Chapter Ten
MAJORCA, SPAIN
Creon watched the reporter for five minutes before he decided to uncloak himself from the shadows.
He appeared out of the darkness behind her, barely a step away.
She spun around and inhaled a startled breath so quickly it almost sounded like a sob.
There was something exhilarating about seeing a woman afraid, Creon thought, especially when that woman was a pushy bitch like this one.
A little fear is good; it reminded non-Scion mortals of their place, and Creon wanted this mortal in particular to remember that she might be able to force this meeting by threatening to have the police investigate his family, but she wasn’t in control.
That’s why he picked the docks at night.
He wanted to see how committed she truly was to writing a story on his family.
The fact that she met him there proved she had a spine, if not a brain, and because of that Creon decided she deserved a moment of his time.
Besides, she made such a pleasant sound when she was startled. Maybe he would hear it again.
He smiled down at her innocently, as if to let her know that he was just playing a little trick. She met his eye, but she also took a step back—which meant she was brave but scared. Creon liked to see those two emotions together; it made him feel like he had won something.
“Again, I ask for the father but instead I get the son,” she said in accented English.
“I speak perfect Spanish,” Creon replied in her native language, still smiling at her. “And you know my father doesn’t meet reporters.”
“Your father doesn’t meet anyone. That’s why I’m here,” she continued stubbornly in English. He shrugged impassively, refusing to take the bait. She crossed her arms and studied him. “Tantalus Delos hasn’t let anyone see him in almost twenty years now. Strange, no?”
“He likes his privacy,” Creon said through a grin that had grown tight.
“Privacy is the one luxury a billionaire aristocrat can’t buy. You’ve heard the stories about your father, yes?”
“They’re all lies,” Creon said as smoothly as he could, but her eyes were so doubtful he nearly faltered. How dare she?
Over the years there had been many stories floating around the tabloids about his father—that he had been maimed, that he had lost his mind to an obsessive-compulsive disorder like Howard Hughes, that he was dead.
Creon knew at least that his father was alive, and he had vehemently denied all of the other accusations time and time again.
But the truth was, Creon hadn’t seen or spoken to his father in nineteen years.
No one had seen Tantalus except Creon’s mother, Mildred Delos.
His mother insisted that Tantalus was in hiding in order to protect himself and the House of Thebes, but she never could explain to Creon why his father wouldn’t call him on the phone, not even once. It seemed like such a little thing to ask.
“All lies? You know this for certain?” the reporter pressed as soon as she saw Creon fall into his own conflicted thoughts.
Creon noticed that she kept speaking in English, almost as if she was taunting him.
“For years now, you, your mother, your whole family, say all these things are lies, but how do you know for true? Tell me, Creon, when is the last time you saw your father? I know he was not at your graduation from university.”
Creon gritted his teeth. “My father is a very private man. He—”
“Pssh!” she exclaimed derisively, cutting Creon off with an imperious wave of her hand. She shouldn’t have done that. “This is not privacy, this is lunacy! Can any man’s privacy mean so much that he would abandon his only son simply to stay out of the papers?”
Creon’s hand shot out and he had her by the throat before she could even raise an arm in protest. She had such a tiny throat, so slender and fragile.
Creon thought it was like holding a thin kitten in his hand.
Her eyes blossomed with fear. The pupils opened up and reflex tears beaded on their dark surface like dew.
She was lovely in terror—a perfect, pleading mask of alabaster white skin, wide eyes, and, best of all, her mouth, an open oval of red surprise like she was waiting to be kissed.
Creon wanted to hold her like that for days, but a split second of enjoyment later he heard a snap.
Like a switched-off TV, the light in her eyes contracted to pinpricks, and then went completely dark.
Creon dumped her body in the water and ran back to the citadel so quickly no normal person could see him pass, even if they were standing inches away.
Still shaking with a half-sickening thrill, he went straight up to his room, and froze when he opened the door.
His mother was waiting for him. She was sitting next to his packed suitcase with her narrow, manicured hands folded neatly in her lap, holding something.
Her head fell to the side as she stared at him.
His mother only needed to look at him to know that the meeting that she had arranged, the meeting that was supposed to be nothing more than a polite gesture, had ended violently.
“Did you have to kill her?” she asked seriously and without reproach. Mildred was nothing if not practical.
“She provoked me,” Creon said as he moved past his mother and grabbed the handle of his suitcase. “Besides, it’s better this way and you know it.”
Mildred dropped her eyes and nodded, accepting that her son was right. More than one reporter had “disappeared” over the years.
“Given the situation, I approve of you leaving the country for a while.” She held up the plane ticket she had taken from the front pocket of his suitcase and waved it at him before he could bolt out of the room.
He stopped dead, realizing that he had been caught.
“What I don’t approve of is your choice of destination.
What do you think you’re going to accomplish by going there?
Your father forbade the Hundred to go anywhere near Nantucket. ”
He took a breath to calm himself down. It didn’t work.
“It’s their fault we don’t have what is rightfully ours, it has to be, because all the other Houses are gone!
I have to know how they can live with themselves when they’ve sentenced the rest of their family to inevitable death.
Immortality is my birthright, and regardless of what my father allows or forbids, I will not sit back while they deny me that! ”
Creon shouldered his carry-on, wheedled the ticket out of his mother’s reluctant hands, and moved past her. He hurried down the ancient stone steps at the back of the citadel, his heart still pumping with excitement.
Outside, there was a nondescript black sedan waiting. His mother’s driver was behind the wheel, ready to take him to the airport. Creon realized that Mildred had known all along that he would kill that girl. She had probably known he would do it the moment she arranged for Creon to meet her.
“Son?” she called out to him from under the arched gate. “Did you kill her just to have a reason to leave?”
He turned and faced her, forcing patience. “Did you send me there to kill her?”
His mother smiled at him, but her eyes were far away and out of focus—thinking many thoughts at once.
She walked toward him slowly, making him wait for her even though she had to know that he was vibrating with adrenaline.
She stepped close to him and looked up into his face.
Her elegantly sculpted lips were pulled tight in a thin line of warning.
“Stay away from Hector.”
Wednesday morning, Helen ran out of the house and toward Lucas’s waiting car before Jerry could get it into his head to come out and “have a talk with that young man,” as he had been threatening.
Helen wasn’t entirely sure if her dad was serious or if he was just trying to get a rise out of her, but she wasn’t about to take any chances.
It wouldn’t be fair to put Lucas through the traditional parental screening when they weren’t even officially dating.
“Ready?” she asked quickly, trying to distract Lucas.
“Should we wait?” Lucas asked when he saw Jerry standing in the front door.
“No, just drive. Quick! I don’t know if he’s really going to do it or not,” Helen responded desperately as she waved good-bye to her father.
“Do what?” he asked. He put the car in gear and drove out.
“Try and talk to you, man-to-man,” Helen said, relieved.
“Well, in that case,” Lucas said. He hit the brakes and shifted into reverse.
“What are you doing?” Helen put her hand over his to stop him from shifting.
“I’m going to go inside and talk to your dad. I don’t want him to feel like he can’t trust me with his daughter.”
“Lucas, I swear to whatever god you think is holy that I will get out of this car and walk to school if you go inside and talk to my dad.”
Lucas smiled and shifted back into first, driving away from her house. “Who told you the gods were holy?” he asked with a sinister glint in his eyes. Helen punched him on the arm.
“You just did that to see me freak out, didn’t you?” she asked indignantly.
“Hey, you’re the one embarrassed by her own father. You’re pretty cute when you panic,” he said with a huge smile.
Helen tried to smile back at him, but it came out all mangled on her lips. She had no idea what to think. The use of the word cute could either encourage her hopes, or eulogize them.
Every person who recognized them honked and waved with a big smile on their face. Honking at passing friends was customary on the island, and it was something that Helen had grown up with, but it seemed to her as if everyone was leaning on their horns for an extra-long time this morning.
“So, listen,” Lucas said, changing the tone from playful to something a little more serious. “Hector told me you found him on your roof.”
“Yeah,” Helen replied, trying to scrunch down in her seat so no one could see her. “About that . . .”