A Beautiful Evil (9 page)

My fists clenched hard. “And if that happens, Josephine, if I turn into a monster, I’ll be coming for you first, and there isn’t a damn thing you can do to stop me.”

I
TURNED MY BACK AND WALKED AWAY FROM
J
OSEPHINE, KNOWING
that right then she could’ve snapped my neck, killed me before I even made it to the iron door. She could’ve, but she wouldn’t have.

The Novem had agreed to keep me in the city, shield me from Athena, and allow me into their library. And I knew the only reason Josephine had agreed was because she thought me going after Athena was a suicide mission.

Whatever. I’d spent my life proving people wrong. What was one more?

I shoved the tall iron door open, went four steps, and then pushed the double doors wide. There’d always be a target on my back when it came to Josephine. The only question was when she’d choose to strike.

Every step I took down the stairs, I let out a little more of the anger I’d been holding in. By the time I got to the first floor, I was less angry but way more irritated, cussing under my breath and saying all the rude, obnoxious things I’d wanted to say to Josephine. I ignored the looks thrown my way as I marched into the large study hall, her comments about Sebastian echoing in my head.

I knew Josephine’s game. Her clever words had been designed to sink into my psyche in my quiet moments, when I was alone and not feeling confident, when her words would cut me the most. I saw it for what it was, but the worst part was that she might be right. If I didn’t find a way to reverse the curse, things might go exactly like she said. I’d be a gorgon and Sebastian would walk away from me.

I found a quiet table, slapped my backpack down, and jerked out my notebook, throwing a glare over my shoulder at the group of kids sitting at the nearest table. They turned away quickly.

Like I was some kind of freak show.

Whatever. Get to work and forget them. They don’t matter.

I sat down, drew in long breath to steady myself, and started writing down everything I could remember about what I’d read in the library. After a few notes, I was able to sink into my task and forget Josephine and the fact that the entire school seemed bent on ogling me at every opportunity.

The sudden squeak of the chair across from me made me look up, my pen skipping over the edge of the paper. A guy dropped into the chair.

“Well, if it isn’t the Moon Queen herself.”

Images of the Arnaud ball slammed into me before I could stop them. Spinning around and around on the dance floor amid a sea of beautiful gowns and masks. Like a glittering dream . . .

Gabriel Baptiste, Novem heir and Bloodborn vampire, rocked back in the chair, crossed his arms over his chest, and stared at me, his lips twisting into a playful smile.

My cheeks flared hot. I’d danced in Gabriel’s arms during the ball. I’d flirted with him and nearly allowed him, a masked stranger, to kiss my neck—and possibly do more had Sebastian not showed up.

First Josephine and now Gabriel. I shook my head at my shitty luck.

“My father told me you’d be attending Presby. Didn’t quite believe him. But”—he smiled—“here you are.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Everyone is talking about you. Word spreads fast, you know. Gorgon. God-killer. Freak. You’re to be our savior, our protector from Athena, is that it?”

His mocking words held an edge to them, as though his male Bloodborn ego couldn’t handle the idea of me saving the Novem or, more to the point, him. Sebastian had been right. Bloodborns had enormous egos.

Two other guys dropped down beside him, and a girl stood behind his chair, hugging textbooks to her chest. I sat back slowly, setting my pen down and closing my notebook. I regarded them with the slightly bored, uncaring look that I’d perfected years ago.

I almost smiled. If they thought they could intimidate me . . . Amateurs.
Try facing a psychotic goddess of war.

“Rumor is you’re going after Athena,” the girl said. “Rumor is they let you into the library.”

Something no one was supposed to know. “And you are?”

“Anne Hawthorne. My mother is head of the Hawthorne family. I’m to follow in her footsteps.”

A witch, then. The Hawthornes, Cromleys, and Lamarlieres were the three witch families in the Novem. Anne’s mother, Rowen, was in the Council of Nine meeting when it was decided that I’d attend the school and would be granted access to the library. I didn’t know why the hell they called it a secret library if everyone seemed to know about it.

“We’re all Novem heirs,” Gabriel said. “So we know things the rest of our families don’t. We’ll be running things soon.”

The way he said it . . . like a threat, like I was a problem they’d be dealing with one day. Gabriel Asshole Baptiste was playing his own version of Novem head already.

I shoved my notebook into my backpack. “Look, Gabriel, if you have a point to all this, then get to it.”

He eyed me for a drawn-out moment. “The way to Athena isn’t in any book.”

I gave him a “So what?” look.

“Come on, Gabriel, let’s go,” Anne said, glancing around and suddenly going pale. Sebastian had entered the hall.

Gabriel ignored her. “I know where you should look.”

“Where?”

“The ruins.”

“I thought the ruins are supposed to be off-limits,” I said, noticing that Sebastian had spotted us, and his mood was black. The tension in the room spiked.

Gabriel regarded Sebastian as he moved toward us, and then he turned back to me, humor playing on his lips. I couldn’t believe I had ever let this guy get close to me. “The Novem makes the rules. We break them. Isn’t that how it works? My friends and I go there to . . . play.” To hunt. His meaning was obvious, and he meant it to be. “We see her disgusting creatures there sometimes. You might want to have a look, try to capture one of them. Just a thought.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Because it wasn’t out of the goodness of his heart; I was pretty sure Gabriel would just love to see me go into the ruins of Midtown and never come back.

“If we scratch your back, maybe one day you’ll scratch ours.” He paused. “You should come to our Mardi Gras party on Friday.” He let his chair fall forward and stood up.

Sebastian blocked his path. I rose slowly as the air between them crackled.

Finally Sebastian stepped around Gabriel and headed for me.

As Gabriel walked away with his cronies, Anne tossed a look over her shoulder, her interest in Sebastian pretty damn clear. The bell rang and students began shoving books into bags and filing out the door.

Sebastian dropped his backpack on the table. “What the hell did he want?”

“He said I should look in the ruins to find Athena.”

“Sounds like something he’d say.” Sebastian was quiet for a long moment. “You want to get out of here and go to Gabonna’s for lunch?”

“Love to.”

I gathered my stuff and left Presby, still fuming over Gabriel. He was no different from Josephine and some of the other Novem heads I’d met. I’d faced all nine of them and come away with the realization that most of them lived and breathed intrigue, power, and politics. Even Michel played the game to some degree. I guess you had to if you wanted to hold your own against types like Josephine.

Power and politics were the reasons Josephine had “helped” my mother and had tried to use me. My curse was a tool to her. To Athena. To a lot of people in the Novem. I might’ve been flattered if only the reason had been different.

Sebastian and I walked to Gabonna’s, the restaurant and jazz club on St. Ann Street. It was the same place he’d taken me when I got the migraine from hell after visiting the voodoo priest Jean Solomon.

The same place where I’d woken up in his arms. Where he’d kissed me.

The door was held open by a three-foot-tall statute of an alligator playing the saxophone. I followed Sebastian inside and slid into a corner booth. After ordering sandwiches and drinks, he said, “Don’t listen to Gabriel.”

The piano player walked by, gave a nod of greeting to Sebastian, and then sat down on his bench. A slow, easy melody filled the restaurant.

“I don’t plan to,” I answered. “But I was thinking as we were walking here. He might be onto something.” I reached into my backpack and pulled out my notebook. “I found out the gods create their own realms to house their temples and palaces. Like a different dimension. It’s an automatic security system. Other gods can’t pass into the realm unless the god who made the realm allows them in. But humans can pass through, though I couldn’t find out why that is. I read stories where people in the past accidentally passed through a doorway into a different realm, or went in search of the land of the gods and found it.”

Pam, our waitress, arrived and set our drinks on the table.

“Sebastian,” I said, leaning closer to him and feeling like we might actually have a chance at finding Violet and my father. “All we have to do is find the doorway. I bet it’s in the ruins. It’d be the best place to hide it. Easy access for her hunters and creatures to come and go, right?”

Sebastian thought for a little while. “Good way for her to have kept tabs all these years. The ruins would be the perfect cover.”

The question was, why did Athena have so much interest in New 2? Could it be just because of me, my mother, and my father? Or was there more to it than that?

“I also found out that Athena was able to kill most of the gods in her own pantheon, the Olympians, because they trusted her, they were family. And it was easy for her to kill them because once she’d offed Zeus and had his shield, the Aegis, it protected her from the other gods. It made her indestructible. Apparently, after the war there were only a few gods left from random families. . . .”

“No reason why, though? Why she started her killing spree to begin with?”

I shook my head. “No, nothing. Maybe she just lost it, you know? After thousands of years, she could’ve cracked.”

Our sandwiches came and we ate in thoughtful silence. The more I considered it, the more I believed the doorway was somewhere in the ruins.

“We should become the hunters,” I said.

“What? Like hunt down one of her minions?”

I washed my bite down with a drink. “Yeah, and make it tell us how it gets here, where Athena keeps her prisoners.”

“Remind me not to get on your bad side. You’re not serious, are you?”

Was I? Could I torture information out of another living thing? I groaned, slid my hands over the tabletop, and let my head fall on my hands. “I don’t know,” I muttered on the way down. I didn’t want to be like that, but at the same time, when I thought of what Violet and my father were going through, I just might do anything.

Sebastian’s hand touched my back. I lifted my head as his arm slid around my shoulders and he pulled me closer. “Just listen to the music. Take your mind off things for a minute. It’s okay to do that, you know?”

“I know.” I let my head rest against him as the music continued.

We stayed at Gabonna’s for nearly an hour before going back to Presby to finish out the day. Bran gave me another brutal workout, but this time I was faster on the “power draw” and he actually paid me a compliment—miracle of miracles. I knew he was right; the more I used my power, the more comfortable it’d become. Though I was still far from feeling
comfort.
Bran was so pleased that he told me to come to the Ramsey Black and Gold Masque, his family’s annual Mardi Gras party. He wasn’t surprised when I passed on the invitation. The thought of being in a crowd, having to talk and smile and act polite, sounded more exhausting than it was worth.

Sebastian and I took it easy and people-watched in the square after school and then ate dinner at one of the cafés nearby. Once darkness settled over the city, we decided to stroll up the Riverwalk before heading over to catch the streetcar for home.

The Riverwalk at night was the place to be. Streetlamps burned, couples strolled, gamblers went in and out of the newly restored Harrah’s. Laughter and conversation mixed with the sound of the street performers playing their trumpets and saxophones. Vendors lined the walk, which paralleled the river, selling flowers, jewelry, masks, and beads. I took a deep inhale of the cold air saturated with Mississippi River and the salty tang of the Gulf of Mexico beyond.

“You sure you don’t want to go to the party?” Sebastian asked, bumping me with his shoulder.

“Yeah, I’m sure. I’d rather go back to the GD and crash.”

“Me too, but you still have to check it out. The Black and Gold is a pretty cool sight, see?” He nodded ahead of us.

The
Creole Queen
was docked in the water alongside the walk. And the paddleboat wasn’t something you could miss; her railings were strung with lights that reflected off the water and made the
Queen
look as though she floated on sequins.

She was packed, too, with Mardi Gras revelers all dressed in black and gold.

Several costumed guests had gathered in groups on the Riverwalk in front of the boat, talking, laughing, and clinking their champagne glasses together as lively jazz wafted from the back of the boat. Tourists snapped pictures and watched the party; the black and gold costumes drew a lot of spectators.

Eyes peered through the oval holes of gorgeous masks, making me think of Violet and how much she’d love to see this. The plain gold ones worn by the men—unadorned, smooth, and covering the forehead to the tip of the nose—gave me the creeps more than any of the others. When they looked at me . . . it was like being stared at by an old-world predator. They turned their heads like silent puppets, seeming suspended for a moment in time, their eyes glittering, black and mysterious.

Despite the eerie masks, the sight was beautiful, like being in an elegant dream of sparkling lights and aristocratic make-believe.

We found a bench in a dark spot away from the crowd. I angled my body so that I could stare at the boat, completely taken with the image. “You can go. To the party. You don’t have to stay on my account,” I said over my shoulder. “Michel’s probably there, right?”