Rogue Descendant (Nikki Glass) - By Jenna Black Page 0,37

I didn’t think Anderson or any of his Liberi could connect to Jamaal the way I did. Our lives and backgrounds were completely different, and yet there were unmistakable similarities between our emotional landscapes. I knew what it was like to feel isolated, to hold everyone at arm’s length and be completely self-sufficient. Anderson could see Jamaal’s outward behavior, but he couldn’t understand it like I could.

Of course, if I told Steph any of that, she’d read a whole lot more into it, and things felt rocky between us already.

“Anderson is too much of a guy to be much help,” I said, and it was the truth, even if it wasn’t the whole truth. “But he does have money up the wazoo, so maybe he’ll have some contacts that can get me into the Sackler. I’ll ask him about it tomorrow, and we can pretend we never had this conversation.”

There was a long silence, and then Steph shook her head and sighed. “Don’t bother. I know one of the trustees, and I can probably arrange something.” I started to thank her, but she cut me off. “You can thank me by laying off me and Blake. What we do or don’t do is our business, not yours. You’ve more than done your sisterly duty in trying to warn me, and you need to back the hell off.”

I swallowed a protest. I had backed the hell off. Hadn’t I? But maybe I needed to try harder.

“Okay, fine. It’s a deal,” I said.

Steph didn’t respond.

The rest of the ride passed in silence.

NINE

It was still raining when I woke up on Monday, and a glance at the weather forecast showed me the rain was settling in for a lengthy visit. This did not increase my chances of hunting down Konstantin before he struck again, and I was tempted to drop-kick my computer for giving me the bad news.

I made another pot of coffee instead. Then I stretched out on the sofa in my sitting room with my laptop on my lap to make a show of keeping up to date with the news. I was brooding a little too much to read more than a couple of paragraphs here and there, and those only for the most interesting of stories.

My heart took a nosedive into my stomach when I saw the headline that read ARSON SUSPECTED IN CONDO FIRE THAT LEFT THREE DEAD.

There was no reason to think it had anything to do with me, but the words arson and condo jumped out at me like monsters at a horror movie.

My throat was tight, my every muscle taut, as I reluctantly clicked on the link to the full story. My breath whooshed out of my lungs when I saw the picture of a burned-out husk of a building. The roof had collapsed, and the brick facade was black as charcoal, but the shape of the building was familiar, as were the rows of granite planters that adorned the circular drive.

Without a doubt, it was my building.

Konstantin had struck again, and this time it wasn’t an empty building he’d burned.

My eyes were clouded with tears as I took in the horrifying details the article revealed. The fire had occurred around ten last night, while Steph and I had been riding around the Beltway in our fruitless quest. The three dead were a ninety-two-year-old woman who was apparently overcome by the smoke before she’d even gotten out of bed, a twenty-five-year-old single mother whose broken leg had hampered her attempt to escape, and the three-month-old baby she’d been trying to carry to safety.

All dead because of me.

I shook my head violently. No, it was because of Konstantin. I had to remember that, had to keep it front and center in my mind, or I would go crazy. I’d done nothing wrong, nothing I’d had any reason to believe would endanger innocent civilians. Konstantin had always made it clear that he valued humans about as much as he valued insects. It was his contempt and malice that was behind the deaths, not me.

All sound, logical reasons why I shouldn’t feel guilty about what had happened. And not one of them did a thing to lessen the guilt that sat heavily on my shoulders.

I read the article about four or five times, under the guise of getting all the details down, but I think I was mostly just flogging myself with them. Maybe if I’d done a better job on one of my aborted hunts, I would