EIGHT
I was afraid to move. Afraid to even breathe. I felt like I was standing on a land mine, and one false step would blow me to smithereens. Should I try to say something sympathetic and comforting to Anderson? Should I apologize for my role in Emma’s revenge, even while refusing to accept any blame? Or should I try to slink away without bothering him?
Sometimes it really sucked knowing the truth about him. Even having witnessed his Hand of Doom in action, I doubt I’d have felt this level of dread if I thought he were merely another Liberi. But I did know the truth, and I wasn’t sure what would happen if Anderson reached his breaking point.
“Don’t stop breathing on my account,” he said. His voice sounded almost normal, but there was still something about him that felt dangerous.
“I’ve seen you lose it before,” I replied quietly, thinking about what had happened when we’d trespassed on Alexis’s property to rescue Emma from the depths of his pond. Alexis had taunted Anderson with what he and Konstantin had done to Emma while she was in their custody, and Anderson had dispensed with his mortal disguise and turned into a humanoid pillar of fire. “I don’t want to see it again.”
“I didn’t ‘lose it,’ ” he said, sounding affronted.
“I saw you turn into—”
“I know what you saw.” He turned and looked me squarely in the face. “I was entirely in control of myself, Nikki. I had always planned to . . .” He looked around, as if just noticing we were standing in the foyer, where anyone could overhear. “What I did then was calculated. Trust me: you don’t want to be near me if I ever really do ‘lose it.’ ”
Oh, I trusted him about that all right. I might not know the details of what would happen, but it would be ugly, and there was likely to be collateral damage.
“I’m . . . sorry about Erin,” I said, because I couldn’t walk away without saying it.
“Me, too.” He was almost eerily calm now, his face showing no emotion, his voice flat. “I need to be alone right now.”
He turned from me without another word, climbing the stairs, no doubt heading for the east wing, which was his private domain within the mansion. My throat was tight, and my heart hurt for him. I’d had very little contact with Erin, and my memories of the time were a little hazy, but I remembered how she and Anderson had sniped at each other as ex-lovers often do. Yet Anderson had loved her once, and to have Emma bring about her death was a devastating blow. I wished he had someone to turn to, someone to give him support and companionship to help him through.
But Anderson was a god in hiding, and that meant he had to be used to dealing with the hardships of life alone. My heart might ache for him, but there was nothing I could do.
After Emma left, I tried to forget all about her nasty visit. I had enough crap on my plate that it wasn’t too hard.
Despite Cyrus’s unequivocal warning that I was to back off Konstantin, I had no intention of doing so, especially now that I’d crossed Emma off my suspects list. It was still possible Anderson was behind it, that he’d done it to light a fire under my ass, so to speak, but Konstantin was the more likely suspect. It might have been smarter for him to leave me alone, but being deposed from his position as “king” of the Olympians, he might be angry enough to act on emotion rather than logic.
I wasn’t breaking the treaty by merely driving around the city looking for Konstantin, but just in case Cyrus didn’t see it that way, I rented a sedan that would blend in with the city’s traffic. Last night had revealed the pitfalls of cruising around by myself and trying to follow my instincts. I needed to be able to let my conscious mind drift, which was hard to do—and potentially dangerous—while driving. I’d be much better off if I could get someone else to do the driving for me.
There were only three people in the house I was willing to spend that many hours shut up in a car with. My first choice, naturally, was Jamaal, but he turned me down with some lame excuse about being too tired after having worked so much with Sita during the day. He didn’t look tired when I cornered him. More like sullen and . . . distant. He was drifting further away, and I might be the only one in the house who saw it happening.
My second choice was Maggie, but I couldn’t find her, and she didn’t answer her cell. My third and last choice was Logan, but he informed me he already had plans for the evening. I was tempted to ask him what he was up to—for the most part, Anderson’s Liberi didn’t seem to have much of a social life—but it was none of my business, and he hadn’t seemed like he wanted to share.
I tried Maggie one more time, but no dice. She was off the grid, and I was on my own.
That is, I was on my own if I insisted my driver be one of the Liberi. I hesitated to ask Steph to do anything that might be even remotely dangerous, but I couldn’t see any problem with her driving me around. We’d be in a rented vehicle no one recognized, and I would not make the mistake of loitering around if the moon hid behind the clouds at inconvenient times. No one was going to notice a nondescript car that drove by without stopping or slowing.
My decision to ask Steph was reaffirmed when I got a call from the Glasses. They had decided to come home early after all, although they hadn’t been able to get a flight until Wednesday. That meant I could no longer put off trying to come up with a plausible explanation for why I was living in the mansion, and I’d need Steph’s help to corroborate it. Driving around with her tonight would give me the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.
It was getting uncomfortably late by the time I reached the decision to ask Steph to drive me, the sun already starting to set. Moonset wasn’t until almost eleven, but a quick check on the weather had shown me rain was heading our way. The skies were still clear, but who knew how long it would last? I stood by my window and watched the sky anxiously as I called Steph. There was no urgent reason why I should have to go out hunting tonight, specifically, except for my fear that Konstantin wasn’t going to wait very long before he struck again.
The phone call started off poorly, because Steph was planning to meet Blake for dinner. If the rain weren’t moving in, I’d have said we could go on our hunting expedition afterward, but it didn’t look like we were going to have a whole lot of time tonight. Steph reluctantly agreed she could reschedule her date for the next day.
The good news was that since she’d been planning to meet Blake, Steph was already on her way to the mansion when I called, and she arrived about fifteen minutes later. I waited for her on the front porch, my rental car parked along the mansion’s circular drive. Steph pulled up behind the rental, and I took a deep breath before starting down the stairs toward her. Silly of me to feel nervous about seeing my own sister, but I was still swimming in guilt about the hell I’d brought on our family, and I knew she wasn’t happy with me for interrupting her planned evening with Blake.
Our eyes met over the hood of her car as Steph got out, and maybe I was reading things into her expression that weren’t there, but I thought I detected a hint of coolness. I wondered if asking her to do the driving tonight was a bad idea, but it was too late to change my mind now. I dug the keys to the rental out of my coat pocket and took a quick glance at the darkening sky. So far, there were only wispy clouds, and the moon was easily visible. It was a good night for a hunt.
“Thanks for helping me out,” I said to Steph as I handed her the keys.
She certainly didn’t need to dress up for a date with Blake, who would find her beautiful and alluring even in ratty sweats, but either they’d been planning to go somewhere fancy, or she’d dressed up because she felt like it. Her red wool swing coat covered most of the outfit, but her black pencil skirt and stiletto-heeled pumps gave her away. Not the kind of outfit she’d have worn if she’d known how she’d be spending the next few hours.
I guess my visual assessment of her outfit wasn’t terribly subtle, because Steph looked down at herself and chuckled. “I’ll be the best-dressed assistant private eye out there.”
“I’m sorry—” I started, but Steph cut me off.
“I have even more reason than you to want Konstantin caught,” Steph said, all hints of humor banished. “I’m not doing this as some kind of favor.”
I knew that was the truth, but that didn’t stop me from wanting to apologize. I refrained, because I knew Steph wouldn’t appreciate it. “Am I allowed to thank you at least?”
She sighed dramatically. “I suppose so,” she said in a tone of long-suffering patience.
My lips twitched with a smile. Maybe I really had been imagining the hint of coolness I’d thought I’d seen when she first got out of the car. She seemed like her usual self, full of warmth and good humor.
“Thank you,” I said again, and then I gave her an impulsive hug. She was more than just my big sister; she was also my best friend, and a truly nice person at heart. Maybe somewhere deep down inside she was angry about all the chaos I’d brought into her life, but she would be ashamed of those feelings and would do her best not to show them. That was all I could ask for, and maybe more than I deserved.
“All righty then,” Steph said when I released her from the hug, “let’s get this show on the road.”
I smiled at the stupid pun, and Steph and I piled into the rental. I’d thought about planning out an elaborate route that would take us by more Olympian properties, but I hadn’t been near any of those properties when I’d spaced out last night, so I saw no reason to keep operating under the hopes that Konstantin was hiding somewhere I could find him by logic.
“So what’s the plan?” Steph asked as she adjusted the seat and mirrors, then started the car.
“It’s a pretty lame one,” I admitted. “But I think we should just get on the Beltway and see what happens.”
The Beltway circles all the way around the city, and driving on it is easily tedious enough to put anyone on autopilot. Unless you hit traffic or there’s an accident, in which case it’s more suited to road rage, but I was going to pretend those possibilities didn’t exist.
Steph’s sidelong glance told me how enamored she was of my plan, but she didn’t argue. “Do you care which way I go when I get to the Beltway?”
“I don’t think it matters. Take whichever way seems to be moving fastest. Once we get on the Beltway, I’ll need you not to talk to me anymore. Just let me zone out.”
“If you’re zoned out, how are you going to tell me which way to go?”
I made a face. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “This is really just an experiment. I have no idea if it’ll work. It might be a waste of time.”
Steph shrugged. “Okay then. Only one way to find out.”
During the ride to the Beltway, Steph and I tried to concoct a plausible story about why I was living in the mansion. Preferably one that didn’t cause her parents—our parents—to ask too many questions. We didn’t have a whole lot of luck. Let’s face it, the situation was hard to explain. I could tell the Glasses I was working for Anderson, and they might almost believe that I’d spend a night or two there if I was working late for some reason. However, being there every night, as well as me moving an awful lot of my stuff from the condo to the mansion, was a lot harder. I was almost glad when we hit the Beltway and it was time to invoke radio silence, because thinking about it was making my head hurt.
It was full dark when we got to the Beltway, and there wasn’t any sign of the upcoming storm yet. The moon’s light was bright and clear even with the city lights doing their best to drown it out. I checked with my gut to see if I had any compulsion to go one way or another on the Beltway, but I felt nothing. There seemed to be a lot of brake lights going east, so Steph chose to go west, and I tried to let my mind drift.
As I’d already established numerous times, it’s hard to get your mind to drift on command, especially when a sense of urgency is riding you. I found myself overanalyzing every minute sensation, every stray thought, every person, place, or thing that caught my eye. My mind bounced around like a hyperactive toddler on a sugar high, and the more annoyed I got at myself for not being able to knuckle down and concentrate, the harder it got for me to knuckle down and concentrate. Or not concentrate. Whatever.
After a fruitless half hour of driving in silence, I was climbing the walls and squirming in my seat with frustration. And that was when we hit the traffic.
I didn’t know whether refraining from talking was necessary, especially since the silence didn’t seem to be helping me, but I bit back a couple of curse words as I caught sight of the brake lights ahead and our car slowed first to a crawl, then to a stop. It was six thirty on a Sunday night, but I’d run into traffic snarls on the Beltway at two in the morning, so I wasn’t entirely surprised. Irritated, yes, but not surprised.
Steph glanced over at me as the traffic eased forward about six inches before coming to a stop again. “Anything?”
I shook my head and wondered if we should just give up. We weren’t getting anywhere—literally or figuratively—and being stuck in stop-and-go traffic is about as much fun as having a root canal.
“Maybe we should just take the next exit and call it a night,” I said. To hell with my vow of silence.
Steph gave me a withering older-sister look. “You aren’t seriously planning to give up after a half hour on the road, are you?”
We’d actually been on the road almost an hour, because the mansion wasn’t particularly close to the Beltway, but I supposed that wasn’t really very long in the grand scheme of things. Both Steph and I had understood that this would be a long, tedious night.
I shook my head. “Sorry. That was frustration talking. I can’t seem to get my mind to shut up so I can zone out.”
Steph shot me a droll smile as she propped her elbow against the window and laid her head down on her hand, waiting for the next opportunity to inch forward. “If anything can make your eyes glaze over, it’ll be this traffic. Now hush and get back to work.”
I hushed as ordered, and tried once again to let my mind wander. I spent more time than I care to admit mentally cussing out the traffic, wondering what the holdup was. My guess was an accident with rubberneckers, but if I was right, it was far enough away that we couldn’t see any flashing lights yet.
Roll forward. Stop. Roll forward. Stop. Roll forward . . .
I can get pretty damned keyed up sometimes, particularly when I’ve been dipping into the coffee too much, but eventually the monotony of the drive got to me. My mind drifted a couple of times, but I unfortunately noticed it drifting, which yanked me back into full alertness. But it took me less time to start drifting, and I figured I was going to either get myself into the zone or fall asleep.
I blinked, and saw that not only were we not stuck in traffic anymore, we weren’t even on the Beltway. I shook my head to clear the cobwebs.
I remembered thinking—dreaming?—that I was in a hedge maze, trying to find my way to the center. I’d mumbled to myself each time I got to an intersection and had to decide which way to go. I remembered a sense of urgency pressing on me, telling me to hurry. I’d started out walking, then switched to jogging, then to an all-out run. It was . . . clearer and more coherent than an ordinary dream, but fuzzier than just a flight of imagination. I honestly had no idea if I’d been awake or asleep.
The car came to a stop at a red light, and Steph turned to me with an inquiring raise of her brow. A couple of raindrops spattered on the windshield, and the trees swayed in a gust of wind. I leaned forward, staring up at the sky, but I saw no hint of the moon or of stars. The light turned green, and Steph drove through the intersection, continuing on straight, probably because I hadn’t told her to turn.
“Umm . . . Have I been giving you directions?” I asked.
Steph glanced over at me again. More raindrops spattered down, and she was forced to turn on the windshield wipers.
“Yeah,” she confirmed. “You’ve been kind of mumbling to yourself for a while. I thought you’d fallen asleep, only your eyes were open. Don’t you remember?”
I rubbed my eyes, but I knew I hadn’t been asleep. “I remember daydreaming, or something, about being in a hedge maze.”
I ran my hand through my hair in frustration. “Let me guess: the clouds rolled in, and that’s when I stopped giving you directions.” The rain came down harder as if to emphasize the point that I wouldn’t be getting any more moon-fueled hunches tonight.
“Yeah.”
I was so frustrated I wanted to kick something. If I’d been able to get into the zone before the rain had started . . .
“We wouldn’t have gotten here any faster if you’d started directing me earlier,” Steph said, guessing my line of thought. “We were stuck in traffic, remember?”
I made a sound of grudging acceptance. I knew she was right, but it didn’t make me any less frustrated. Two nights in a row, I’d been on Konstantin’s scent, and two nights in a row, I’d failed to find him. I was not the happiest of campers.
Steph and I drove around the area a little while longer, just to be thorough, but the rain had settled in to stay, and the moon wouldn’t be giving me any more help tonight. Our meanderings had taken us deep into the heart of D.C., and the most convenient way to get back to Arlington was to take Independence Avenue to the Arlington Memorial Bridge. I was staring out the rain-speckled side window, brooding about what a total failure this expedition had turned out to be. It wasn’t until we passed the Sackler Gallery that I snapped out of my funk and directed my mind toward another of the many problems on my plate.
To be fair, I shouldn’t have been thinking of Jamaal as one of my problems. I wasn’t his girlfriend, was barely even his friend anymore. And he was a grown man, responsible for his own issues. But I couldn’t help wondering if his almost obsessive practice with Sita—and his decreasing ability to keep her controlled and contained—was a sign that his self-imposed isolation wasn’t good for him.
The new Indian art exhibit would be opening on Saturday, but I’d already determined that Jamaal would blow me off if I asked him to go see it with me. I needed a stronger temptation, something Jamaal couldn’t get on his own. I glanced sidelong at Steph, who was quietly concentrating on driving. Through her extensive charity work, Steph knew practically everybody who was anybody in the D.C. area. Her virtual Rolodex contained a veritable cornucopia of the rich, famous, and powerful.
I didn’t know how to bring up the subject gracefully, so I just blurted it out.
“Do you happen to know anyone who’s a big muckety-muck at the Sackler Gallery?” I asked.
We conveniently came to a red light, so Steph could turn in her seat and give me a long, puzzled look. “The Sackler? Why? Have you developed a sudden interest in Asian art?”
There was something too knowing in her eyes as she stared at me. My sister’s no dummy, and not only was she aware I had the hots for Jamaal—despite my repeated attempts to deny it—but she was also aware that he was the descendant of an Indian goddess. Even if I could have thought of a more innocuous-sounding reason for my interest, I didn’t think Steph would buy it, not when the look in her eye said she’d already put two and two together.
The light turned green, and Steph returned her attention to the road. I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. Steph disapproved of Jamaal almost as much as I disapproved of Blake, so asking for her help might not have been the smartest idea I’d ever had. However, I’d already committed to the course of action.
“There’s a new Indian art exhibit opening up next weekend,” I said. “I’d like to see if I can draw Jamaal out to go see it, but I know if I ask him, he’ll say no. I was thinking maybe you had a contact who could get us in for a private tour, maybe before the exhibit is open to the public. I think he’d have a much harder time saying no to that.”
Steph was silent for the next couple of blocks, and I forced myself to be quiet and let her think. If I tried too hard to persuade her, she might come to the conclusion that I was letting myself get too involved. Actually, she probably already thought that, but there was no reason to make it worse.
“Do you really think that’s a good idea?” she finally asked me.
I shrugged, trying to look casual. “It wouldn’t be that big a deal. Just a trip to a museum. But I think Jamaal needs to get out of his own head for a while.
“That’s your professional opinion, eh?”
I bristled, but managed to refrain from making an angry retort. “It’s my opinion as a fellow human being.” I didn’t think telling Steph about Sita’s walkabout was going to incline her to see things my way, though it was that more than anything that convinced me Jamaal needed more human contact. “We’re not meant to be solitary creatures. Or didn’t they teach you that in psych class?” Steph had been a psych major in college, although she’d chosen not to pursue a career.
She raised an eyebrow at me. “No reason to get testy.”
“I’m not!” I protested, though I knew I was.
Steph ignored me. “If I have to listen to you telling me Blake isn’t good for me, then you have to listen to me telling you that Jamaal is bad news for any woman.”
I slumped in my seat. I thought I’d been getting better, refraining from editorializing about Blake, but maybe I hadn’t. “You don’t listen to me about Blake,” I pointed out.
“That doesn’t stop you from sharing your opinion.”
“When was the last time I said anything to you about him?” I honestly couldn’t remember. I’d bitten my tongue more times than I could count.
“You don’t have to say anything to make your opinion clear. All I have to do is take one look at your face when I’m talking about him.”
I glanced out the side window to orient myself, hoping we were almost at the mansion so I could escape this conversation. No such luck.
“I’m doing my best to keep my opinions to myself,” I said. “That doesn’t mean I don’t have opinions, and I can’t just turn them off like a light. Sorry.”
Steph’s hands had tightened on the wheel, and I hated the tension that radiated from her. She was a genuinely nice, good person, and she deserved to be happy. Ever since I’d become Liberi, I’d been dragging her down, and I wished I could make things better. But I knew Blake was bad for her. Eventually, they would both get tired of a relationship that didn’t include sex, and then one of two things would happen: either Blake would sleep with her, thereby tying her to him for the rest of her life, or he’d dump her, breaking her heart. Neither of these alternatives was acceptable.
“I just want you to stop treating me like a child who’s not capable of making her own decisions. I’m twenty-seven years old, and I don’t need your guidance.”
“What do you want me to do, Steph? Stop caring about you? Stop worrying about you? That isn’t reasonable.”
“Oh, but it’s reasonable for you to ask me not to care that you’re falling for Jamaal?”
“I’m not falling for him!” I snapped, which probably cemented her opinion that I was. I took a deep breath to calm my temper. Steph had seen me make a lot of bad relationship decisions over the years, and I couldn’t blame her for trying to warn me away from what she saw as just one more. I took a second deep breath just for insurance, then continued in what I hoped was a calmer, more reasonable tone.
“Jamaal is a different story. I live in the same house with him, and unless the Olympians turn over a new leaf and decide to live and let live, I’ll be stuck with him for the rest of my life. And in case you’ve forgotten, I’m immortal.” Despite already having come back from the dead once, those words sounded almost laughably absurd. I supposed I’d get used to it someday, but that day sure hadn’t come yet. “It’s in my own best interests to try to help him, because I have to live with him either way, and he’s not good to live with right now.”
Everything I said was true, but it wasn’t really the reason I wanted to help Jamaal, and we both knew it. Steph tapped her fingernails against the steering wheel, but the gesture seemed more restless than angry. Maybe we were making progress.
“Why does it have to be you who tries to help him?” she asked, and I decided we weren’t making progress after all. “Why don’t you let Anderson handle it? He’s supposed to be in charge, right?”
It was a perfectly reasonable question. Anderson had certainly known Jamaal longer than I had, and Jamaal respected him a hell of a lot more. But I didn’t think Anderson or any of his Liberi could connect to Jamaal the way I did. Our lives and backgrounds were completely different, and yet there were unmistakable similarities between our emotional landscapes. I knew what it was like to feel isolated, to hold everyone at arm’s length and be completely self-sufficient. Anderson could see Jamaal’s outward behavior, but he couldn’t understand it like I could.
Of course, if I told Steph any of that, she’d read a whole lot more into it, and things felt rocky between us already.
“Anderson is too much of a guy to be much help,” I said, and it was the truth, even if it wasn’t the whole truth. “But he does have money up the wazoo, so maybe he’ll have some contacts that can get me into the Sackler. I’ll ask him about it tomorrow, and we can pretend we never had this conversation.”
There was a long silence, and then Steph shook her head and sighed. “Don’t bother. I know one of the trustees, and I can probably arrange something.” I started to thank her, but she cut me off. “You can thank me by laying off me and Blake. What we do or don’t do is our business, not yours. You’ve more than done your sisterly duty in trying to warn me, and you need to back the hell off.”
I swallowed a protest. I had backed the hell off. Hadn’t I? But maybe I needed to try harder.
“Okay, fine. It’s a deal,” I said.
Steph didn’t respond.
The rest of the ride passed in silence.