by Jenna Black
Only Jamaal failed to put in an appearance, and that hurt me though it probably shouldn’t have. He was even less comfortable with expressing feelings than Logan. But I couldn’t help taking it as even more evidence that whatever friendship we had started to build together had been destroyed, either by my willingness to leave, or by our tentative foray into romance. I wished I knew which.
Anderson was sitting at his desk when I ventured through the open door of his study. I had the immediate impression he’d been waiting for me, though perhaps that was egocentric of me. He spent a lot of time in his study, and it was always the first place to check when I wanted to look for him.
I didn’t know what Anderson generally did all day while he was sitting around in his study, but this morning, he was reading the newspaper. I hadn’t read a real, printed newspaper since I was a kid clamoring for the Sunday comics, but Anderson was a bit of a traditionalist. Not surprising for a god who’d been around since the dawn of time, I suppose.
He folded the paper when I came in and laid it down on his desk. His fingertips were stained gray from handling newsprint. He was badly in need of a haircut, and I wished he’d either learn how to iron or start buying no-iron shirts. But looking like an unprepossessing slob is part of his disguise, part of how he hides the enormous power that lies just beneath his surface.
“I’m sorry to hear about your house,” he said, beckoning me to one of the chairs in front of his desk. There was no hint of “I told you so” in his voice, and he looked genuinely sorry.
If one more person told me how sorry they were, I was going to scream. Unless that person is Jamaal, I mentally amended.
The sympathy—I refused to think of it as pity—sat heavily on my shoulders, and I practically collapsed into the chair. I wanted to maintain some semblance of dignity, but the weight of it all was getting to me, and my throat tightened like I was going to cry.
It was just a house, dammit. A thing, an object. Something that could be rebuilt. It had been empty when it burned down, and no one was hurt. That was all that mattered. I swallowed hard, trying to push the irrational grief back down inside. The Glasses and Steph had a right to grieve over the loss of their home, but it had never really been mine to begin with. So why did I suddenly feel like someone had just died?
Anderson rolled one of his desk drawers open and pulled out a little pop-up box of tissues, setting them on the edge of the desk within easy reach. “Just in case,” he said with a small, sad smile.
I was not going to cry about this. I was not going to make it that easy for Konstantin to hurt me.
“I’m fine,” I said, more to convince myself than to convince Anderson. “And you win: I will hunt Konstantin to the ends of the earth if that’s what I have to do to keep him from hurting my family anymore.”
I had the brief, unworthy thought that it was convenient for Anderson that the very week when he’d pinned me down and forced me to listen to—and refuse—his request, my adoptive parents’ house should burn down and Konstantin should taunt me with that email.
“I knew he’d lash out eventually,” Anderson said. “But it never occurred to me that he’d come after you. I’m his true enemy here, not you.”
“Yes,” I agreed, “but you’re a lot harder to hurt. Plus, he’s scared of you, though I don’t suppose he’d admit it.”
To tell you the truth, despite Anderson’s dire predictions, I was actually kind of surprised that Konstantin had decided to go on the warpath. If he’d kept his head down and hadn’t bothered anyone, I wouldn’t have been motivated to hunt him down for Anderson to kill. Though perhaps he didn’t know that. Perhaps he was incapable of understanding my reluctance to commit murder for revenge. Even Anderson hadn’t understood, and he had a much firmer grasp of the concept of morality than Konstantin did.
“Good point,” Anderson said. “Though I expect he will eventually scrape up his courage. I already want him dead, and he knows that. It’s not like provoking me would change anything.”
No, but provoking me had had a definite effect, spurring me into the hunt. Maybe Konstantin hadn’t realized I wasn’t planning to hunt him—or maybe someone who really, really wanted Konstantin dead had thought it a good idea to provide me a little motivation.
I stared at Anderson across the desk, wondering if he was ruthless enough to do something like that. He’d wanted his revenge badly enough that he’d neglected to tell anyone that Konstantin was still under the Olympians’ protection. But still, burning down my parents’ home . . . As ruthless and manipulative as I suspected Anderson could be, I couldn’t see him doing something like that to innocent bystanders. However, I didn’t have much trouble coming up with another suspect.
“What if someone knew I wasn’t going to hunt him for you?” I asked, watching Anderson’s face carefully. I suspected I was about to piss him off. “And what if that someone wanted him dead and would get a real kick out of hurting me in the process?”
Anderson froze in his seat, his face going so still he looked like a statue. He didn’t breathe or blink, and I had the feeling something dangerous was brewing inside him. I half expected him to leap over the desk and seize me by the throat, and I mentally mapped out my escape route. Then he blinked, and the life returned to his face.
“You mean Emma,” he said, as if there could be any doubt who I was talking about. His voice was even and his expression bland, but he had never taken well to accusations about Emma, and I didn’t expect that to change now.
“Yeah. She’d love to be able to hurt me without breaking the treaty. And she knows my family is my weak spot. And the only person she hates more than me is Konstantin.”
“I understand why you suspect her,” Anderson said carefully, then paused.
“But . . . ?”
“She was . . . damaged by what Konstantin and Alexis did to her. I know that for a long time I tried to ignore that damage, and that makes my judgment where she’s concerned questionable in your mind. But no matter how damaged she is, she’s still the same woman I married, beneath it all. She’s joined the Olympians to spite me, but just because she’s joined them doesn’t mean she is one at heart.”
I clenched my jaws to hold back my protest. His judgment was more than just questionable where Emma was concerned, and I had absolutely no doubt she was capable of burning down my parents’ house if she thought that would get her what she wanted. What I did doubt was that any force on earth could make Anderson believe that without some pretty overwhelming evidence to support the theory.
Anderson shook his head, having thoroughly talked himself into discounting my suggestion. “Emma didn’t do it,” he said firmly. “I told you Konstantin would strike out, and he has. Let’s not go looking for complex explanations when a very obvious and simple one exists.”
That clanking sound I heard was the doors of his mind slamming shut. I would have argued with him more if I thought there was a chance I could convince him, and if I thought for sure Emma really was the culprit. I was certainly willing to entertain the possibility, but I had to admit that for the moment, Konstantin had to take center stage as the prime suspect.
“I don’t have any clue how I’ll find him,” I said, cursing my annoyingly mercurial power. My ability to find people is based on supernaturally fueled hunches, but it’s hard to tell the difference between an honest-to-goodness hunch, wishful thinking, and random stray thoughts. “But I’ll get right on it. I still have that list of Olympian properties from when I was searching for Emma. I doubt he’ll be on one, but I’ll start cruising by them one-by-one tonight.”
For the most part, I didn’t truly understand how my powers worked. It would probably take years of trial and error before I had any real confidence in them. But it did seem they worked better in the moonlight, which made sense because Artemis was a moon goddess as well as a huntress.
“The question then becomes, what do we do if I find him?” I gave Anderson a hard look. “I ran into Cyrus the other day, and he i
nformed me that his father is still an Olympian and under their protection. He said he’d talked to you about it and you’d agreed to leave Konstantin alone.”
Anderson didn’t bother trying to act like he felt guilty about his tacit deception. “I gave him that impression, it’s true. And if there’s any way we can eliminate Konstantin without Cyrus having to know we’re responsible, that’s how we’ll do it.”
I shook my head. “If you kill him and he disappears off the face of the earth, everyone’s going to know you were behind it.”
“Not true. Only you know what I can do. As far as anyone else is concerned, I can’t kill Konstantin unless I have a Descendant around to do my dirty work, and I don’t. As long as we leave no evidence that can be traced back to us, Cyrus will have to assume that one of Konstantin’s other enemies got to him. An Olympian enemy, because, believe me, those exist.”
I did believe him about Konstantin having enemies within the Olympians. There were probably plenty of them who’d chafed under his rule over the years. But I didn’t buy the idea that Anderson wouldn’t be suspect number one.
“Look,” Anderson said, leaning forward and clasping his hands on the desk, “Cyrus isn’t going to start a war unless he’s certain I’ve broken our treaty. Unlike Konstantin, he actually values people and would care if someone close to him got killed. It’s not something he’s going to risk unless he has to.”
I reluctantly had to admit that Anderson had a point. I knew Cyrus wasn’t as nice a guy as he pretended to be, but he wasn’t evil. After all, he was protecting his father out of loyalty—misguided though it might be—and that proved he cared about something other than himself. I didn’t know who else among the Olympians Cyrus cared about, but I did know he cared about Blake. And Blake could very easily get killed if we went to war.
“So what you’re saying is if I find Konstantin, I should keep my mouth shut to everyone else and only tell you. Right?”
Anderson nodded. “Exactly. I don’t mind everyone knowing you’re hunting him, because no one would believe you weren’t, after what happened. But if you find him, that has to be our secret. And I’ll take care of what needs to be done.”
I still didn’t like it, not one bit. But I’d gotten as much concession out of Anderson as I was going to, and I had to be satisfied with it.
FIVE
The rest of the day didn’t go a whole lot better than the beginning of it had. Steph called me to say the fire investigator had already declared the incident was arson. Whoever had set it had made no attempt to be subtle or try to hide the crime. Which made sense, considering the whole point of it was for me to know it was the start of Konstantin’s path to revenge.
Steph was brisk and businesslike when we talked, telling me the facts without falling apart or betraying any emotion whatsoever. She was in problem-solver mode, and she’d distanced herself from her own pain. Considering how much charity work she did, and how often she ended up in charge of the charity functions she worked on, she was better suited for the job than I was. She’d already been in touch with the insurance company and had even tracked down the builder who’d designed and constructed the house more than twenty years ago.
Not once did Steph hint that she blamed me for what had happened, but I didn’t know how she could not. I had already brought so much misery into her life. She’d been attacked by Alexis because of me, and now her childhood home had been destroyed. She didn’t need me to tell her the fire had something to do with me, not after it was declared arson. Guilt pounded at me relentlessly, and I didn’t know what to do with it. Big Sister Steph was the one I leaned on when I needed emotional support, but that wasn’t an option this time.
I tried burying myself in work, digging up my previous list of Olympian properties in the D.C. area and then doing some research to see if they’d bought anything else since last I’d checked. Let me tell you, the Olympians own a lot of property, both commercial and residential, and I doubted I’d identified all of it despite my research. They knew how to use shell corporations and offshore bank accounts and out-and-out bribery to hide their assets. And let’s not even talk about their worldwide holdings.
My gut told me Konstantin would not have left town, and the fact that he’d sent that email from a local FedEx seemed to support the theory. My ever-present voice of self-doubt pointed out that Konstantin could easily have hired someone to do the dirty work from afar. Maybe he was living like the king he thought himself to be in Monte Carlo or somewhere else far away from here. But if I had to search the whole world for him, I was in deep trouble.
I mapped out a driving route that would take me past many of the Olympian properties that I deemed likely candidates. It would take several nights to do a drive-by on every one, especially if I wanted to actually get some sleep once in a while. For the time being, I was skipping the places that were directly owned by known Olympians, figuring those were just too obvious, but that still left me with a daunting list of possibilities. Yet I had to start somewhere.
I got so caught up in what I was doing that I forgot to eat lunch, and when I finally was satisfied with my itinerary for the first night, the sun was on its way down and I was ravenous. I ventured downstairs into the kitchen, hoping someone was cooking a communal dinner.
It was something of a frail hope, as only Maggie and Logan did much in the way of cooking, and they usually let everyone know when they were doing it. Anderson made a vat of chili every once in a while, and Jack had once made some kind of stew that no one in the house had been willing to touch. Maybe he’d thought he’d fool me into tasting it, seeing as I was the new person, but I wasn’t stupid enough to eat something a trickster prepared.
There were no enticing aromas drifting from the kitchen, and I figured it would be a Lean Cuisine night for me. However, I was in luck after all. There were no enticing smells, but Logan was hard at work on some kind of cold noodle dish. A huge salad bowl filled with noodles in brown sauce sat on the counter, and Logan was shredding a head of bok choy with the ease and quickness of a professional.
“Need a sous chef?” I asked as he tossed the shredded bok choy in with the noodles.
Logan looked at me doubtfully as he sliced a red pepper into ribbons. If it had been me wielding the knife, I’d probably have sliced my own fingers off, even if I was looking at what I was doing. He jerked his chin toward the salad bowl.
“You can toss all of that together, if you’d like. I’m almost done with the knife-work.”
I was just as happy not to be put to work slicing veggies, as it would take me at least four times as long as it was taking him. The man was almost as fast and efficient as a Cuisinart. He was a descendant of Tyr, a Germanic war god, and apparently his supernatural skills with weapons carried over to the kitchen.
I grabbed the salad tongs and began gingerly tossing the noodles and veggies with the sauce. I was afraid to do it too vigorously, or I’d spill stuff all over the place. Close up, I could smell soy sauce and ginger, and now the aromatic tang of red pepper. Leave it to Logan to make a cold salad into an enticing meal.
Logan finished his chopping and shredding, then nudged me aside to take over tossing the noodles. I don’t think he’d really wanted my help in the first place.
I drifted into the breakfast nook, which is like a mini-sunroom with three walls of glass looking out over the back lawn. Sunset tinged the scattered clouds with hints of peach and pink, and the woods beyond the lawn created the illusion that we were miles from civilization.
It was a nice view, until I saw the familiar orange and black stripes through a break in the trees. Moments later, Sita emerged onto the lawn, ambling along like she was taking a leisurely tour. I didn’t think it was smart of Jamaal to bring her this close to the house, particularly when she didn’t seem to differentiate friend from foe. Then again, I didn’t see Jamaal anywhere, so Sita might have decided to go on a walkabout all by herself, which did not speak well of his ability to control her.
“What are you looking at?” Logan asked as he set a couple of bowls of noodles down on the table.
Mutely, I pointed.
“Oh.” Logan sounded about as thrilled to see her as I was. There had been an . . . incident with Logan and Sita before and he’d almost gotten mauled before Jamaal was able to reel her in. I think he held a bit of a grudge. “Where the hell is Jamaal?” he muttered, and it was a good question.
If Sita were to leave the edge of the property, that would be bad. I didn’t want to think about how the humans around us would react if she toured the neighborhood, nor did I want to think about what Sita would do if she took exception to the reactions.
“We can’t just let her wander around loose,” I said.
“I know,” Logan replied grimly, then headed back into the main part of the kitchen and grabbed the chef’s knife he’d been using. “I’ll keep the damn cat busy, and you use your mojo to find Jamaal and drag his ass over here to corral her.”
This did not sound like the world’s greatest plan to me. Logan might be a war god descendant and really good with a knife, but I doubted he was a match for a full-grown tiger. Especially a supernatural one that might have powers we were as yet unaware of. However, he and I could survive being mauled if it came to that; our human neighbors could not. I hoped Jamaal wasn’t passed out somewhere.
Logan strode out the back door with me following close on his heels. Sita caught sight of us immediately and went eerily still. Her lips pulled back in a snarl.
“I am going to kick Jamaal’s ass,” Logan muttered, then started toward Sita with a resigned sigh.