Rogue Descendant (Nikki Glass) by Jenna Black Read Free Book Online Page A

aren’t you?” I murmured.
    “Have to be,” he answered without turning his attention away from the computers. “Sometimes all the markets are open at the same time. Don’t want to miss anything.”
    I was tempted to ask him what he did for fun, but I already knew the answer. Maybe he wasn’t just socially awkward. Maybe he actually bordered on autistic, though he was obviously high functioning. I wondered if he’d always been like that, or if becoming Liberi had changed him. Then I wondered how someone as mild mannered and aloof as Leo couldhave become Liberi in the first place. Unless he was one of the original Liberi —the son of a god, rather than just a descendant of one—he had to have killed someone to become immortal. I had a hard time imagining him doing that.
    “I like numbers more than I like people,” he said without looking up, as if he could guess the direction of my thoughts. His fingers kept zipping across the keyboard. There was an edge of defensiveness in his voice. “Whenever someone new comes along, they feel sorry for me and try to draw me out, but I’m not like the rest of you. I’m happy like this.”
    Maybe that was why he was so nervous around me—he was waiting for me to try to “save” him. If he were an ordinary human being, I might have thought him desperately in need of human contact. I might have thought he couldn’t possibly be living a good life shut up in his room with his computers all the time. But he wasn’t an ordinary human being—he was a Liberi . Immortality, and the powers that were awakened in a Liberi when he or she became immortal, changed people, made them something other than human. When Leo said he was happy with his life as it was, I believed him.
    “I don’t feel sorry for you,” I said, though maybe that wasn’t strictly true. It seemed sad to me that Leo would spend so much of his time so completely alone, but I knew I was imposing my own likes and dislikes on him. “I wouldn’t want to live like this, but if it works for you, that’s all that matters.”
    He paused for a moment in his typing, lookingover his shoulder at me, though he still didn’t meet my eyes. “Thank you.”
    “No problem.”
    He turned back to his computer and tapped a few more keys. Then he nodded sagely and spoke without turning around.
    “The email was sent from a computer at the FedEx Print and Ship on K Street at 4:02 A.M. The email account was created at 3:46 A.M. and deleted at 4:03. Sending that email is the only activity associated with the account, and the user registered as John Smith.”
    “Creative,” I muttered under my breath. I’d have to swing by and see if anyone there remembered seeing Konstantin, though even if they did, I didn’t think it would be much help. I needed to know where he was now, not where he’d been at 4 A.M.
    Leo shrugged apologetically. “Sorry that’s all I could get.”
    I almost laughed. “You got everything there was, and in about five minutes. I couldn’t have asked for more.”
    He didn’t respond, instead zipping his chair over to another computer and typing at high speed. But even so, I didn’t miss the pleased little smile on his lips.
    I’m not particularly fond of admitting I’m wrong—who is?—but it seemed like the logical conclusion, given the evidence. Trying to catch Konstantin all by myself would be flat-out stupid, and it wasn’t like I could doanything to him if I caught him. Which meant I had to swallow my pride and tell Anderson I’d changed my mind about the hunt.
    I was in a foul mood when I stepped into his study after a late breakfast I’d forced myself to eat in an attempt to counteract the ice-cream binge. I desperately wanted to catch Konstantin before his next attack, whatever that would be, but I wasn’t overly optimistic about my chances. I didn’t have much to go on, and since Konstantin knew he’d have a descendant of Artemis on his tail, he was no doubt going to be extra paranoid and