Elemental Assassin 02 - Web of Lies (5 page)

Despite the movements, he was totally focused on his sister, as though she was the most important thing in the world to him. Maybe she was. He stared at the red welt on her cheek, and his hands curled into fists. I got the distinct feeling he would love to have some alone time with Jake McAllister.

When Eva finished her story, her big brother turned his attention to me. For the first time, I felt the full force of his gaze. Sharp, shrewd, calculating. Like looking into my own eyes. He walked forward and held out his hand.

“Owen Grayson.”

Well, the hits just kept on coming. First, Jake McAllister decided to grace my restaurant with his presence, and now Owen Grayson had come to collect his sister.

I’d heard of him, of course. Grayson was one of the city’s wealthiest businessmen. Mining, timber, metal manufacturing.

He had his fingers in a lot of money-making pies. With his subdued suit and chiseled features, Grayson didn’t have the ostentatious, deadly, in-your-face flash of Mab Monroe, who enjoyed flaunting her status as the city’s golden girl. Still, I knew power when I saw it—elemental or otherwise. And Owen Grayson had plenty.

Definitely someone worth watching.

“Gin Blanco.”

“Gin?” he asked.

“Like the liquor,” I quipped.

Owen Grayson’s eyes glittered at my wry tone, but I still put my hand in his. Grayson’s fingers curled around my skin like thick ropes of kudzu. Hard, sturdy, and almost unbreakable. He might not be a dwarf, but there had to be some of the blood in his veins. Only way to explain that kind of grip. Grayson glanced down at our entwined hands and frowned, as though I’d static-shocked him or something. Maybe I had, because I felt a brief prick on my palm.

The sensation vanished, and I tightened my own grip, just to show him I wasn’t easily intimidated. A small smile tugged up Grayson’s lips, as though he found my show of strength amusing. I gave him a cool stare. The hostility must have flickered in my gray eyes because Owen Grayson let go first.

Eva Grayson watched the exchange with interest. So did her friend Cassidy. Sophia Deveraux had already retreated to the back of the Pork Pit to start closing up the restaurant for the night.

Owen Grayson stared at me a moment more before turning to his sister. “If nothing else, tonight has proven my point about Southtown. From now on, someone will be with you during school hours.”

Eva rolled her eyes again. Looked like something she did a lot when her big brother was around. “No. No more bodyguards. I’m nineteen years old, Owen. I’m in
college
. I can take care of myself.”

“Like you did tonight?” he replied.

“Tonight was a freak event, and you know it,” she retorted.

“I’m not going to let you use it as an excuse. Besides, I was perfectly safe the whole time.”

“That bruise on your cheek tells me otherwise.”

Owen glowered at his sister, but the hostile gaze slid off her like water. Looked like something she ignored a lot. Instead, Eva gave him a calm, calculating look.

“You want me to have a bodyguard? Then hire her.”

The girl stabbed her finger at me. “Because she took out a Fire elemental like it was nothing. And she cooks.”

Owen’s pale eyes swept over my body. Probably wondering how I’d had the strength, balls, or dumb luck to do that.

I’d taken a lot of dirty jobs in my time, but be a bodyguard to a know-it-all college girl? I might have retired from being an assassin, but I hadn’t gone insane. “Sorry. My dance card’s already full.”

Owen nodded. “Job offer notwithstanding, you saved my sister’s life. I owe you. Name your price.”

My turn to roll my eyes. “I don’t want your money, and I don’t need it.”

His violet gaze flicked around the restaurant, taking in the faded pig tracks on the floor and the well-worn booths, chairs, and tables. Disbelief filled his features, but he was enough of a Southern gentleman not to call me a liar to my face. Little did he know I was telling the truth. I’d salted away a lot of money—a
lot
of money—from my assassin jobs over the years, and Fletcher had left me an exceptionally healthy bequest in his will. I could hemorrhage C-notes for years, decades even, and it wouldn’t hurt a bit.

But instead of offering his money to me again, Owen reached into his suit and drew out a small white card. I took it from him. Along with his name and a cell phone number, a hammer was embossed in silver foil on the card. Grayson’s rune. A large, heavy hammer, symbolizing strength, power, hard work.

“If you ever need anything, please, don’t hesitate to call, day or night,” he said.

My finger traced over the hammer rune, and I memorized the number. Might not be a bad thing having someone like Owen Grayson owe me a favor. Besides, Finnegan Lane, my foster brother and general partner in crime, would kill me if I turned him down. “All right.”

We locked gazes. Cool, calculating, and shrewd, on both sides. Grayson tipped his head at me. I did the same, and we had an agreement.

Owen turned to the two women. “Come on, girls. Time to go.”

He held the door open for them, and they headed outside.

Owen Grayson paused, looking over his shoulder.

The businessman stared at me a moment more before stepping out into the dark night.

———

I locked the front door behind the three of them and turned the sign over to
Closed
. It was barely after seven, but we weren’t going to have any more customers tonight.

This close to Southtown, people could sniff out violence better than bloodhounds. Besides, I didn’t feel like mopping up Jake McAllister’s blood just yet.

I went into the back and said my good nights to Sophia.

The Goth dwarf grunted, gathered up her glass Mason jars full of baked beans, and headed out the back door to go home to her sister, Jo-Jo. After I made sure the stoves, french fryer, and lights were off, I followed her out into the alley that ran behind the restaurant.

I stood in the ink-black shadows next to one of the Dumpsters, looking, listening, searching. But nothing moved in the cold, quiet night, not even the rats and alley cats searching for garbage. Still, I brushed my fingers against the hard brick of the restaurant, using my elemental magic to listen to the stone.

The brick’s slow murmur was one of muted, clogged contentment—just the way the stomachs and arteries of the Pork Pit’s customers felt after eating a hot, thick, juicy barbecue sandwich. Over time, emotions, feelings, and actions sink into the earth and especially stone, where they can linger indefinitely until something else, some other action, comes along to add to, change, or overpower them. My elemental Stone magic let me sense these vibrations, analyze, interpret, and even tap into them if I wanted to. But the brief bit of violence that had happened earlier tonight hadn’t lasted long enough or been brutal enough for the brick to permanently pick up its vibrations. Good.

Still, I looked and listened a moment more, searching for the telltale shape of a half giant or some sort of fire flickering in the shadows. But Jake McAllister wasn’t waiting for me. Daddy was probably bailing him out of jail right now. McAllister would be here sooner or later, though. I’d gotten the better of him, and he knew it. He wouldn’t be satisfied until he’d returned the favor. I hoped he tried. Might alleviate some of the boredom that had settled over me these last two months during my retirement.

For a few minutes, anyway. Guys like Jake McAllister always thought they were tougher than they actually were.

Satisfied the Fire elemental wasn’t going to come gunning for me tonight, I dropped my hand from the cold brick and headed home. I walked three blocks in the drizzling rain, cut through twice as many alleys, and doubled back five times before I was positive no one was following me. Sure, I was a retired assassin, but that didn’t mean there weren’t people out there who didn’t want me dead.

As the Spider, I’d killed my share of powerful men and women over the years, and I wasn’t taking any chances with my safety—retirement or not.

Twenty minutes later, I retrieved my car—a sturdy, silver Benz that I’d recently purchased—from one of the parking garages near the restaurant and headed for Fletcher’s.

Traffic was light on the downtown streets that ringed the Pork Pit. The bankers, businessmen, and other corporate sharks had long since fled the city’s spindly skyscrapers for the comfort of their posh homes in Northtown.

Their secretaries and junior staff lived out in the suburbs that clustered around the heart of the city, while the janitors, maids, and other menial workers made their homes on the rough streets of Southtown.

The city of Ashland spread over three states—Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina. The official borders might have shown it to be one cohesive city, but the area was really divided into two distinct sections—Northtown and Southtown. A holdover from the Civil War days that had just never faded away. The sprawling, circular confines of the downtown area joined the two halves of the city together, but they bore little resemblance to each other. The working poor and blue-collar folks populated Southtown, along with vampire hookers, gangbangers, junkies, and all other manner of rednecks and white trash. Most of them lived in run-down row houses and public housing units that resembled fallout shelters. The Pork Pit lay close to the Southtown border.

While Southtown resembled the dregs in the bottom of a coffee cup, Northtown was the whipped meringue on top of a chocolate pie. You had to have money to live in Northtown. Lots of it, to afford one of the plantation-style mansions. Connections and a bloodline that went back a few hundred years didn’t hurt either. But for all their polish, the folks in Northtown weren’t any better than those in Southtown. They were all dangerous. The only difference was the people in Northtown would serve you tea and cucumber sandwiches before they fucked you over.

The Southtown hoods were much more efficient. They’d slit your throat, take your wallet, and be ready to do it again to someone else before you even hit the alley floor.

It took me about twenty minutes to wind my way from the downtown district out into the suburbs that lay northwest of the city. I drove past gated communities with cutesy names like Davis Square and Peachtree Acres and eventually turned onto a rutted, gravel road that wound up one of the ridges that slashed through the city.

I rode over the lumps and bumps in the road, used to the teeth-rattling sensation by now. Fletcher Lane had liked his privacy, which was why his house squatted on the side of a cliff so steep a mountain goat couldn’t climb up it.

I steered the car through the skeletal remains of the trees that flanked what passed for the driveway. Thirty seconds later, the Benz left the bare, clutching branches behind. I crested a hill, and the house popped into sight.

In addition to leaving me the Pork Pit in his last will and testament, Fletcher Lane had also bequeathed me his house—a three-story clapboard structure that had been built before the Civil War. Various improvements and additions had been made to the house over the years, none of which matched. Gray stone, red clay, brown brick. All that and more could be seen on the house, along with a tin roof, black shutters, and blue eaves. The whole thing reminded me of a pincushion someone had haphazardly stuck a variety of implements into, with no thought for whether they actually belonged together or not.

I parked the Benz and ran my eyes over what I could see of the yard. It stretched out a hundred feet in front of the house before falling away in a series of jagged cliffs. Beyond the dropoff, the surrounding Appalachian Mountains were coal smudges in a night sky covered with a blanket of diamond stars and the gleaming crown of a half moon. Hell of a view, especially at night.

I got out of the car and stooped down behind the Benz, keeping it between myself and the sprawling house.

To a casual observer, it probably looked like I was tying my shoe. You would have had to look hard to see the glint of magic in my gray eyes or realize I had my hands pressed against the cold, wet gravel of the driveway.

The sounds of the trees, wind, and small, scurrying animals ran through the stones. Soft, comforting murmurs as familiar to me as a lullaby. No visitors today. I hadn’t expected any, but it never hurt to double-check. I’d stayed alive this long, despite all the incredible odds and job hazards of my former profession. I wasn’t going to get dead now because I’d made a rookie mistake, like not checking the gravel before I stepped into Fletcher’s home.

Once I’d assured myself everything was as it should be, I grabbed my purse and headed for the house. But before I slid my key into the front door lock, I brushed my fingertips against the stone that framed and composed it.

Deep, rich, black granite so hard and solid even a giant would have a tough time pounding through it. Thin veins of silverstone glistened in the granite, adding to its dark beauty. But the magical metal served another purpose besides mere decoration. Silverstone could absorb any kind of elemental magic that came its way—Stone, Air, Fire, or Ice—as well as offshoots of the elements. Instead of being true elementals and being able to tap into one of the big four, as they were called, some folks were gifted in other areas, like metal, water, electricity, or even acid.

Regardless, the silverstone in the door would absorb quite a bit of power should anyone decide to use magic to force their way inside. I’d spent a fortune having the granite installed here and in other strategic places throughout the house, but it was worth it to make sure I was secure.

Helped me sleep easier.

The granite’s hum was low and muted, just like the gravel in the driveway. Nobody had been near the door all day. Good. I’d had enough excitement already.

I unlocked the door and stepped inside. Given its unusual construction, the interior of the house resembled a rabbit’s warren. Small rooms, short hallways, odd spaces here and there that doubled back and opened up into completely new areas. When I was living here as a kid, I’d had to draw myself a map just to get from my upstairs bedroom to the front door and back again. I threw my keys down into a bowl by the front door, kicked off my boots, and headed toward the back of the house, where the kitchen was.