Jenna Black - Dark Descendant

Anderson turned to me when Jamaal was gone, his expression somber. Had Jamaal told him about the ring? Was I going to be having a tribunal of my own? At the moment, I wasn’t sure I cared.

Anderson looked me up and down, inspecting the damage. The cuts and scrapes I’d suffered from rolling around on the asphalt were all well on their way to healing, but from the feel of it, several of the deeper bruises still had a ways to go. My head ached fiercely, but I suspected much of that was the aftermath of the stress rather than real physical injury.

Anderson shook his head. “I never would have guessed he’d do that,” he said. “I knew he still suspected you, and I knew he was unstable, but …” He let his voice trail off, and for the first time since I’d met him, a look of true uncertainty crossed his face.

I heaved out a sigh. “It’s not your fault,” I told him, and despite my anger at the Liberi in general, I realized I meant it. Maybe if I had told him about Jamaal’s nocturnal visit, he’d have been able to head off tonight’s disaster. Keeping quiet had seemed like the honorable thing to do, but I’d had even more evidence than Anderson that Jamaal was out of control. I should have done something about it, and Steph had suffered because I hadn’t.

“What are you going to do to him?” I asked, crossing my arms and shivering in a phantom chill. Despite his mild-mannered affect, I’d seen hints that Anderson had a ruthless side. No matter how angry I was at Jamaal, I wasn’t sure I wanted to see that ruthless side unleashed.

“We’ll decide that tomorrow.” There was no give in his tone, and I knew the subject was closed.

“And his eye …” I swallowed hard, sickened once again at the memory of what I had done. “Will it heal?”

Anderson looked at me in surprise. “Don’t tell me you’re feeling sorry for him!”

Logic said I shouldn’t. I never wanted to be so bloodthirsty that I reveled in another’s pain, no matter what that other had done, but that didn’t mean I should feel sorry for him. And yet still I couldn’t help being aware of the deep river of pain that ran beneath Jamaal’s hostility. He needed someone to blame for Emmitt’s death, and I was the obvious candidate. I knew too well what it was like to try to offload pain onto someone else. Just ask some of the unfortunate foster families who got stuck with me before the Glasses tamed me.

I glanced at the doorway through which Jamaal had disappeared. “What was he like before Emmitt died?” I asked instead of answering Anderson’s question.

Anderson sighed and ran a hand through his already disheveled hair. “Not like this,” he muttered, confirming what I’d already guessed. “He was always strung pretty tight, but Emmitt helped balance him. Emmitt had centuries of experience dealing with the effects of his death magic, and Jamaal’s only had a couple of decades. It isn’t an easy adjustment.”

Despite the situation, I couldn’t help being curious. I’d seen firsthand what Maggie and Blake could do, and I was pretty sure I’d seen Jamaal walk through a closed door, but other than that, I had very little grasp of the powers of my fellow Liberi . “Death magic?”

Anderson nodded. “It’s a very … dark power, particularly in Jamaal. He can kill people without even touching them, and the power practically has a mind of its own. It wants to be used, and it’s always a struggle to keep it contained. Emmitt had some of the same power, and he’d learned to master it. He was teaching Jamaal his techniques, and Jamaal was stabilizing.” His jaw clenched. “Then the bastard decided to shuffle off this mortal coil with the job unfinished.”

I hadn’t known Emmitt very well, and most of what I’d known had been a fiction anyway. He’d seemed like a pretty nice guy, at least on the surface. But truly nice guys didn’t walk out on people who needed them.

“Too bad we can’t bring him back from the dead and give him a tribunal,” I said, and Anderson cracked a small smile.

“Indeed.” The smile faded before it had a chance to take hold. “You should get cleaned up and tend your wounds. We’ll have an early day tomorrow.”

“Look, I don’t know if Jamaal told you—”

“That you found Emma’s ring?”

Well, that answered that. “Um, yeah.”

Anderson met my eyes. “If you tell me you found that ring in the pot, then I’ll take you at your word. For now.”

I wasn’t sure if saying he believed me was legitimate when it was paired with “for now,” but at least he wasn’t threatening me with the Hand of Doom. “I found the ring in the pot,” I said, looking him straight in the eye. “I swear it.”

He stared at me a long while, but I didn’t look away. Finally, he nodded. “All right then. We’ll say no more.”

I knew a dismissal when I heard one. I didn’t much want to be alone with my thoughts, but I headed upstairs anyway. I took a shower and changed, avoiding taking too close a look at myself in the mirror, then went looking for Steph.

Not surprisingly, she was in Blake’s suite. He was in his sitting room, sipping from a tumbler of amber liquid and pacing. The door to his bedroom was ajar, but the lights inside were out.

He stopped pacing when he saw me, putting his finger to his lips in a shushing motion. “She’s sleeping,” he whispered.

I wanted to go to her, to look her over and assure myself that she was all right. But of course, she wasn’t all right, and if she’d temporarily escaped her misery in sleep, I wasn’t about to wake her.

“You should get some sleep, too,” Blake continued, still in that soft whisper. “You look like you’re about to keel over.”

I felt like it. Healing definitely seemed to take a lot out of my body, and I felt like I hadn’t slept in three days. “Take good care of her,” I urged, surprised to find I felt perfectly comfortable leaving Steph in his care. Just a few short hours earlier, I’d have said I didn’t trust Blake as far as I could throw him. He’d failed to protect Steph, but he’d done more for her than I had. Who knew how much worse it would have been if Blake hadn’t shown up at the scene when he did?

Hoping that I could find oblivion in sleep, at least for a little while, I headed back to my own room and collapsed on the bed fully clothed.

I’ve had more than my fair share of bad nights throughout my life, but that night was among the worst. As exhausted as I was, I couldn’t sleep. I could barely even keep my eyes closed. Instead, I lay there on my back in the dark, cataloging the sins of my past and wondering how Steph had had the bad luck to get stuck with such a crappy adoptive sister. As I lay there wallowing in guilt, I realized that this wasn’t the first time someone had gotten hurt because of my misguided desire not to be a tattletale. Considering how horribly wrong things had gone the last time I’d made the fateful decision to keep my mouth shut, you’d think I’d have known better by now.

I was eight years old, and was already on my eighth foster family, the Garcias. They had a twelve-year-old son, Dave, who had been every bit as much of a problem child as I was, so they were sure they could “fix” me. The thing was, they hadn’t “fixed” Dave as much as they’d thought.

Mr. Garcia was a gun enthusiast, but a very responsible one. He kept his guns safely locked away, with the ammo in a different safe and both keys hidden. Dave was fascinated with those damn guns, and one summer day when Mr. Garcia was off at work, Dave figured out where the keys were hidden. He was very proud of himself and excited about being able to handle the guns with impunity. He showed off for me and even let me hold one myself.