“I didn’t disobey you! I swear to you, I’m being framed. That bitch probably set the whole thing up to try to get me out of the way.”
My jaw dropped open. Even now, when I was the only one in the room trying to save her life, Emma was trying to stick it to me. If I’d had any sense, I would have washed my hands of her right there and then. Surely there was a straw that broke the camel’s back somewhere in her ravings.
And yet they really were ravings. I’d always thought of her irrational behavior like it was some kind of character flaw, but maybe instead of hating her and being angry with her for her behavior, I should have been trying to get her to seek professional help. Maybe if she’d been put on meds shortly after she’d emerged from the pond, she wouldn’t be what she was today.
“It’s not fair to blame her for being crazy when it was your own father’s decade of torture that made her that way,” I told Cyrus, deciding it was best to ignore Emma’s wild accusation. “You always said you were sorry for what he did to her. Prove it!”
“What caused her to do it is irrelevant. I told her what would happen if she disobeyed me, and she did it anyway. I might have spared her if Anderson were willing to claim her as his own again, but that seems not to be the case.” He raised an inquiring eyebrow at Anderson, who shook his head.
I was still scrambling for an argument that might work. I supposed I could try throwing something at Mark and giving Emma another chance to run for it, but I couldn’t risk breaking the treaty. If my choices were to let Emma die or to trigger a war we couldn’t win between us and the Olympians, I had to let Emma die.
I practically jumped out of my shoes when Blake put his arm around my shoulders, giving them a firm squeeze while whispering in my ear. “There’s nothing you can do, Nikki.”
“Proceed,” Cyrus said to Mark.
Emma started making gasping, gurgling sounds, and I saw that Mark’s forearm was across her throat, muscles bulging as he choked her. Emma kicked and flailed, but she was no match against Mark’s brute strength.
“You could stop it,” I hissed at Blake. He could use his power to distract both Cyrus and Mark with uncontrollable lust. That might interfere with their plans, but it wasn’t technically breaking the treaty.
“I suspect it would annoy Anderson almost as much as it annoyed me if you tried it,” Cyrus said to Blake. I guess my whisper hadn’t been as quiet as I’d thought.
“Don’t even think about it,” Anderson said. He was looking at Emma now, and his face wasn’t quite so impassive anymore. His Adam’s apple bobbed a couple of times in quick succession. Emma’s lips were turning blue, and her struggles became even more frantic.
“You don’t have to do this,” I said lamely, my eyes blurring with tears. Yes, I was crying over the impending death of a woman who’d tried to have me buried alive.
“Yes, I do,” Cyrus answered, showing no signs that he felt any regret over ordering Emma’s death. “You’d better grow a thicker skin if you’re going to hang around with Liberi for the rest of your life.”
If Blake hadn’t clamped his arm around my shoulders harder, I might not have been able to resist the temptation to go slug Cyrus. I’d reminded myself time and again that he was one of the bad guys.
After today, I knew I would never forget it again.
Cyrus didn’t chortle or rub his hands together with glee as someone like Konstantin might have done, enjoying the suffering of others. But his callous indifference was almost worse. At least if he’d reveled in it, it would have told me the death of a fellow human being actually meant something to him.
Emma went limp in Mark’s arms. Unlike Cyrus, he looked like he was having a great time, but then he was in the process of becoming Liberi, stealing Emma’s immortality so that he could live forever himself. I guess that could be quite a rush for someone who was raised believing in the Olympian ideal.
Mark didn’t let Emma’s body fall to the floor until long after she stopped moving.
Before that awful day when my car crashed into Emmitt and changed my life forever, I’d never once seen anyone die. On the way back to our car, I tried to figure out how many people had died in front of me since I’d become Liberi. The fact that I had to think about it before I could be sure freaked me out.
There was Emmitt, of course. Then there was Alexis and his two cronies, who had died when Anderson and I rescued Emma from the pond. There was Justin Kerner, and one of his victims, whom I’d tried unsuccessfully to save. And now there was Emma. That brought the death toll up to seven, if you didn’t count the two times I’d seen Jamaal executed. Seven permanent deaths witnessed over the course of two months.
But today’s was the worst of all. I’d seen Anderson be ruthless before. I knew he had it in him. He was the son of a Fury, for God’s sake. But Emma was his wife. Okay, ex-wife, though they hadn’t exactly filed for divorce in a court of law. The principle was the same. He had stood there and watched her die when he could have saved her.
I kept having to dab at my eyes as we made the silent walk from Cyrus’s house to the garage where we had parked. Anderson was stone-faced, staring straight ahead as he walked. When we reached the car, Anderson pulled the keys out of his jacket pocket and handed them to Blake.
“I’m not fit to drive,” he said. His voice was gravelly, and for the first time I noticed the rim of red around his eyes.
It made me feel a little better to know that Anderson was hurting after what he’d done. I don’t know if I could have borne it if he’d been as indifferent as he’d pretended to be while we were at Cyrus’s. Maybe he’d just been trying to hide his true emotions in front of the enemy.
“It had to be done, boss,” Blake said as he took the keys.
A glint of anger flashed in Anderson’s eyes. He’d called for Emma’s death himself, had stood idly by while Mark killed her, but apparently he didn’t like the implication that she’d needed to die. “You never did like her, did you?”
“There are a lot of people I don’t like, and only a couple of them I’d like to see die. Emma wasn’t one of them. But she wasn’t right in the head, and she was getting worse over time instead of better. I just wanted you to know I thought you did the right thing.”
Blake gave me a look that held both warning and reproach, probably worried I was going to argue, but what would be the point? I’d made my position clear already. Anderson was obviously suffering—as he had been almost from the moment we’d pulled Emma from the pond and he’d seen what she’d become. I wasn’t going to give him an “atta boy” like Blake had, but I wasn’t going to kick him while he was down, either.
Anderson nodded a thank-you at Blake, then climbed into the back of the car. The ride home was even longer and more miserable than the ride out had been.
TWENTY-ONE
I felt far from social when we returned to the mansion, so I made a beeline for my suite and locked the door behind me. A long, scalding-hot shower failed to erase my memories, and my mind was stuck on a continuous loop, replaying Emma’s death over and over again.
Was there something I could have said or done to save her? Some way to convince Anderson or Cyrus that it wasn’t fair to hold an insane woman responsible for her actions?
In some traditions, when you save a person’s life, you then become responsible for that person. It was a cruel, capricious universe that made my rescue the first step on Emma’s path to destruction. In a fair world, Emma would have come out of that pond sane and healthy. Maybe her marriage to Anderson would have dissolved anyway—from what I’d heard, their marriage had already been on shaky footing when Emma was kidnapped—but she would not have fixated on me, nor would she have run off to join the Olympians to spite Anderson.
It burned me somewhere deep inside that I had rescued Emma only to have her die while Anderson looked on.
Because I wasn’t feeling wretched enough already, my mind insisted on dangling my conversation with Maggie in front of me, the conversation during which Mag
gie had suggested that Emma’s jealousy wasn’t entirely misplaced. No matter how I looked at it, I still saw no sign that Anderson was interested in me that way, but then maybe I didn’t know where to look. Maybe I just didn’t know Anderson well enough yet to pick up the cues. And maybe if I had picked them up, I’d have been able to find some way to discourage him, and then—
My thoughts were spiraling out of control, and I knew it. Logic told me in no uncertain terms that Emma’s death was not my fault. I’d done everything I could to prevent it, and I had absolutely nothing to feel guilty about. But logic was a cold comfort, and despite my attempts to distract myself and stop thinking about it, I was brooding myself into a deep, dark funk.
I tried everything I could think of to occupy my mind with something else, but Emma’s death loomed over me like a massive shadow blocking out the light of the sun.
And then, as I sat on my couch with my computer on my lap and clicked from one website to another, looking for my magic potion of forgetfulness, I clicked by the page where I’d seen the ad for the Indian art exhibit at the Sackler, and I remembered the mixture of comfort and passion I’d experienced in Jamaal’s arms last night, before he’d pulled away from me yet again.
Jamaal had a way of occupying my mind like nothing else in the world did, and as I closed my eyes and tried to remember every touch and caress, every word, every scent, every sound, the rest of the world seemed to fade away. He was such a hard, angry man, and yet his lips were deliciously soft, his hands gentle. I shivered in remembered pleasure, wishing I had kept my wits about me and not touched his scars.
How would things have worked out if I hadn’t made that crucial mistake? If Jamaal were an ordinary man, I knew exactly where things would have led, but Jamaal was anything but ordinary, and there was more than just his scars holding him back.
I was very aware that I was reaching for a distraction, looking for an excuse to end my self-imposed isolation, but it occurred to me that Jamaal had probably gone back out to the clearing to practice with Sita this afternoon once I was safely out of the house. There was good reason to think she might be a bit cranky today after our aborted attempt at romance. I wondered if there was any chance she would take her anger out on Jamaal if I wasn’t around. The thought sent a chill of alarm through me.
Was my sudden concern nothing but a big, fat rationalization, an excuse to fling myself at Jamaal when he’d made it clear he thought we should maintain our distance? Yes. But I didn’t care. I needed a distraction, and Jamaal was the biggest, best distraction I could imagine.
It was a little after eleven at night when I rapped on Jamaal’s door. It didn’t occur to me until after I’d knocked that some people like to get a full night’s sleep and go to bed at a reasonable hour. I had the vague impression that Jamaal was a night owl, but I didn’t have much evidence to support it.
If he didn’t answer the door, should I assume he was asleep? Or should I worry that my fears were more than a flimsy rationalization and Sita had hurt him?
Luckily, I didn’t have to make that decision, because the door opened, and Jamaal stood there in all his manly glory, looking good enough to eat.
He hadn’t been in bed yet, or he wouldn’t have gotten to the door so fast, but he had changed into a pair of plaid pajama bottoms topped with a wife-beater. Instinct told me he wore the top to cover his scars, even in his sleep, and the thought made me hurt somewhere deep inside.
“What do you want?” he asked curtly when I just stood there in his doorway staring at him.
If I’d come down just because I was worried Sita might have hurt him, I could turn around and go back to my room now. He was obviously fine. Besides, he was blasting out keep-away vibes so hard I couldn’t possibly miss them.
“Did you practice with Sita while I was gone today?” I asked, instead of acting on the unsubtle message.
Jamaal sighed and rubbed his eyes like he was tired. I didn’t think he was. I didn’t feel like standing in the hall, so I pushed past him into his sitting room. The door to his bedroom was open, and I could see that the covers on his bed had been neatly pulled back. Jamaal was the kind of neat freak who makes his bed every day, so I knew this meant he’d been about to turn in for the night.
“Go to bed, Nikki,” Jamaal said, a hint of pleading in his voice.
“Tell me what happened with Sita. Was she pissed off because of last night?”
Jamaal looked like he wanted to strangle me. Once upon a time, I’d have been intimidated by that look, but not anymore. As long as he was in control of himself, he would never hurt me, and he was firmly in control. I crossed my arms and gave him my best stubborn, implacable look.
He closed his sitting room door. It wasn’t quite a slam, but it was close.
“Yes, she was pissed off,” he said.
“Did she hurt you?” If she had, he was okay now, but that didn’t stop my blood pressure from rising at the thought.
He rolled his eyes. “Of course not. But she tried to go looking for you even though I told her you weren’t in the house.”
That didn’t sound good. “Maybe she didn’t understand you.” I still had trouble wrapping my brain around the idea that Sita understood anything people said to her. How the hell did a tiger learn English?
I shook my head at myself. I had to stop thinking of Sita as a tiger. That was the form she took, but that wasn’t what she actually was. She was magic, and who knew what her limits were?
“She understood,” Jamaal said grimly. “I wasn’t sure she wasn’t going to pick on someone else to punish me, so I put her away. You have to keep your distance, Nikki. It’s not safe to be around me.”
I heard the hint of bitterness in my own laugh. “I think safe is a thing of my past. In the last couple of months, I’ve been beaten, bitten, kidnapped, murdered—twice!—and threatened with fates worse than death. I doubt I’ll ever feel safe again.” I shivered, suddenly chilled by my own recap of what I’d been through. I was lucky I wasn’t as insane as Emma by this point.
Jamaal took a step toward me, and I think he was planning to give me a hug, but he stopped himself and clenched his fists at his sides.
“The closest I’ve come to feeling safe,” I continued, and this time I took the step forward, “was last night when I was in your arms. When you kissed me, I forgot the rest of the world existed.” I reached out to touch his chest. The fabric of his shirt was thin enough that I could feel the ridges of his scars beneath it. I looked up into his eyes. “I need to forget for a while. Please.”
“It’s too dangerous,” Jamaal said, but he didn’t move away from me, and his eyes were dark with desire. “Sita—”
“Is going to have to learn to live with it. And if she can’t, then you’ll just have to go back to coping with your death magic the old-fashioned way. You managed to do it for a century before her.”
His face hardened. “If you can call what I did ‘managing.’ You remember that long list of bad things that have happened to you? Who was it who beat you?”
I’d thought Jamaal had forgiven himself for that. Apparently, I was wrong. “Even when your temper flared, you wouldn’t have done that to one of your friends,” I said. “You thought I was the enemy. Look, I don’t like it when you go off like a powder keg, and I know fighting the death magic made you miserable, but if using Sita to vent it means you have to live your life in complete isolation from the rest of us, then it isn’t worth it. I’d rather deal with your temper.”
Jamaal shook his head. He opened his mouth to argue, but I reached up and put my fingers on his lips to stop him.
“You deserve to have a life,” I told him, caressing the fullness of his lower lip with my thumb as I closed the last remaining distance between us. Almost against his will, he put his arms around me. There was a look very like fear in his eyes, and I was determined to extinguish it. I raised up on my tiptoes and kissed him, and a small sound of need escaped me.
“This is a bad idea, Nikki,” he
said against my lips, but the sexy rasp in his voice and the way his hands gripped me tighter said he was in as much of a mood to be bad as I was.
I breathed deep, taking in his scent of smoke and cloves and something else I suspected was hair product. And underneath was the scent of him, of the man who could chase all other thoughts from my mind with the lightest brush of skin against skin, or even with the faintest hint of a smile. I slid my hands up his chest and looped them around his neck, pulling his head down toward me.
For all his protests, he didn’t resist. His lips came down on mine, and there was no longer room in my brain for anything but the taste of him, the feel of him against me. He was rapidly hardening beneath those soft flannel PJs of his, and I wished I were taller so I could grind something other than my belly against him.
Jamaal apparently had a similar thought, because his hands slid down my back to my butt and he boosted me up with casual strength. I groaned into his mouth and wrapped my legs around him, reveling in the feel of him. His tongue stroked mine rhythmically, and I grabbed hold of a double handful of his hair to remind myself not to let my hands wander. It was hard to remember anything at the moment, hard to think of anything but how glorious his lips felt as he kissed me.
My heart was already tripping along happily in my chest, but when Jamaal carried me through the sitting room and into his bedroom, I thought it might burst. I wanted him more than I wanted my next breath, wanted to lose myself in the sensations he sparked in my body, but I knew from past experience that I needed to keep some small section of my brain on-line and functional if I didn’t want to scare him off again.
Jamaal laid me down on the crisp white sheets of his bed, pushing the covers further aside without breaking the kiss. He came to rest on top of me, his lower body held in the cradle of my legs, which I kept wrapped around him. My hands yearned to explore, to tear away the clothing that separated us. I wanted to feel his skin, hot and slick against mine, but I didn’t dare make any overtures.