by Jenna Black
Hesitantly, I took the compact from her hand. The makeup inside looked ordinary enough, so I guessed that the something I needed to see would be in the mirror. Holding my breath, I opened the compact all the way and looked at my reflection.
I looked awful. There was a big lump on my temple, and my right eye was thoroughly blackened. The entire left side of my face was one big bruise from where Jamaal had kicked me—though the bruise looked like it was about three days old. But clearly, that wasn’t what Maggie had wanted me to see.
No, what Maggie wanted me to see was the iridescent mark on my forehead. It vaguely resembled a half moon with an arrow through its middle. My mouth dropped open and my eyes widened as I reached up to touch the mark that quite obviously was not a tattoo.
“What the fuck is that?” I whispered.
“It’s a glyph,” Maggie explained, holding out her hand so I could see the mark on the back of it. Hers looked like stylized circular lightning bolt. “It represents whose line you’re descended from.”
“Line?” My voice sounded hollow, and I stared intently at the mirror. The glyph wouldn’t go away, no matter how many times I blinked or how I rubbed it.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Maggie run a finger over the glyph on her hand. “Mine represents Zeus,” she said. “I’ve never seen one like yours before, but Anderson says it’s Artemis. I didn’t think she had any descendants—she was supposed to be a virgin goddess—but I’ll take his word for it.”
“Artemis.” I sounded like a mentally challenged myna bird, but none of this was quite sinking in. My rational mind threw in the towel, deciding to go hide somewhere safe until the world returned to order.
“Emmitt was from Hades’ line. Jamaal’s a descendant of Kali, and he and Emmitt bonded like brothers because both of them possessed death magic. Emmitt was mentoring him, teaching him control, but Jamaal still had a long way to go. Without Emmitt to balance him, it’s hard to know if he’ll be able to hold it together.
“You also met Logan, right?” She didn’t wait for my answer. “He’s Tyr.” She cocked her head at me. “Are you familiar with Tyr?”
Totally numb—and not comprehending a word of what I was hearing—I shook my head.
“He was an old Germanic war god. Descendants of war gods tend to be kind of cranky, but Logan is one of the most easygoing people I know. Oh, and I almost forgot Blake.” She made a face, making it clear Blake was not her favorite person. “He’s a descendant of Eros. Despite that cutesy Cupid tattoo he’s got, there’s nothing even remotely cherubic about him. He’s easily as deadly as Jamaal. He’s just not as in-your-face about it.”
I remembered the way Blake had looked at me while he was playing bad cop. That was plenty in-your-face for me.
Maggie gave my shoulder another sympathetic squeeze. “I know this has got to be overwhelming, and you probably don’t believe half of what I’ve said. I’ll give you the quick highlights and then give you some time to try to absorb it all.
“Anderson and the rest of us are what is known as Liberi Deorum, which means ‘children of the gods’ in Latin. A long time ago, when the ancient gods were still around, they had children with mortals. Before the gods left Earth, they gave each of their children a seed from the Tree of Life. This seed made them immortal, and the Liberi thought they were gods themselves as a result. The only limitation they had—as far as they knew—was that they couldn’t make their own children immortal, because the gods took the Tree of Life with them when they left. What the first Liberi didn’t know until too late was that anyone with even a drop of divine blood—in other words, all their children and descendants—could steal their immortality by killing them.”
Wow. That was one hell of a detailed delusion. I had to admit, there was something decidedly weird going on. But come on, children of the gods? Really?
“The glyph on your hand marks you as a Descendant of Artemis,” Maggie continued. “When you killed Emmitt, you also stole his immortality. Not on purpose, I know,” she hastened to add.
“So I’m immortal now?” I asked, trying to hide my skepticism the best I could—which wasn’t well at all.
“I know it sounds crazy. But yes, you are.”
“Uh-huh.”
“The guys—especially Jamaal—think you already knew all this and staged the accident to steal Emmitt’s immortality deliberately.”
Perfectly logical—if you bought into the craziness in the first place, which I wasn’t about to do. “But you think Emmitt committed suicide, because he knew I was a Descendant of Artemis and was actually capable of killing him?” I was well aware of my tone of voice, that I was talking to her like I was humoring a dangerous psycho, but I couldn’t help it.
Maggie nodded. “I don’t know how he found you, but he must have seen the glyph on your face and decided to use you.”
“But the glyph only showed up a little while ago!” Had I caught an inconsistency in her story?
“It’s been there all along. It’s just that only Liberi can see it.”
Some of this was beginning to make a weird kind of sense, and I began to worry about my own sanity. Maybe the blows to my head had rattled my brain around more than I knew. But Maggie was the closest thing I had to an ally in this loony bin, and I needed to take advantage of that while I could.
“It’s all a little much to take in,” I said, because I didn’t have it in me to actually say I believed her.
“I know,” she said with a gentle smile. “And it’s all right. You don’t have to pretend to believe me. I’m not offended.”
Maggie was definitely the nicest of the cultists. It was time to test just how nice.
“Thanks for being so understanding,” I said.
“Hey, we girls have to stick together here in Testosteroneville.”
“Yeah, about that …”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t let you out,” Maggie said.
“Please, Maggie. I think Anderson’s going to … interrogate me. And I don’t think that’s going to go so well for me.” I didn’t have to force the shudder.
She gave me a sympathetic smile. “It’ll be all right. I’d let you out if I could, but Anderson gave me an order, and disobeying his orders isn’t such a great idea.”
I remembered Jamaal’s scream, and felt just a little guilty for asking Maggie to defy Anderson. Not enough to stop asking, though.
“Maggie, I—”
But she’d had enough, rising to her feet and cutting me off. “I can’t, Nikki. I just can’t. I’ll get you some clean bedding, some towels, and some toiletries, but that’s the best I can do.”
She started toward the door, and I slid off the bed, wondering if I could barrel past her and escape. I didn’t like my odds, but I might have tried it anyway if my wounded side hadn’t screamed in pain. Apparently, I’d stood too fast. By the time I was able to breathe through the pain, Maggie was gone and the door was closed.
FIVE
Maggie brought the supplies she had promised. If I had been inclined to stick my head in the sand and pretend nothing out of the ordinary was happening, I might have been able to curl up on the cot in something resembling comfort and gotten some sleep. Of course, sleeping was the last thing on my mind; I kept thinking Anderson was going to come back to “question” me.
He never showed. Maybe Maggie convinced him that I was telling the truth. Or maybe he just thought the anticipation of pain would crack me faster than the pain itself.
Whatever the reason, no one came for me through the long hours of the night. For a while, I was treated to the comforting sound of Jamaal pounding on a door and yelling at the top of his lungs. Apparently, Anderson had locked him in one of these basement rooms, too, and he wasn’t shy about letting everyone know he was unhappy about it.
Every time I heard his voice, I found myself selfconsciously rubbing my throat, where I should have had bruises galore from his attempt to strangle me to death. I didn’t have a mirror, but as far as I could tell
by touch, there wasn’t any bruising at all.
Of course, everything Maggie had told me had to be bullshit. Right? There was a perfectly rational explanation for everything that had happened tonight. Damned if I could figure out what it was, though.
Locked as I was in a room without windows, and wearing a broken watch, my internal clock was my only way to keep track of time. No matter how scared and freaked out I was, as the hours crept by, exhaustion sat more and more heavily on my shoulders. When the pillow started to look inviting, I forced myself to the sink and splashed some cold water on my face. It helped me feel more alert for all of about five seconds.
I never consciously made the decision to lie down and sleep, but when the door to my cell next cracked open, the sound of squealing hinges woke me up with a start. My heart instantly went on red alert, pounding adrenaline through my system. I leapt to my feet, wide awake. My side didn’t scream at me for the sudden movement, but I was too alarmed to be relieved.
Standing in the doorway, grinning as if my terror was the funniest thing he’d ever seen, was yet another one of Emmitt’s “cult members.” This one was Jack Gillespie, and he looked a bit like a transplanted surfer-dude. His curly, dark blond hair was streaked with lighter blond—an effect that was probably supposed to look like sun-bleaching, but was a little too even to be anything but man-made. His skin was a deep, skin-cancer tan, and in the handful of times I’d seen him, he’d always been wearing torn jeans and a short-sleeved T-shirt, despite the cold.
I shook off my fear and narrowed my eyes at him. “Has Anderson ordered you guys to take turns coming to see me, or what?” I asked. Unless there was another cultist I wasn’t aware of, I had now met all but one of the men Emmitt had had me “investigating.”
Jack’s grin didn’t falter. “If Anderson had ordered me to come down here and talk to you, I probably wouldn’t be here. I’m not too good with orders.”
I rubbed my eyes. Now that the first surge of adrenaline had faded, I remembered how utterly exhausted I was. I had no idea what time it was, or how long I’d been asleep, but I felt like I could sleep another six or eight hours, easy. I wasn’t in the mood for witty banter.
“Are you just here to stare at me like I’m an animal in a zoo, or is there something you want?”
He leaned casually against the doorjamb and crossed his arms over what his tight T-shirt advertised was a very nice chest. “I’ll go away if I’m interrupting your beauty sleep. But I thought you might sleep better in your own bed.”
My heart leapt at the thought, though my rational mind immediately proclaimed the suggestion too good to be true.
“So you’re letting me go?” I asked, making no attempt to mask my skepticism.
“I’m going to do better than that. I’m going to drive you home, seeing as what’s left of your car has been towed. And there’s not much in the way of public transportation out here even in the daytime.”
I examined his words for hidden nuances, but couldn’t find any. Still, there was something decidedly fishy going on. If Anderson had decided to release me, I was pretty sure I’d have been gone hours ago. Jack showing up here in what my body clock told me was the middle of the night or very early morning screamed of ulterior motives. Unfortunately, I had no idea what those motives could be.
“Why would you do that?” I asked suspiciously.
The grin came back full force. “Because it’ll make Jamaal shit bricks.” He rubbed the glyph on his forearm. “I’m of Loki’s line, so making trouble is in my blood. And Jamaal is the easiest target ever.”
I wasn’t much of an expert on mythology, but if memory served, Loki was a Norse trickster-god. But since I didn’t buy this whole descended-from-the-gods bullshit, I didn’t buy Jack’s explanation, either. Still, letting him drive me home sounded like an excellent idea.
“Real nice of you to pick on someone whose best friend just died,” I said, deciding that even if he was letting me go, I didn’t much like him.
“Isn’t it, though?” he responded, unperturbed.
“And you’re not worried about what Anderson will do when he finds out?” Maggie had seemed awfully sympathetic to me, but she had categorically refused to defy Anderson’s orders.
“Descendant of Loki, remember? We tend not to trouble ourselves about consequences. If I didn’t piss Anderson off at least once a week, I’d feel like a disgrace to my divine ancestor.”
I looked at him like he was crazy. Even crazier than the rest of the crazies here, that is.
He straightened up and gave an exaggerated shrug. “Hey, no skin off my teeth if you’d rather stay locked up down here. Make yourself comfortable. Anderson’s going to come talk to you in the morning, and I’m sure that’ll be just loads of fun.”
I felt myself pale on cue, a hard knot of fear twisting in my gut.
“I won’t look a gift horse in the mouth,” I told Jack hurriedly, hoping I didn’t look as scared as I felt. I’d never thought of myself as a shrinking violet, but I’d been scared so many times over the last few hours I might have to reassess my own toughness.
Jack nodded briskly. “I thought you’d come to see it my way.” He reached behind him to pick something up from the floor. He held it out to me, and I saw that it was my pocketbook.
At least, it had been a pocketbook once upon a time. The tan leather was soaked through, turning it almost chocolate brown, there was a slash all the way across the front, and one of the straps was gone. I took a moment to mourn the loss—I love my bags, and this one had been my favorite—then took the ruined pocketbook from Jack.
“I couldn’t get your car key out of the ignition,” he told me, “but I got the rest of the keys off the ring and put them in the inside zipper compartment.”
Numbly, I checked the pocket in question and was glad to see that my apartment keys had survived the crash. I was tempted to check the rest of the contents of the purse, but decided that might be rude, implying that Jack might have taken something. I didn’t know why he was helping me—if that was really what he was doing—but if he was going to take me home, I didn’t want to do anything to risk pissing him off.
“Ready to go?” he asked, stepping away from the door.
Way more than ready, I hurried out of the cell and into the hallway beyond.
Jack drove me home in a surprisingly bland black BMW. I’d have figured him for the red sports car kind of guy, but maybe he didn’t like to be predictable. Or maybe he was “borrowing” someone else’s car. I wouldn’t have put it past him.
The clock on the dashboard informed me it was four A.M. I fought a yawn. God, I was tired! My body felt ridiculously good, considering the abuse it had taken, but if I really was now possessed of supernatural healing ability—a fact that I was going to have trouble continuing to deny—I must have burned extra energy to do it. I could hardly hold my head up.
The streets of Arlington were deserted at that time of night, and Jack made good time into Bethesda. He seemed to consider the speed limit merely a suggestion. Same with red lights and stop signs. If I weren’t exhausted down to my bones, I might have been alarmed.
The good news was that we didn’t get stopped by cops, and that Jack was blessedly quiet for the whole ride. I wasn’t up to either an encounter with the police or another conversation that would make my head hurt. The bad news was that Jack never bothered to ask me where I lived. He drove straight to my apartment building, barely even looking at street signs.
The obvious conclusion was that even if he hadn’t taken anything from my pocketbook, he’d obviously looked in it. My driver’s license would conveniently provide my address, which made the fact that he was willing to let me go a little less surprising. As long as he knew where I lived, he—and his crazy friends—could get to me. The smirk he gave me as I dragged myself out of the car made me wish I had the energy—and the guts—to smack him.
“Be seeing you around,” he said with a wave just before I slammed my door closed. The smile and th
e twinkle in his eye failed to hide the warning behind the words.
Moments later, I was safe inside my own home and could have wept in relief. My body still cried out for sleep, but I didn’t have time for it. I had no illusions that the folks at Nutso Central were going to leave me alone, and that meant I had some preparations to make.
First, I had to get out of the apartment, much though it pained me to admit it. The feeling of safety that enveloped me when I stepped in the door was nothing but an illusion when Jack knew where I lived. He might or might not have been releasing me behind Anderson’s back, but either way, I knew he wasn’t doing it out of the goodness of his heart. I also knew he wasn’t going to keep my address a secret.
I went into the kitchen to brew a pot of coffee—I was never going to stay awake otherwise—while I tried to figure out where to go. The light on my answering machine was blinking, and I hit it by reflex.
“Hey there, Nikki,” said Steph’s perky voice. “You know I hate it when you keep me in suspense. How’d it go tonight?”
I groaned and pinched the bridge of my nose. The Date from Hell seemed like it had happened in another lifetime. And any date Steph arranged for me came with a mandatory debriefing afterward, one that I could have done without in the best of times. In my current state of mind, I couldn’t bear to face it. The answering machine beeped, then moved on to the next message. Steph again. What a surprise.
“It’s midnight, and you haven’t called me back yet,” she scolded. “I promise to forgive you, but only if you’re not calling because you’re in the middle of some hot and heavy sex.”
I snorted, both at the ridiculousness of the idea of me having hot and heavy sex with Jim, and at the ridiculousness of my real reason for not having called.
“I wish,” I muttered.
I briefly considered going to stay with Steph for a while, just until I got things sorted out. Unlike me, she was willing to dip into her trust fund, and her house was more than big enough for the two of us. Not that my condo was a humble shack. My adoptive parents, the Glasses, had set up a trust fund for me at the same time they’d set up Steph’s. When I’d refused to touch it, they’d bought this condo and offered to rent it to me for a ridiculously small sum. I should have turned it down, but I’d fallen in love with the place. I assuaged my guilty conscience by paying them three times what they asked, although they didn’t need the money.