A Beautiful Evil (25 page)

His cloak was gone, replaced with jeans and a blue oxford shirt rolled to his forearms. Despite the jagged scars that still marred him, he was a handsome guy with strong, classical features and blond hair that was already growing back. He looked like a fierce, battle-scarred warrior.
A retired warrior
, I thought firmly, surprised by how strongly I felt about that.

He was my father. I wanted him to have peace and happiness, a life without torture, grief, loss. . . . He’d paid his dues.

I realized I was staring and the room had gone quiet. Heat bloomed on my cheeks. “How’s your scratch, Henri?” I asked.

He snorted and leaned against the dresser. “You mean the shotgun blast to my side? It’s wonderful. I have about eighty pellet-size scars to show for it.”

“Dude,” Dub said, plopping down in one of the chairs, “who gets shot with their own gun? Embarrassing, if you ask me.”

Henri gave Dub’s chair a hard shove with his foot. Dub laughed, and Henri rolled his eyes.

“Look at this, Ari.” Dub shook his stomach with his hands. “That’s happiness right there. Michel’s got a kick-ass chef. I’m talking top of the line. I think you should play sick until tomorrow. He’s going to make red velvet cake. Speaking of food . . .” Dub got up and walked to the intercom panel near the door and pressed a button.

“Kitchen,” a heavy French accent said through the speaker.

Dub turned to us, winked, and then leaned close to the panel. “Snow White has risen. I repeat. Snow White has risen.”

“Excusez-moi?”
Pause. “Is this you again, Dub?” The irritation in the tone was unmistakable.
“Nom de Dieu!”
crackled through the speaker, followed by a long string of scolding, unintelligible French words.

“Yeah. Roger that. We’re going to need food. Meats, cheeses, chips, chocolate, sweet tea, beignets. Just bring it all. She’s hungry.”

We all burst out laughing. Even my father cracked a half smile.

After I ate, showered, and had more visitors—Michel and Bran—I finally found myself alone in the courtyard. For exercise, I walked around the rectangular lawn a few times and then into the English-style garden.

My father sat on a stone bench, elbows on his knees, head resting in his hands. He glanced up at me. I didn’t move. Neither did he. We just stared at each other for a while before I mustered the courage to walk over. I felt odd sharing the bench, so I sat in the grass facing him.

In Athena’s temple the threat of danger had overshadowed the nerves and awkwardness that I felt now. He didn’t say anything, and I knew he was giving me time, letting me get comfortable. I picked at a blade of grass. “So what happens now?”

He thought for a moment. “I stay in New 2, find a home, and get to know my daughter. If she’s willing.”

I nodded. “She is.”

My heart hurt with grief. Lost time. So much taken from both of us.

As though he could read my thoughts, he said in a gentle tone, “We move forward, aye?”

I smiled. “Are you trying to read me, or does it just come naturally?”

“Both. You were frowning and your eyes went sad. Your heart sped up and your scent changed subtly. Palms are about to get sweaty. . . .”

I rubbed my hands together. “That’s kind of freaky. I guess you can tell if I’m lying, too.” He shrugged. “So there’ll be no sneaking out and lying about boys, then?” I joked.

From the look on his face, probably not something he wanted to think about.

“Your young man,” he began. “You’re serious about him?”

I’d totally opened the door to that one, and since I had, I decided to be honest. “Yeah. I like him.” I left it at that, wondering how my father felt about me dating Michel Lamarliere’s son.

“Sebastian and Henri came with you through Athena’s gate,” he said, as if that explained it all. And I supposed it did. “They are both . . . acceptable.”

I laughed at that. If only he knew Henri and his penchant for getting under everyone’s skin. “Are you trying to steer me away from Sebastian? Because he’s Michel’s son?”

“No, Ari. You have made your own way, made your own choices, and I am . . . proud of the woman you’ve become. Sebastian seems to care a great deal for you.”

“But?”

“He is powerful. Disturbingly so.”

Then we make a good pair
, I thought, because I was pretty disturbing to people too. My father wasn’t exaggerating, though. Sebastian, being Mistborn and now a full-blown vampire, had displayed some horrifying new abilities after I’d resurrected him from stone. Creatures dropping dead as he passed. . . .

It was no more than two hours ago, during my visit with Bran and Michel, that I’d learned Sebastian had simply commanded the creatures of the ruins in his mind:
Stop breathing.

And that’s what they’d done. They’d suffocated themselves.

Because he’d
told
them to.

His powers of persuasion were amplified to a degree no one had ever seen before.

Now I understood why he’d told me his mind and heart hadn’t changed. He wanted me to see beyond the horror of what he’d done, that he wasn’t going to let it change who he was, wasn’t going to let it go to his head.

I picked some more grass. “So what do you think happened to Athena?”

“I think she went back to her temple, did whatever she could to halt the power you set free within her. If she did survive, she is in terrible pain. Only you can reverse what has already been done.”

“And Menai? Do you think she’s okay?”

My father let out a deep sigh. “Menai is resourceful. She’ll be fine. She will never leave Athena. Not until the goddess is dead.”

“What does Athena have on her?”

“Artemis. Menai fears what Athena will do to her mother. Though the what or the why of it, I don’t know. She would never say.”

“I should have known,” I said. The bow, her accuracy, it should’ve been a dead giveaway.

I could only hope that Athena had become as hard and cold as granite and Menai had dropped her over the garden wall to smash on the rocks below.

“Come, dinner will be ready soon.”

I didn’t smell a thing, but my father was standing and holding out a hand to me. I glanced up at him with a lopsided smile. “What’s on the menu?”

He turned his face toward the house and drew in a deep breath. “Pork chops stuffed with corn bread and andouille sausage, crawfish étouffée . . . a spinach salad with praline-crusted bacon.”

I laughed and he smiled broadly. His face transformed, and I knew then why my mother had fallen head over heels for him. I slid my hand into his and let him pull me to my feet.

“May I?” he asked, lifting our hands. He didn’t want to let go.

Something light and good sank into my heart and settled there with a sigh. I nodded, and together we walked toward the house.

S
EBASTIAN AND
I
SAT HIGH ABOVE
J
ACKSON
S
QUARE ON THE
wide ledge surrounding the middle steeple of St. Louis Cathedral. Below us the square was lit up with its usual nighttime revelry. Jazz wafted on the breeze along with the hum of conversation and laughter.

Two days had passed since my conversation in the garden with my father. And I’d just spent the last few hours in the library trying to find out if there was more information about the witch who could untangle my curse.

I wanted my curse lifted. Sure, I might be different from any other gorgon before me, but no one knew what would happen when I turned twenty-one. I might still turn into a full-blown gorgon. I’d no longer look like me, and I’d no longer be able to meet anyone’s gaze without turning them to stone. And I sure as hell wasn’t going to sit around and wait to see what happened.

I wanted a future. Here in New 2. With my father. With Sebastian and my friends.

His shoulder knocked mine. “Why the frustration?”

I bumped him back. “I hate that you can read me so easily.” I seemed to say that to him a lot lately, but it had become a sort of term of endearment.

He shrugged unrepentantly. “So you didn’t find anything in the library this time. You’ve only scratched the surface of what’s in there. We have three and a half years before you turn twenty-one. We’ll find someone who can help us.” He squeezed my hand.

I thought of the baby held by the hands of Zeus. I’d searched for it while I was in the library, but it wasn’t on the table. The Keeper had seemed perplexed that it had been moved. It hadn’t left the library—that much he knew. But if anyone could locate the statue, it was the Keeper.

Someone had hidden it within the library. And that someone had to be Josephine.

“I think I know why Athena killed Zeus,” I said. Sebastian lifted an eyebrow, waiting for me to continue. “She had a baby that was prophesied to be the child who’d destroy Zeus. Zeus found out and took the child. I think Athena freaked and sent a god-killer, a gorgon, after him in retaliation. Only, he had the baby with him and both were turned to stone. I don’t think she would’ve intentionally had her baby turned to stone.”

“Wow,” he responded with a note of disbelief. “That’s . . .”

“Crazy, I know. But I’m almost sure of it. In the library there’s a broken statue. The Keeper told me it’s the hands of Zeus holding the baby fated to destroy him. I got a weird feeling when I saw it. Then in the main hall of the temple—”

“There’s that statue of Zeus with no hands,” Sebastian said, getting it. “Holy shit.”

“Tell me about it. That’s no ordinary statue. I’m guessing Athena was after the jar to get to the baby. Somehow she learned it was there. Maybe that’s the reason the jar was given to the Novem in the first place, to hide the baby from Athena. I mean, who knows what happened after the gorgon turned them to stone, or how the statue was broken, who put it into the jar. . . .”

There were lots of unknowns, but now some of the pieces were falling into place, and there was at least a reason behind Athena’s madness.

“Well,” Sebastian said, “now it makes sense why she wanted you and tested you like she did. I bet she thought you could resurrect her kid.”

And that made my chest hurt a little because I felt somewhat responsible for all the people my ancestors had turned to stone. The possibility that I might be able to turn them all back, to save a bunch of people, settled heavily on my conscience.

“Only problem is your grandmother,” I said. “I think she knows too, or at least suspects. I looked for the statue in the library so I could touch it—”

“To turn it back?” he asked in surprise.

“No. I’d have to really pour everything I had into doing that. And I’m not even sure someone turned into stone for that long could be brought back. But if I touched it, I’d feel the gorgon’s power, and then I’d know if the baby was once real.”

“Which would mean the statue of Zeus is real too. Christ, imagine what would happen if you brought him back.” Sebastian rubbed a hand down his face and stared out over the square. “Guess that child-fated-to-destroy-him thing came true after all.”

“Yeah.” Though probably not the way Zeus had thought it would. “The whole thing is kind of tragic. . . .”

“I wonder who the father was,” Sebastian said.

I stared at the tiny lights bobbing on the Mississippi River, feeling that weight of responsibility again. “We should probably make sure Josephine doesn’t destroy the baby or do something worse with it.”

Sebastian nodded. “Her intentions can’t be good.”

We passed a few more seconds in thoughtful silence, the sounds from below filling the space.

“The kid
is
innocent, after all,” I added.

He turned his head, a grin playing on his lips. Then he leaned over and kissed me on the mouth.

“What was that for?”

“Because you’re a good person, Ari, one of the best. And because it sounds like we’re about to get into trouble again.”

Which translated to: Whatever happened, we were in this together. And I was pretty sure I could handle whatever life threw my way if I had my family, my friends, and Sebastian.

A smile spread over my face, and I felt it all the way to my toes. I rolled my eyes and laughed. “Said the warlock vampire to the gorgon.”

Enormous gratitude to my editor, Emilia Rhodes, for her patience and insight as we went through many variations of this book. Thank you so much for always being supportive and encouraging. I have enjoyed our time together!

To all the amazing people at Simon Pulse who are or have been involved in Ari’s books: Annette Pollert, Mara Anastas, Jennifer Klonsky, Carolyn Swerdloff, Dawn Ryan, Paul Crichton, Sienna Konscol, Kim Sooji, Cara Petrus, and Angela Goddard. There are many others whose names I don’t yet know, but a big, big thank you to everyone. I still pinch myself at being part of the Pulse family.

To author Cynthia Cooke, for helping me immensely with this book. Here’s to many more talks and lunches. Thank you for the friendship and the critique rescue.

To my agent, Miriam Kriss, who always has valuable insight and the ability to set my worries at ease. So glad to have you in my corner.

To Allen, Cheryl, Dylan, Ryan, and Isabel, and to Kami—faithful reader, sister, and friend. Thanks once again for the quick read and thoughts.

To Audrey, for dealing with all the times I stare out into space and loving me for all my quirks and stressing. You are indeed Audrey Awesomepants and seriously “Georgeous.” All my love, kiddo. To Jonathan, for holding down the fort. I’m often too frazzled to express my gratitude adequately in the midst of deadlines and writing, but you bear with me all the same. Thank you!! And to James, for brightening my heart and making me laugh. You guys define my life and purpose in the best ways possible.

And finally to Melissa Marr, for her generosity and kindness, and to all the readers out there for giving Ari’s books a try. Thank you for the support, the time, and the kindness. I appreciate it more than I can ever say.

K
ELLY
K
EATON
is the critically acclaimed author of
Darkness Becomes Her
. As Kelly Gay, she writes the popular adult series Charlie Madigan for Pocket Books. While she calls the Raleigh, North Carolina, area home, she can also be found chatting about books and life on Facebook and Twitter. Read more about Kelly on her website at kellykeaton.net.