by Jenna Black
“Blake, you son of a bitch!” I yelled. “Open this door!” I was going to feel like an idiot if this wasn’t his room, but I was running on adrenaline and instinct and ignored all logical concerns.
The door cracked open and I lunged forward, holding it open with my body so Blake couldn’t slam it on me. He took a startled step back, and by the time he recovered, my gun was aimed squarely at his forehead. His eyes widened, and he held his hands up as if to show he wasn’t armed. I was fully prepared to shoot if I felt the slightest hint he was about to use his aura against me, but he wasn’t an idiot. We’d already established that I could pull the trigger faster than he could put me under.
“You stay the hell away from my sister,” I ordered, and though my hands were shaking with fury, I didn’t for a moment doubt my aim.
“Take it easy, Nikki,” he said. “I was just—”
“You were just what?” I interrupted. “Taking a page out of Alexis’s book and threatening Steph to keep me under control?”
“I didn’t threaten her!” he snapped, putting his hands down. “I was helping keep an eye on her, and she happened to notice me. Women do, you know, and it’s not something I can control.”
“You took her out on a date.” I kept the gun pointed steadily at his forehead.
“I didn’t sleep with her, if that’s what you’re freaking out about. I asked her out because I’d already blown my cover, and I figured that way I could help protect her without having to try to hide.”
He sounded perfectly sincere, but how could I believe him? I’d seen how ruthlessly he’d used that aura before, and the idea of him turning it on Steph made me sick to my stomach.
“I don’t believe you,” I said, moving my aim from his forehead to his crotch. His eyes went a little wider, and he swallowed hard. I was glad to know he was less scared of me blowing his brains out than shooting him somewhere really important.
“I’m telling the truth,” he said, a little desperately. “If I were the kind of guy who preyed on innocent bystanders like that, I’d be with the Olympians, not with Anderson.”
For some reason, his words had a ring of truth to them, and I took a baby step back from the edge. I still kept the gun pointed at his family jewels, but I didn’t feel like I was moments away from pulling the trigger.
“I don’t want you anywhere near her.”
“I’m one of the few people Alexis is actually afraid of. You saw how he reacted to me in the diner. He’s not getting within a hundred yards of her as long as I’m around.”
I shook my head. “And I’m supposed to think that letting you seduce her is okay as long as you keep Alexis away?”
Blake rolled his eyes. “I’m not going to seduce her. I won’t let things go further than a little flirtation.”
“Why not? Don’t you like women?” I couldn’t imagine there were a whole lot of straight men who wouldn’t leap at the chance of getting Steph into bed.
To my surprise, Blake blushed. “Yeah, I like women. Look, any chance we can continue this conversation without you threatening to shoot me? Because you’re almost as berserk as Jamaal, and it’s getting old.”
Crap. I was acting a bit like Jamaal, come to think of it. Assuming the worst and threatening violence. That wasn’t the kind of person I wanted to be, but I’d already really stuck my foot in it. “What’s to stop you from doing something nasty with your aura if I put the gun away?”
“The fact that Anderson would ‘lay hands’ on me if I did. He takes a pretty dim view of infighting.”
Again, there was that ring of truth. Plus, there was the fact that I couldn’t keep him at gunpoint forever. Reluctantly, I uncocked the gun and lowered my arm.
Blake let out a sigh of relief. “Just to clarify something: I made some threats to you at the diner, but I wouldn’t have followed through on them. I’d have used my aura to lower your inhibitions and get you to go with me, but I wouldn’t have taken advantage of it. I could do it to Alexis without my conscience uttering a peep, but that’s because I know exactly what he’s capable of. Rampant abuse of power is an Olympian thing.”
I wasn’t sure whether I believed him or not, but at least he wasn’t on the attack at the moment.
“So, if you like women, then why aren’t you interested in Steph?”
Once again, he blushed. It was almost cute. Emphasis on “almost.”
“I never said I wasn’t interested. It’s just …” He cleared his throat and looked at the floor. “As a descendant of Eros, I have certain … skills. If a woman has too much exposure to those skills, she’ll have a hard time being satisfied with normal men.”
I gaped at him. “I’ve heard men brag about their sexual prowess before, but you take the cake.”
“It’s not a boast, and I’d turn it off if I could. If I were an Olympian, it wouldn’t bother me to make a woman unable to achieve satisfaction with another man for the rest of her life, as long as I enjoyed myself. But I’m not an Olympian, and it would bother me. As far as sex is concerned, I will always have to be a one-night-stand kind of guy. That’s nothing to boast about.”
I’d never thought learning the guy who was dating Steph was into one night stands would be a relief. “If you decide to make Steph one of those one night stands, we’ll be having this conversation again. And I might find myself pulling the trigger by accident. Got it?”
Blake gave me a wide-eyed innocent look. “I got it. Now how about you and your gun do an about-face and get out of my apartment?”
By that point, I was happy to oblige.
SIXTEEN
I spent the next couple of days splitting my time between Internet research, locating every piece of Olympian property within driving distance, and doing some preliminary reconnaissance. Good old Google Maps let me get satellite views, and I weeded out the properties that didn’t look like they had convenient burial spots. Of course, for all I knew, Emma was buried under someone’s basement, but I figured I’d try the places with significant amounts of land first.
I did a series of drive-bys, hoping for some kind of supernatural X-Marks-the-Spot, but no such luck. I tried not to worry about what would happen to me—and to Steph—if I didn’t make any demonstrable progress soon. Jamaal wasn’t the most sociable of Anderson’s Liberi, so I didn’t run in to him often. But each time I did, his expression seemed darker, more full of accusation. And a little less sane.
One day, when I returned to the mansion after another round of fruitless drive-bys, I noticed that the potted plants on the porch were looking ragged and overgrown. Hoping that manual labor would shut down the gerbil wheel in my brain and help me Zen out enough to think straight, I decided to do a little impromptu gardening. Anything to escape the feeling of futility that kept trying to creep up on me.
I started off by plucking dead leaves, of which there were many. Shortly afterward, Maggie came out to join me. Without a word, she set to plucking leaves by my side. When I looked over at her, I saw a sheen of tears in her eyes.
“Maggie? Are you all right?”
She sniffed and nodded, a faint smile on her face. “Yeah. It’s just that these plants were Emmitt’s babies. Big, macho death-god Descendant that he was, he’d talk to them like he thought they’d talk back.”
I guessed that explained why they were starting to look ragged now that Emmitt was dead. “Should I keep my hands off them?” I asked, worried that someone would be offended at the idea of Emmitt’s killer touching his beloved plants.
“Emmitt would want them taken care of,” was her response, so we continued plucking.
There were several plants that needed pruning, and a couple that needed repotting. Possibly, I should have been using my time more productively, but I was enjoying the peace of playing in the dirt too much to quit. When Maggie dabbed at her eyes, I pretended to ignore it.
In the back corner, there was one plant that looked completely dead. I pulled the pot out of the corner, then looked up at Maggie’s gasp of dismay.
“Oh!” she said. “We should have brought that inside before the sleet storm the other night. I guess Emmitt was too busy killing himself to take care of it.” Her eyes looked all wet and shiny again.
I poked at the dead foliage, not recognizing the plant. “Maybe it’s just dormant and will come back in the spring.” I grabbed a pair of shears and started snipping, hoping to find something green and alive at the core. We’d only had one really cold night so far, so there was always a chance…
Maggie shook her head. “It’s a night blooming jasmine. They aren’t cut out for Virginia winters. It was Emma’s. And Anderson is going to be very unhappy if he sees it’s dead.”
I wasn’t finding any signs of life, but I kept snipping compulsively anyway, until I’d removed enough dead leaves to see the soil. There was something shiny in the dirt, and for reasons unknown, I found myself poking at it.
Probably a piece of mica in the dirt, I told myself, but my fingernail caught on something, and it wasn’t mica. I dug my finger into the soil and pulled out a silver band, dotted with moonstones and what looked like diamonds.
“Look what I found,” I said, scraping some of the dirt away as I laid the ring on my palm to show it to Maggie.
“Where did you get that?” Maggie asked, and there was something off about her voice.
“It was in the pot. Why? Do you recognize it?”
She nodded. I didn’t like the way she was looking at me, like she suddenly thought I was scum. “It’s Emma’s wedding ring.”
I shivered, though I wasn’t cold. Finding Emma’s ring while I was searching for Emma had to be some weird sort of coincidence, right? I just happened to be in the mood to prune plants, and I just happened to pick up the dead jasmine, and I just happened to keep snipping at it even when I knew it was dead. It could happen.
But what if it wasn’t coincidence? What if it was a sign that my supposed supernatural powers were coming out?
Maggie was still looking at me strangely. Her usually friendly face was closed off, and there was suspicion in her eyes.
“Anderson and Emma had marital problems,” she said, and there was a caution in her voice that hadn’t been there before. “But Emma never took off that ring. She was wearing it on the day she disappeared.”
I swallowed hard, realizing that my finding the ring like this could look bad, especially to people who didn’t entirely trust me in the first place.
“You can’t possibly have that ring,” Maggie continued. “Not unless you have access to Emma.”
“Come on, Maggie,” I said. “You’ve been with me the whole time. You saw me find it.”
“I saw you poking around at the pot. That’s not the same thing.”
“If I’m working for the Olympians, then why would I pretend to find the ring when I knew Emma was wearing it when she was taken?”
“You were going to use it as a sign of progress. ‘Hey, I haven’t found Emma, but I’ve found her ring.’”
“Do you really think I’m that stupid?”
She bit her lip and shook her head, though I could tell she wasn’t entirely convinced. If someone like Maggie, who’d given me the benefit of the doubt since day one, thought finding the ring made me look guilty, I didn’t want to imagine how someone like Jamaal would take it.
“Maggie, I swear to you, I just found it in the pot. You said this was Emma’s plant. Maybe she repotted it and lost her ring in the dirt on the day she disappeared.” According to Anderson, no one was sure exactly when Emma was captured. She’d apparently been prone to storming out in a huff when she and Anderson argued, and it had been hours before anyone had realized she wasn’t anywhere in the house or on the grounds. “Maybe she was pissed at Anderson and hid the ring there so she could pretend she tossed it or pawned it—without having to actually toss it or pawn it.”
“That does sound like something Emma would do,” Maggie agreed. “Maybe it happened exactly that way. But maybe it didn’t.”
“I’m not one of the Olympians.”
Her look of polite skepticism hurt. She’d been the closest thing I had to a friend in this house, and it sucked to lose her over something like this.
“Are you going to tell Anderson about this?” I asked. “I haven’t done anything wrong, but my job’s going to be a lot harder if he starts being all suspicious again.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “I really should tell him. He has a right to know. And I’m sure he’d want the ring back.”
“I’m not asking you to keep him in the dark forever,” I assured her. “I just need a little more time to locate Emma, and I won’t be able to do that if Anderson decides I’m a spy after all.”
“How much time?”
That was the million-dollar question, wasn’t it? Should I take the finding of the ring as some kind of good sign? I had no way of knowing.
What I did know was that Maggie wasn’t going to keep her mouth shut forever.
“Give me one week,” I said, wondering if the ticking clock was going to make the job even harder. “If I haven’t found her in a week, I’ll talk to Anderson myself.”
Maggie thought about it a minute, then nodded. “All right. You have one week. Make it count.”
Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock.
Despite the looming deadline, Wednesday night rolled around, and I reluctantly got ready for Steph’s charity auction. I’d held out a faint hope that our fight would get me out of it, but no. Steph called and informed me in no uncertain terms that I was going. She seemed content to pretend our fight had never happened, and I was happy to go along with it.
I wore the admittedly nondescript little black dress I’d bought on our shopping trip and a pair of stiletto-heeled pumps that would have my feet hurting in fifteen minutes flat. Remembering Steph’s gorgeous red dress, I knew I was going to spend most of the night feeling like one of the ugly stepsisters from a fairy tale. I’d have to try to keep to myself as much as possible, because I wasn’t exactly feeling like Little Miss Sunshine.
I left the house around six thirty to get to the pre-dinner cocktail party. That would be the most painful part of the evening—I wasn’t a big fan of mingling with the rich and snooty. But I knew Steph would want me there the whole time, and I’d have done just about anything to smooth the waters. Even stand around in high heels drinking cocktails and talking to people with whom I had nothing in common.
The country club that was hosting Steph’s auction reminded me a bit of Anderson’s mansion, if only in its attempt to hide from the sight of passers-by. There was even a set of gates—though these were usually kept open and were more ornamental—and an artificial forest lining the driveway. The “forest” was as well-manicured as the one at the mansion, devoid of the weeds and underbrush that would accompany natural growth. The driveway, however, was a lot straighter, and there were actually streetlamps to guide the way.
The patch of woods didn’t last long, giving way to the inevitable golf course. This being the height of winter, it was already too dark for even the most fanatical of golfers, so at least I didn’t have to dodge golf carts on my way in. There was convenient valet parking if I drove right up to the clubhouse, but I chose to park myself in one of the outer lots. It meant an uncomfortable walk in my high heels, but by the time the night was over, the last thing I would want to do was wait for someone to retrieve my car for me.
The glittering crowd was just starting to trickle in as I headed into the bar and lounge area. My eyes were immediately drawn to Steph in her fire-engine-red dress. She looked even more fabulous than usual, with her blond hair swept into an elegant up-do and her long neck adorned by a pearl and diamond necklace.
Standing right beside Steph, with a proprietary hand resting on her lower back, was Blake. I had to admit, he looked good enough to eat in his conservative black tux, the perfect Ken to Steph’s Barbie. I didn’t like the way he was touching her, though, not one bit. Despite Blake’s promise that he would behave like a g
entleman, I was all too aware of the malice that lurked beneath his cultured exterior. He was a dangerous man who used sex as a weapon. Was it any shock I didn’t want him around my sister?
Steph caught sight of me while I was giving Blake the evil eye. I tried to blank my expression as she made her way across the room toward me, Blake following in her wake. She stopped right in front of me and smiled brilliantly, and I wondered if she’d thought I was going to stand her up. Sad to say if I had, it wouldn’t have been the first time. Have I mentioned how much I hate these affairs?
“You look gorgeous!” Steph said, giving me a warm hug. She was busy enough hugging me not to see the way Blake rolled his eyes at her words.
Steph released me from the hug, then looked back and forth between me and Blake. His expression was one of polite disinterest. I have no idea what my own face looked like. I hoped my flush of embarrassment had faded. Bad enough to be pathetically insecure about my looks, but to have others know it was almost unbearable.
“I take it you two know each other,” Steph said with a raise of her eyebrows. I could tell by the sparkle of curiosity in her eyes that Blake hadn’t made up a story about how we’d met. Which was a good thing, since I’d have had no idea what the cover story was and would probably have blown it the moment I opened my mouth.
“We’ve met,” Blake said drily, but he held out his hand for me to shake.
It felt like a challenge, so I didn’t hesitate. Of course, he then lifted my hand to his mouth and kissed my knuckles. It was all I could do not to jerk my hand out of his grip and make a scene.
“Charming,” I muttered under my breath, and he laughed softly at this evidence that he’d gotten to me.
Steph kept looking back and forth between us, no doubt hoping one of us would cave and tell her how we knew each other. She knew, of course, that I didn’t like Blake, but Blake wasn’t giving any overt signs of how he felt about me. Not signs that Steph could read, that is.
