For a moment, I thought Anderson was going to bite my head off for being a wuss. There was certainly a dangerous spark in his eye. But the spark faded quickly enough, and he reached up to scrub a hand through his already unkempt hair.
“It’ll be a last resort,” he promised me. “Only if we can’t get Phoebe to talk without … shaking her up. In which case, we have to make sure the goon doesn’t kill anyone.”
Anderson may have reined in his anger, but my own blood pressure was starting to rise. “You mean only if you decide she needs to be tortured?” None of this was what I had in mind when I pictured the “good guys.”
“If you don’t like it, then suggest something better. I don’t know how else to get the information we need, unless I can guilt her into talking for Konstantin’s own good, which I’d say is about a fifty-fifty shot. So, what would you have me do instead?”
Of course, he had me on that one. I didn’t know whether anything Phoebe told us could possibly lead us to the killer before he struck again, but I was pretty damn sure we weren’t going to find him if we didn’t get more info. I’d been able to predict which cemetery he’d show up at last time, but if he realized that running into another Liberi out for a casual stroll in the cemetery at night was more than a freaky coincidence, he might change his pattern.
No matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t find a moral high ground. If we weren’t willing to press Phoebe for details, then we were most likely condemning some other poor bastard to die a horrible death, to put his family through untold misery. I could only imagine what it felt like to have a loved one not only killed but torn to shreds and partially eaten, as the previous victims had been.
“Time’s a-wasting, Nikki,” Anderson said. “Let’s hear your suggestion.”
But I couldn’t come up with one. “I hate this,” I said instead, feeling sick to my stomach.
“Let’s not sweat it too much yet. It’s possible Phoebe will cooperate, and then none of this will matter.”
But it would matter, whether it came to pass or not. Because I knew that given the choice, I was willing to stand by and let the evil happen, and that revelation scared the ever-living crap out of me. I liked being a bleeding heart. It proved that my difficult childhood hadn’t destroyed my ability to empathize with others and that empathy made me feel less isolated. My willingness to go along with Anderson’s plan suggested that I might be starting down the road to losing that empathy, and I didn’t like what that said about me or what it portended for the future.
I offered to help Anderson clean up the mess in his office, but he declined, which was probably just as well. My feelings were a bit too jumbled to survive prolonged contact with him, at least for the moment.
I really wanted a cup of coffee but wasn’t willing to risk running into Emma, so I went back to my room instead. I didn’t have any plans for what to do with the rest of my day as I waited for word from Anderson that Phoebe was on her way, but when I stepped into my sitting room, I found myself glancing over toward the coffee table, where the manila folder containing my adoption records had been sitting unopened since Steph had brought it to me.
My intention wasn’t to start delving into my past. But I did a double take when I saw that the folder was lying open on the table. I knew for a fact that I hadn’t opened it. Steph had probably done it when I was ill, hoping to draw me to it.
Mouth dry, I approached the table cautiously, as if I thought the folder were about to fly up and bite me.
There was a substantial stack of papers in the file, and the one on top appeared to be a chronological list of all of the families I’d fostered with. I told myself to shut the file and have done with it, but instead, I found myself sitting down and picking up the list. There were two more sheets stapled to the first, and I was amazed to see how many different homes I’d had in the seven years before the Glasses had taken me in. I’d never bothered to count before.
Two and a quarter pages of names and addresses. Some of the families I’d stayed with so briefly that I didn’t even remember the names, couldn’t conjure up a picture of my foster parents’ faces. In the beginning, I’d gotten my hopes up each time I was moved that this would be my permanent home, that I would find the stability and love I so desperately craved. Then the disappointments mounted up, and all hints of optimism faded.
I’d brought it on myself, of course. After my mother’s abandonment, I’d become a total hellion, bound and determined to make everyone else as miserable as I was. I’d lied, I’d cheated at school, I’d shoplifted—if it got me into trouble, I did it. And then, each time a family gave up on me, I felt validated in my conviction that no one loved me, that every home was temporary, that security and stability were myths.
Maybe I should start researching my past, if only to find all of the foster parents I’d tormented and apologize for the hell I’d put them through. Sure, there were some apathetic losers in the bunch, ones who returned me like defective merchandise and didn’t give a shit about anything but their own inconvenience, but I was sure I’d driven some of my foster mothers into tears of despair. Despair they didn’t deserve.
How the Glasses had seen past all that I had no idea. If I’d been in their shoes, I’d have sent me away in a heartbeat. But they were better people than I, and I loved them so much for what they’d done for me that my throat ached with it.
My body had gone on automatic pilot the moment I’d set eyes on the folder, and I hadn’t even bothered to close my door. When someone knocked softly on it, I jumped and hastily slammed the folder closed, as if I’d been looking at porn or something. When I looked up to see Jamaal standing in my doorway, I felt something akin to panic stir in my chest. I couldn’t deal with him right now, not when seeing the history of my childhood had scraped my nerves raw.
He came in without waiting for an invitation, closing the door behind him. I meant to tell him to go away and leave me alone, but I couldn’t seem to force myself to talk.
Jamaal didn’t say anything as he dropped into the love seat. At least he was leaving the sofa to me, giving me some space. But something about the way he looked at me was too knowing.
“You looked at this, didn’t you?” I asked as I dropped the folder back onto the coffee table, wishing I’d never laid eyes on the damn thing.
He’d changed the beads at the ends of his braids, I noticed. They’d been white last night, but today they were all in shades of brown and amber. A bright white T-shirt—so new it still had fold lines on it—made his skin look darker than usual. There was an artful tear across one knee of his jeans, and he wore unlaced combat boots.
“It was lying here open,” he said, no hint of apology in his voice. “I was curious.”
“It was none of your business!” I said between gritted teeth, surprising myself as much as Jamaal.
He tilted his head like a curious dog. “I really didn’t mean anything by it. I thought it might be your file on the case when I first saw it.”
I sucked in a deep breath and told myself to get a grip. There was no reason to be ashamed of my background, and there was certainly no reason for me to snarl at Jamaal. Not after he’d been so nice to me last night.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, too stubborn to apologize.
“Checking on you.”
“As you can see, I’m fine. And why do you need to check on me, anyway? You hate my guts.”
God, could I sound any more like a whiny child? But knowing he’d seen the file had catapulted me straight into ultradefensive mode, and I wished he’d just go away.
“I do?” he asked with another of those head tilts.
It was true he hadn’t been acting like he hated me anymore. His feelings for me had certainly run to hatred when I’d first come to the mansion, but the more he came to accept that I wasn’t an Olympian spy—and the more control he gained over himself—the milder his opinion had seemed. That didn’t mean he liked me, though. He’d certainly never been anything remotely like f
riendly toward me before.
“Just leave me alone, okay? I’m not feeling real chatty right now.”
He settled deeper into the love seat, studying me. I refused to let myself squirm under his gaze.
“I spent almost fifteen years trying to track down my parents,” he said, and something inside me shifted.
The knot that had been steadily tightening in my stomach relaxed. Not all the way but enough that I could take a full breath, that I could let go of some of the almost unbearable tension.
Jamaal wasn’t looking at me anymore. He was tugging at a loose string at the torn knee of his jeans, studying it with the intensity of a surgeon at work, which told me just how uncomfortable his own admission had made him.
I spoke carefully, afraid I’d spook him. “Did you find them?”
He shook his head, still fidgeting with the string. “I found my father’s grave, but I never did find my mother.”
A lump formed in my throat. His voice was perfectly calm and level, but I heard the pain in it nonetheless. I’d always felt a certain amount of kinship with Jamaal, had never been able to condemn him for the things he’d done. I’d sometimes worried that I was seeing similarities that didn’t exist, that I was making excuses for him based on my own experiences, when his own actually bore no resemblance to mine. But now I wondered if some hidden part of me had known all along that Jamaal and I had a lot in common.
“I’m sorry,” I said, though the words were lame and useless.
One corner of his mouth tipped up in a bitter smile. “I’m not. If I’d found them, I probably would have killed them, and I’d have regretted it eventually …” he said. “Guess that sounds terrible. But it took me years to get the death magic even slightly under control. When I was searching for my parents, I didn’t know how to fight it yet, and it didn’t take much to set me off.”
I tried my best not to be judgmental. I had no idea what Jamaal had been through, had no idea what it felt like to have this malevolent force residing within me, eating at my self-control. Still, as angry as I was at my mother for abandoning me, I couldn’t imagine killing her if I ever found her.
“And you think your parents would have set you off?” I asked, because the question seemed relatively neutral.
“My father, almost certainly. My mother …” He thought about that a moment, then let out a grunt of disgust. “She’d have started defending my father, and that might well have pissed me off more than I could handle. I shouldn’t have started looking for them in the first place.”
Obviously, he hadn’t been abandoned as a small child. He knew his parents—enough to despise them.
I’d been lost in my own funk when Jamaal had appeared in my doorway, but curiosity was quickly getting the better of me, kicking my family woes to the background as I tried to figure out how to keep Jamaal talking. Talking wasn’t generally one of his strong suits.
“How did you get separated from them?” I asked, hoping the question wasn’t too direct.
Jamaal’s eyes met mine and locked on. “I’ll tell you, if you tell me what happened to you.”
The quid pro quo surprised me a bit. He made it sound like I was secretive about my past, which I wasn’t. Sure, I’d gotten a little touchy about him looking at the file, but that was because I didn’t like having my privacy invaded. And because looking at the file myself had put me on edge.
Of course, while I might not make a big secret of my past, I didn’t exactly volunteer information about it, either. Everyone in this house knew I was adopted, but that was about it.
Maybe I made a big secret of it after all and had just never noticed. I wasn’t always a pillar of self-awareness.
“My mother abandoned me in a church when I was four,” I said. “I don’t know who my father was or why he wasn’t in our lives. And my mom made damned sure no one would be able to identify me or tie me to her when she dumped me.” It was about as bare-bones a version of the story as I could tell, but as the words left my mouth, I realized that I had never told even that much before.
My usual response to questions about my childhood? I’d say I was adopted and then change the subject. So this was progress for me.
I thought Jamaal might press for details, but he settled for giving me a knowing look. Then he fulfilled his part of the bargain, doing a much more thorough job of it.
“My mother was a slave,” he said, and I stared at him in shock. Obviously, he’d been dealing with his death magic for longer than the “couple of decades” Anderson had said. “My father was a white man. Her owner.” He bared his teeth at the word, and I couldn’t blame him.
“My father was married to a woman named Matilda, and she couldn’t have children. When I was born, Matilda had no idea I was her husband’s son, and I became the child she’d always wanted but could never have. She and my father both doted on me, spoiled me way more than my mother could. They treated me like a member of the family, not a slave. I honestly didn’t understand that I was a slave. I loved them, and I thought they loved me.
“Then, when I was eight, Matilda found out her husband was my father. I think he confessed in a moment of guilt. She totally lost it. Couldn’t stand the sight of me or my mother anymore. She told my father he had to choose between us and her. And he chose her.
“My father sold my mother and me, and our lives went straight to hell. Neither one of us realized how good we’d had it at my father’s house. We’d been blissfully ignorant of what life was like for the average slave.
“I was sold again when I was ten, separated from my mother. I never saw her again. And I have no idea what happened to her. But I bet she died still making excuses for my father, for what he did to us. She never once blamed him for giving in to Matilda’s demands. And the stupid bitch felt sorry for Matilda!”
There was anger on Jamaal’s face—fury, even. But even more prominent was the deep, abiding hurt. He’d been betrayed by everyone he loved. Even his mother’s sympathy for Matilda was a betrayal, since it was Matilda who’d caused them to be sent away.
I had no idea what to say. Jamaal’s story made my own hellish childhood seem practically ideal. Was it any surprise that he and anger were such great friends? He’d probably have been a powder keg even without the addition of the death magic.
There was a long, awkward silence as I floundered for something to say. Maybe if it had been someone other than Jamaal sitting there, I might even have been able to find something. But let’s face it, he was capable of scrambling my wits at the best of times, and this wasn’t the best of times. Still, I had to say something, couldn’t just sit there like a moron.
“I can’t even imagine …” I started, but couldn’t figure out where to go from there.
What was the matter with me? I wasn’t the type to get all tongue-tied like this.
But you’re also not the type to have personal conversations, I reminded myself. Steph had told me once that I tended to avoid intimacy, and I didn’t think she was off base.
I cleared my throat. “I can’t for the life of me think of anything to say,” I told him, deciding to settle for complete honesty. “Why did you decide to tell me this?”
His shoulders rose in a hint of a shrug. “I was wrong about you. I know you’re not an Olympian, and I know you didn’t kill Emmitt on purpose. I treated you like shit, and then I left you alone to face a madman with a pack of rabid jackals. I owe you more than a little. If you need any help tracking down your birth mother …”
The offer made my eyes sting even as my emotional barriers flung themselves into place. “You don’t have to do penance.”
“Maybe I’m just using your search as a way to relive my own, preferably with a different outcome.”
“I haven’t even decided for sure whether I want to go looking or not.”
Jamaal pushed himself to his feet, and I suspected he was giving me a condescending look, though I didn’t have the courage to check.
“Well, when you decide to go looking,
let me know.”
He said that like he was sure he knew which decision I was going to make. I didn’t like him making assumptions and might have told him so, except he was already on his way to the door.
“By the way,” he said before he left, “you’re the only one I’ve told. Everyone else thinks I’m only about fifty. I don’t want sympathy or pity, and Anderson won’t be happy if he finds out how much I haven’t told him, so I hope you’ll keep a lid on it.”
I was too choked up—and too confused by everything I was feeling—to do more than nod.
TWELVE
Phoebe waited until it was almost dark before she finally hauled her ass over to the mansion to talk to Anderson. He asked Blake and me to wait in his study, because he’d suggested to Phoebe on the phone that he would be meeting with her alone. I guess the rest of us hadn’t made a very favorable impression the last time she’d dropped by.
Blake and I had both sat in chairs against the wall on the near side of the room, where the open door would block Phoebe’s view until she was fully inside. The choice was not coincidental. Her eyes widened in surprise when she saw us, but she wasn’t the only one with a surprise in store for her.
Phoebe’s goon—whom no one had ever bothered to introduce—we had expected, but Blake was obviously as surprised as I was when Cyrus followed the goon in.
Blake raised his eyebrows. “Who invited you?”
The words were confrontational, but his tone didn’t quite match.
Cyrus grinned. “I invited myself,” he said as Anderson closed the study door behind him. Cyrus’s grin faded. “Though perhaps that was a miscalculation.”
Phoebe turned to Anderson with a narrow-eyed stare that was probably meant to be intimidating. It’s hard for petite blondes to be intimidating.
“What are they doing here?” Phoebe asked with a curl of her lip. “You told me—”
“I know what I told you,” Anderson interrupted. “But we really need to sit down and have a serious conversation. One that involves you telling the truth.”