by Jenna Black
Anderson was waiting there for us, and he wasn’t alone. Jamaal stood beside him, his eye thoroughly bandaged. I expected him to be in a towering rage after what I’d done to him. Instead, he took one look at Steph’s battered form as she cuddled against Blake’s chest, and lowered his head in what looked a hell of a lot like shame.
The rage I’d been fighting since the moment I’d seen what Alexis had done to my sister came boiling up through my chest. It was all I could do not to hurl myself at Jamaal and try to scratch his other eye out.
“Take her upstairs,” Anderson ordered Blake, who nodded and headed toward the grand staircase. “Not you,” Anderson continued when I made to follow Blake.
“But—” The look in Anderson’s eyes made me swallow my protest. I didn’t want to let Steph out of my sight, but a part of me knew my own emotional turmoil might do her more harm than good. The last thing she needed was to worry herself over my well-being after what she’d been through, and she was enough of a mother hen to do it. Curling my hands into fists, I stayed where I was and watched as Blake carried her upstairs.
Slowly, I turned back to Anderson and Jamaal. Jamaal still stood with his head bowed, his shoulders hunched like he was trying to make himself smaller. Maybe he sensed me looking at him, because he raised his head and met my gaze for a moment. The expression in his unbandaged eye was bleak. He opened his mouth to say something, then shook his head and returned his gaze to the floor.
“There are no words,” I thought I heard him say under his breath.
One thing I can say for Jamaal, he’s no actor. I doubted he could fake remorse if his life depended on it, and I knew what I was seeing was genuine. He had convinced himself every word out of my mouth was a lie, and therefore he had never believed holding me up would actually hurt anyone but me. Now that he was faced with the truth, his malice had drained away.
He might be genuinely sorry for what he’d done, but that didn’t do Steph any good, and therefore I didn’t give a damn.
“Tomorrow morning at nine,” Anderson said to Jamaal, his voice cold steel, “we will hold a tribunal in my study to determine your punishment.” Jamaal nodded his acceptance without looking up. “You’ll spend the night downstairs.” In one of the cells, I presumed. “Go. Now.”
Jamaal bowed from the waist and, still keeping his gaze fixed on the floor, backed out of the room and away. It was as submissive a gesture as I’d ever seen, and it made me wonder just what kind of punishment this tribunal might sentence him to. For all that I was nominally a part of Anderson’s merry band, I didn’t know all that much about them.
Anderson turned to me when Jamaal was gone, his expression somber. Had Jamaal told him about the ring? Was I going to be having a tribunal of my own? At the moment, I wasn’t sure I cared.
Anderson looked me up and down, inspecting the damage. The cuts and scrapes I’d suffered from rolling around on the asphalt were all well on their way to healing, but from the feel of it, several of the deeper bruises still had a ways to go. My head ached fiercely, but I suspected much of that was the aftermath of the stress rather than real physical injury.
Anderson shook his head. “I never would have guessed he’d do that,” he said. “I knew he still suspected you, and I knew he was unstable, but …” He let his voice trail off, and for the first time since I’d met him, a look of true uncertainty crossed his face.
I heaved out a sigh. “It’s not your fault,” I told him, and despite my anger at the Liberi in general, I realized I meant it. Maybe if I had told him about Jamaal’s nocturnal visit, he’d have been able to head off tonight’s disaster. Keeping quiet had seemed like the honorable thing to do, but I’d had even more evidence than Anderson that Jamaal was out of control. I should have done something about it, and Steph had suffered because I hadn’t.
“What are you going to do to him?” I asked, crossing my arms and shivering in a phantom chill. Despite his mild-mannered affect, I’d seen hints that Anderson had a ruthless side. No matter how angry I was at Jamaal, I wasn’t sure I wanted to see that ruthless side unleashed.
“We’ll decide that tomorrow.” There was no give in his tone, and I knew the subject was closed.
“And his eye …” I swallowed hard, sickened once again at the memory of what I had done. “Will it heal?”
Anderson looked at me in surprise. “Don’t tell me you’re feeling sorry for him!”
Logic said I shouldn’t. I never wanted to be so bloodthirsty that I reveled in another’s pain, no matter what that other had done, but that didn’t mean I should feel sorry for him. And yet still I couldn’t help being aware of the deep river of pain that ran beneath Jamaal’s hostility. He needed someone to blame for Emmitt’s death, and I was the obvious candidate. I knew too well what it was like to try to offload pain onto someone else. Just ask some of the unfortunate foster families who got stuck with me before the Glasses tamed me.
I glanced at the doorway through which Jamaal had disappeared. “What was he like before Emmitt died?” I asked instead of answering Anderson’s question.
Anderson sighed and ran a hand through his already disheveled hair. “Not like this,” he muttered, confirming what I’d already guessed. “He was always strung pretty tight, but Emmitt helped balance him. Emmitt had centuries of experience dealing with the effects of his death magic, and Jamaal’s only had a couple of decades. It isn’t an easy adjustment.”
Despite the situation, I couldn’t help being curious. I’d seen firsthand what Maggie and Blake could do, and I was pretty sure I’d seen Jamaal walk through a closed door, but other than that, I had very little grasp of the powers of my fellow Liberi. “Death magic?”
Anderson nodded. “It’s a very … dark power, particularly in Jamaal. He can kill people without even touching them, and the power practically has a mind of its own. It wants to be used, and it’s always a struggle to keep it contained. Emmitt had some of the same power, and he’d learned to master it. He was teaching Jamaal his techniques, and Jamaal was stabilizing.” His jaw clenched. “Then the bastard decided to shuffle off this mortal coil with the job unfinished.”
I hadn’t known Emmitt very well, and most of what I’d known had been a fiction anyway. He’d seemed like a pretty nice guy, at least on the surface. But truly nice guys didn’t walk out on people who needed them.
“Too bad we can’t bring him back from the dead and give him a tribunal,” I said, and Anderson cracked a small smile.
“Indeed.” The smile faded before it had a chance to take hold. “You should get cleaned up and tend your wounds. We’ll have an early day tomorrow.”
“Look, I don’t know if Jamaal told you—”
“That you found Emma’s ring?”
Well, that answered that. “Um, yeah.”
Anderson met my eyes. “If you tell me you found that ring in the pot, then I’ll take you at your word. For now.”
I wasn’t sure if saying he believed me was legitimate when it was paired with “for now,” but at least he wasn’t threatening me with the Hand of Doom. “I found the ring in the pot,” I said, looking him straight in the eye. “I swear it.”
He stared at me a long while, but I didn’t look away. Finally, he nodded. “All right then. We’ll say no more.”
I knew a dismissal when I heard one. I didn’t much want to be alone with my thoughts, but I headed upstairs anyway. I took a shower and changed, avoiding taking too close a look at myself in the mirror, then went looking for Steph.
Not surprisingly, she was in Blake’s suite. He was in his sitting room, sipping from a tumbler of amber liquid and pacing. The door to his bedroom was ajar, but the lights inside were out.
He stopped pacing when he saw me, putting his finger to his lips in a shushing motion. “She’s sleeping,” he whispered.
I wanted to go to her, to look her over and assure myself that she was all right. But of course, she wasn’t all right, and if she’d temporarily escaped her misery in sleep, I wasn’
t about to wake her.
“You should get some sleep, too,” Blake continued, still in that soft whisper. “You look like you’re about to keel over.”
I felt like it. Healing definitely seemed to take a lot out of my body, and I felt like I hadn’t slept in three days. “Take good care of her,” I urged, surprised to find I felt perfectly comfortable leaving Steph in his care. Just a few short hours earlier, I’d have said I didn’t trust Blake as far as I could throw him. He’d failed to protect Steph, but he’d done more for her than I had. Who knew how much worse it would have been if Blake hadn’t shown up at the scene when he did?
Hoping that I could find oblivion in sleep, at least for a little while, I headed back to my own room and collapsed on the bed fully clothed.
I’ve had more than my fair share of bad nights throughout my life, but that night was among the worst. As exhausted as I was, I couldn’t sleep. I could barely even keep my eyes closed. Instead, I lay there on my back in the dark, cataloging the sins of my past and wondering how Steph had had the bad luck to get stuck with such a crappy adoptive sister. As I lay there wallowing in guilt, I realized that this wasn’t the first time someone had gotten hurt because of my misguided desire not to be a tattletale. Considering how horribly wrong things had gone the last time I’d made the fateful decision to keep my mouth shut, you’d think I’d have known better by now.
I was eight years old, and was already on my eighth foster family, the Garcias. They had a twelve-year-old son, Dave, who had been every bit as much of a problem child as I was, so they were sure they could “fix” me. The thing was, they hadn’t “fixed” Dave as much as they’d thought.
Mr. Garcia was a gun enthusiast, but a very responsible one. He kept his guns safely locked away, with the ammo in a different safe and both keys hidden. Dave was fascinated with those damn guns, and one summer day when Mr. Garcia was off at work, Dave figured out where the keys were hidden. He was very proud of himself and excited about being able to handle the guns with impunity. He showed off for me and even let me hold one myself.
Playing with guns had appealed to my wild nature, and of course I thought of Dave as older and wiser. To tell the truth, I never even considered telling on him.
About a month later, Dave had some of his friends from school over. I was out shopping with Mrs. Garcia. Mr. Garcia was supposed to be keeping an eye on the boys, but they were old enough not to need constant supervision. He was comfortable sitting down in the living room and watching a baseball game while the boys played video games in Dave’s room.
Dave was now making a habit of sneaking into the gun safe. Wanting to impress his friends, he’d stuck a gun into his dresser drawer. I’m pretty sure he thought it wasn’t loaded, or that he’d fired all the bullets the last time he’d snuck it out for some target practice in the woods. One of his friends found out the hard way that there was one bullet left. The gun went off in Dave’s hand, and he’d have his friend’s death on his conscience for the rest of his life.
Dave told all in the aftermath, and when the Garcias found out I’d known about the gun, they couldn’t wait to get rid of me. They couldn’t find it in their hearts to be mad at Dave, their flesh and blood. So instead, they heaped all the blame on me. It was blame I’d never accepted, and my bitterness and anger when they packed me off was monumental.
I should have learned my lesson. No, the death hadn’t been my fault, and yes, it had been wrong of the Garcias to blame me. Even so, there’d been a life lesson I could have learned if only I’d opened my eyes to it. I wasn’t to blame for the death, but I could have prevented it.
Now that it was too late, I’d finally figured it out: I should have told Anderson the truth about Jamaal’s threats. But even the best hindsight couldn’t change the past.
TWENTY
I managed to doze fitfully through the darkest hours of the night, but was up and out of bed as soon as the sun peeked up over the horizon. I was tired, dejected, and on the verge of a headache, but I knew I wasn’t getting any more sleep. I ventured down to the kitchen and made a pot of coffee, then fixed myself two hearty mugs full and took them back upstairs to my suite. With the tribunal at nine, I knew the rest of Anderson’s clan would be getting up earlier than usual, and I didn’t want to run in to anyone.
If I’d thought I could avoid the tribunal, I’d have done it in a heartbeat. Pissed off as I was at Jamaal, I thought that having his eye put out and then having to live with the guilt of leaving Steph to Alexis’s tender mercies was punishment enough. He might still think I was a spy—Steph getting hurt proved that Konstantin was a bastard, but not that I wasn’t in league with him—but I seriously doubted Jamaal would make another unsanctioned attack against me.
I wasn’t really one of Anderson’s people, no matter what he claimed to Konstantin. And moving into the house hadn’t even saved Steph. There was no good reason for me to follow Anderson’s orders and attend the tribunal. Maybe I should have just packed my bags and gone home. But Jamaal was being punished on my behalf, so when nine o’clock rolled around, I headed for Anderson’s study.
Anderson had pulled in additional chairs from somewhere and pushed his usual furniture to the walls. Jamaal sat with his back to the wall on a metal folding chair, and the rest of the chairs were set up in a semicircle around him. In the center, directly facing Jamaal, was Anderson, his chair larger and more comfortable-looking than all the rest, looking almost like a throne. The others were all ranged around him, and there was only one empty seat, between Maggie and Blake. Apparently, I was the last to arrive.
Dragging my feet a bit, I made my way over to the empty seat. No one was talking, the tension in the room so thick I could almost feel it sliding against my skin.
Jamaal sat with his head bowed and his hands clasped in his lap, the picture of penitence. His eye was no longer bandaged, but it wasn’t finished healing yet, either. The flesh all around the socket was swollen and bruised, but the eye itself seemed to have regenerated. I breathed a little sigh of relief at that. Like I said, a bleeding heart.
“Where’s Steph?” I whispered to Blake as I took my seat. I didn’t like the idea of leaving her alone, although I supposed having her sit in on the tribunal wouldn’t be such a hot idea.
“Still sleeping,” he answered, his voice equally soft. “She took a Valium, so she’ll be out for a while.”
I wanted to ask where Steph had gotten a Valium—it didn’t seem like something the Liberi would have around—but just then Anderson called the tribunal to order. He asked me to tell everyone exactly what had happened last night, and I squirmed. Silly, perhaps, seeing as it was after the fact and everyone already knew, but I didn’t want to sit there and publicly rat Jamaal out. Guess I still wasn’t over my fear of being seen as a tattletale.
“Is that really necessary?” I asked. “We all know what happened.”
“It’s necessary,” Anderson said in a clipped voice that told me he didn’t appreciate his orders being questioned. Gone entirely was his usual, easygoing manner. This morning, he was all alpha-male leader, grim and intimidating.
I struggled to come up with a tactful way to explain the situation, but to my surprise, Jamaal put me out of my misery.
“I fucked up,” he said quietly. He raised his head and looked us squarely in the eye, one by one. It wasn’t a gesture of defiance, but one of accountability.
“I convinced myself Nikki was working for Konstantin, and I decided to teach her a lesson,” he continued. There was misery in his eyes, but his voice was flat as he recounted the facts. “I thought if I ambushed her at the auction, I’d have the time to do what I wanted without fear of being interrupted. I waited by her car, and when she came running into the parking lot, I jumped her. She tried to tell me Alexis had her sister, but I wouldn’t listen. I told myself she was lying again, and I wouldn’t let her leave. She managed to fight me off.” Was there a hint of approval in his voice when he said that? Hard to believe he’d approve of me takin
g out his eye.
“But my attack delayed her, and she was unable to get to her sister in time. Because of me, Alexis brutalized an innocent woman.” His voice wasn’t so flat anymore, and the words rasped out of his throat. “I have no excuse for anything I’ve done, and I’ll willingly take whatever punishment you think I deserve.”
A long, tense silence followed Jamaal’s speech. I glanced at the other Liberi, trying to be subtle as I read their faces. There were a couple of people—specifically, Maggie and Jack—who regarded Jamaal with expressions of sympathy. Logan and Leo looked neutral, like they didn’t care what happened to Jamaal one way or another. Blake was giving him a death glare, and Anderson looked cold and deadly.
“You’ve broken our trust,” Anderson said, and he sounded about as warm as an iceberg. “You disobeyed my direct orders, and you hurt someone who was under my protection. Pack your bags. I want you out by noon.”
Jamaal’s jaw dropped, and his face turned ashen gray. “No,” he whispered, not in refusal but in dismay. “Please.” He gripped the seat of his chair until his knuckles turned white, as if he were holding onto it for dear life. “Anything but that.”
My throat tightened in sympathy. Damn it, it was too easy for me to empathize with him! I’d been kicked out of too many homes in my life not to know the sickening lurch of it. And most of the homes I’d been kicked out of hadn’t really felt so much like homes to me as way stations. Jamaal might not have an easy rapport with the rest of Anderson’s people, and he definitely held himself a bit aloof, but this was truly his home.
What would he do if he were no longer part of Anderson’s crew? His divine ancestor wasn’t Greek, so he couldn’t become an Olympian even if he wanted to. And if being separated from Emmitt had worsened the effects the death magic had on him, I couldn’t imagine what being separated from all his friends and his home would do to him.
“Maybe he deserves another chance,” Jack said into the silence.
