Rogue Descendant (Nikki Glass) - By Jenna Black Page 0,17

his chair over to another computer and typing at high speed. But even so, I didn’t miss the pleased little smile on his lips.

I’m not particularly fond of admitting I’m wrong—who is?—but it seemed like the logical conclusion, given the evidence. Trying to catch Konstantin all by myself would be flat-out stupid, and it wasn’t like I could do anything to him if I caught him. Which meant I had to swallow my pride and tell Anderson I’d changed my mind about the hunt.

I was in a foul mood when I stepped into his study after a late breakfast I’d forced myself to eat in an attempt to counteract the ice-cream binge. I desperately wanted to catch Konstantin before his next attack, whatever that would be, but I wasn’t overly optimistic about my chances. I didn’t have much to go on, and since Konstantin knew he’d have a descendant of Artemis on his tail, he was no doubt going to be extra paranoid and careful about keeping himself hidden.

The icing on my grumpy-pants cake was the sympathy the rest of Anderson’s Liberi had thrown my way. Blake had apparently spread the word after Steph’s visit, and my friends/coworkers had paraded through my suite to offer their condolences. I had to endure a long, motherly hug from Maggie, who was so sweet my misfortune brought a sheen of tears to her eyes; an awkward visit from Logan, who was too much of a manly man to know how to express his sympathies comfortably; and an even more awkward visit from Jack, who, with his trickster heritage, had trouble being serious for more than two minutes in a row.

Only Jamaal failed to put in an appearance, and that hurt me though it probably shouldn’t have. He was even less comfortable with expressing feelings than Logan. But I couldn’t help taking it as even more evidence that whatever friendship we had started to build together had been destroyed, either by my willingness to leave, or by our tentative foray into romance. I wished I knew which.

Anderson was sitting at his desk when I ventured through the open door of his study. I had the immediate impression he’d been waiting for me, though perhaps that was egocentric of me. He spent a lot of time in his study, and it was always the first place to check when I wanted to look for him.

I didn’t know what Anderson generally did all day while he was sitting around in his study, but this morning, he was reading the newspaper. I hadn’t read a real, printed newspaper since I was a kid clamoring for the Sunday comics, but Anderson was a bit of a traditionalist. Not surprising for a god who’d been around since the dawn of time, I suppose.

He folded the paper when I came in and laid it down on his desk. His fingertips were stained gray from handling newsprint. He was badly in need of a haircut, and I wished he’d either learn how to iron or start buying no-iron shirts. But looking like an unprepossessing slob is part of his disguise, part of how he hides the enormous power that lies just beneath his surface.

“I’m sorry to hear about your house,” he said, beckoning me to one of the chairs in front of his desk. There was no hint of “I told you so” in his voice, and he looked genuinely sorry.

If one more person told me how sorry they were, I was going to scream. Unless that person is Jamaal, I mentally amended.

The sympathy—I refused to think of it as pity—sat heavily on my shoulders, and I practically collapsed into the chair. I wanted to maintain some semblance of dignity, but the weight of it all was getting to me, and my throat tightened like I was going to cry.

It was just a house, dammit. A thing, an object. Something that could be rebuilt. It had been empty when it burned down, and no one was hurt. That was all that mattered. I swallowed hard, trying to push the irrational grief back down inside. The Glasses and Steph had a right to grieve over the loss of their home, but it had never really been mine to begin with. So why did I suddenly feel like someone had just died?

Anderson rolled one of his desk drawers open and pulled out a little pop-up box of tissues, setting them on the edge of the desk within easy reach. “Just in case,” he