“It’s not too late unless you want it to be,” I said.
“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, so shut the fuck up.”
F-bombs from Jamaal were a dime a dozen, so I wasn’t particularly surprised by his response. I also couldn’t help noticing he still hadn’t tried to pull his arm from my grip. There was a battle going on inside him, a battle between the part of him that wanted to avoid all human contact to prevent being hurt and the part that was desperate not to be alone anymore. It was a battle with which I was intimately familiar.
“I know exactly what I’m talking about, and you know it,” I countered. “I know exactly what it’s like to be abandoned by someone I love, and I know exactly what it’s like to build up that suit of emotional armor so—”
Jamaal jerked his arm, the motion making me stumble forward, right into his chest. I expected him to shove me away, so what he did next shocked me.
His free hand plunged into my hair, grabbing a handful and pulling my head back. I started to gasp out a protest, but before a sound escaped me, his mouth crashed down on mine.
He smelled of cloves and smoke, with a sweet overtone of pot. His braids tickled my face and throat, and his lips …
This was not a soft kiss, not a kiss inspired by tender emotions and affection. This was rage and pain, loneliness and frustration, and, most of all, fear. His lips pressed against mine so hard I half expected them to fuse. My mouth was open from my interrupted protest, and he thrust his tongue inside.
I won’t lie and claim I wasn’t a bit turned on. There was no question I was attracted to Jamaal, had been even when he’d hated me and wanted to kill me. He was beautiful and exotic and dangerous, all of which made him sexy as sin. Desire stirred in my belly as his tongue brushed against mine. I wanted to shut off my brain and return the kiss, press my body up against his. I wanted to take him upstairs and get him out of his clothes, see if his body was as beautiful as his face.
But this was wrong on so many levels. Jamaal and I didn’t even like each other, and I’d never seen any sign before now that he shared my attraction. He was violent and dangerously unstable, and he was kissing me because he wanted to shut me up—although I had to wonder why he hadn’t just pulled free and slammed into the house.
I tried to pull away from the kiss, but Jamaal wouldn’t let me. His hand was still buried in my hair, strands wrapped around his fingers as he tasted the inside of my mouth. I put my hands on his chest and pushed, but I might as well have tried to move a tank. He pressed me closer to his chest, close enough that I could feel the impressive bulge in his pants. He might be doing this just to make a point, but he wasn’t completely unmoved by it.
His scent filled my head, blurred my mind. His taste threatened to overwhelm me, and his touch threatened to make me forget why I should be stopping him. But I’m nothing if not stubborn, and I held on to my reason with desperate strength. This was not a battle I could allow him to win.
I pressed my teeth gently against his tongue in warning. Of course, he ignored the warning. I pressed a little harder, silently begging him not to make me hurt him, but he was well beyond being warned off.
Wincing in anticipation, I bit down hard enough to draw blood.
Jamaal’s mouth jerked away from mine, his hand in my hair tightening to painful levels before he suddenly let go. His chest was heaving with his breath, and his eyes were dilated with lust. If he weren’t using this to cover up a whole lot of other, less savory emotions, I might have found the expression on his face smoking hot.
I opened my mouth to force out an apology for biting him but swallowed it before any words escaped. He’d deserved it and was lucky I hadn’t done anything worse.
“Leave me alone,” he said hoarsely, shoving on my shoulders so hard I almost fell on my butt. “I don’t need your interference.”
Instead of seeking refuge in the house, Jamaal ran past me, jumped down the porch steps, and sprinted toward the garage. I guess he was afraid that if he ran into the house, I’d follow him.
FIFTEEN
Even though Jamaal had shut me down in no uncertain terms, I decided to do a little research on Kali, to see if there was an animal associated with her that perhaps Jamaal could try to use to make his death magic take physical form. I’d already seen evidence that animals associated with the gods had real significance when it came to Liberi. I couldn’t be sure the doe that had led me to find Emma had been supernatural in nature, but it seemed a bit of a stretch for it to be a coincidence that Artemis is often pictured with a deer by her side. It all seemed a little whimsical and perhaps not at all useful, especially if Jamaal refused to try anything, but arming myself with knowledge couldn’t hurt.
Let me tell you, Kali is one hell of a scary goddess, and I wouldn’t want to meet her in a dark alley. She isn’t evil—despite some of the really nasty cults that had sprung up in her name—and most of the stories about her involve her killing demons, not people. Still, when you’ve got a goddess who’s often depicted standing on a dead body and wearing amputated body parts for jewelry, it’s hard to feel much in the way of warm fuzzies. I did notice that she was often associated with tigers. Perhaps Jamaal already knew that, but I decided that the next time I saw him, I’d try to work the fact into the conversation. Assuming the embarrassment of what had happened this morning didn’t make conversation impossible.
I was trying to figure out what to do next when the lights suddenly went out.
It was broad daylight, and while the windows in my sitting room were a little small for my taste, they let in plenty of light. However, when the lights went out, my room was suddenly pitch dark, like someone had switched off the sun.
My adrenaline spiked as I reached up to rub my eyes, not believing what I was seeing. Or, more accurately, what I wasn’t seeing. But rubbing my eyes didn’t suddenly make everything better. No matter how much I blinked, the room remained dark.
The hairs on the back of my neck rose, and my breathing shallowed. I’m not afraid of the dark, but this was something else entirely, and it reminded me far too much of being dead. I forced myself to take a deep breath, forced myself to acknowledge that I had a body and that it was following my orders. I wasn’t dead, no matter how much the empty blackness made me feel like it.
Slowly, I rose from my chair as I mentally mapped out the room and tried to keep myself oriented. If I was careful, I should be able to make it to the door and out without falling over anything.
As I stood there hesitating, wondering if the whole house was draped in this unnatural darkness, I heard the faint sound of my door swinging open. No light poured in from outside, and I wondered if I’d suddenly gone blind. Maybe it was some lingering effect of the super-rabies. I grabbed the back of my chair, needing an anchor as panic skittered around the edges of my mind.
The door clicked shut. I was no longer alone in the room.
I closed my eyes and tried to pretend that was the only reason I couldn’t see. I could still try a run for the door, but I had no idea who’d just come in, and whoever they were, they could well be in my way. Besides, the fact that I hadn’t seen any light from outside when the door opened made the prospect less appealing.
“Who’s there?” I asked, but I wasn’t surprised when there was no answer.
I was seriously creeped out, my skin crawling, but I was also getting just a tad pissed off. Especially as a suspicion crept into my mind about just who might be behind the unnatural darkness.
Who in this household didn’t like me and was a descendant of Nyx, the Greek goddess of night?
My fingers began exploring the surface of my desk, looking for something that would make a useful thrown weapon. Something other than my laptop, which I’d never dream of risking.
The most weighty thing I found was my empty coffee mug, and I hefted it experimentally. It wasn’t exactly a lethal weapon, but it was all I had. Plus, I’d once taken out Jamaal’s eye with a thrown shoe, so ordinary objects coul
d be more dangerous than they looked when I wielded them.
My blood rushed in my ears, the only thing I could hear in the hushed silence of the room. I closed my eyes again, straining my ears for the slightest hint of movement, anything that would help me target the intruder.
There! Something that sounded like the brush of a shoe over carpet.
With a grin that was probably a less-than-attractive expression, I heaved the coffee mug in the direction of the sound, letting my body make the toss on autopilot. I might not understand how my supernatural tracking abilities worked as well as I’d like, but I did understand my miraculous aim.
There was a distinctive thump as the coffee mug hit its target, followed by a cry of pain and surprise. Another thump, sounding like a body hitting the floor. And then the lights came back.
I had to blink in the sudden brightness, but it hadn’t been dark long enough for my eyes to adjust fully, so I wasn’t blinded for long.
Emma was sprawled inelegantly on my floor, and I could practically see the stars and chirping birds circling as she blinked and shook her head. A thin trail of blood snaked down her face from her temple, and I might have felt bad about it if she hadn’t been sneaking into my room to terrorize me. My coffee mug lay in pieces on the carpet around her.
I took a couple of steps to my right and grabbed the hardback book that was sitting on a nearby chair, in case Emma decided to object to my treatment and go ballistic. I hadn’t hit her hard enough with the coffee mug to knock her out, but the book felt heavy enough to cave in the side of her head.
“How nice of you to come pay me a visit,” I said, hefting the book dramatically in case she didn’t get the hint.
She shook off the lingering effects of the blow to the head and glared up at me. She pushed herself into a sitting position.
“If you’re going to stand up,” I said, “do it real, real slow.” I held up the book for emphasis.
The look she leveled on me then was pure malevolence. “I’ll make you pay for this.”
“For what?” I cried in exasperation. “You’re the one who attacked me.” Though I supposed, strictly speaking, making the room go dark wasn’t exactly an attack. I was sure she’d had more on her mind than just a little optical illusion.
Moving at a normal pace, as if the book in my hand didn’t worry her for a moment, she stood up, touching the blood on her face. “I did nothing to you,” she snarled, staring at the blood on her fingers. “And you drew my blood.”
“Oh, cut the crap, Emma. I don’t know exactly what you were planning on doing, but I know it wasn’t anything good.”
She wiped her bloody hand on her shirt, leaving a crimson smear. Scalp wounds bleed like a son of a bitch, even when they aren’t deep.
“I came here to apologize, and this is how you treat me?”
My mouth dropped open in shock as for half a second, I thought she meant what she said—no matter how loudly her actions contradicted her. Then I saw the sly smile on her lips and realized she was already crafting her own version of this story. A version that would make me look like the aggressor. Once again, she wiped blood from her face and then smeared it on her shirt, making her look like she’d just left a war zone. The small wound on her forehead might fade before she tattled on me, but the blood on her shirt would not.
The bitch had played me.
I shook my head, hating that I’d stepped right into her trap. Anderson should know me well enough to know I wouldn’t just pitch something at Emma’s head for no reason; however, he had an obvious blind spot where Emma was concerned. If she told him I’d attacked her, there was a chance he’d believe her, no matter how outlandish the claim. If he believed her, things could go very badly for me.
“What the hell, Emma?” I asked as my stomach dropped to my toes. “If it hadn’t been for me, you’d still be down at the bottom of that pond.” I’d long ago given up on the romantic idea that she might be grateful to me for her rescue, but for her to hate me so much …
“Oh, thank you sooo much,” she said, oozing sarcasm. “I’m so glad I get to be around and watch you throw yourself at my husband while talking him out of avenging me. I will owe you for all eternity, and you can treat me like your bitch whenever you want.”
Throwing myself at Anderson? I couldn’t think of a single thing I’d done that any halfway reasonable person would even think of labeling “throwing myself” at him. And did she honestly think I could talk Anderson out of anything? As for treating Emma like my bitch, I’d done my best to keep my distance from her from the very beginning. I barely spoke to her at all, if I could help it.
Obviously, the woman was delusional. But knowing that didn’t help me.
“You need professional help,” I told her. “You’re being completely paranoid and irrational. And whatever problems you and Anderson are having, you should be working it out yourselves, not dragging me into the middle of it.”
The cut on Emma’s forehead had stopped bleeding and was probably well on its way to healing completely. But the streaks of blood on her shirt would look very damning if Anderson was prepared to take her story at face value.
If she heard a word I said, she didn’t acknowledge it. Instead, her eyes filled with cunning, suggesting that as crazy as she was, she still had enough wits about her to be dangerous.
“I won’t tell Anderson what you did to me,” she said. “On one condition.”
I did not like the sound of that. Nor did I like her self-satisfied tone and gloating expression. It told me she was sure she’d won.
I wished I could be sure Anderson would be rational, would realize I wasn’t the type of person who would just attack his wife out of nowhere. Maybe he would, but maybe wasn’t good enough, not with a man who had threatened to kill me on more than one occasion. And even if he did believe me, he might decide this was evidence that Emma and I couldn’t live in the same house together, and I was damn sure she wasn’t the one who would be asked to leave.
“What condition?” I asked through gritted teeth.
“Make no effort to catch Justin Kerner until after Konstantin is dead. Lead everyone on a merry chase, pretend you’re trying your hardest. But stay away from him. Do we have a deal? Or should I go speak to Anderson right now?”
I seriously considered throwing the book at her in hopes that another blow to the head would jar some sense loose. I didn’t do it, but I’m sure my face conveyed the message of how much I wanted to.
“All I’m asking for is justice,” Emma said earnestly. “Konstantin deserves to die. And Kerner has sworn he’ll stop killing civilians. It’s like the gods themselves dropped a solution to the Olympian problem straight into our laps!” Her voice was steadily rising with her excitement, but she seemed to notice and pull back. She was nuts, but not so nuts as to not realize how nuts she was making herself sound.
“Anderson refuses to declare war on the Olympians because he’s afraid some of his people might get hurt if he does,” she continued more calmly. “But if we just let Kerner take care of things himself, there won’t have to be a war. I don’t know why Anderson refuses to see that.”
There was a certain amount of logic to what Emma was saying. If I could be certain Kerner would only kill Konstantin, I might even have agreed with her. I’m not the bloodthirsty sort as a rule, but I did want Konstantin dead. Maybe the rest of the Olympians deserved it as much as he did. But no matter what, my conscience couldn’t swallow the idea of standing idly by while who knows how many people got torn apart by phantom jackals. I just didn’t have it in me to let that happen when I could possibly stop it.
Emma didn’t like my hesitation. She plucked at her bloody shirt. “I’m asking you to do the right thing,” she said while fixing me with a cold glare. “But if you refuse, I’ll tell Anderson you attacked me. Believe me, I’ll make it very convincing. After all, I’m his wife … and you’re just some stray he picked up from the street.”
I tried not to let her see that she’d scor
ed, but I must have flinched or something, because she smirked. “Oh, yes. Anderson will toss you back out on the street without a single regret, and you and your sister will both lose his protection. How long do you think the two of you will last before Konstantin finds you?”
Dammit, she’d just scored again. I felt the blood draining from my cheeks and could do nothing to stop it. Emma’s eyes practically glowed with satisfaction.
“Do you want me to describe in graphic detail what Konstantin likes to do with pretty female captives?” Her lip curled. “You he wouldn’t touch, but I bet he’d make you watch while he—”
“Shut up!” I shouted, trembling with rage. Steph had already suffered terribly because of me. My conscience would hate me for letting a crazed serial killer continue his reign of terror, but I refused to put Steph at risk again.
“Okay, fine, you win,” I growled. “I’ll lay off Kerner until Konstantin is dead. But someday, this is all going to come back and bite you in the ass. And I’ll be there to see it.”
Emma smiled at me, so smug in her triumph that I wanted to slap her.
“I’m glad we could come to an understanding,” she said, then frowned down at the bloody shirt. “I guess I’ll have to go change my shirt. But don’t worry; I’ll keep it nice and safe somewhere, in case I should ever need it.”
She waited for my response, but when there was none forthcoming, she sighed in satisfaction and sauntered out of my room.
I’m not a big drinker, but after what had just happened, I felt that a little alcohol was in order. I found an open bottle of Chardonnay in the fridge downstairs and brought the whole bottle and a wineglass back up to my suite. I hadn’t even eaten lunch yet, but that didn’t stop me from pouring a glass immediately.
What was I going to do about Emma? Sure, I was caving to her demands, and that would appease her for the moment. However, I had just established my willingness to be bullied, and that was a terrible precedent to set. Not to mention that my reaction to the threat to Steph had amply demonstrated where my weak spot was.