Dark Descendant (27 page)

Olympians have had interred for ten years. Why not give them a taste of their own medicine?”

There was a sense of poetic justice to the idea, except—

“If we bury him, somebody could dig him up someday just like we plan to dig up

Emma.” Assuming I could ever find her, which wasn’t looking too likely. “I never thought of

myself as bloodthirsty before, but I want that man dead.”

“And the world would probably be a better place without him.” Her voice softened. “But

Nikki, you aren’t a killer. I want Alexis to pay for what he did, but not at the price of putting a

black mark on your soul.”

I’d always suspected Steph was so damn nice because she’d had such an easy life. It’s

easy to be magnanimous toward others when everything is going your way, or at least that’s

what I’d thought. But here she was, being nice, worrying about the state of my soul after having

been through a trauma worse than any I’d experienced. Maybe her niceness had nothing to do

with her charmed life after all. Maybe it was just
her.

“You can’t possibly believe you’re the only woman he’s hurt,” I said instead of voicing

any of my true thoughts. “There’s not a question in my mind that he deserves to die.”
And killing

him would make me feel so much better.
Thought the woman who felt guilty about taking

Jamaal’s eye out. Maybe Steph had a point, but damned if I was going to admit it.

“So you’re going to turn vigilante? Use your superpowers to hunt down the baddies one

by one?”

She meant for me to respond to the vigilante comment—I guess it was supposed to shame

me into seeing things her way—but I didn’t want to argue with her, not now of all times. So I

deflected the question.

“You’re presuming I even have superpowers. I do seem to have acquired really good aim,

but the hunting/tracking thing has been a total bust.” Unless I counted finding the ring as part of

my ”superpowers,” but that hadn’t exactly turned out so well.

Despite her misery, there was a spark of interest in Steph’s eyes. I suppose learning about

the secret world that existed just beneath the surface of the ordinary one was a good way to

distract herself from her present situation.

“How is the power supposed to work?” she asked.

“Beats me,” I answered with a shrug. “I didn’t get an instruction manual.”

She gave me an exasperated look. “No kidding? What have you tried?”

I resisted the urge to give her another flippant answer. I couldn’t do near as much as I

wanted to help her, but I could at least talk to her and keep her mind occupied. “To tell you the

truth, I’m not really sure
what
to try,” I admitted. “I’ve approached the search just like I would if I were using my ordinary everyday skills and hoped I’d figure something out. So far, it hasn’t

worked. It’s not like I’ve suddenly developed a hound’s sense of smell or can tell which way

someone went by a blade of broken grass.”

Her brow furrowed in thought. “But you’ve always been good at finding things, even

when you weren’t
Liberi
. How did you do it?”

I waved her point off. “Yeah, I was good at it, but there was nothing supernatural about

it. Like you said, I wasn’t
Liberi
.”

“But it seems unlikely it’s a coincidence that you’re descended from a goddess of the

hunt and you’ve always been good at … well, hunting.”

“I suppose,” I said doubtfully.

“Remember that time back in high school when I lost my wallet?”

I frowned at the unexpected question. “Um, yeah. I guess.” When we were kids, Steph

had always been pretty bad about losing things, though it was a habit she’d outgrown. In fact,

she’d lost enough stuff that I wasn’t immediately sure which incident she was talking about.

“I was walking back from school and stopped at a coffee shop because a couple of my

friends were in there.”

I nodded, the memory sparking in my mind. “You got home and realized you didn’t have

your wallet. We retraced your steps back to the shop, assuming you must have left it there when

you paid for your coffee.”

“Right. Only it wasn’t there.”

We’d searched the place thoroughly, even asking the manager if we could look in the

trash cans in case someone had found the wallet, taken all the good stuff, and thrown it away.

We’d had no luck, and Steph had been in tears because she’d just gotten her first credit card. She

was afraid her mom wouldn’t let her replace it if she lost it so fast.

Steph was sure someone had stolen the wallet and it would never be seen again. That

seemed like a pretty logical conclusion, but I suggested that maybe she’d dropped it somewhere

between the coffee shop and home.

We started walking back home, scanning the pavement and the gutters, although Steph

wasn’t exactly holding out much hope. When we still didn’t find it, Steph gave up and went to

her room, miserably waiting for her mom to get home and scold her for being so careless with

her belongings.

On a hunch, I headed back out. I remember it was in the early spring, the kind of day

where you need a coat in the morning but it’s too hot to wear by afternoon. Steph had a habit of

absently stuffing things in pockets—it seemed like half the things she lost turned up eventually

in a pocket somewhere—and I thought it was possible she’d stuffed the wallet in her coat pocket

after paying for her coffee. Because it was too hot to wear the coat, she’d have been carrying it

over her arm, and it was possible the wallet had dropped out.

We’d checked the sidewalk carefully when we’d retraced her steps, but what if a Good

Samaritan had found the wallet? This was D.C., not the kind of place you could leave a wallet

lying around on the sidewalk for very long before someone helped themselves to it. That Good

Samaritan would have either taken it with them in hopes of finding the owner—which might be

hard, since the only identification in there was the credit card, and that gave nothing but a

name—or handed it in to the closest shop.

It seemed like a long shot, but I didn’t think it would hurt to check. Figuring the wallet

would have fallen out pretty close to the coffee shop, I went into the tiny little shoe store a

couple of doors down and asked if anyone had turned in a wallet—and wouldn’t you know it,

they had.

“How did you find that wallet?” Steph asked me.

“You know the story as well as I do.”

“Not really. I wasn’t inside your head, you know. Why did you decide to go into a shoe

store that you knew I hadn’t been in myself to look for the wallet I’d supposedly lost at the

coffee shop?”

“Well, uh, it just seemed logical is all.” But I had to admit, as sound as my logic had

been, the shoe store hadn’t exactly been a
likely
place to look.

“It was more logical to assume someone had walked off with it than to assume I’d put it

in my coat pocket, that it had fallen out close to the coffee shop, that a Good Samaritan had

found it, and that that Good Samaritan would turn it in at the shoe store. I’d given up, so why didn’t you?”

I shrugged. “It was just a hunch is all,” I said, unable to explain it better than that. I

cracked a smile that felt fragile and tenuous. “Besides, I was trying to impress my big sister, and

I wasn’t going to do that by assuming the wallet was gone for good.”

She returned the smile. “And do you have those same kind of hunches when you’re

searching for people that other investigators have been unable to find?”

“Well, yeah. But it’s really just thinking a little outside the box. I figure everyone’s tried

the most likely places already, so I try to come up with someplace less immediately obvious.”

“So have you had any hunches about where Emma is buried?”

I sighed. “Not really.”

“Do you think she’s buried at one of the properties you checked out?”

“Yeah, probably, but I have no idea which one.”

She nodded sagely. “There are a million other places she could be. What makes you think

she’s at one of those properties?”

I saw what she was getting at, but I was far from convinced. “It’s either a hunch, or it’s

wishful thinking because if she’s somewhere else, I’ve got nothing. And even if it is a hunch, and

even if my hunches are supernaturally fueled somehow, I don’t have it narrowed down enough to

matter.”

“Yet.”

I appreciated her faith in me, but honestly, I didn’t exactly feel hopeful. Would Anderson

still have his people protect Steph if I turned out not to be able to find Emma? The warm,

easygoing Anderson might, but I had my doubts about the cold, implacable leader who’d

presided over this morning’s tribunal. I told myself not to worry about that, but I didn’t listen.

“I hope you’re right,” I told Steph. I had no idea if Blake had told her that she was under

Anderson’s protection only because I’d agreed to search for Emma. Even if
I
couldn’t stop

worrying about what would happen if I failed, there was no reason why
Steph
should worry, so I

didn’t elaborate.

“Big sisters are always right,” she said with a grin.

I snorted. “You’ve been trying to convince me of that for years.”

“Can’t blame a girl for trying. Now I think it’s time for you to stop coddling me and get

back to work.”

If she weren’t so beat up already, I’d have given her a good smack on the arm for that.

“I’m not coddling you!”

“You’re hovering. I’m going to be fine. If I feel like I’m going to break down and need a

shoulder to cry on other than Blake’s, I’ll come find you, okay?”

I knew I wasn’t doing Steph any particular good by being at her bedside. Though I hid it

fairly well—at least I thought I did—every time I caught sight of the bruises on her face, I

suffered a hammer-strike of guilt. So I let her talk me into leaving her bedside no matter how

convinced I was that I should have stayed.

I spent the rest of my afternoon at the desk in my suite,
eyes glued to the computer

screen as I tried not to think too much. I looked over all the information I had on the Olympian

properties, searching for something I’d missed, something that might point me toward one choice

over all the others. I also looked for some subconscious hint that one was more likely to be

Emma’s gravesite, but discovered it was really hard to
look
for a subconscious hint. My

conscious mind kept yammering away at me, arguing logic and casting doubt, until I had to give

up or go mad.

Hoping to clear my mind, I decided to take a different tack and did some research on

Artemis. Maybe if I learned more about the goddess who was my ancestor—a concept I still had

trouble wrapping my brain around—I’d be able to figure out how to use the powers I supposedly

had.

I read through a lot of Greek and Roman mythology that afternoon, scouring the stories

for something that might hint at a secret power I was missing. The only thing that rang anything

like a bell with me was the fact that Artemis, aside from being a huntress, was also a goddess of

the moon. It made me wonder if any of her descendants’ powers were moon-based. If that were

the case, then perhaps I’d been making a mistake by doing all of my investigating during the

daylight hours.

I felt like I was grasping at straws. It seemed more likely that my newly enhanced aim

was my only supernatural power. Then again, it had seemed more likely Steph’s wallet had been

stolen, but I’d gone with my gut all those years ago and my gut had been right.

I can’t say I exactly got my hopes up. But I at least tried to keep something resembling a

positive attitude as I gathered the paperwork for some of the most likely properties and mapped

out a route I would travel tonight, after the moon had risen. A faint hope was better than no hope.

Whether Anderson would kick me out if I failed or not, my position here would still be stronger

if I somehow managed to find Emma. I would do anything in my power to strengthen my

position and protect myself—and Steph—from the Olympians.

TWENTY-TWO

Sunset officially came around
five that night, but it took half an hour more before most

of us were gathered in the kitchen, which was near the back door that would lead us to the

clearing where Jamaal’s first execution would take place. Everyone was in a grim, nervous

mood. Maybe I was being paranoid, but I felt like everyone except Maggie was giving me a mild

version of the cold shoulder. They might not have been all one happy family before I came

along, but they’d been a lot happier than they were now. I couldn’t blame them for holding me at

least partially responsible.

Someone had left a bunch of lanterns on the kitchen table—actual oil-fueled lanterns, not

the Coleman variety. I picked one up because everyone else did, lighting it with the

long-barreled lighter that was being passed around.

We were milling about, no one talking, when Logan stepped into the room.

“Head on out to the clearing,” he told us. “We’ll meet you there.”

“We” apparently referred to Logan, Jamaal, and Anderson, because the rest of us were all

present and accounted for. If anyone objected to being ordered around by Logan, they kept their

mouths shut. Still tense and unnaturally quiet, we filed out the back door.

When I’d first arrived at the mansion, Maggie had given me a thorough tour of the house,