“Because the moment the secret was out,” I said sourly, “there was no putting that particular genie back in the bottle.”
“Correct,” Janus said, glancing sidelong at me. “In addition, he had reached a point where after so many attempts to ensnare you—Wolfe, Henderschott, Fries, Mormont, the vampires—he believed that even were I to bring you into the fold, your loyalty would always be suspect.”
“Because it was predicated on one thing, right?” I asked him. “On a common enemy.”
“And once that enemy was gone …” Janus said with a slight nod. “He was not a man prone to solving one massive problem by unleashing another. He was very careful to protect his interests and those of the Ministers by finding solutions that would insulate them from additional fallout.”
“Yeah, he was a real prince,” I said acidly. “Unfortunately, the rest of us have to deal with the consequences of his failure to act.” And yours, I didn’t say.
“How did you know?” Janus asked after a moment’s pause. “About Adelaide?”
“She’s left a ghost in my head,” I said, looking back at the photo of the stasis unit. “She’s the one who told me how to use my powers.” She’d told me a lot of things, actually. Showed me things. I felt a shudder and suppressed it.
Things I wasn’t ready to talk about just yet. That I couldn’t talk about.
Remember.
“How is that possible?” Scott asked, and his voice sounded a little hoarse. He cleared it, looking around the table self-consciously.
“She was the stronger succubus,” Janus said, shaking his head very lightly.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “She touched me for a long time, like … way longer than it would have taken for a succubus’s power to work.” I caught the hint of something in Janus’s gaze, a flicker, and he looked away from me. “What are you not telling me?”
Janus paused, and when he answered it was with more than a hint of irritability. “Nothing that pertains to defeating Sovereign. Let us keep the focus on the matter at hand—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Reed said, leaning forward on the table. “You don’t just get to dish out and withdraw a little bit of info like that. You’re saying there’s a way to control a succubus—and assuming that’s right, presumably an incubus’s power, too, right?” He glanced around at all of us, his look somewhere between incredulity and relief. “This could be the thing that stops Sovereign.”
“She could still use the powers of the metas she’d absorbed,” I said with the shake of my head. “Whatever it is, it doesn’t keep them—us—from being able to use what we’ve got already.”
“Nor does it keep a succubus or incubus from being able to absorb fresh souls,” Janus said with that same wary air, now flecked with the barest hint of indignation. “Should we apply this particular treatment to Sovereign, it would do precisely nothing. It is little more than a method for a succubus to voluntarily control their absorption powers.”
I swallowed as I felt a rush of hope run through me. Control my powers? Make it so I could keep from absorbing someone’s soul the moment I touched them?
Make it so I could live a normal life?
“I’d be interested in hearing about it even so,” Scott said from his place down the table. I met his gaze for half a second and looked away.
“It is not relevant to the discussion at hand,” Janus said, and the menace in his voice was unmistakable. There was a sudden, dark pall over the table, a palpable anger that made everyone lean back a little in their chairs.
“Whoa, there,” Zollers said. “Restrain yourself, Janus.”
“I apologize,” Janus said after a moment more. He stood abruptly, and his chair clattered as he did so. “I’m afraid I must withdraw from this conversation. I have nothing more to add to the discussion at this time.” He looked around the room once briefly, his eyes so low that he never met any of ours, and then he left the conference room as quickly as I’d ever seen him move.
“Wow,” J.J. said. “That was super awkward. What do you think his secret was?”
Kat had a flushed look, slightly alarmed, and her gaze was rooted on the door. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen him act this way before. But if he says he’s got nothing more to contribute that would help, I believe him—”
“I don’t,” Reed said sourly. I wheeled my gaze to him. “I don’t care what he says, he’s still Omega in my view, and they’re all filled to the brimming with secrets and lies.”