The Spider(Elemental Assassin series)

36





PRESENT DAY


I finished my story and leaned back, feeling tired and drained, as though I’d just relived the whole fight with Sebastian and had once again suffered all the injuries that he’d inflicted on my body and my heart back then. It took me a moment to let go of the memories and realize that I was in the Pork Pit, that what I had described had taken place ten years ago, instead of just ten minutes ago.

“You?” Owen asked. “You killed Sebastian Vaughn?”

I grinned. “Who else?”

“I remember that,” he said. “It was the talk of Ashland for weeks. It was all over the news. How part of the mansion was destroyed, how the cops found a dead giant inside the house and then Sebastian out in the greenhouse. From what I remember, the police thought that the same person who killed Cesar had killed Sebastian too.”

I grimaced. “Well, they were actually right about that. For a change.”

Owen took my hand, giving it a gentle squeeze. He didn’t ask me to say anything else, and he didn’t make any comments about what I’d told him. He simply let me know that he was here for me.

“And to think,” he murmured. “We actually met back then.”

“I know,” I replied. “I’d mostly forgotten about it until now. Did you ever think about that girl you picked up on the side of the road that night?”

“Sometimes,” he said. “I hoped that she—you—were okay. And that you’d told that dick boyfriend of yours what was what.”

“Well, I guess I did that, after all.”

I grimaced again, and Owen tightened his grip on my hand.

We stayed like that for a while before he reached out and picked up one of the roses, twirling it around in his hand.

He frowned. “But I don’t understand. Why the roses? Why the note? Why now, ten years later, on the day you killed Sebastian? Who sent them? You killed Sebastian and Porter and even Cesar. There’s nobody left.”

I reached out and fingered the edge of one of the petals. Soft and smooth, just like Sebastian had said.

“You’re forgetting,” I said. “I let one person live.”

? ? ?

It was a few minutes before midnight when the woman turned on the lights in the library and stepped back into the arms of the man she was with. Both of them were in their twenties, giggling, kissing, and messing around the way young couples do. The guy was a cute blond, with short, spiky hair and a smattering of freckles across his cheeks. The woman was a brunette, with a short bob of black hair and expressive brown eyes.

I stood in the shadows and watched them canoodle. If it went any further, I’d have to excuse myself quietly and come back another night. I wasn’t much for being a voyeur. But I hoped they would wrap up their little tête-à-tête soon. I wanted to finish this—tonight.

Finally, reluctantly, the woman pulled back. “Sorry, babe, but I’ve got some work that I’ve got to get done tonight. See you in thirty?”

The guy gave her a coy smile. “I’ll draw us a bath. But don’t wait too long . . . or the water might get cold. Me too.”

The two kissed again before the guy left the library. The woman watched him go, a small smile playing across her lips. Then she turned to the desk in the back of the room and headed toward it.

It took her three steps before she noticed the white paper bag bearing the Pork Pit’s pig logo that I’d placed in the middle of the desk, along with the chocolate-chip cookie cake. She hurried over to the desk and stared down at the message I’d written in chocolate icing on the cake. Happy (Late) Birthday.

Her eyes widened in surprise, and her gaze shot around the library, looking for me. So I stepped out into the light where she could see me.

“Hello, Charlotte,” I said.

? ? ?

Charlotte Vaughn drew in a startled breath, and her hand flew to her throat, clutching the pink cameo she wore there, the same one she’d gotten at her birthday party all those years ago.

“Whoa!” she exclaimed. “You scared me to death.”

I gave her a thin smile. “We both know that I could do a lot more than that if I wanted to.”

Charlotte’s dark eyes narrowed. “Is that a threat, Gin?”

“I don’t know. Were the roses a threat?”

She stared at me. “Why would you think that?”

“Well, your brother gave me roses like that once upon a time. Things didn’t turn out that well for any of us—you, me, him.”

Charlotte’s gaze flicked to the mantel over the fireplace, where a series of photos in silver frames were propped up. I’d looked at them earlier when I’d first come into the library. Most of the photos showed a teenage Charlotte with her father, but there was one of Sebastian standing by himself, smiling for the camera. His smile was the same as I remembered—smug, confident, cocky. I hadn’t forgotten one thing about him, but it had still been like a kick to the gut to see his smiling face, frozen in time.

Charlotte glanced at the photo of Sebastian for a moment before turning away. “No, things didn’t turn out so well for Sebastian—or my father.”

Her mouth tightened, and pain flashed in her eyes, along with more than a little anger.

“You have every right to hate me for what I did to him. I took him away from you. Not Sebastian, not anyone else, just me.”

Charlotte let out a bitter laugh. “Well, you might have killed him, but Sebastian put you up to it. Even as a kid, I knew that. If it hadn’t been you, he would have found some other assassin to do the job. I don’t blame you for Papa’s death. Well, not as much as I blame Sebastian.”

“So why the roses? Why the cryptic message? Why now?”

She shrugged. “I suppose I wanted to see if you remembered me after all these years. If you remembered Papa . . . and Sebastian.”

“I haven’t forgotten any of it, not one thing. No matter how much I might have wanted to.” This time, my mouth twisted with bitterness.

Charlotte stared at me, then moved over to a cabinet in the back corner of the library. She opened one of the glass doors, reached inside, and drew out a bottle of gin. She held it up so I could see it.

“How about a drink?” she asked. “For old times’ sake?”

I nodded and settled myself in one of the chairs in front of the fireplace. While Charlotte fixed our drinks, I reached out with my magic, listening to the stones around me. According to the news reports, part of the Vaughn mansion had collapsed in on itself the night I killed Sebastian. After his death, it had stood empty for years. But now it looked eerily similar to how it had all those years ago, with one notable difference: the stones no longer murmured with Sebastian’s cruelty.

Oh, a current of darkness still rippled through them, but it was the emotion of someone who’d known her share of horrors and would never, ever forget them. Mostly, though, the marble and granite murmured with pride at all the hard work she’d done to restore them to their former glory. Looked like Charlotte had inherited more of her father’s Stone magic than Sebastian had realized.

Charlotte walked over and handed me a crystal tumbler full of clear liquid, a few ice cubes, and a thick wedge of line.

“Gin for Gin, right?” she murmured, settling into the chair across from me.

“You’ve done your homework.”

She shrugged. “I had a lot of time to think about things in foster care. That’s where I ended up, after everything that happened.”

I took a sip of the gin, feeling the cold liquid slide down my throat, then start its slow, familiar burn in my stomach. Charlotte and I sat there sipping our drinks. All around me, the stones kept whispering of secrets—hers and mine.

“The first foster home they sent me to was terrible,” she said, staring into her glass. “The sort of place where the adults are only in it for those sweet little checks the government sends them every month. The husband and wife constantly screamed at each other. One day, the husband hit the wife—and me too. So badly that I ended up in the emergency room with a broken arm.”

“Something that sadly is not uncommon in the system.”

Charlotte shrugged, then raised her eyes to mine. “It’s funny, though. The next day—the very next day—they found the husband in an alley behind some Southtown bar. He’d been beaten to a pulp.”

“Imagine that,” I drawled. “But that’s the risk you take when you wander over into Southtown, day or night.”

Charlotte snorted. “Well, his beating got the cops involved, and I got shipped to another foster home, a much nicer one, with an older couple. They treated me like their own daughter.” She jerked her head at another photo on the mantel, one that showed Charlotte standing between a man and a woman. “The Smithson family.”

I’d noticed that photo too. I didn’t say anything, although I did take another sip of my gin.

“When people have accidents and walk away from them, lots of them claim that their guardian angels were watching out for them,” Charlotte said.

“Mmm.”

“My experience has been a little different,” she continued. “I was never involved in any accidents, but every time I had a problem, no matter what it was, it was always taken care of. I got a bad foster family, I got a new one. Somebody hassled me at school, he soon stopped. A guy even stole my car once. He brought it back to me three days later, washed, waxed, and with a full tank of gas.”

“I guess his conscience caught up with him, and he realized what a bad thing he did.”

Charlotte quirked an eyebrow at my sarcasm, but she continued with her story. “Some anonymous donor even paid to have the rubble of my father’s mausoleum cleared away and to have him and my mother entombed at Blue Ridge Cemetery, in a new mausoleum that looked just like the one he’d built before.”

I didn’t respond this time.

“Then, on my eighteenth birthday, just as I’m wondering how I’m going to pay for college, I get a letter from some investment banker saying that my father had set up a trust fund for me and that all of the Vaughn property had been signed over to me. The mansion, the grounds, even the few assets that were left from my father’s construction company.”

“Good for your father, for thinking ahead like that.”

Charlotte leaned forward, her dark brown eyes searching mine. “But you see, I know for a fact that all of the property was in Sebastian’s name. He got it as soon as my father died. But Sebastian didn’t leave a will, and since I was underage, it was tied up in the courts for years. And there was no trust fund, not when most of my father’s money was used to pay off lawsuits from the family members of the victims of the terrace collapse. It came out, you know, that Sebastian used his Stone magic to cause it. A cop my father knew sent his findings to the police. It cleared my father’s name, but Vaughn Construction was still liable since Sebastian was part of the company. I didn’t mind those folks getting the money, though. I think my father would have paid them himself, if he’d still been alive.”

I didn’t respond.

“I know it was you, Gin,” Charlotte said in a soft voice. “The foster home, the bullies, the guy who boosted my car, the money, the mausoleum . . . everything. It was you—you took care of everything. You took care of me.”

Actually, Finn had done the heavy lifting with the money and all the legal stuff, one of the first jobs he’d ever done at his bank. But she was right. I’d done the rest.

“Why did you do it? Was it because you felt guilty about killing my father?”

I gripped my glass a little tighter, feeling the chill of it sink into the spider rune scar in my palm. “If—and this is a big if—I had anything to do with your good fortune over the years, it wasn’t because of the guilt. I’m an assassin. I kill people. Sometimes the wrong ones, but it’s still who I am and what I do.”

“Then why?”

I looked at her. “Because I know what it’s like to be alone and scared and lost and hurt—hurt so deep down in your soul that you know that part of the pain will never, ever go away. Once upon a time, someone was kind enough to take me in and teach me how to deal with that hurt the best way that he knew how. He helped me, and I owed it to you to do the same. And then some.”

Charlotte kept staring at me. After a moment, she nodded, accepting my explanation.

“Reminiscing is all well and good, but why the roses? Why the note? Why did you really want me to come here tonight, Charlotte?” I asked.

She stared at me for a long time, taking in my black clothes, my cold, determined features, and my wintry gray eyes.

“I wanted to let you know that I was okay,” she finally said in a quiet voice. “And I suppose that I wanted to say thank you, since I never did before.”

“You don’t have to thank me,” I said, my voice harsh and raspy with guilt and regret. “I killed your father, Charlotte. Like I said before, you have every right to hate me. Truth be told, I half expected a couple of cops to be waiting in here tonight, ready to finally arrest me for what I did to him.”

Actually, part of me had been expecting it for years, but it had never come to pass.

“I suppose that I do hate you for that,” she said. “And I thought about telling the police what you did so many times.”

“So why didn’t you?”

“Because I am thankful every single day that you killed Sebastian, that you saved me from him.”

“But it’s not an even trade,” I said in a gentle voice. “Your father was a million times the man Sebastian was. Killing Cesar is one of the many regrets that I have, one that still hurts, one that will always hurt. If I could have gone back then and changed things, I would have. If I could do it now, I would in a heartbeat.”

Charlotte blinked and blinked, but she couldn’t quite keep two tears from streaking down her face. “I know,” she whispered, her voice hoarse with emotion. “I know.”

She wiped the tears off her face and slowly regained her composure. She sat back in her chair and gestured with her drink at the library around us.

“As you can see, now that I have control of my family home again, I’m working to rebuild it, restore it. And I’m starting up Vaughn Construction again. I’m going to continue on with the legacy that my father started.”

“Good for you,” I said, and meant it.

“So I’m okay now. You don’t have to keep looking out for me anymore. I can fight my own battles from here on out.”

I reached into my vest and drew out a manila folder. I tossed it onto the table between us. “Then you should take a look at that. Because your new boyfriend is only interested in your money, according to what he’s been telling his friends when they go out for drinks at Northern Aggression. And the woman you’re thinking about hiring as your CFO plans to start skimming as soon as you give her access to your business accounts.”

For a moment, Charlotte looked decidedly unsettled, but she recovered quickly, and a wry grin lifted her lips. “Still watching out for me, Gin?”

I shrugged. “Just keeping my ear to the ground. That’s all.”

“As an assassin,” she said. “As the Spider.”

“Yes, as the Spider.”

She didn’t say anything else. I didn’t know what was left to say. It certainly hadn’t been the evening I’d expected, and it would take me some time to process it. Still, there was one more thing I wanted to tell her.

“You know, you should give Bria Coolidge a call sometime.”

Charlotte blinked. “Bria? I haven’t thought about her in years. Not since . . . the night of my birthday party.”

“But you were friends with her once, and I’m sure she would love to hear from you again. She’s a cop now, just like her dad, Harry, was. She’s here in Ashland. Xavier too.”

Charlotte gave me a guarded look. “How the hell do you know about Bria and Harry Coolidge?”

“I didn’t know Harry, not really.” I grinned at her. “But I know all about Bria. She’s my baby sister.”

She gaped at me.

“I thought that Bria was dead for a long time,” I said in a quiet voice. “But I was lucky enough to find her again. I can’t give you your father back, but I can maybe return some of your friends to you. So give her a call. I put her card on the desk, next to the cake.”

Charlotte kept staring at me, blinking and blinking, as if she were trying to process everything. Yeah, I knew how that felt.

I gave her a wink and my best, most mysterious smile. “See you around, Charlotte.”

Then I raised my glass to her in a toast, drained the rest of my gin, and left the library.

? ? ?

Like her father before her, Charlotte didn’t employ any guards. Something that I’d have to speak to her about some other night. I wouldn’t want just anyone to waltz in here on her.

I walked out the front door of the mansion, ambled down the long driveway, and headed for the iron gate at the front of the estate. It was closed, but I had no problems scaling the stone wall and dropping down on the far side. After all, it was the same way I’d come in a couple of hours ago.

And just like all those years before, a car was waiting for me on the other side.

A momentary pang of loss shot through me that it wasn’t an old, battered white van but instead a flashy silver sports car, the latest Aston Martin. I opened the door and slid into the passenger’s seat.

“How did it go?” Finn asked.

I looked at my foster brother, with his green eyes, his walnut-colored hair, and his features that were so much like Fletcher’s. Once again, I felt that pang in my heart, but it was softer now, more sweet than bitter.

“Charlotte and I agreed to keep each other’s secrets.”

He sighed, then rolled his eyes. “Seriously, Gin, could you be any more cryptic?”

“?‘And no matter what, you should never, ever tell someone all of your secrets,’?” I said. “Do you remember that?”

Finn gave me a blank look. “Not particularly. Should I?”

“Yeah. You said it to me ten years ago about Sebastian.”

His chest puffed up. “Well, then, I was totally right.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Seriously, though, what happened?”

I shrugged again. “Charlotte wanted to talk.”

“About Sebastian? Or her father?”

“Both. And a lot of other things too.” I hesitated. “She figured out that I’ve been keeping tabs on her all these years. She knows about the money you set up in that trust fund for her.”

“Is she going to talk?” Finn asked, a worried look creasing his features.

“No. She’s not going to talk. Not about any of it. She actually wanted to thank me.”

Finn nodded. “I can understand that.”

He stared through the gates at the estate. “All of this . . . it reminds me of that night with Dad, when Sebastian’s giants busted into the house.”

“Yeah.”

Finn looked at me. “He’d be so proud of you, Gin. He was always proud of you, but never more so than after what happened with Sebastian.”

“Do you really think so?”

He reached over and squeezed my hand. “I know so.”

I stared into the dark of the night, thinking about Fletcher and all the lessons he’d taught me. “Yeah,” I said. “I think you’re right.”

“Are you kidding?” Finn scoffed. “I’m always right.”

I laughed at his never-ending confidence.

“Now, the night is still fairly young. You want to go get a drink at Northern Aggression?”

“Sure,” I said. “I had plans to meet Owen there after . . . this.”

“Then allow me to be your chariot,” Finn said. “And chauffeur service.”

He threw the car into gear and zoomed away from the curb.

I took one last look through the gate toward the Vaughn estate, my gaze settling on the lights that burned in the library. Despite everything, Charlotte had survived—and so had I.

Because that’s what the Spider did.

Turn the page for a sneak peek at the next book in the Elemental Assassin series

POISON PROMISE

by Jennifer Estep

Coming soon from Pocket Books

Even from across the parking lot, I could see the two vampires creep a little closer to Catalina, smiling wide and showing off their fangs. Troy’s meaning was clear—get with the pill-pushing program or get drained.

Catalina lifted her chin and glared at Troy. She wasn’t backing down, no matter what. I admired her for it, really, I did, but it was also stupid of her. She just should have accepted the pills and flushed them later. Oh, I knew Catalina since she worked as a waitress at the Pork Pit, and she seemed like a good kid. She didn’t want to get sucked in with Troy and his thugs, but it was too late for that. This was about to get very ugly for someone.

Good thing that ugly was what I specialized in.

I could hear Owen talking through my cell phone. “Gin?”

Realizing that he had asked me a question, probably more than once, I focused on the sound of his voice again. “Sorry, babe. I’ve gotta go.”

“Is something wrong?”

“Nah. I just see a bit of trash that needs picking up. I’ll be there soon.”

Owen and I hung up, and I slid my phone into my jeans pocket before opening the car door and throwing my bag into the passenger’s seat. Then I slammed the door shut.

The sharp crack reverberated through the parking lot, and the three guys turned to stare at me. Catalina tried to edge away, but the two vamps spotted her furtive movements and flanked her, keeping her pinned against the fence. I pushed away from my car, stuck my hands into my jeans pockets, and ambled in their direction.

Of course, Catalina recognized me, her boss, at once. She let out a small gasp, her face paled, and she started shaking her head no-no-no, although I couldn’t tell if she was trying to warn me off or was worried about what I was going to do to the three guys hassling her.

But Troy didn’t see her reaction. Instead, his gaze slid past me to my car. When he realized I was driving an Aston Martin, a greedy smirk slashed across his face.

“Hey, hey, foxy lady,” he called out. “You lookin’ for some action? You lookin’ to score a little sumthin’ sumthin’?”

I smiled back at him, baring almost as many teeth as the two vampires behind him. “Sumthin’ like that, sugar.”

Behind Troy, Catalina kept shaking her head no-no-no. She opened her lips, but one of the vamps rattled the fence behind her, a clear sign for her to keep her mouth shut. But there was no need for her to waste any more of her breath on these fools, especially not to try to tell them who they were messing with now. Besides, Troy wouldn’t have heeded a warning anyway. He was completely focused on me, a potential customer, and I could almost see the dollar signs churning in his head as he calculated how much he could take me for.

His smirk widened. “Well, you are in the right spot, baby. Because I have got just the thing for you.”

He held out one of the bags he’d been shoving at Catalina, and I took it from him. A single pill lay inside the plastic, its deep, dark red color making it look like a drop of congealed blood. I flipped the bag over and realized that a rune had been etched into the surface of the drug, but I didn’t take the time to squint and make out the details of the symbol.

Still, despite its bloody color and rune, the pill looked more like a kids’ vitamin than a dangerous drug, but I knew all too well how deceiving looks could be. Most people didn’t think that I seemed anything like a dangerous assassin—until my knife was cutting into their guts.

“What’s this?” I asked.

Troy smirked even more. “It’s the latest, greatest thing on the market, baby. It will rock your world. Nah, scratch that—it’ll burn it down.”

The two vamps snickered at his cheesy lines. Catalina rolled her eyes. Yeah, that’s what I wanted to do too, but I decided to let things play out.

I tucked the plastic bag with its pill into my jeans pocket. Not because I had any intention of taking the pill, but because my sister Bria would no doubt be interested in it. Detective Bria Coolidge, one of Ashland’s few good cops, actually cared about things like trying to keep drugs off the streets. I tried to help her out whenever I could, despite my own life of killing and crime.

“Now that you’ve seen the goods, let’s talk about payment, baby,” Troy crooned. “Normally, a hit like that is three hundred a pop.”

My eyebrows shot up. “Three hundred for one pill? That must be a hell of a joyride.”

“Oh, it is,” Troy said. “Believe me, it is. But if you don’t have that much cash on you, don’t sweat it. I’m sure we can work out some other form of payment.”

His brown eyes tracked up and down my body, taking in my black boots, dark blue jeans, and the tight black tank top that peeked out under my black leather jacket. Behind him, the two vampires did the same thing, licking their lips like I was a bottle of booze they were going to pass around.

Oh, everybody was going to get a taste of Gin Blanco, all right. Just not the kind they expected.