Rogue Descendant (Nikki Glass) - By Jenna Black Page 0,14

have been forced to abandon a magnificent home and watch as my worthless son attempts to destroy from within everything I’ve built over my long, long life.

All of these indignities I’ve been forced to face, I can trace back to one person: you.

If you had joined the Olympians when I invited you, none of this would have happened. You and I could have lived harmoniously together, and we could have hunted down Justin Kerner without all the fuss and fireworks. Maybe if I hadn’t had to ask for Anderson’s help to stop Kerner, we could have captured and neutralized him before he killed Phoebe. Certainly we could have taken care of him quietly, in such a way that no one untrustworthy had to know about my lapse in judgment.

But you didn’t join us. Instead, you set yourself up in opposition, and you went out of your way to reveal every detail of what had happened. You cost me everything I hold dear, and I plan to pay you back in kind.

This morning’s little surprise was nothing more than a warning shot across the bow. I have much, much more in store for you. I know you’ll be hunting for me, and maybe you think you’ll catch me before I can fully realize my revenge. But I didn’t manage to become king of the Olympians and lead them for centuries without having an impressive bag of tricks at hand. I’m betting I can break you before you get to me. And if you think you can invoke your silly little treaty and get Cyrus to control me, you are gravely mistaken. I will do nothing to harm you or your family. Nothing that will officially break the treaty. Hurting you without breaking the treaty will be quite the enjoyable test to my creativity. And believe me, I am highly creative.

Be afraid, Nikki Glass. I am coming for you.

Yours, Konstantin

I read the email twice, hardly believing what I was reading. Konstantin blamed me for all his troubles? That was nuts.

I’ll admit, I’d certainly had a hand in his downfall. It was I who’d unraveled the mystery and found out why Justin Kerner was hunting the D.C. area. I’d discovered that his death magic combined with the taint of supernatural madness made him capable of killing Liberi, and that he wanted to kill them all—starting with Konstantin—for having forced him to take the tainted seed in the first place. I’d uncovered the fact that all of the Olympians could have been killed because Konstantin made a mistake, and that was what caused him to lose power. But that didn’t mean it was my fault.

I rubbed my eyes, which ached with a combination of weariness and lingering grief over my family’s pain. Why did every Liberi blame me when things went wrong in their lives? Jamaal had originally blamed me for killing Emmitt. Emma blamed me for the dissolution of her marriage, which I believed she was 100 percent responsible for herself. And now Konstantin was blaming me for his own screwup.

I had only met Konstantin once, and though he’d chilled me to the bone with his coldness and malice, I had never once suspected he was insane. But a vendetta of this magnitude did not speak of a man of sound mind. Maybe losing his place at the top of the totem pole had cost him his sanity as well as his power.

Whatever the reason, he was one hell of a dangerous enemy. And if he was coming after me, my life was going to get a lot more difficult very soon.

FOUR

It was still oh-God o’clock, and the sun hadn’t even begun to peek up over the horizon yet, but I was so wired on stress and chocolate ice cream that I didn’t put much consideration into other people’s comfort and routine.

I forwarded the threatening email to Leo, our resident computer expert. He was a descendant of Hermes, and had a Midas touch where money was concerned. He’d first started learning about computers so he could keep in constant touch with the stock market, but he’d taken to them like a duck to water, and his hacking skills were sometimes downright scary.

Leo’s rooms were down the hall from mine, and after I hit send, I scurried to his door and knocked. I figured the email I just forwarded needed an explanation, and it wasn’t until I’d knocked a second time without an answer that I realized what time it was, and that I