know the question yet?” I asked. I gave her my best innocuous smile and held out my hand as if inviting her to shake, though I knew full well she wouldn’t. “I’m—”
“Nikki Glass,” she finished for me, startling me into silence. “Yes, I know who you are, and I know what you want. And my answer is still no.”
She tried again to close the door, but I didn’t think she was putting her whole strength into it or she probably would have crushed my foot. I put my shoulder against the door for extra leverage, just in case.
“If you know who I am, then you might as well accept that there’s no short version of this conversation,” I told her. “I’m not leaving, so you’ll get rid of me faster if you just let me in and get it over with.”
I didn’t like the fact that Violet knew who I was. I imagined she’d gotten her information from Niobe, who must have researched Anderson’s people. Which meant Niobe knew who was important to Anderson. I was probably lucky she was too busy trying to end all humanity to stop by and slaughter us all.
“Fine,” Violet said with a disgusted snort, pushing away from the door and turning her back to us. “Come on in,” she called over her shoulder.
I stepped inside, with Jamaal close behind me. Either Violet didn’t hear the heavy tread that could not possibly come from my feet, or she just didn’t care that I wasn’t alone. She kept walking, and we followed. I thought maybe she was going to try to leave through a back door and run away. However, she led us into a first-floor turret room that was some combination of library and den. A wood fire crackled in the fireplace, and a tattered paperback lay open and facedown on the seat of a cozy chair in the corner. The matching ottoman looked like it had been casually shoved aside, and I made the educated guess that Violet had been sitting by the fire and reading when we came knocking.
Violet stood in front of the fire with her back to us, staring into the flames. Jamaal and I shared a look and simultaneously shrugged, not sure what to make of her behavior.
“How did you know who I was?” I asked, despite having deduced the answer.
“Kane mentioned you,” she said to the fire. “Told me you might come knocking.”
“You mean Anderson?” I asked with a gasp. “You’ve seen him? Do you know where he is?”
Violet turned to face me. She glanced briefly at Jamaal, her eyes darting to his glyph. I would have introduced him, but she started speaking before I could. “I mean Kane. Yes, I’ve seen him, and no, I don’t know where he is now. I expect he’s visited as many of us as he can find to try to plead his case. I don’t suppose you’d be here if you didn’t know he’s a murderer of innocents.”
A tiny pinprick of white appeared in the center of her pupils then quickly disappeared. It was something I’d noticed happening with Anderson a couple of times when he was angry, a bit of his true self leaking through his human disguise. A lot of time had passed since Anderson had slaughtered his children, but it looked like Violet still held quite the grudge. Not that I could blame her.
“I know the story,” I told her, trying not to think about it too much. “I can totally understand why you and your sisters might want him dead. But—”
There was that spark in the middle of her pupils again, and it lasted a little longer this time before disappearing. “Don’t try to tell me how he’s changed, how he would never do such a terrible thing again. I’ll tell you the same thing I told him: it doesn’t matter. He killed my nieces and nephews, destroyed my sister’s heart, out of pure malice, and he deserves to pay for that crime!”
Rose had seemed more saddened than angry at what Anderson had done so long ago. Such was obviously not the case with Violet.
I held up my hands in a gesture of surrender.
“I’m not arguing with you. I’m not here because I’m trying to save Anderson’s life.”
To tell the truth, I couldn’t entirely sort out what I felt about Anderson right now. If Niobe and her sisters had some means of killing him without the entire human race dying out, would I step in and try to protect him? The man I’d thought was my friend was nothing but a fraud, and I wasn’t sure I could forgive the atrocity in his past no matter how much he may or may not have changed.
“I just don’t think it’s right that billions of innocents should suffer and die because of what he did,” I said.
“No one will suffer and die because my sisters and I neglect our altars. They just won’t have children.”
“Cut the crap,” Jamaal said before I could respond. “You’re not a lawyer arguing about the letter of the law, and you know perfectly well what will happen if children stop being born. Who do you think will be blamed for it? Because you know people will want to find someone to blame. You can bet there’ll be people pointing fingers at every minority group in the world. Religious fanatics will say God is punishing us and we have to eliminate people who don’t share their beliefs. People who already hate the West will decide it’s all some American plot gone wrong and start blowing more shit up. These are just the possibilities I can come up with off the top of my head. There will be plenty of suffering and plenty of death.”
Violet folded her arms in what I thought was a defensive posture despite her still-belligerent expression. “There’s always been plenty of suffering and death.”
I could almost feel Jamaal’s temper poking its head up and looking around, so I put a calming hand on his arm. I doubted the situation would be much improved by a shouting match. He tensed under my touch, and I feared it had had the opposite of the desired effect, but at least he didn’t rise to Violet’s bait.
“It’s my understanding that you and your sisters are going to be trapped on Earth forever if you don’t take good care of it,” I said. Violet’s eyes narrowed in a barely perceptible wince. “Forever is a long time, and the world is going to be pretty boring if there are no people in it, don’t you think?”
Violet let out a huge sigh, and some of the fight went out of her. Her arms dropped back to her sides, and her shoulders slumped. “It’s not like I want it to happen,” she admitted. “But I’ve always been a pragmatist. I only fight the battles I can win. This isn’t one of them. My sister is nothing if not determined.”
At least she’d admitted she didn’t want to destroy the world. That was progress, wasn’t it?
“We’ll find a way,” I promised her. “But to solve the larger problem, we’re going to need time, and that means getting Jasmine’s altar renewed before it’s too late.”
Violet shook her head. “I’m not going anywhere near that altar. Niobe would see it as yet another in a long list of betrayals, and she is not the forgiving sort. I love my sister, but I also know what she’s capable of, what she became after Kane murdered her children.”
“We’ll protect you,” Jamaal said.
“Like you protected Rose?” she fired back.
I suspect Jamaal and I wore similar expressions of surprise. It hadn’t occurred to me that she had any way of knowing we had already tried to renew the altar once before and failed.
“How do you know about that?” I asked.
Violet turned away from us and faced the fire. “Because Niobe wanted to make sure all of us knew what would happen to us if we didn’t cooperate. She sent pictures.” Even with her back turned, I could see Violet’s shiver of fear. “I don’t want to cause the extinction of mortals, but better that than risk crossing Niobe.”
“Wow, that’s some attitude,” Jamaal said with equal parts shock and disgust. “You’re really so selfish that you’d rather let billions of people die than risk your own life?”
I had to admit, Jamaal was right. It was almost impossible for me to imagine how someone could live with themselves if they were that cowardly.
She’s a goddess, Nikki, I reminded myself. Goddesses don’t think like human beings, and Violet was living proof. She might have lived among humans for thousands of years, but she wasn’t one of us.
“You can shame me all you want,” she said, turning to face us once more. Tears shimmered in her eyes, but none fell. “But renewing that single altar will do no good, and it’s just not worth the risk. Even if you could get me through, what happens when the next altar wanes? And the one after that? How many times do you think you can fight your way past a goddess?”
Violet blinked away the tears. “I will happily renew the altars that have been left empty, but only if I can do so safely. You’ll have to either talk Niobe into forgoing her revenge, or find another way of stopping her. Without hurting her!” she hastened to add. “If you harm Niobe in any way, I swear to you neither I nor any of my other sisters will ever set foot near an altar again.”
Jamaal gave Violet a glower that would melt an iceberg or freeze a flame. “So you’ll happily just sit back in your chair reading a book while panic spreads throughout the islands and people start dying because of it.”
She lowered her head, unable to meet either of our gazes. “Happily? No. But I will be staying home.”
Jamaal, visibly shaking with barely suppressed fury, took a menacing step in Violet’s direction. I don’t think he was planning violence—as angry as he was, he wasn’t out of control—but Violet took no chances. White light leaked from her eyes, and suddenly a blinding white brightness stabbed my eyes, causing me to cover them with my forearm.
The brightness quickly eased off, and when I risked opening my eyes, the Violet we had been talking to was gone. In her place was a towering, vaguely humanoid pillar of white light. Jamaal let out a string of curses and hastily backed away. I would have done the same if I hadn’t seen Anderson in this same form once before.
“Get out of my house,” the pillar said in a voice that reverberated through my bones.
I had no idea what Violet could do in her current form, but I suspected she was capable of some serious smiting. I didn’t want to give up, but it was plain to see there would be no reasoning with her. Not right now at least.
“I’m going to leave my card in case you change your mind,” I told her, fishing through my purse. I was pretty sure I still had some business cards in there from my PI days.
“I won’t change my mind.”
“Just in case,” I repeated as my fingers found a beat-up, dog-eared card at the bottom of my purse. I straightened it out as best I could, then dropped it on an end table.
“Out!” she said, pointing one glowing arm at the door.
This time, Jamaal and I obeyed.
NINE
Jamaal and I had no choice but to retreat to the hotel Leo had booked for us. We hadn’t bothered with a real dinner, having settled for sandwiches grabbed at the airport, but we weren’t much in the mood to sleep, so we ordered room service just after midnight.
We were in a two-bedroom suite, and while we waited for our food to arrive, Jamaal retired to his room for a shower. I felt mildly grungy myself after all that travel, but I decided I’d rather do something more productive than freshen up.
Violet was right, and getting the altar in Bermuda renewed was only a Band-Aid on the much larger problem. I was mildly heartened to learn that Anderson had been out and about since his secret was revealed, and glad to know he was at least trying to do something to save the world. However, I was still royally pissed at him for going Lone Ranger on us. Would it have killed him to at least send one of us a text or an email letting us know he was on the job?
Maybe Anderson thought this conflict between gods was something too big for his Liberi to handle, but it didn’t seem to me that whatever solo solution he’d come up with was having a whole lot of success. We needed to work together to keep Niobe from destroying humanity, and that meant Anderson had to grow a pair and face us, whether he wanted to or not.
I opened my laptop
and let my fingers hover over the keys, waiting for inspiration to hit. Playing around on Google had helped lead me to Violet, so maybe it could help lead me to Anderson as well. I started performing searches almost at random, typing in any word that popped into my head, hoping one of them would lead to search results that piqued my interest.
I was still trying when Jamaal emerged from the shower, and I’d probably have kept at it if our food hadn’t arrived at the same time.
“So, no luck, huh?” Jamaal asked as soon as he closed the door after the delivery guy.
I was tempted to toss the metal dome that covered my plate to the floor in frustration. When my weird searches actually worked, I never felt confident in them, never felt secure in my own reasoning. Tonight, however, I was quite sure none of the random thoughts that had come to me was a supernatural hunch.
“Absolutely nothing,” I said, sitting cross-legged on the sofa with my plate on my lap. I’d ordered a burger because I thought the decadent overindulgence might help soothe my frustration, but my stomach was so tied up in knots I wasn’t sure I could eat it. I nibbled on a lukewarm fry and tried to give myself permission to just relax and focus on my food for a few minutes.
“Maybe he’s too far away for my powers to sense him,” I mused. “He’s apparently trying to visit all of Niobe’s sisters, and they’re scattered all over the world. He could be anywhere.”
I’d been talking more to myself than to Jamaal, but when I played my words back in my head, I realized I knew exactly why I hadn’t been able to get even the slightest hint of a lead on Anderson’s location.
“He’s traveling all over the world,” I groaned. “And unlike us, he isn’t going by plane.”
Jamaal frowned at me and put down his own burger, which he’d already partially demolished. “What do you mean?”
“He’s in the Underworld.” No wonder I couldn’t find him. He was spending most of his time in a place I couldn’t possibly reach.
