Quinn snorted. “You can’t lay any guilt on me. You get full the responsibility for the damage.”
Riley wondered if Quinn would tell her sister what he’d said, and if that would make her feel better, or worse.
Nick leaned on the chair again, pressing harder until Anson yelped. “When did you hook up with Numina?”
“I don’t know exactly. They must have tapped into my research somehow. They never told me how I came on their radar.”
“You didn’t ask?”
He raised his eyebrows. “Guys like that come to your door, offer you a job like this, for that kind of money—you don’t ask a lot of questions.”
“Guys like what?” Nick demanded.
Anson looked as delighted as someone with a broken nose and blood all over his face could look. “Seriously, you don’t know who Numina is?”
“We know,” Sam fibbed. “Who are you working with specifically?”
He shifted on his chair and pretended Sam hadn’t said anything, addressing his answers toward Quinn and Riley, as if he was gifting them with a history lesson. “Numina’s core leadership is made up of guys like William Yates, Benjamin Odrama, Darren Breffet.”
Somehow, Riley wasn’t surprised that he’d just named the world’s biggest computer magnate, a former U.S. president, and the most respected investment guru in history. How many more of the world’s leaders were part of that legacy?
“Gods,” Nick said, half scoffing.
Anson sneered back. “Yeah. Descended just like the goddesses. Only instead of having physical powers, they got power based off influence.”
“Influence,” Sam repeated.
Anson gestured. “You know how people say a guy has charisma? Seems charmed, no matter what he does. Everything he touches turns to gold. All those clichés? Influence.”
Riley wondered if he even saw the irony in his dismissal, calling the traits clichés. He obviously recognized his own charisma and used it whenever possible. Even when it didn’t work.
“I assume their use of it isn’t all the same,” Sam said. “Goddess abilities vary, as does the amount of power they have.”
Riley thought about John’s reference to splintering and said, “The men you named wouldn’t have a need to go after the power of goddesses. They have a high level of respect and success they wouldn’t want to risk.”
Anson winked at her and gave a little nod.
“How many Numina are there?” Nick asked.
Anson shrugged. “No idea. My best guess is about as many as there are goddesses.”
“Imagine that…men having the more subtle skills,” Riley snarked.
Anson ignored that, too. “Numina is a secret organization, even from within. You’re a member from birth, and all male descendants are included, no matter how much influence they have, but only certain ones are part of the inner circle. So there’s a wide range of success. And as you can imagine, some abuse it, get greedy, and fall off their peaks.”
“People like Broginvicci, Danner, Lilling.” Sam named some of the biggest recent falls from grace, CEOs and politicians who fit Anson’s description.
Riley gasped in recognition. Anson nodded at her. “Exactly. One of those guys was in my office a couple of days ago. They all want their power back, and influence isn’t doing it fast enough. So they came up with a bigger plan.”
The pieces were coming together now. Sam relaxed his threatening stance and paced at Anson’s side. “They found out you planned to leech goddesses—”
“A goddess,” Anson interrupted, one finger in the air. His self-righteousness was so ridiculous, Quinn laughed. “I only intended to leech one goddess. They came to me and offered me everything I’d ever wanted if I leeched more and used the power to help them get theirs back.”
Sam didn’t buy it. “They couldn’t offer you everything you’d ever wanted. You wanted to be a goddess.”
Anson made an annoyed face. “Yeah, well, their offer was still hard to turn down. I promised I’d work for them, and once Marley did the initial bestowment, it wasn’t hard to go after the others.”
“Because you were addicted.” Riley was sure she was the only one who heard the crack Sam barely kept out of his voice, the statement driven by his own fears.
Anson nodded but didn’t look chagrined or rueful.
“I would have been unstoppable.” He gazed into the distance, as if considering what could have been. “If I’d leeched Quinn—”
“Except she stopped you.” Nick’s hard tone stripped Anson’s wistfulness off his face. “So, then what? Numina didn’t cast you off?”
“I don’t work for Numina. These guys are members, but they’re working outside the organization.” He winced. “And no, they weren’t too happy. You notice they didn’t keep me out of jail. Too risky. They didn’t want a traceable connection to me.”
His tone gave Riley an inkling of why Anson had suddenly become so cooperative. Maybe he wasn’t thrilled with his treatment at his employers’ hands and was looking to change sides? She glanced at Sam, who didn’t seem to be thinking along the same lines. In fact, he looked suspicious, and that made Riley wonder if Anson was talking as a stall tactic. But for what? She tuned out for a second to check for prickles but still only sensed the people in the room.
“They came up with this other plan when they found out that I could track—” Anson broke off, his eyes widening and his face going red. He glanced at Riley out of the corner of his eye but kept his face forward.
Her mind raced. The Numina had found out that Anson could track…goddesses. It had to be goddesses. Quinn had said he could sense them with the residue from his leechings.
Suddenly she knew how Vern and Sharla and all the other shadow stalkers kept finding her, even when she traveled with no plan, no destination in mind. How they’d followed her on the way up here when the only people who knew where she was were people they should have been able to trust.
“How?” She stepped forward and raised a candlestick over his head. “How do you track goddesses? How did you track me?” Sam came around the back of the chair and nudged Riley out of Anson’s reach. But just let the bastard try to get a jump on her. So far tonight, all she’d felt for Anson was disgust and pity. But now fury lit, fueled by all those months of confusion and anxiety.
Anson’s smile was smug this time. “Once I tag a goddess, I always know where she is.”
“Why me?” It didn’t make any sense for Anson to have “tagged” her, even if their grandmothers were friends. “I didn’t even know I was a goddess. What did you think you could get from me when I shouldn’t have had any power?”
Sam tugged her back again. She hadn’t even realized she’d stepped nearer. She really wanted to brain Anson.
But this time Sam spoke, his voice hard, his arm tight around Riley’s shoulders. “Think about it. He’s patient. Look how long his first plan took. He knew you weren’t part of the Society, that you didn’t know goddesses, because of his grandmother’s journals. He probably had you in reserve from day one. If you didn’t know anything about yourself, he could teach you. You’d be grateful.”
Anson’s expression had darkened while Sam spoke, losing any hint of charm, but he was smart. He must know that arguing would have made Sam’s assessment sound more true, so he just glared at them all, mouth pressed tight and hands clenched on his thighs.
“He was hedging his bets. If you didn’t come into your power when you turned twenty-one, there was no loss for him. But if you did, and if things didn’t work out the way he planned with Marley and the others—which it didn’t—you were his backup. You wouldn’t know anything about him. Unlike all the other goddesses, you weren’t warned about him.”