Chaos (Kardia Chronicles) (Entangled Teen) (12 page)

That fucking hurt, and I bit my lip to hold back the gasp. “You don’t even know me. How can you say that?”

“You’re
kardia
Aphrodite.”

He said it like it should mean something and while I knew the Aphrodite part, the other word was new to me.

“What’s
kardia
?”

His frown deepened and the seats creaked as he turned to face me more fully. “It means like, from the heart of. That’s what we say when we declare our origins. Why don’t you already know that?”

Answering would require me telling him more stuff I didn’t want to tell him. Instead, I opened my mouth to explain why that was none of his goddamned business, but the thunderous look on his face stopped me. “I guess it didn’t come up.”

He uttered something under his breath and, judging by the clenching of his fists, I was glad I didn’t hear it. Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before he increased the volume. “I seriously don’t know whether you’re playing stupid or you’re actually this stupid sometimes.”

Oh, fuck this
. I made for the door again, but his softly muttered, “Don’t,” was menacing enough that I didn’t.

He blew out an exasperated sigh. “You’re from Aphrodite’s bloodline. So you’re
kardia
Aphrodite. There are still a handful of you out there, and I’ve never met a good one. You know the whole succubus folklore?”

My mouth went dry and I forced a nod.
Please don’t say it, please don’t
—

“Where do you think it came from?”

That little gem rocked me, but I didn’t even have time to catch my breath before he added more to the load.

“For a second, I wondered about you. When I saw you at the hospital with Eric today? I thought that just maybe…” His lips pulled into a harsh line. “But I realize now it’s early days and you all but admitted you put that kid in a coma. You steal. You lie when it suits you.”

His words rained on like a razor storm, and I wanted to curl into a ball and cover myself.

But he still didn’t stop. “And that’s only now. You’re not even strong yet, and you’re still a little torn. Once you’re seventeen and you finish changing, what little good is left in you will be eaten up by the need. Now, I’m trying to help you here before that happens. If Eric had died, we wouldn’t even need your permission. You’d have been taken out. Period. You can take the hand I’m offering you and in a few months this will all be a bad dream, or you can do this the hard way.” His voice dropped low, which was scarier than if he’d started to yell. “And if you think it’s been hard up until now, you’re sadly mistaken.”

Was he right? Was all my kind evil somehow? Not my mom or my gram. That much I knew was true in my heart. But maybe they used to be, before they bound their power? The thought made me ill and prompted another, even worse thought. Was I a birthday away from being a complete monster like something from a horror movie? I couldn’t deny that sometimes I sure felt like it. Tears clogged my throat, and I swallowed hard.

“I need more information before I can decide. Like, why do we? If Aphrodite is the goddess of love, why do her descendants have the desire to steal it from people? Seems backwards.”

“It sure as hell is.” His lip curled in disgust. “But that’s the way it goes for all semis. When god’s mate with humans, it dilutes that blood line. Ancient gods aren’t like today’s gods. Most were ruthless when they were at their height of power. Put them together with equally flawed humans, and sometimes it works out okay, sometimes it doesn’t. One really bad mating can create a rift in the line that carries on for centuries.”

He gave me a pointed look, and I worried the soft flesh on the inside of my cheek with my teeth. So apparently the
kardia
Aphrodite had been among the lines with said rift. There was a lot of annoyance and no sympathy in his voice while he delivered all this pleasant info, and it made me want to punch him. This was my life we were talking about.

He didn’t seem to notice and continued on. “Then, add to that the passing of thousands of years. Powers change, and become unstable but through it all, each line retains some part of its origin deity in some way. Most
kardia
Poseidon can control water, moving it with their hands or sometimes even their minds.
Kardia
Hermes are notorious gossips and often have the power to travel from one place to another in a blink. Your kind has retained Aphrodite’s need for worship and her affinity for love. Somehow, over centuries, that manifested into what it is now. When you come fully into your power, you’ll be able to do other things, but the desire to take love from people will always be there.”

Way to make it sound as awful as possible.

“I’ve answered your question, now you need to answer mine.” His gaze drilled into me. “Are you coming with me?”

Before I could even form a response, the lights flickered in my house and I looked down at my cell phone with a start.

“Please. I have to go in. My mom has her Pilates class on Saturday nights, and I need to be there to watch my gram. Do we have to do this right now? I’m totally overwhelmed. I can barely think straight, and…”

And? What had I planned to say? That I felt like I was taking crazy pills and should think about checking myself into a loony bin? That if he pushed me, I was going to crack into a thousand little pieces? “Give me until Monday to think, okay? I’m begging you.”

He hesitated, sparing a glance to the picture window of my house where my mom stood now, peering out. “Fine.” He nodded curtly. “Monday. Lunchtime. Meet me in the quad area so we can talk.”

I got the impression I didn’t have a whole lot of say in the matter, so I nodded. “Fine.”

I took the reprieve gratefully, despite the twenty questions on the tip of my tongue. It was strange, but even though he’d spent the better part of an hour threatening me, I felt oddly as energized as I did terrified. If he was telling the truth, I’d found another semi my age. One who knew things about me and my kind. I’d never met one and wasn’t even sure how many existed or if I’d ever meet another.

What type of semi was he? Did he have powers? Where did he come from? When was he leaving? Was he sure
all
kardia
Aphrodite were bad? I voiced none of these questions, though.

Instead, I stepped out of the car in silence, the sting of cold a welcome, jarring slap.

“And Maggie?” Mac called after me, his voice soft but audible over the rumble of the car engine.

“Yeah?” I bent low to poke my head through the still-opened door.

His face was so intense, I wondered if he descended from a God of war. “Don’t even think about blowing me off.”

Chapter Six

I stepped into the house, wishing I had even another five minutes to get my head together before Mom grilled me about the boy who’d driven me home. I had a lot of questions for her, too, but wasn’t sure what I wanted to tell her about Mac yet, so asking all of them would be impossible until I made a decision on that front. I didn’t know what scared me more: the thought that she would tell me I couldn’t go with him to the Council to relinquish my powers or the possibility that she would grab me, toss me into the car, and drive me herself when she found out it was an option.

“Who was that?” she called into the hallway.

Didn’t even have my coat off yet. I yanked my arms out and hung it on the back of the door, still shaking from my discussion with Mac. “A friend from school.”

“What friend? Did he see you walking home and pick you up?”

“This kid named…” Had I told her Mac’s name? I didn’t think so. Better if I didn’t mention he was the same guy I’d been talking about the other day, because that would open up a whole new line of investigative reporting. “Mac. He was at the hospital visiting his mother and saw me walking out.” Hey, if that was a good enough line for him, it was good enough for me. I sure couldn’t tell her the truth.

I strolled toward the dining room where she stood, eyeballing me, a frown creasing her brow. “Is this a possible boyfriend?”

She asked like it was just mild curiosity, but the concern was plain in her eyes. The thought of me alone with boys still scared her. I got that. It scared me, too.

“Definitely not. Just a ride home.”

Her smile was much more genuine this time as she pulled out a chair then sat in front of a pile of mail. “That was nice of him.” She leafed through the pile and jerked her head toward the kitchen. “There’s dinner on the stove. Turkey chili.”

I nodded but made no move to get a bowl. “How’s Gram today?” I peered into the living room, but it was dark.

“She’s asleep already. Today was…not great.” A cloud passed over her face, and I felt like a shit for not coming in sooner.

“Not great” lately meant bad.

“I’m so sorry I’m late. Why don’t you go get ready for your class?”

“I think I’m going to skip it tonight and just veg on the couch,” she said with a phony smile.

She was Pilates-obsessed, so that was another clue of exactly how bad her day must have been. Yet another reason not to tell her about my conversation with Mac. “I’ll veg with you, then.”

As soon as I got some information because right now I was flying blind with only the word of a near stranger who’d been almost exclusively shitty to me to go on and a life-altering decision less than two days away. How to bring it up nonchalantly?

“So, tell me more about the Council of Amaranth.”
Ah, well played, Maggie. Very smooth.

Mom stopped shuffling the pile of mail and pulled off the reading glasses I was convinced she only wore to make her look less pretty.

“Why are you asking about them now?” Her tone was as sharp as her gaze.

I managed to keep from flushing—a sure sign of guilt to Mom’s eyes—and shrugged, good reasons in decidedly short supply. I didn’t let that stop me, though, and leaned on the back of one of the chairs. “Well, my birthday is less than five months away. I’m getting closer to becoming whatever it is I’m becoming, and I want to know more about the stuff you told me. I thought I’d start there.”

She sighed. “You know I’m not comfortable discussing this with you. I don’t even know how it works anymore—it’s been so long. It’s a part of my past, and soon, hopefully it will be a part of your past, too.”

I shelved my anger at her continued unwillingness to help me and tried a different tack. “Right. And past is history. Our history. I want to know where we came from. How can that hurt?”

She seemed to relax some and rubbed her eyes. “Okay, sit down. We’re going to keep it short and sweet.”

I sat, anticipation at the thought of getting any information at all making me a little giddy.

“The Council is traditionally made up of three demi or semi-gods. For the past two hundred years or so, they have been women. Demi-god sisters named Bryony and Floryn and then a semi-god named Marigold. Their jobs are to regulate the interaction between the gods, demigods, semi-gods, and humans and to keep order.”

Bryony, Floryn, and Marigold.
I filed that away, thinking those sounded like pretty nice names, and sat quietly, hoping she’d continue without me harassing her.

“I’m not sure what else you want to know.” She looked slightly nauseous at even having shared that much, but I couldn’t stop myself from pressing for more.

“How do they keep order? What kinds of rules are there?”

She shifted in her seat and tucked a stray lock of blonde hair behind one ear. “Well, for example, they try to keep our existence hidden. So if they find that too many people are talking, they will send a semi out to do a wipe, say.”

“A wipe?”

She hesitated, pursed her lips, and nodded. “Where they might take away that certain memory from a person.”

I drew back, stunned. Why, after all that had happened to me,
that
would be a surprise, I couldn’t say. But it sure as shit was. “That can be done?”

“By a semi with that particular skill set, yes.” She cleared her throat and reached for her pile of envelopes again.

I soaked it all up like a sponge and wanted more. “What else?”

She let out an exasperated sigh. “Let’s see… Well, if there is an issue where someone is causing chaos or too much notice by humans, the Council will step in. Power is an insidious thing and people will do bad things to each other to get it. Our kind is no different. The only problem is, sometimes the people in charge of policing things are just as bad. That’s part of why we stepped away.”

“Sooo, are you saying the Council is good or bad?”

“Where is all this coming from?” She froze and pinned me with a searching gaze. “Did someone approach you, Maggie?”

The fear in her eyes was very real and made me a little less comfortable about keeping the truth from her. Although, to be fair, if she hadn’t kept the truth from me first, we might not even be in this mess.

“No, it’s not that. I just feel like it will help me control it all better if I can understand until I can bind it. That’s all.” I crossed my fingers behind my back as I spoke, but guilt stabbed at me anyway. I wasn’t big on the whole “binding” idea, mainly out of principle. So far I hadn’t handled the semi thing all that well, but I never even got a chance to try. To see what I could become if someone…
anyone
had some faith in me and gave me a chance.

It was a part of me, like my eyes and my nose and my weird laugh. Burying it away would mean becoming someone I wasn’t born to be, and that bugged me. At the same time, I couldn’t say I was big on going someplace and having my powers stripped, either. No matter how I turned it in my head, it smacked of unpleasantness at the very least. “Stripped” was a pretty harsh word. If I was their PR person, I would’ve gone with something more like “rinsed” or “undone.” “Better to be prepared for when the time comes. Knowledge is power and all that,” I added with a sage nod.

Relief flashed in her eyes. “Good. That’s really good. The members of the Council are tough, to say the least. I haven’t had too many dealings with them, but there were stories… I worried at first about Eric,” she admitted softly. “But they don’t normally get involved in something small-scale and easily explained away. There were no questions left hanging. It was written off as an accident. No issues…”