Rogue Descendant (Nikki Glass) - By Jenna Black Page 0,19
“I told you Konstantin would strike out, and he has. Let’s not go looking for complex explanations when a very obvious and simple one exists.”
That clanking sound I heard was the doors of his mind slamming shut. I would have argued with him more if I thought there was a chance I could convince him, and if I thought for sure Emma really was the culprit. I was certainly willing to entertain the possibility, but I had to admit that for the moment, Konstantin had to take center stage as the prime suspect.
“I don’t have any clue how I’ll find him,” I said, cursing my annoyingly mercurial power. My ability to find people is based on supernaturally fueled hunches, but it’s hard to tell the difference between an honest-to-goodness hunch, wishful thinking, and random stray thoughts. “But I’ll get right on it. I still have that list of Olympian properties from when I was searching for Emma. I doubt he’ll be on one, but I’ll start cruising by them one-by-one tonight.”
For the most part, I didn’t truly understand how my powers worked. It would probably take years of trial and error before I had any real confidence in them. But it did seem they worked better in the moonlight, which made sense because Artemis was a moon goddess as well as a huntress.
“The question then becomes, what do we do if I find him?” I gave Anderson a hard look. “I ran into Cyrus the other day, and he informed me that his father is still an Olympian and under their protection. He said he’d talked to you about it and you’d agreed to leave Konstantin alone.”
Anderson didn’t bother trying to act like he felt guilty about his tacit deception. “I gave him that impression, it’s true. And if there’s any way we can eliminate Konstantin without Cyrus having to know we’re responsible, that’s how we’ll do it.”
I shook my head. “If you kill him and he disappears off the face of the earth, everyone’s going to know you were behind it.”
“Not true. Only you know what I can do. As far as anyone else is concerned, I can’t kill Konstantin unless I have a Descendant around to do my dirty work, and I don’t. As long as we leave no evidence that can be traced back to us, Cyrus will have to assume that one of Konstantin’s other enemies got to him. An Olympian enemy, because, believe me, those exist.”
I did believe him about Konstantin having enemies within the Olympians. There were probably plenty of them who’d chafed under his rule over the years. But I didn’t buy the idea that Anderson wouldn’t be suspect number one.
“Look,” Anderson said, leaning forward and clasping his hands on the desk, “Cyrus isn’t going to start a war unless he’s certain I’ve broken our treaty. Unlike Konstantin, he actually values people and would care if someone close to him got killed. It’s not something he’s going to risk unless he has to.”
I reluctantly had to admit that Anderson had a point. I knew Cyrus wasn’t as nice a guy as he pretended to be, but he wasn’t evil. After all, he was protecting his father out of loyalty—misguided though it might be—and that proved he cared about something other than himself. I didn’t know who else among the Olympians Cyrus cared about, but I did know he cared about Blake. And Blake could very easily get killed if we went to war.
“So what you’re saying is if I find Konstantin, I should keep my mouth shut to everyone else and only tell you. Right?”
Anderson nodded. “Exactly. I don’t mind everyone knowing you’re hunting him, because no one would believe you weren’t, after what happened. But if you find him, that has to be our secret. And I’ll take care of what needs to be done.”
I still didn’t like it, not one bit. But I’d gotten as much concession out of Anderson as I was going to, and I had to be satisfied with it.
FIVE
The rest of the day didn’t go a whole lot better than the beginning of it had. Steph called me to say the fire investigator had already declared the incident was arson. Whoever had set it had made no attempt to be subtle or try to hide the crime. Which made sense, considering the whole point of it was for me to know it was the start of Konstantin’s path to revenge.