Jenna Black - Dark Descendant

I waved her point off. “Yeah, I was good at it, but there was nothing supernatural about it. Like you said, I wasn’t Liberi .”

“But it seems unlikely it’s a coincidence that you’re descended from a goddess of the hunt and you’ve always been good at … well, hunting.”

“I suppose,” I said doubtfully.

“Remember that time back in high school when I lost my wallet?”

I frowned at the unexpected question. “Um, yeah. I guess.” When we were kids, Steph had always been pretty bad about losing things, though it was a habit she’d outgrown. In fact, she’d lost enough stuff that I wasn’t immediately sure which incident she was talking about.

“I was walking back from school and stopped at a coffee shop because a couple of my friends were in there.”

I nodded, the memory sparking in my mind. “You got home and realized you didn’t have your wallet. We retraced your steps back to the shop, assuming you must have left it there when you paid for your coffee.”

“Right. Only it wasn’t there.”

We’d searched the place thoroughly, even asking the manager if we could look in the trash cans in case someone had found the wallet, taken all the good stuff, and thrown it away. We’d had no luck, and Steph had been in tears because she’d just gotten her first credit card. She was afraid her mom wouldn’t let her replace it if she lost it so fast.

Steph was sure someone had stolen the wallet and it would never be seen again. That seemed like a pretty logical conclusion, but I suggested that maybe she’d dropped it somewhere between the coffee shop and home.

We started walking back home, scanning the pavement and the gutters, although Steph wasn’t exactly holding out much hope. When we still didn’t find it, Steph gave up and went to her room, miserably waiting for her mom to get home and scold her for being so careless with her belongings.

On a hunch, I headed back out. I remember it was in the early spring, the kind of day where you need a coat in the morning but it’s too hot to wear by afternoon. Steph had a habit of absently stuffing things in pockets—it seemed like half the things she lost turned up eventually in a pocket somewhere—and I thought it was possible she’d stuffed the wallet in her coat pocket after paying for her coffee. Because it was too hot to wear the coat, she’d have been carrying it over her arm, and it was possible the wallet had dropped out.

We’d checked the sidewalk carefully when we’d retraced her steps, but what if a Good Samaritan had found the wallet? This was D.C., not the kind of place you could leave a wallet lying around on the sidewalk for very long before someone helped themselves to it. That Good Samaritan would have either taken it with them in hopes of finding the owner—which might be hard, since the only identification in there was the credit card, and that gave nothing but a name—or handed it in to the closest shop.

It seemed like a long shot, but I didn’t think it would hurt to check. Figuring the wallet would have fallen out pretty close to the coffee shop, I went into the tiny little shoe store a couple of doors down and asked if anyone had turned in a wallet—and wouldn’t you know it, they had.

“How did you find that wallet?” Steph asked me.

“You know the story as well as I do.”

“Not really. I wasn’t inside your head, you know. Why did you decide to go into a shoe store that you knew I hadn’t been in myself to look for the wallet I’d supposedly lost at the coffee shop?”

“Well, uh, it just seemed logical is all.” But I had to admit, as sound as my logic had been, the shoe store hadn’t exactly been a likely place to look.

“It was more logical to assume someone had walked off with it than to assume I’d put it in my coat pocket, that it had fallen out close to the coffee shop, that a Good Samaritan had found it, and that that Good Samaritan would turn it in at the shoe store. I’d given up, so why didn’t you?”

I shrugged. “It was just a hunch is all,” I said, unable to explain it better than that. I cracked a smile that felt fragile and tenuous. “Besides, I was trying to impress my big sister, and I wasn’t going to do that by assuming the wallet was gone for good.”

She returned the smile. “And do you have those same kind of hunches when you’re searching for people that other investigators have been unable to find?”

“Well, yeah. But it’s really just thinking a little outside the box. I figure everyone’s tried the most likely places already, so I try to come up with someplace less immediately obvious.”

“So have you had any hunches about where Emma is buried?”

I sighed. “Not really.”

“Do you think she’s buried at one of the properties you checked out?”

“Yeah, probably, but I have no idea which one.”

She nodded sagely. “There are a million other places she could be. What makes you think she’s at one of those properties?”

I saw what she was getting at, but I was far from convinced. “It’s either a hunch, or it’s wishful thinking because if she’s somewhere else, I’ve got nothing. And even if it is a hunch, and even if my hunches are supernaturally fueled somehow, I don’t have it narrowed down enough to matter.”

“Yet.”

I appreciated her faith in me, but honestly, I didn’t exactly feel hopeful. Would Anderson still have his people protect Steph if I turned out not to be able to find Emma? The warm, easygoing Anderson might, but I had my doubts about the cold, implacable leader who’d presided over this morning’s tribunal. I told myself not to worry about that, but I didn’t listen.

“I hope you’re right,” I told Steph. I had no idea if Blake had told her that she was under Anderson’s protection only because I’d agreed to search for Emma. Even if I couldn’t stop worrying about what would happen if I failed, there was no reason why Steph should worry, so I didn’t elaborate.

“Big sisters are always right,” she said with a grin.

I snorted. “You’ve been trying to convince me of that for years.”

“Can’t blame a girl for trying. Now I think it’s time for you to stop coddling me and get back to work.”

If she weren’t so beat up already, I’d have given her a good smack on the arm for that. “I’m not coddling you!”

“You’re hovering. I’m going to be fine. If I feel like I’m going to break down and need a shoulder to cry on other than Blake’s, I’ll come find you, okay?”

I knew I wasn’t doing Steph any particular good by being at her bedside. Though I hid it fairly well—at least I thought I did—every time I caught sight of the bruises on her face, I suffered a hammer-strike of guilt. So I let her talk me into leaving her bedside no matter how convinced I was that I should have stayed.

I spent the rest of my afternoon at the desk in my suite,eyes glued to the computer screen as I tried not to think too much. I looked over all the information I had on the Olympian properties, searching for something I’d missed, something that might point me toward one choice over all the others. I also looked for some subconscious hint that one was more likely to be Emma’s gravesite, but discovered it was really hard to look for a subconscious hint. My conscious mind kept yammering away at me, arguing logic and casting doubt, until I had to give up or go mad.

Hoping to clear my mind, I decided to take a different tack and did some research on Artemis. Maybe if I learned more about the goddess who was my ancestor—a concept I still had trouble wrapping my brain around—I’d be able to figure out how to use the powers I supposedly had.

I read through a lot of Greek and Roman mythology that afternoon, scouring the stories for something that might hint at a secret power I was missing. The only thing that rang anything like a bell with me was the fact that Artemis, aside from being a huntress, was also a goddess of the moon. It made me wonder if any of her descendants’ powers were moon-based. If that were the case, then perhaps I’d been making a mistake by doing all of my investigating during the daylight hours.