The Spider(Elemental Assassin series)

14





At precisely seven o’clock Monday evening, Sebastian Vaughn strolled into the Pork Pit, carrying a dozen roses. He grinned, crossed the storefront, and made a gallant bow before straightening back up and handing the flowers to me.

Instead of the typical red, these roses were a deep, dark color. At first, I thought they were black, but then, as I held them up to the light, I realized that the petals actually had a rich blue sheen. The stems were unusual too, milky white instead of the normal green. The thorns were the same pale color, although they seemed to be sharper and longer than usual. All put together, the flowers were beautiful, vibrant, and striking, just like Sebastian.

“Roses!” I exclaimed, playing the part of a girl who was thrilled by such things. It wasn’t too much of a stretch. Secretly, I was delighted that he’d brought me flowers. No one ever had before.

“I know most folks like red roses, but I thought that I would bring you something really special. They’re called Blue Velvet, and they’re from my family’s greenhouse,” Sebastian said.

I buried my nose in the roses, breathing in deeply and inhaling their scent. They smelled much sweeter than I’d thought they would, given their dark blue color, as though someone had distilled the petals down to their purest, most intense essence. Truth be told, the scent was a bit overpowering, almost cloying, and I had to scrunch up my nose to keep from sneezing. Not exactly the aroma I would have picked if I’d been giving myself flowers, but I appreciated the gesture.

I was standing behind the counter, close to where Fletcher sat behind the cash register, reading. Beaming, I held the flowers out to him.

“Aren’t they lovely?”

“Exquisite,” he echoed back in a wry voice.

“Is this your . . . father?” Sebastian’s eyebrows drew together as he looked back and forth between me and Fletcher, as if he was puzzled by the lack of familial resemblance.

“My cousin, actually,” I said. “He . . . adopted me after my family died . . . in a car accident.”

That was more or less the cover story that we’d developed long ago to explain my connection to Fletcher and Finn. Funny, but I’d never had a problem telling the lies before.

Sebastian nodded, his face clearing, and he stretched out his hand. “Nice to meet you, Mr. . . .”

“Lane,” the old man said in a reluctant voice. “Fletcher Lane.”

He took Sebastian’s hand and shook it, even though I could tell that he didn’t want to. Despite his desire to learn more about Vaughn’s mystery file, Fletcher wasn’t all that happy about me going out with Sebastian. Then again, he rarely liked any of the guys that I brought around the restaurant, not even the ones that we had no reason to be wary of. Fletcher’s dislike of my dates was yet another way in which he was overprotective of me.

He stared at the younger man, his green eyes sharp and thoughtful. Sebastian smiled back at him, although his expression seemed a little uneasy around the edges. Then again, Fletcher’s hard, laserlike stare was enough to make anyone nervous, even me.

Fletcher turned to me and held out his hand. “Let me put those in some water for you, Gin. You don’t want to keep your young man waiting.”

“Thanks,” I said, handing the roses over to him. “Ouch!”

Fletcher took the flowers from me, and I pulled my hand back, wincing. I watched a bit of blood well up out of my right thumb, which I’d stabbed into one of the pale thorns.

Sebastian gave me a chagrined look. “Sorry. I should have warned you. They have bigger, sharper thorns than most roses. I think it has something to do with the color of the stems.”

“It’s okay,” I said, grabbing a paper towel and wiping the scarlet drop off my thumb. “It’s just a little blood. Nothing to worry about.”

“If I could kiss it and make it better, I would,” Sebastian said in a low voice that only I could hear.

His gaze locked onto my mouth, as if he was thinking about the soft kisses we’d shared the other night. I certainly was. Sebastian caught me staring at him. He grinned, then flashed me a quick, sly wink. I blushed and dropped my gaze from his.

While Fletcher grabbed an old jelly jar to use as a vase and filled it with water, I untied my work apron, pulled it over my head, and hung it on a hook on the back wall. Then I grabbed my purse, which contained two of my knives, from its slot under the cash register and stepped around the counter. Sebastian reached out and took my hand, careful of my injured thumb.

“So what are we doing tonight? Dinner and a movie?”

He shook his head. “Nothing so predictable as that. I thought you might like to see the greenhouse where your roses came from, along with the rest of my estate.”

I glanced at Fletcher, who gave me a tiny nod as he kept arranging the flowers in the jelly jar. Getting invited to the Vaughn estate was too good an opportunity to pass up. Maybe Sebastian would give me a full tour, including a peek at his father’s office. If I was extremely lucky, he might even leave me alone in there long enough for me to search for the mystery file.

But more than that, I wanted to see the estate for myself, inside and out. You could tell a lot about someone from his home and the furnishings, photos, and knickknacks that adorned it, and I wanted to learn more about Sebastian. I wanted to know everything about him.

I flashed him another smile. “So what are we waiting for? Let’s go.”

Sebastian grinned and tugged me toward the door.

“Don’t be too late,” Fletcher called out.

I gave him a distracted wave of my hand, completely focused on following Sebastian out of the Pork Pit and into the hot summer night.

? ? ?

Sebastian had a sleek black town car waiting down the block.

“After you, madam,” he said, opening the back door and bowing, as though he were a chauffeur.

I giggled and slid into the car. Sebastian shut the door, then went around and got into the other side. He gestured to the giant sitting in the driver’s seat. The giant had forgone the usual black chauffeur’s uniform in favor of a powder-blue suit that brought out the red color of his hair. Freckles were splattered across his nose and cheeks like brown blood drops, while his eyes were as pale as his suit.

“This is Porter,” Sebastian said. “He’s been the head of my father’s security detail for years. He’s agreed to stay on and work for me.”

Oh, I knew all about Roy Porter, since Fletcher had included plenty of information about him in the initial file on Vaughn. Porter arranged the security at the estate, but more than that, he had acted as a sort of foreman for Vaughn, overseeing building-material deliveries, checking on crews, and generally making sure that everything ran smoothly at the job sites. He’d also been Vaughn’s middleman, the one who actually doled out all the bribes necessary to keep his boss’s construction projects chugging along.

From what Fletcher had been able to uncover, Porter went beyond dropping off bribes. Whenever there was a problem that Vaughn’s money hadn’t been able to fix, Porter had often taken care of it himself—with his fists. Like a couple of weeks before the terrace collapse, when Porter had found two Southtown punks spray-painting graffiti at one of the job sites and had beaten them both to death. A third guy who’d been waiting for his friends in the car had said that Porter had toyed with the punks, breaking their legs so they couldn’t run away, then their arms so they couldn’t fight back, before finally caving in their skulls with his fists.

Charges had been filed, but nothing ever came of them, because the last guy had been found dead a week later, beaten to death in an eerily similar manner. That time, Porter had been smart enough not to leave any witnesses behind.

I wondered if Sebastian knew what kind of vicious, violent, ruthless man Porter was. Probably not. He hadn’t seemed to know about his father either. But seeing Porter cooled some of my enthusiasm for my date with Sebastian and reminded me that I still had work to do tonight.

Porter gave me a polite nod in the mirror. “Ma’am.”

I nodded back at him. “Mr. Porter.”

“Take us back to the mansion, Porter,” Sebastian ordered.

Porter steered the car away from the curb. Sebastian kept up a steady stream of conversation all the way from the downtown loop up to Northtown, where his family’s estate was located among Ashland’s other mansions. In fact, the Vaughn estate was down the block from Mab Monroe’s place. Well, perhaps that was a bit of an understatement. Given Mab’s sprawling compound and the thick woods that surrounded it, Sebastian’s home was a good two miles away, but he seemed to be the Fire elemental’s closest neighbor.

Finally, after about thirty minutes of driving, Porter turned off the road. He reached down into the console between the front seats and picked up a small black clicker, which he used to open the gate that led into the estate. The giant steered the car through the opening and up a long driveway that curved to the top of a hill.

Even though I’d seen the Vaughn estate in the surveillance photographs that Fletcher had given me, I still peered out the window, as though I’d never seen the grounds or the house sitting in the middle of them before.

The mansion was impressive, even by Northtown standards. Six stories of stone towered into the air, old, solid, sturdy gray granite that had easily weathered the wear and tear of the years and would continue to do so for decades to come. The house had three separate wings, each sporting a variety of balconies and patios, while white trellises climbed from floor to floor, all with roses of different colors winding through them—red, white, pink, and even a pale green. The only shade that I didn’t see was the dark blue of the flowers that Sebastian had given me earlier.

“Well,” Sebastian said, grinning. “Home sweet home. What do you think of it?”

“It’s gorgeous.”

He squeezed my hand. “Just wait until you see the inside.” He leaned even closer to me. “Especially my bedroom.”

I knew that he was teasing me, but I couldn’t help the blush that crept up my cheeks. Kissing Sebastian was one thing. So were raging hormones and getting caught up in the moment. But I wasn’t going to be foolish enough to sleep with him—even though it was all that I could think about right now. His lips on mine, his warm skin flush with my own, his fingers slowly trailing down my body as he pulled me even closer . . .

I realized that Porter was staring at me in the rearview mirror, a flat, measured look on his freckled face as though I were an ant under a magnifying glass, one that he was thinking about burning with the lens. The soft smile slid from my lips, while the pleasant heat evaporated from my cheeks. A bucket of ice water couldn’t have been more effective.

Porter kept looking at me, his own expression cold and level. What was his problem? Was he pissed that Vaughn was dead and he was working for his son now? Or did he not like playing chauffeur? I didn’t know, but it made those whispered doubts rise up in my mind again.

“Come on,” Sebastian said. “Let me show you around.”

We got out of the car, which Porter then drove behind the house, probably to park it in the garage there. Sebastian threaded his fingers through mine and led me up the main steps and into the house.

The mansion was even more impressive on the inside than it was on the outside. High vaulted ceilings, crystal chandeliers, gleaming hardwood floors, marble staircases, exquisite antiques everywhere you looked. Everything was expensive, elegant, and polished to a high gloss, and the interior could have easily been featured in a magazine.

Still, something about the furnishings bothered me. Mainly because they didn’t match up with the rather spartan decor I’d seen in Vaughn’s office. In fact, the only thing that was similar was the thick Persian rugs that covered the floors.

“It’s lovely,” I said. “Everything is so fine.”

Sebastian beamed. “Do you like it? The staff just finished putting everything together this morning. I’ve been doing a little redecorating since my father . . . passed away. He was never much for comfort, but after my mother died, he didn’t want to add or change anything about the house. I think we’ve had the same curtains in every room for fifteen years now. But I wanted . . . a fresh start.”

I nodded. I knew all about fresh starts, so I could understand his sentiment, despite the guilt that it stirred in my chest.

We strolled from room to room and floor to floor, passing all sorts of staff. Housekeepers dusting knickknacks in the living rooms, cooks slicing vegetables in the kitchen areas, even a guy dressed in a formal tuxedo in one of the dining rooms, like he was some stuffy English butler out of a movie ready to serve a table full of guests tea, scones, and insults. Funny, but Vaughn hadn’t employed this many people. I supposed Sebastian had hired some extra folks to help with the funeral and all of the redecorating.

But they all bowed their heads when Sebastian passed, murmuring quiet, respectful hellos to “Mr. Vaughn.” It took me a while to get used to the idea that Sebastian was Mr. Vaughn now—and that I was the one who’d made it happen.

Sebastian chatted throughout the tour, pointing out interesting paintings, drawing my attention to the way the crystal chandeliers glistened overhead, and even talking about some of the masonry work his father had done on the staircases. Apparently, Vaughn had built the mansion when Sebastian was a boy.

“I loved helping my father with his work,” Sebastian said in a proud voice. “Even though all I could do back then was hand him his tools and watch him work his magic on the marble.”

Until now, the stone of the mansion had been pretty subdued, much like the housekeeping staff, but whispers sprang to life at Sebastian’s words, along with low, somber notes of sorrow. Stones couldn’t cry—not like people did—but the murmurs told me that the marble and granite were grieving in their own way for Vaughn, the man who had spent so much time crafting and taking care of them.

“Your father was a Stone elemental, right?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer. “I remember hearing that on the news. Do you have the same sort of magic?”

Sebastian shook his head. “Unfortunately, no. I don’t have any magic. Charlotte has a bit of his Stone power, but she’s not as strong as he was.”

The murmurs in the marble took on a darker, harsher cadence, almost as if they didn’t like Sebastian’s words. I frowned, wondering what was troubling them so much. Obviously, they were greatly upset by Vaughn’s death, and the mourners and all of their feelings toward Vaughn were also sure to have left an impact. Perhaps the marble and granite were still trying to absorb all of those powerful emotions. Or could it be something else? I cocked my head to the side, listening to what the stones were trying to tell me—

“Is something wrong?” Sebastian asked. “You have a strange look on your face.”

The dark murmurs vanished. I listened a second longer, but all I heard now were those low, somber notes of grief. “Everything’s fine.”

Sebastian smiled. “All right, then. Let’s go upstairs . . .”

We continued with the tour, eventually winding up on the third floor.

“And now the library,” Sebastian said, throwing the double doors wide open.

The library was the biggest room we’d been in so far. Actually, it was two rooms, divided into equal-sized sections by a granite fireplace that stood in the middle. A grate on either side of the fireplace let heat flow into both areas, while two archways, one at the front of the library and one at the back, led to the next room over. Floor-to-ceiling shelves lined with books covered the other walls in the left section, while a series of chairs and couches with thick cushions were scattered around the room.

“My father used this area as his office,” Sebastian said, walking past the fireplace and into the right-hand section of the library. “It was his favorite room, not counting the greenhouse.”

More bookcases, chairs, and couches took up this space, although I would have known it was Vaughn’s office thanks to all the models. Stone models were lined up on the fireplace mantel, and even more perched on the bookshelves and end tables. A few even hung from the ceiling like clusters of wind chimes.

I eyed the scale buildings, remembering how Vaughn had used his magic to shatter his miniature creations, before examining the rest of the room. A series of glass windows were set into the back wall, letting the evening sun spill over the large desk that stood in front of them—Vaughn’s desk.

My gaze locked onto the antique wood, which was covered with a computer monitor, mouse, and keyboard, several small blocks of stone, and, most important, stacks and stacks of papers. I didn’t spot the manila folder that Vaughn had put into his office safe, but this was the most likely place for it to be if Sebastian had emptied out the safe and brought the contents home.

“Well?” Sebastian asked, beaming with pride again. “What do you think?”

“I—”

A knock sounded on one of the open library doors, cutting me off, and Porter appeared. “Mr. Vaughn,” he said. “A word, please.”

Sebastian sighed. “Please excuse me.”

“Sure.”

Sebastian squeezed my hand, then moved over to see what Porter wanted. The two of them stepped into the left part of the library, out of my line of sight, and started murmuring. Their words were too low for me to make out easily, so I wandered around the office, pretending to be fascinated by the models. In truth, I was fascinated by them, but they weren’t my focus right now—the desk was.

While Sebastian and Porter continued to speak in low tones, I made my way over to the desk, running my fingers over the smooth wood, as though I were admiring it, even as I scanned the surface. The computer monitor, mouse, and keyboard had been shoved to one side of the desk, along with the blocks of stone, as though someone had wanted them out of the way. Piles of papers squatted in the center, a high mound in the middle that tapered down like a snowdrift spreading across the rest of the wood. It looked like Sebastian had started going through his father’s files already. It didn’t surprise me. Just because a family member died didn’t mean that the world stopped turning. There were still things to do, people to contact, funeral arrangements to make, bills to pay. In Sebastian’s case, there was Vaughn Construction to run. Still, maybe the papers or something else tucked away in one of the desk drawers would tell me more about Vaughn’s meeting with his cop buddy, Harry Coolidge.

I glanced over my shoulder, but Sebastian and Porter were still talking in the other section of the library, so they couldn’t see me. I pulled the chair away from the desk so I could have better access to the drawers for my quick search—

A pink sneaker peeked out from underneath the edge of the wood.

I froze, wondering whose shoe it was, and then I remembered. I wondered if she realized what I’d been up to. I hoped not, but there was nothing I could do about it, so I rolled the chair out the rest of the way and bent down.

Charlotte Vaughn peered out at me from underneath the desk.

In addition to her pink sneakers, she was wearing pink shorts and a white T-shirt with a sparkly pink heart in the middle of it. Her long black hair was pulled back into a French braid, showing off her pretty face. Apparently, I’d startled her as much as she had surprised me, because she stared up at me with wide, worried eyes.

I crouched down so that my face was level with hers. “Hi there, sweetheart. Do you remember me? I’m Sebastian’s friend from the barbecue restaurant.”

Charlotte stared at me and slowly nodded, her fingers curling around a book that was lying on the floor next to her. I tilted my head so I could see the title on the spine.

“Redwall by Brian Jacques.” I nodded my head in approval. “That’s one of my favorites.”

She stared at me for several seconds. “Really?” Her voice was a low whisper.

“Really.” I gave her a small smile. “I like to read too.”

A hint of a smile tugged up her lips. But the spark of happiness fled just as quickly, and her face turned sad again as she dropped her gaze to the book and stroked her fingers over the cover.

“My papa gave it to me,” she said. “Last week. We were reading it together.”

Charlotte kept staring at her book, so she didn’t see the smile fall from my face or the guilt that took its place.

Footsteps sounded, and Charlotte scrunched down even further, like a turtle retreating back into the wooden shell of the desk. I glanced up at Sebastian, who had finished his business with Porter and come back into the office. He stepped to one side so he could see what I was looking at.

He sighed. “You’re supposed to be in your room for the night, Charlotte. I told you that I was having a guest over.”

Charlotte stared up at her big brother, her eyes dark and troubled. She brought her book up to her chest and cradled it tightly, the way some kids might hug a stuffed animal.

Sebastian hesitated, like he wanted to say something else, but he shook his head and held his hand out to me again. “Let’s leave Charlotte to her book.”

“Of course.” I took his hand and let him help me to my feet before staring down at her. “?’Bye, Charlotte.”

Her only response was to clutch her book even tighter.

“Come on, Gin,” Sebastian said.

I let him lead me away, although I glanced back over my shoulder. Charlotte was now standing behind the desk, still holding on to her book. For some reason, the look she gave me seemed even sadder than before, as though she knew some secret that I didn’t.