Jenna Black - Dark Descendant

“The fact that Anderson would ‘lay hands’ on me if I did. He takes a pretty dim view of infighting.”

Again, there was that ring of truth. Plus, there was the fact that I couldn’t keep him at gunpoint forever. Reluctantly, I uncocked the gun and lowered my arm.

Blake let out a sigh of relief. “Just to clarify something: I made some threats to you at the diner, but I wouldn’t have followed through on them. I’d have used my aura to lower your inhibitions and get you to go with me, but I wouldn’t have taken advantage of it. I could do it to Alexis without my conscience uttering a peep, but that’s because I know exactly what he’s capable of. Rampant abuse of power is an Olympian thing.”

I wasn’t sure whether I believed him or not, but at least he wasn’t on the attack at the moment.

“So, if you like women, then why aren’t you interested in Steph?”

Once again, he blushed. It was almost cute. Emphasis on “almost.”

“I never said I wasn’t interested. It’s just …” He cleared his throat and looked at the floor. “As a descendant of Eros, I have certain … skills. If a woman has too much exposure to those skills, she’ll have a hard time being satisfied with normal men.”

I gaped at him. “I’ve heard men brag about their sexual prowess before, but you take the cake.”

“It’s not a boast, and I’d turn it off if I could. If I were an Olympian, it wouldn’t bother me to make a woman unable to achieve satisfaction with another man for the rest of her life, as long as I enjoyed myself. But I’m not an Olympian, and it would bother me. As far as sex is concerned, I will always have to be a one-night-stand kind of guy. That’s nothing to boast about.”

I’d never thought learning the guy who was dating Steph was into one night stands would be a relief. “If you decide to make Steph one of those one night stands, we’ll be having this conversation again. And I might find myself pulling the trigger by accident. Got it?”

Blake gave me a wide-eyed innocent look. “I got it. Now how about you and your gun do an about-face and get out of my apartment?”

By that point, I was happy to oblige.

I spent the nextcouple of days splitting my time between Internet research, locating every piece of Olympian property within driving distance, and doing some preliminary reconnaissance. Good old Google Maps let me get satellite views, and I weeded out the properties that didn’t look like they had convenient burial spots. Of course, for all I knew, Emma was buried under someone’s basement, but I figured I’d try the places with significant amounts of land first.

I did a series of drive-bys, hoping for some kind of supernatural X-Marks-the-Spot, but no such luck. I tried not to worry about what would happen to me—and to Steph—if I didn’t make any demonstrable progress soon. Jamaal wasn’t the most sociable of Anderson’s Liberi , so I didn’t run in to him often. But each time I did, his expression seemed darker, more full of accusation. And a little less sane.

One day, when I returned to the mansion after another round of fruitless drive-bys, I noticed that the potted plants on the porch were looking ragged and overgrown. Hoping that manual labor would shut down the gerbil wheel in my brain and help me Zen out enough to think straight, I decided to do a little impromptu gardening. Anything to escape the feeling of futility that kept trying to creep up on me.

I started off by plucking dead leaves, of which there were many. Shortly afterward, Maggie came out to join me. Without a word, she set to plucking leaves by my side. When I looked over at her, I saw a sheen of tears in her eyes.

“Maggie? Are you all right?”

She sniffed and nodded, a faint smile on her face. “Yeah. It’s just that these plants were Emmitt’s babies. Big, macho death-god Descendant that he was, he’d talk to them like he thought they’d talk back.”

I guessed that explained why they were starting to look ragged now that Emmitt was dead. “Should I keep my hands off them?” I asked, worried that someone would be offended at the idea of Emmitt’s killer touching his beloved plants.

“Emmitt would want them taken care of,” was her response, so we continued plucking.

There were several plants that needed pruning, and a couple that needed repotting. Possibly, I should have been using my time more productively, but I was enjoying the peace of playing in the dirt too much to quit. When Maggie dabbed at her eyes, I pretended to ignore it.

In the back corner, there was one plant that looked completely dead. I pulled the pot out of the corner, then looked up at Maggie’s gasp of dismay.

“Oh!” she said. “We should have brought that inside before the sleet storm the other night. I guess Emmitt was too busy killing himself to take care of it.” Her eyes looked all wet and shiny again.

I poked at the dead foliage, not recognizing the plant. “Maybe it’s just dormant and will come back in the spring.” I grabbed a pair of shears and started snipping, hoping to find something green and alive at the core. We’d only had one really cold night so far, so there was always a chance…

Maggie shook her head. “It’s a night blooming jasmine. They aren’t cut out for Virginia winters. It was Emma’s. And Anderson is going to be very unhappy if he sees it’s dead.”

I wasn’t finding any signs of life, but I kept snipping compulsively anyway, until I’d removed enough dead leaves to see the soil. There was something shiny in the dirt, and for reasons unknown, I found myself poking at it.

Probably a piece of mica in the dirt , I told myself, but my fingernail caught on something, and it wasn’t mica. I dug my finger into the soil and pulled out a silver band, dotted with moonstones and what looked like diamonds.

“Look what I found,” I said, scraping some of the dirt away as I laid the ring on my palm to show it to Maggie.

“Where did you get that?” Maggie asked, and there was something off about her voice.

“It was in the pot. Why? Do you recognize it?”

She nodded. I didn’t like the way she was looking at me, like she suddenly thought I was scum. “It’s Emma’s wedding ring.”

I shivered, though I wasn’t cold. Finding Emma’s ring while I was searching for Emma had to be some weird sort of coincidence, right? I just happened to be in the mood to prune plants, and I just happened to pick up the dead jasmine, and I just happened to keep snipping at it even when I knew it was dead. It could happen.

But what if it wasn’t coincidence? What if it was a sign that my supposed supernatural powers were coming out?

Maggie was still looking at me strangely. Her usually friendly face was closed off, and there was suspicion in her eyes.

“Anderson and Emma had marital problems,” she said, and there was a caution in her voice that hadn’t been there before. “But Emma never took off that ring. She was wearing it on the day she disappeared.”

I swallowed hard, realizing that my finding the ring like this could look bad, especially to people who didn’t entirely trust me in the first place.

“You can’t possibly have that ring,” Maggie continued. “Not unless you have access to Emma.”

“Come on, Maggie,” I said. “You’ve been with me the whole time. You saw me find it.”

“I saw you poking around at the pot. That’s not the same thing.”

“If I’m working for the Olympians, then why would I pretend to find the ring when I knew Emma was wearing it when she was taken?”

“You were going to use it as a sign of progress. ‘Hey, I haven’t found Emma, but I’ve found her ring.’”