Rogue Descendant (Nikki Glass) - By Jenna Black Page 0,27

know I don’t want to get on Emma’s bad side, and she wouldn’t want me spoiling the surprise.”

“Bastard.”

“Sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up in the first place. Suffice it to say that she’s made it clear to me that you’re not her target. And what I said about Konstantin still stands. If you or any of your people harm him, it’ll be a declaration of war.”

I was too sick with dread to keep talking. “I understand,” I said, and hung up the phone.

It was hard to go back to my morning routine when I got off the phone with Cyrus, but I gave it my best shot. I drank my coffee and scrolled listlessly through the news, not really reading anything, just sort of skimming and making a show of it. As if by going through the motions of acting normal, I could actually be normal. But it was damn hard not to obsess, both about who was responsible for the fire, and about what hell Emma was going to release on Anderson in the near future.

When something finally did capture my full attention, it was an ad, of all things. There was a new exhibition opening at the Sackler Gallery next weekend. I’m not a huge fan of museums—thanks to umpteen million school trips in this museum-filled metropolis, and aided by the necessity of taking every visiting relative and friend of the family on museum tours—and normally, I wouldn’t even notice an ad like that, or care what exhibitions were in town. But since I’d set my sights on mending my fences with Jamaal . . .

You wouldn’t think to look at him that Jamaal was into museums, not with the testosterone that fairly oozed from his pores. Ask your average manly man if he’d like to go to a museum, and he’ll look at you like you suggested he wear a tutu in public. But there was nothing average about Jamaal, and the one and only time I’d been in his suite I’d noticed an impressive collection of museum catalogs displayed on his bookshelves. Not to mention the crowning glory of his sitting room, which was a tiny Indian painting of the goddess Kali, from whom he was descended. It was a bona fide work of fine art, dating from the seventeenth century.

The new exhibition opening at the museum was of Indian art, and I’d bet anything Jamaal would want to go. Maybe I should tell him I was planning a visit and invite him to come along.

Yeah, like Jamaal would make it that easy.

I had about a half hour to make and reject a number of plans to coax Jamaal out of his shell before Emma and her malice drove every other thought out of my head.

SEVEN

The window of my sitting room looks out over the front of the house, so when a candy-apple-red sports car wended its way down the long and twisty driveway, it caught my eye. I’m not enough of a car nut to guess what it was, except that it was probably something Italian and obscenely expensive. No one in this house drove anything so ostentatious, and I made an educated guess that Emma was behind the wheel, dropping by for the visit Cyrus had warned about.

I told myself it was none of my business, and that I should stay up in my suite, as far away from the impending fireworks as possible. But after Cyrus’s advance warning, my stomach was tied up in knots wondering what terrible thing Emma had done. Whatever it was, whatever Anderson’s faults, I was sure he didn’t deserve it, not from her. He’d done everything he could to take care of her after we’d rescued her, had made excuses for her and forgiven her outbursts well past the point of being reasonable. She was the one who’d walked out.

My feet carried me to the door before I’d consciously made the decision to go downstairs. I was probably being stupid. My presence was likely to throw gasoline on the fire, and though I considered Anderson a friend, of sorts, we weren’t close enough to justify me sticking my nose into his marital difficulties. But of course I kept heading downstairs anyway.

Anderson was waiting in the foyer when I reached the landing above the first floor. He was standing straight and tall, his arms crossed over his chest and his gaze focused on the front door. Emma had to have called him to let him know she was