The Wicked Within (13 page)

As I undid one of her braids, Violet came back, pulling a large cardboard box filled with makeup and scavenged jewelry. She climbed onto the mattress, out of breath and happy, and started undoing the second braid.

“I’ll show you how to do a messy twist,” I said. “That’ll look pretty with your hair.” And it would. Crank had beautiful wavy hair.

“I like those stick things you put in yours sometimes,” she said. “Those kind of look girly and kick-ass.”

I laughed. “Now you’re talking.”

*  *  *

I lay in the bed later, hands tucked behind my head, staring at the plaster medallion on the ceiling as I relived the makeover
Violet and I had just given Crank. Besides my last foster parents, I never had many ties to other kids or adults growing up. Being passed around from one foster home to another wasn’t exactly bond-inspiring. Now it felt like I had a family, sisters, two unruly brothers, and a father who loved me.

And Sebastian . . . I didn’t know what we were anymore.

I couldn’t help but wonder if deep down, no matter what he said to the contrary, he harbored resentment for me. I was the one who’d made him take blood, who’d given him the first taste. He’d been drained and starved to the brink of death. And I couldn’t watch him die. Of course, Athena had planned it all along, had put me in that cell with him, knowing the outcome.

But he’d never wanted my blood. He’d said he’d rather die.

Had our roles been reversed, I knew Sebastian never could have sat back and watched me die either. I pressed my palms to my eyelids, suddenly thinking of my mother and wishing like hell she were with me. I couldn’t remember her face, her smell, her laugh, anything. I had a vision of her in my head, but I’d been so young when she left me that I didn’t know if it was real or not. More like wishful thinking, a phantom I’d made up over the years.

A figment of my imagination. A ghost without a grave. My mother never had a proper funeral, thanks to Athena taking her body back to her temple.

Not liking the direction of my thoughts, I dressed and armed myself. Sleep wasn’t coming to me anytime soon, so I might as well get some work done.

I sat in the living room for a while, cleaning my gun and letting my thoughts wander. The front door opened. I stilled, staring into the hall.

Henri appeared.

“Hey.” I returned to my cleaning as he plopped onto the couch opposite me.

“Caught sight of your friends a little while ago,” he said.

“Friends?” Most of my friends were upstairs sleeping.

“Yeah, you know, the hot hunter and the ghost?”

I raised my brow. “Menai and Mel are still in the city?”

“Looks like. I was doing a little recon around the square. Keeping tabs on Josephine for you, and I saw them on Presby’s roof.”

My pulse leaped. “They’re zeroing in on the jar.”

“From what I hear, Athena has everyone looking for it,” Dub said, shuffling in with a yawn. “Overheard some big-time witch talking about it in Spits’s shop.” He slid into a chair and let his head fall back as though it was too heavy to hold up.

“Couldn’t sleep?” I asked.

“Bad dreams. Lots of fire.”

I returned the clip to my weapon and then shoved the gun in
the holster. I stood, wrapping the holster around my waist. “Too many people will be after the Hands now.”

“Where are you going?” Henri asked.

The Hands are
my
golden ticket. I’m going to make sure Menai and Mel don’t get them before I do.”

Henri shot to his feet. “I’m going with.”

Dub waved us away, letting his eyes close again. “You kids have fun.”

W
ITH EVERY STEP WE TOOK
toward St. Charles, my muscles screamed their soreness. I’d overdone it with my workout, but I didn’t regret it. The emotional distance I’d gotten from it had helped immensely, even if I was paying for it now.

We caught the streetcar, and I found a bench by myself as Henri took the one across the aisle. I swiveled in my seat and asked him, “How’s your side doing?”

“Aches sometimes, but it’s getting better every day.”

It was a miracle Henri hadn’t been killed when Athena shot him and dumped him off the side of a cliff.

We rode in the rhythmic rocking of the car for a few moments.

“What’s bugging you,
chère
?” Henri asked, his eyes sharp, brows drawn down, reminding me of the bird of prey he was.

How to answer? Everything was wrong, and a lot of things were right. Sharing wasn’t usually my thing, but I found myself saying, “I just want this all to be over and done with, you know? I want . . . ”

“What?”

“I want Sebastian to get better. I wish none of you had ever gone to Athena’s temple.”

“Yeah, well, you couldn’t have stopped us. Bastian and I would have done anything to get Violet away from Athena. We
chose
to go. And we got Vi and your father back. Getting shot was a small price to pay to see her back home again.”

I knew without a doubt that Sebastian felt the same.

“Sometimes you’re a real hard-ass, Henri,” I said. “And then you go and say shit that makes me like you.”

A lopsided grin appeared on his face. “Girls say that to me all the time.”

I shook my head at him, unable to keep from smiling back. But then I turned serious. “Why are you so hard on Dub all the time? I mean, I know he needs to control his gift and everything, but . . . ”

Henri’s smile died. “Dub reminds me of me at that age. I did a lot of stupid stuff. Got in a lot of trouble. I see him doing the same. I know the impulses, the recklessness, the energy. He doesn’t think before he acts, and I don’t want him to end up . . . ”

Like him. But Henri couldn’t say it. He looked at me with a depth I’d never seen before. “There is a reason I’m the only one left in my family. I don’t want Dub to hurt the people he loves because he didn’t take the time to think. . . . ”

“Henri,” I breathed, shocked and wanting to reach out to him. But what could one say to that?

He gave me a rueful smile. “I made my peace with my past. Now our Bastian, on the other hand—”

“Is struggling, I know. You didn’t see him while you were in the Quarter, did you?”

“No, not this time.”

My ears perked up at that. “But other times?”

Henri shrugged. I could tell he didn’t want to break the bond of brotherhood he had with Sebastian, and I didn’t want to force him to. He and Sebastian were friends long before I came into the picture. I wasn’t going to put Henri in the middle. “Never mind. We’re here.” I got up as the car slowed to a stop at Canal Street.

We walked down to Chartres, which would take us directly in front of the school.

“I wonder if they’re still around,” he said as we closed in on our destination.

“We’re about to find out. Can you do a few flybys of the school?”

“One is all I need.”

“I’ll wait for you on one of the benches in the square. Say five minutes?”

“I’ll do it in four. Watch and learn, rookie. Watch and learn.” Henri sauntered off, broke into a jog, then disappeared into the darkness.

Menai found me in three minutes.

Henri returned in four.

“Where’s the other one?” he asked as he strode up to us, the ends of his flannel shirt flying behind him.

“Mel doesn’t like the attention she attracts in the human realm,” Menai answered casually. “She’s . . . around.”

“What do you mean, ‘around’?” I asked.

“Mel’s got one foot in the living world and one in the Underworld. She can go ghost whenever she wants. She could be here right now, and unless you’re a seer or a powerful medium, you’d never know.”

“No shit,” Henri said, impressed.

“Why didn’t you say anything about hunting the Hands?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest.

“Look, I just delivered the message I was supposed to, down to the letter. That’s what she wants, that’s what I do.”

“Yeah, right. Like Athena wanted you to help us escape her temple.” It was getting hard to figure out what side Menai was on, and I was starting to think she was on whatever side
benefited her own personal agenda, whatever that was.

“What Auntie doesn’t know—and will
never
know,” she warned, “won’t hurt her. In this case, she knows what’s up, so you need to get us the Hands, Ari.”

I lifted my brow. Was she serious? “Isn’t that what you’ve been trying to do?” If anyone should have success in hunting the Hands, it was the daughter of Artemis, goddess of the hunt. “But you don’t have them. Why is that?”

“Because we can’t get inside that stupid jar, that’s why. Look, Anesidora’s Jar prevents anyone of the Greek pantheon from entering it. It was one of Dora’s spites against us. She and what’s left of the Olympians are not on good terms.”

“So you’re waiting for someone to bring them out,” I concluded.

Menai gave an innocent shrug. “You’d make all our lives a lot easier if you just found them and gave them back. What?” she said at my frown. “You’re both getting what you want. Athena gets her child. You get to be free of your curse. I don’t see the problem.”

“Well, when you put it like that, neither do I,” Henri said.

I glared at him. “Shut up, Henri.”

“Why? She’s right. If Athena is willing to make a blood-bound vow to turn you into a normal person, isn’t that what you want? Or were you hoping to turn into a snake-headed monster at twenty-one?”

I got up from the bench. “No, that’s not what I want. But neither of you are considering the repercussions of resurrecting that kid. What if it’s not meant to be in the world? You can’t just hand a child over to Athena without knowing who the father is. That kid was fated to kill Zeus, the
king
of the gods. What else will it be able to do?” Irritated, I shook my head. “I’m going for a walk.”

Of course I wanted to be normal, to live a curse-free life. Right now my future was set, thanks to my curse. But if I could free myself, I could live past twenty-one as
me 
—not some monster. Not hunted for being a threat to the gods. I wanted a future. To be with my family and friends. But no matter what anyone said, I knew it would never be that simple. I didn’t even have the know-how to turn the child back to a living, breathing being. . . . And what if I failed? Then what? Athena goes nuts and kills me. End of story.

And even if I could, I just wasn’t sure that turning over the Hands to Athena was the right thing to do. She had hurt so many people. She was unstable, manipulative, and psycho. Could I leave a child in her care and sleep at night?

But what if she loved that child? What if, despite everything she’d done, she’d be a good mother? Who was I to deny that child the wonder of growing up loved? I knew what it was like not to have that. And it was Athena who had taken my mother away from me.

I continued down the path, through the park gate, and onto St. Ann, heading past Presby. It was quiet this time of night, after midnight. A few late-night revelers wandered down from Bourbon Street, along with the occasional local and a few young pickpockets trolling the streets.

I stopped on the corner and looked up at the building that served as the Novem’s elite school. The whine of a gate’s hinges drew my attention to an alley that ran behind Presby and one of its satellite buildings. A figure slipped out the side gate. Shoulders hunched, tall, hands tucked into the front pockets of his pants. Yeah. That was Sebastian, all right.

I followed, wondering what he was up to, since all the stores and restaurants were closed or closing, and Bourbon Street wasn’t exactly his kind of scene. But then the big gray mansion with the black iron balconies and tall black shutters came into view. Arnaud House.

I stopped across the street and watched from the shadows as Sebastian walked to the gate and let himself inside.

“You want me to spy?” The voice came out of nowhere, scaring me to death as a hazy form appeared. Melinoe.

“Let me guess,” I gasped, holding my chest. “Your superpower is giving people heart attacks.”

She shrugged. “It happens.” Her eerie gaze returned to the house. “Your boyfriend was scoping the library.”

“How do you know?”

“Watched him. Not much he can do. Guards everywhere . . . ”

“Too bad you guys can’t get into the jar. Athena would’ve had the Hands long ago.”

“Not really. It took her a long time to find out where the jar was being kept, and even then she wasn’t sure the Hands were inside.”

“Dora sure did a number on Athena,” I commented, remembering my father’s words. “Making the prophecy known to Zeus, stealing the Hands, keeping them hidden all these years . . . ”

“Hard to believe Dora and Athena were once like sisters,” Mel said, in a quiet tone. “They had a near-unbreakable bond. Dora was Athena’s first creation in the time of mankind’s infancy. She was made with the help of Zeus and given life from the goddess’s own blood. Dora was almost as powerful as her maker.”

“Why would Dora share a prophecy she knew would get Athena’s child killed?”

Mel shrugged. “Some say jealousy. Some say they fought over a male. Some say other things.”

“You speak of her in the past tense. Is she dead?”

“No one has seen her or heard from her in a thousand years. To our pantheon, she died the moment she betrayed Athena.” She nodded toward the house. “So you want to know what he’s doing in there?”

Hell, yes, I do.
It was on the tip of my tongue to say so, even though I already had a good idea of why he was there and what he was doing. But the words didn’t come. I couldn’t cross the line. No matter what happened between us, his life was his own, his privacy was his own—he’d made that very clear when he decided to shut me out.

“No.”

“Suit yourself. You need to get us the Hands,” she said, echoing Menai’s same words.

“It would solve a lot of problems. . . . ” But would it create more? I couldn’t shake the feeling that it would. “Would Athena be a good mother, you think?”

Mel thought about it for a long moment. “Hard to know. The child was her first and last. When it came, she was . . . happy. She was in love with it, and terrified when Dora gave her prophecy. Athena tried to kill Dora for uttering those words. But once they were out, we all knew Zeus would never let the child live. Athena knew it too.”