A Beautiful Evil

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.

Twenty-Eight

SEBASTIAN AND I SAT HIGH ABOVE JACKSON SQUARE 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. ns class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">