Deadly Descendant

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Authors: Jenna Black
Tags: Fiction, General, Fantasy, Contemporary, Urban
north of the attack before.” I had brought my big map of the D.C. area with me, and I unfolded it on Anderson’s desk, the sites of the three murders numbered and circled. They formed more of a triangle than a straight line, but I still felt there was a definite direction of movement. A pattern I could exploit.
    “I’ve highlighted the cemeteries in yellow,” I pointed out, “and I think if his pattern holds true, he’ll hit near the Rock Creek Cemetery tonight.” I pointed helpfully at the cemetery in question.
    Anderson looked skeptical. “That seems like an awful lot of conjecture.”
    I couldn’t help grinning. “Conjecture seems to be a big part of my power.” My gut was telling me this wasn’t all in my head, that there really was a pattern to the murders. I couldn’t say I completely trusted my gut, but it had certainly steered me in the right direction many times before.
    “Even if you’re right, Rock Creek is huge. And if you have to include anything within walking distance in your search, the chances of you running into the killer are really low.”
    I grabbed the map and started wrestling it backinto its tidy brochure size. “My chances are better if I go hang around the cemetery than if I sit here doing nothing. I checked the weather and the lunar calendar, and I should have plenty of moon action tonight.” My powers were stronger in the moonlight, though it was difficult to pinpoint exactly what effect the moonlight had. The best explanation I had was that it made my hunches stronger and more accurate.
    Anderson looked anything but convinced, and I couldn’t say I blamed him. If I were an ordinary human being, or even an ordinary Liberi, my chances of finding the killer with so little information would be almost nil. But I wasn’t an ordinary human being, not anymore.
    “Look, it may still be a long shot,” I said, “but what do we have to lose by trying?”
    Anderson thought about it a little more, then came to a decision. “All right. We’ll go stake out the cemetery tonight.”
    “We?” I’d known he wouldn’t let me go alone, and with his ability to kill Liberi, Anderson seemed like a logical choice to go with me, but something about the way he said it told me he didn’t mean just him and me. “Who’s we? ”
    “All of us,” Anderson said, and my jaw dropped. “We can cover a lot more ground if we all go together and then split up.”
    “But I’m the only one who’s got a realistic shot at finding him. Maybe.”
    “Your shot at finding him doesn’t get any worse ifthe rest of us are there looking, too, and our chances of actually catching him are a lot better. We don’t know what he can do, and I’m not sure what it’ll take to subdue him.”
    It was then that I realized the very important question I had so far failed to ask, had failed even to contemplate. “What are we going to do with him if and when we catch him?”
    Anderson was the only one of us who could actually kill a Liberi, but I knew without asking that he wouldn’t do it. For reasons I didn’t understand—and was too fond of being alive to want to delve into—Anderson didn’t want anyone to know who and what he actually was. Even Emma didn’t know, and I doubted her finding out the truth would make their marriage any smoother. What Anderson saw in her—other than beauty—was beyond me.
    “First, we’ll question him and see how much of what the Olympians told us was the truth. There’s nothing he can say to excuse what he’s done, but if the Olympians are hiding something, I think it’s important we find out what it is.”
    I had to agree, though given the ferocity of the killer’s attacks, I wasn’t sure how much reliable information we could get out of him. He seemed several eggs short of a dozen to me.
    “Okay, so we question him,” I said. “If we can. Then what?”
    Anderson looked at me warily, and I knew I wasn’t going to like whatever was coming next. “Then we hand him over

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