Blood of Zeus (Blood of Zeus #1) - Meredith Wild Page 0,59

a devilish smirk toward my stack of research material. “Has a certain lady in vintage red inspired you to become a classic film buff, Professor Kane?”

“Sure,” I reply good-naturedly.

He scrutinizes my pile more carefully. “Wow. Are these all originals?”

“In one way or another, yeah. Some are just cast table-reading copies, but they’re all from the same years Valari’s scripts were produced into films.”

“Wow. I didn’t even know we had them up here. Guess they’ll be moved over to the new wing soon.”

“Guess again.”

“Huh?”

“Giovani Valari is estranged from most of the clan. It’s not exactly his choice, but given the circumstances of his past…”

“Right.” Jesse jogs his chin with a contemplative hum. “‘Circumstances.’ That’s tactful at least. Just like ‘estranged.’” He doesn’t ask about Kara’s relationship with her grandfather, for which I’m thankful.

He grabs a script off the stack, opens it, and starts flipping through pages. “You know, this one looks pretty intriguing. Hell to Pay. I don’t remember the film but feel like I should. I always thought Valari was best at spy thrillers and mafia dramas, but this one has enough pathos for the art film crowd too.”

“Jesse.” I look up as I say it, though my throat caps it.

“You think the movie was just an indie release? Back in the day, independent films didn’t have the same cachet as now. And this thing was written after all the drama with that starlet and her husband. Valari wasn’t such a hot property anymore. His daughter is the one who’s propelled the family name back up to—”

“Jesse.”

“What?”

“There are probably a few things you should know here.”

He turns the script over on the table as a way of saving his place. “This sounds serious.”

“Yeah.” I push my hands together as if to pray—wondering if that might not have been the best way to start the day as a whole. I rest my chin on top of my pressed fingers. “You, more than anyone else on this planet, know all about me. Right?”

A frown takes over his face. “You mean the two tons of parmesan cheese you like on your pizza? Or the fact that you save all the crusts and feed them to the neighborhood strays on your way to the gym? Or the darker stuff, like your strange obsession with Garfield memes?”

“I mean the stuff that’s a lot darker than that.” I say it fast for fear of not getting it out at all. “The reason I was able to do what I did to you. The reason why I’m able to do other…weird…things.”

He slides backward in his chair, leaving his sarcasm behind with the Hell to Pay script. “Why are you bringing this up now?”

“Because I think—I mean I’m pretty damn sure—that Kara might be like me.” I raise my hands and tunnel them into my hair. “And yeah, I know how crazy that sounds. And while it’s not completely the truth—”

“Then how much of the truth is it?”

He all but snarls the interruption. I don’t blame him. The guy will be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life because of what my abnormality made me capable of, and now I’ve dropped the bomb that I may not be the only superhuman freak in this world. Hell, in this city.

I look up. Ruefully shake my head. “She’s different, Jesse. She affects me differently. This can’t be a complete shock to you. You noticed it from the first night you saw us together. You were the one encouraging me to see where things went with her.”

“Because I thought she’d loosen you up a little, asshole. Get you out on a few real, normal dates. Walks on the beach. Miniature golf. Skydiving.”

I shove my elbows onto the table, which hunches my shoulders over. “This already feels like a free fall.” I cock my head back and palm my eye sockets. “And I don’t know where I’m going to crash.”

“Why don’t you just ask Kara?” he drawls. “She might know, yeah?”

“Because if the answer were simple, she’d have told me instead of dancing around the subject. And I wouldn’t be here reading movie scripts from forty years ago, praying for a single clue to the real answer.”

The answer that lies deeper than all that. I know it already. Hell, I see it every time my gaze locks with Kara’s. It’s in every agonized shadow she lets me see in her huge brown eyes. And it’s on full display when she’s furious or passionate, flaring to life in all those amazing,