will get whoever’s been setting the fires to stop?”
Cyrus shook his head. “I can’t promise it will stop. If I’m wrong and my father’s behind this, he might not listen to me. But I will warn all of my people off, and if anyone acts against you after my warning, then they’ll be disobeying my direct orders. I’m not as much of a hard ass as my father, but I will not tolerate disobedience.” He leaned forward and looked back and forth between me and Anderson. No charming smiles this time, and the look in his eyes said that he was dead serious. “And let me make this perfectly clear: if you go after my father, all bets are off.”
“What if he sets another fire after you warn him off?” I asked.
“Then I’ll have to conclude I’m a gullible idiot and declare open season on him. But that’s not going to happen, because he’s not behind this in the first place.”
Anderson leaned back in his chair and didn’t say anything. I didn’t for a moment think he was going to let Konstantin go for my sake, at least not in the long run. He would have his revenge, one way or another. But he would have to find a new way to convince me to find him if the agreement with Cyrus worked out. That was a problem for another day.
Both Cyrus and I were looking at Anderson expectantly.
“What?” he asked. “I’ve already agreed to let him be. Do you need me to agree again?”
“Yes, I think I do,” Cyrus said, and I think he was as skeptical about Anderson’s agreement as I was. After all, he’d already sort of caught me on the hunt after Anderson and I had both agreed to leave Konstantin alone.
“All right,” Anderson said. “I’ll say it again. Neither I nor any of my people will harm Konstantin as long as he is an Olympian, and as long as he commits no acts of aggression against us. Satisfied?”
“I guess I am.” Cyrus didn’t sound convinced, and I didn’t blame him. “Shall we shake on it?”
A round of handshaking followed. This time, Mark didn’t even try to participate.
I returned home from our meeting with Cyrus more than a little unsettled. I couldn’t shake the feeling that although Anderson had raised no objection, I had made a tactical error in promising Cyrus a hunt. The fact that I’d specified no violence made me feel marginally better, but I imagined there were any number of ways Cyrus could twist my promise into something I’d later regret.
I was so worried about what I might have gotten myself into that I went looking for Blake, whom I usually preferred to avoid. The door to his suite was ajar when I arrived. I rapped on it as I pushed it open and stuck my head in, but apparently Blake didn’t hear me, because he didn’t look up. When I saw what he was doing, I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or to gape in shock.
He hadn’t heard me knock because he was wearing earbuds, his head nodding along to whatever was playing on his iPod. He was sitting on his couch, one leg tucked under him, as he concentrated intensely on the pair of knitting needles he was holding. I couldn’t tell what he was making—he only had about four or five inches of fabric so far—but the yarn was a thin, silky-looking crimson, and the little bit he had done was almost lacy. He executed some complex maneuver with the yarn and needles, his forehead creasing with the effort, then came to the end of his row and let out a sigh of what sounded like satisfaction.
If you had asked me what Blake did in his spare time, I’d have put knitting somewhere at about 1,001 on the list of possibilities. He wasn’t as macho as guys like Jamaal and Logan, but despite his pretty-boy looks and his onetime romance with Cyrus, he’d never given me the impression that he might be the sort to engage in such a stereotypically feminine pursuit.
“What are you making?” I asked, loud enough that Blake could hear me over whatever was playing on his iPod.
He jumped and practically dropped his needles. He’d been concentrating so hard that I doubt there was any way I could have made my presence known without startling him, but I gave him a sheepish smile anyway.
“Sorry,” I said, as Blake pulled out the earbuds and laid his knitting carefully