by Jenna Black
Alexis’s shoulders tightened at the rebuke, and his gaze remained pinned to the floor. All very convincing, but I had a hard time believing Konstantin really had a problem with what Alexis had done. Maybe he’d have preferred it if Alexis tried a little harder to make contact peacefully before resorting to threats, but the threats would have come eventually, one way or another. And if Konstantin were really sorry about it, he’d have said so right from the start.
“So are you retracting the threat?”
He smiled at me, the expression condescending, though his tone remained completely pleasant. “My friend threatened harm to your sister if you didn’t show up today. You’re here, so the threat is no longer valid.”
I wondered if he thought he was being subtle. Some people are such good liars that they can respond to questions with a complete non sequitur and make you believe they actually answered you. Konstantin wasn’t one of them.
“So if I walked out of here right now, we wouldn’t have a problem anymore?” I asked, pressing the issue even though I knew the answer.
“Let’s not make this meeting a waste of both my time and yours,” he said. “We can have a civilized conversation over lunch.”
He gestured in the direction I presumed was toward the restaurant, but I didn’t budge. I didn’t want to spend a moment more than necessary in the company of these men, and I sure as hell couldn’t see sitting down to lunch with them.
“I’ve got a very busy afternoon,” I told Konstantin, still trying to be at least relatively diplomatic. “I don’t have time for a fancy lunch. Why don’t we have a seat over there,” I continued, gesturing toward the nook where I’d been sitting, “and we can get right down to business.”
Konstantin was clearly taken aback by my refusal. Guess he was surprised I didn’t automatically do what he wanted. He paused for a long moment before he spoke again.
“I can see how you and Alexis would rub each other the wrong way,” he said with a wry smile that didn’t reach his eyes. He may have been genuinely trying to create some kind of rapport based on shared humor, but the attempt was too forced to be effective. Beneath his urbane veneer, an aura of cruelty clung to him.
“Yeah, I don’t think he and I will ever be on each other’s Christmas lists,” I said.
Alexis said nothing, merely stood to the side and glared at me, his arms crossed over his chest.
“Then perhaps it would be best if you and I spoke alone,” Konstantin said. Without waiting for my response, he headed toward the sofa in the corner of the seating area. I guessed I was supposed to follow.
I felt Alexis’s glare on the back of my head the moment I turned away from him. He hadn’t uttered a sound of protest, but I knew he was majorly pissed off that he was being left out of the conversation. And he hadn’t appreciated Konstantin’s public rebukes, either, no matter how insincere they might have been. Like he needed another reason to hate me.
I sat gingerly on the edge of the sofa, feeling anything but relaxed around this self-proclaimed king of the Liberi Deorum, but he sprawled in the seat at the other end as if he owned the place. For all I knew, he did. I knew nothing about this man, not even his last name. Not that I wanted to know anything about him.
“So what was it you were so desperate to talk to me about?” I asked, trying to release some of the tension in my spine. We were in a very public place. I could hardly expect Konstantin to try to attack me here. Still, I couldn’t dismiss the possibility out of hand, which was why I’d done my surveillance before the meeting. There was just too damn much I didn’t know, and the only people who could give me information were people I didn’t want to talk to. “Alexis suggested you wanted to hire me for something?”
Konstantin nodded. “Yes. As a Descendant of Artemis, your skills would be a great asset to us.”
I wondered if his “us” was a royal “we,” or if he actually meant the Olympians as a whole. “Go on,” I said. I already knew there was no way in hell I was working for him, but I figured it behooved me to hear him out for diplomacy’s sake.
“We Olympians function as something of a police force for the Liberi Deorum. As such, we often find ourselves needing to track down people who do not wish to be found. Ordinarily, we use private investigators to help us locate these fugitives, but even a skilled private investigator has limitations, especially considering the level of secrecy we require. You, however, would be perfect for the position. Not only a descendant of Artemis, but already an experienced private investigator. You would make it infinitely easier for us to track down our fugitives.”
He made it all sound terribly … benign. Of course, even if everything Anderson had told me about the Olympians was true, they were no doubt the heroes of their own stories. What I might see as a ruthless slaughter of innocents, they might consider a necessary purge to protect their own people. Even so, I didn’t think that was what Konstantin believed. He might have started his crusade against Descendants under the pretext of protecting the Liberi, but these days it was all about enjoying the power. Maybe I was reading things into his tone and body language, but his words carried no sense of self-righteousness or conviction like they should if he really believed them.
“What would happen to these ‘fugitives’ once I found them for you?” I asked.
“They would be dealt with in an appropriate manner.”
“Would dealing with them in the ‘appropriate manner’ involve killing them, by any chance?”
“It would depend on the circumstances. However, it would be your job to find them, not to carry out their sentences, whatever those sentences might be.”
Maybe that was supposed to allow me to soothe my conscience if I accepted the job. As if the fact that I wasn’t personally killing anyone would make me feel better about tracking people down so the Olympians could kill them.
“The rewards you would reap if you chose to work with us are considerable,” Konstantin said. “We are richer than many countries, and we are generous with those riches. Your pay would be in seven figures, with bonuses for success. You could live like a queen.” He sounded much more passionate about this argument than he had about the “it’s for a good cause” thing.
I shrugged. “Money doesn’t tempt me.”
He laughed, like I’d just made the funniest joke in the world. “Oh, Nikki, money tempts everyone.”
And just like that, I’d heard enough. I’d listened to what he had to say, and there was no hint of doubt in my mind that I wanted nothing to do with Konstantin or his Olympians. The time for diplomacy was over. “Let me rephrase that: I don’t want your money.”
Konstantin’s urbane veneer thinned a little more, until it was practically nonexistent. “Perhaps you don’t understand. I am the king of the Liberi Deorum. I realize you have only been recently introduced to the Liberi, but that doesn’t exempt you from our laws. You are Liberi, and therefore you answer to me.”
I snorted softly. “Most of the Liberi I’ve met don’t answer to you.”
He went completely still, shedding the last vestiges of his pseudo-friendly persona. The darkness in his eyes spoke of power and of deadly danger. “I have a treaty with Anderson and his people. That treaty does not extend to you.”
He leaned toward me on the sofa, and it was all I could do not to recoil. His anger wasn’t as ostentatious as Alexis’s, but it was all the more chilling for its calculated control.
“Make no mistake, Nikki,” he said, his calm, unruffled voice at odds with the fury that radiated from his every pore. “I have presented you with a choice, but the consequences of making the wrong one are beyond the limits of your imagination.”
I swallowed hard, hating that I couldn’t hide my fear. “I thought you weren’t into making threats.”
He shrugged and sat back, banishing all signs of anger in a fraction of a second. The veneer was back, but I’d already gotten a clear view of what lay beneath it. “I prefer to catch my flies with honey, when possible.” He gave me a cha
rming smile that scared me almost as much as his glare. “But a good king must sometimes make compromises to ensure the well-being of his people. It is important to our people that we find these fugitives, and therefore I’m not in the position to take no for an answer.”
He reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. “On this paper are three names, those of our most wanted.” He tried to hand me the paper, but I refused to take it from him. Then he grabbed my wrist in a crushing grip and forced the paper into my fingers, smiling pleasantly all the while.
“I know they will be difficult to locate,” he continued, still holding my wrist so hard I felt like my bones were scraping together. “I’ll be generous and give you one week to find your first fugitive. It can be any of the ones on that list, although eventually you must find all three. When you have the location of the first fugitive, you will call Alexis with your information, and he will send a squad to confirm you’re telling the truth. When you find that first fugitive, I will pay you one million dollars.” He smiled again and let go of my wrist. “In case that isn’t incentive enough, I’ll have you know that Alexis has taken quite a liking to your sister.
“If you refuse, or if you fail, I will give Alexis permission to do whatever he wants with her. Let your imagination run wild. He won’t kill her, though. He’ll let her live so that you can see the wretched ruin he has made of her. If that doesn’t motivate you … then we will have to get more creative. I have walked this earth for many centuries, my dear. Let me assure you, when it comes to cruelty, I’ve seen every form imaginable in my day, and there is nothing I would not scruple to do.”
His eyes bored into me as I sat there in horrified silence, unable to force a single word from my mouth.
Konstantin reached over and patted my shoulder. I was too frozen to react. Then the lines of his face softened and he gave me what looked like a sad smile. Another veneer, no more convincing than the other.
“It doesn’t have to be like this,” he said softly. “You can join with us and work in a spirit of cooperation. No one need get hurt. You are Liberi Deorum, Nikki Glass, and you will live forever. The choice is yours whether that life will be one of pleasure and privilege, or pain and strife.”
I still couldn’t speak, didn’t know what I could say in the face of such blatant evil. Words of defiance might get Steph hurt, but it was beyond me to in any way suggest I was in agreement with him. About anything he had said.
I remained silent as Konstantin rose to his feet, headed toward the front door, and beckoned Alexis to follow.
TEN
I sat in the hotel lobby for a good half hour after Konstantin and Alexis left, trying to pull myself together and think clearly. I didn’t have much luck.
What was I going to do now? I couldn’t let Alexis hurt Steph. And yet I couldn’t live with myself if I tracked down the people on Konstantin’s list and thereby got them killed.
Of course, it was still possible Anderson had been lying. Maybe the people on Konstantin’s list were all bad guys, fugitives from justice, just as he had described them. I didn’t actually believe it—the threats he’d made against Steph told me all I needed to know about the strength of his moral fiber—but I clung to the unlikely possibility.
I finally managed to get myself moving again. I collected my spy camera from under the chair, then left the Sofitel, keeping a careful eye out for any sign that I was being followed. I was pretty sure Konstantin was convinced he had me over a barrel and therefore wouldn’t waste his time having me tailed, but you never can be too sure.
I took a very long and roundabout route back to my hotel, then retreated to my room to do a little research. I couldn’t see complying with Konstantin’s demands—surely I would find some other way out of this mess without endangering Steph—but I figured it couldn’t hurt to see what I could dig up on the people he was asking me to find.
He’d given me very little to go on. Just names, and dates and places of birth. Under normal circumstances, I would have refused to try to locate someone with so little information. I’m good, but I’m not that good. But these were not normal circumstances. And besides, everyone seemed to think I had some kind of supernatural hunting ability. I’d seen the evidence that I’d become a ridiculously good shot, but so far I had no idea how that could translate into finding someone. Maybe once I tried, I’d unlock a special ability I didn’t know I had.
I started with the first name on the list: Joseph Swift. Born March 15, 1955 in Madison, WI. At least that gave me a starting place for my search, although it was obvious Joseph Swift wasn’t in Madison anymore, or the Olympians could have found him easily without my help.
I didn’t need any fancy new supernatural abilities to find out some basic information about Swift, not when the local papers had a gruesome story to revel in.
Swift had lived a fairly ordinary life as a child. His parents were working class, but steadily employed. He was a straight A student, and a star of his high school football team. Colleges were recruiting him aggressively, and his future looked almost unbearably bright. Until the spring of his senior year in high school, that is.
Just a few days shy of his eighteenth birthday, there was what was described as a failed burglary attempt at Joseph Swift’s home. Several masked men broke into the house around midnight. According to Joseph, everyone in the household had gone to bed, and all the lights in the house were out. He, however, had been having trouble sleeping and had gone downstairs for a glass of water. He was in the kitchen drinking his water when he heard his father’s startled cry, and then his mother’s scream.
Joseph sprinted to his parents’ aid, having no idea what was happening. When he was halfway up the stairs, his eight-year-old sister came running out of her bedroom, pursued by one of the masked intruders. The girl was stabbed to death before Joseph’s eyes. When he saw two more masked men with bloody knives emerging from his parents’ room, Joseph ran for his life. He managed to escape, but his entire family had been slaughtered.
I read several newspaper accounts of the murders. Everyone seemed to think that the masked men were burglars, and that Joseph’s father had surprised them at their work. But the theory made little sense. The “burglars” sounded like a sophisticated crew, but the Swifts hardly seemed wealthy enough to attract them. Plus, what self-respecting professional burglars would break into a house when they knew there were four people inside? Far less risky to wait until the house was empty.
It was hard to see the murders as anything other than a premeditated slaughter of a family of Descendants perpetrated by the Olympians.
Joseph seemed to drop off the face of the Earth after the murders, which I supposed was why the Olympians wanted my help to find him. I tried locating other members of his extended family, thinking maybe he’d gone to live with them, but not only did I not find any sign of him, I found even more evidence that pointed to a purge. I couldn’t find evidence of a single surviving family member on his father’s side. There was one maternal aunt who survived until 1963, when she died of natural causes, and a couple of distant cousins—also on his mother’s side—who seemed to have lived—or still be living—long and ordinary lives. But the more I delved into his father’s family, the more unexplained deaths I discovered. Car accidents. House fires. Mysterious disappearances. Everything led me to the conclusion that Joseph’s divine blood had come through his father’s side, and that the Olympians had managed to eliminate them all one by one.
I never got around to doing any serious research on Swift’s current location, because I’d already learned everything I wanted to know. There was not a single doubt left in my mind: if I located Joseph Swift, he was a dead man. And if he had any children, they, too, would either die or be kidnapped and indoctrinated by the Olympians.
I couldn’t do it. Not even to save Steph. And as horrible as Konstantin’s threat had been, I knew my sister well enough to be certain she’d agree with my decision. I was just going to
have to find some other way to protect her. Reluctant as I was to admit it, that meant I was going to need help. And there was only one person I could go to for said help.
Perhaps I was digging the hole deeper, both for myself and for Steph. Perhaps Anderson was just as cruel and ruthless as Konstantin. But there was only one way to find out.
It was almost five before I found the nerve to pick up the phone and call Anderson. I couldn’t help remembering all the hostility he and Blake and Jamaal had shown me on the other night, and the idea of placing myself at their mercy made me want to hide under the bed. But honestly, I could see no other option, aside from giving up my entire life and making myself disappear, which still wouldn’t guarantee Steph’s safety. It was possible that by calling Anderson, I was handing myself over to the enemy. It was also possible that I’d already soured any potential we’d ever had of working together. But I had to try.
My heart raced and my palms sweated as I waited for Anderson to answer. Was this my gut trying to warn me away? Or was it just a very natural fear reaction, after all I’d gone through in the past forty-eight hours? I couldn’t tell.
Anderson finally picked up the phone just when I thought sure my call was about to go to voice mail.
“Nikki,” he said by way of greeting. Guess he had caller ID. “What a pleasant surprise.” There was a dry humor to his voice, but no hint of irritation. I chose to take that as a good sign. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
I’d debated how much to tell him about my current situation, but decided that full disclosure might be my best shot at getting the help I needed. “I met Konstantin today.”
He grunted softly. “My condolences.”
I surprised myself by smiling. “Yeah. I’m not a big fan.”
“Neither am I.”
“So I gathered.”
“Let me guess what he wanted: he’s asked you to use your unique abilities to find some people for him.”