Spider’s Revenge (8 page)

I groaned again and returned Owen’s smile. More of the anger melted out of his gaze, and the tension between us lightened, like a dark cloud being blown away by a stiff gust of wind. For now, anyway.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “You know I’m a little irrational where Mab’s concerned. I saw an opportunity to take her out, and I couldn’t pass it up.”

“I know, Gin,” Owen said. “I know.”

He got up from his rocking chair and came over to the bed. He sat down and opened his arms to me, and I scooted into his embrace. The warmth from his body mixed with my own, and I breathed in, enjoying his rich, earthy scent, which always made me think of metal, if metal could ever have any real smell.

“I hate that she’s after you,” Owen murmured, his lips against my hair. “But what I hate more is that you went after her alone. That no one was backing you up. Promise me you won’t do that again. Okay, Gin? Promise me that the next time you go after Mab, you’ll take someone with you. Me, Finn, Sophia. Someone, anyone, to help you.”

I could have lied to him. Maybe I should have. Because I had no intention of stopping until Mab was dead—even if she would probably take me down with her. But I didn’t want to lie to Owen and ruin this fragile peace between us.

“All right,” I said in a wry tone. “The next time I go
after Mab, I’ll take a buddy along to hold my knives. Happy?”

“For now,” Owen rumbled, tucking me in even closer to his body. “For now.”

We sat there on the bed for a long time, just holding each other.

Owen had to get to work, since his business empire didn’t run itself, and I had a barbecue restaurant to run, so we made plans to hook up later. But Owen was quieter than usual as he left Jo-Jo’s, and I couldn’t think of what to say to him without the words coming out wrong. So we left things as they were, unspoken and unresolved, with neither one of us knowing how to deal with the other.

By the time I showered, threw on some spare clothes that I kept at Jo-Jo’s, and made my way to the Pork Pit, it was after two o’clock.

The Pork Pit barbecue restaurant was located in downtown Ashland, close to the unofficial Southtown border. It wasn’t much to look at, just another hole-in-the-wall, but it was
mine
—my gin joint. The sight of the multicolored neon sign of a pig holding a platter of food over the front door brought a smile to my face. The Pit was the only real home I’d known since Fletcher had taken me in off the streets when I was thirteen. The old man had started the restaurant years ago, and I’d inherited it after his murder last year.

As I walked toward the front door, I brushed my fingers against the battered brick of the restaurant and reached for my Stone magic. As always, slow, sonorous notes rippled through the brick, whispering of the
clogged, contented hearts, arteries, and stomachs of so many diners after eating at the restaurant. The familiar whispers soothed away the rest of my frustration. I might have screwed up last night, but I was still alive. I’d plotted more than one murder inside the Pork Pit. I’d go inside and get started on Mab’s lickety-split.

I scanned the interior of the Pit through the storefront windows. Clean, but well-worn blue and pink vinyl booths. Matching, faded, peeling pig tracks on the floor that led to the men’s and women’s restrooms. A counter running along the back wall with an old-fashioned cash register sitting at one end. A battered, blood-covered, framed copy of
Where the Red Fern Grows
by Wilson Rawls hanging on the wall opposite the cash register, along with a faded photo of Fletcher in his younger years. Everything was as it should have been.

The lunch rush was over, and only one person sat at the long counter. I stepped inside, making the bell over the front door chime, and he swiveled around and fixed me with a cold glare.

“It’s about time you showed up, Gin,” Finn snapped.

Finnegan Lane was just as handsome as Owen, but in a more polished, classical way. Finn wore one of his many power suits, since as an investment banker, he spent most of his daylight hours swindling people out of their money. Today’s color choice was royal blue with the faintest houndstooth check pattern running through the expensive cloth, topped off by a silver shirt and blue-and-silver striped tie. Finn’s thick, walnut-colored hair was styled just so, and his eyes were as slick, shiny, and green in his ruddy face as the glass of a soda pop bottle.

Finn crossed his arms over his chest and glared at me, much the same way that Owen had done earlier. Time for round two of the Gin Blanco firing squad.

I sighed and walked over to my foster brother. “Let me guess. You want to have a little chat about what happened with Mab last night.”

“Why, whatever gave you that idea?” Finn drawled in a deceptively light voice. “Perhaps it was because I was awakened at an
unseemly
hour this morning only to learn that someone tried to kill Mab last night while she was entertaining guests in the main dining room of her mansion. The very part of the mansion that I distinctly remember getting you the blueprints for just last
week
.”

Behind the counter, Sophia Deveraux grunted her agreement with Finn’s pointed, acidic tone. Today, the Goth dwarf wore a black T-shirt covered with curved, white vampire fangs dripping blood. The crimson color of the blood matched the silverstone-spiked leather collar around her neck, as well as the cuffs on both of her wrists. Her lipstick was a red slash in her pale face, although bits of silver glitter glinted in her black hair.

I sighed. “Look, I’m sorry that I went off the reservation without you, all of you. But we all know that my getting that close to Mab was strictly a solo job. I didn’t want either of you to get hurt if I missed.”

Sophia grunted again and shrugged her shoulders, while Finn’s face softened just a bit. Then he sniffed, and I knew that there would be no sweet-talking him out of his snit. Finn had built up a good bit of righteous indignation, and he was determined to make me suffer through it.

“While we appreciate your concern for our safety, we’re a team, Gin,” Finn lectured me. “We always have been. You need to remember that because it’s the only way that you’re going to kill Mab—by all of us working together. Not by your taking off by yourself with no one to watch your back.”

I gave my foster brother a noncommittal shrug. “Not much chance of that happening, since I missed her last night. I imagine that she’s upped her security considerably since then.”

“Mmm.”

This time, Finn was the one who was noncommittal. He reached down and took a sip from the mug of chicory coffee sitting on the counter in front of him. The warm, fragrant aroma of the caffeine brew filled my nose, making me think of Finn’s father, Fletcher. The old man had drunk the same coffee in the same copious amounts before his murder as his son did. Even now, almost six months later, I still missed Fletcher. Missed seeing the old man leaning behind the counter at the Pork Pit, reading his latest book and telling me about the newest job he’d booked for me as the Spider.

There at the end, right before he was tortured to death by an Air elemental, Fletcher had wanted me to retire, to
live in the daylight a little
, as he had so eloquently called it. After I’d avenged the old man’s death, I’d taken his advice and retired from being the Spider. At least, I’d tried to. I wasn’t having much success so far. I might not kill people for money anymore, but I’d still managed to get myself into a whole lot of trouble in the meantime. Mostly by trying to help other people, good, innocent folks, deal
with certain problems that had only one solution in a city like Ashland—one that involved my silverstone knives and someone losing a whole lot of blood. Permanently.

Finn took another sip of his coffee and stared at me, knowledge glinting in his sly green gaze. I rolled my eyes, walked behind the counter, and pulled a blue work apron on over my jeans and long-sleeved T-shirt.

“Oh, just go ahead and spill it,” I said. “You know you want to tell me every little thing that you know about what’s going on with Mab since I didn’t manage to kill her last night.”

A pleased, smirking grin spread over Finn’s face. “Why, I thought you’d never ask.”

He took another sip of his chicory coffee before he launched into his story.

“So I’ve had my feelers out all day,” he said. “According to my sources, Mab’s plenty pissed and some say even scared. Apparently no one’s ever gotten that close to putting her lights out for good.”

“Fletcher did train me to be the best,” I said in a not-so-humble voice.

Finn saluted me with his mug. “That he did, and that you are. Which is why Mab was so understandably shaken up. Well, that and the fact that you blew that giant’s brains out all over her face. Apparently Mab was quite the mess.”

A cold, hard smile curved my lips. Poor little Mab, covered in blood. I only hoped that next time it would actually be her own.

“Anyway,” Finn continued, “rumor has it that she’s holed up in her mansion. But the weird thing is that she
hasn’t brought in any more reinforcements. At least, none that I’ve heard of.”

“What about the people who were there last night? The ones who were having dinner with Mab? Who were they?”

I told my foster brother about everything that had happened, including going up against Ruth Gentry, Sydney, and the other strange characters Mab had invited into her inner sanctum.

“Weird,” Finn said. “None of my sources said anything about who the guests were. I’ll keep digging and see what I can come up with.”

I nodded. If anyone could find out about those people, it was Finn. My foster brother had more spies in more places at his disposal than the CIA.

Finn had already finished a late lunch of a barbecue pork sandwich, baked beans, and coleslaw, and was ready to move on to dessert. So I dished him up a piece of the strawberry pie that I’d made last night before closing, and topped it off with a big scoop of vanilla bean ice cream. The luscious pie had enough sugar in it to lock a person’s jaws and make him lapse into a diabetic coma, but Finn had two pieces. Sometimes I thought that all the chicory coffee in his system made Finn immune to sugar, fat, calories, and all the other things us mere mortals had to deal with.

A few more folks trickled in throughout the afternoon, and Sophia and I whipped up their meals, but the restaurant was quiet for the most part. Not surprising, given the weather. Last night’s cold temperatures hadn’t warmed up any, which meant that there was still plenty of snow and
ice outside, with more on the way. Over the past several days, including today, Catalina Vasquez and the rest of the waitstaff had called in to say that they couldn’t make it out of their driveways, much less get to the Pit to work their shifts.

Finn’s bank had also closed early today because of the weather so he stuck around and worked his sources while he inhaled a third piece of strawberry pie.

Finn hung up his cell phone. “Okay, now I’m interested. Because nobody I’ve talked to has any idea who those people were at Mab’s mansion.”

“Nobody?” I frowned. “Nobody knows who those people are?”

Finn shrugged. “Whatever Mab’s doing, she’s kept a lid on that part of it. So far at least.”

I put down the paperback copy of
Medea
that I’d been reading for the latest class I was taking over at Ashland Community College. Reading during lulls in the action at the Pork Pit was another habit that I’d picked up from Fletcher. Auditing classes at the college was a hobby I’d developed on my own, but one the old man had approved of.

My book forgotten, I leaned against the counter. I had no real reason to think there was anything particularly special about the group of people Mab had been entertaining last night—except that Gentry and her girl, Sydney, had tried to kill me.

No, I decided, that wasn’t quite right. Gentry hadn’t wanted to kill me—she’d wanted to march me back to Mab so the Fire elemental could do it herself. Sydney, though, had been going for the kill shot, but only after she thought that I was going to stiff Gentry. Still, something
about the whole thing just didn’t add up, and I couldn’t figure out what it might be. Had the people at the dinner been brought to Ashland by Mab as reinforcements for her army of giant bodyguards? As spies? Or something else? I didn’t know, but I was willing to bet that my ability to keep on breathing would depend on my finding out the answer—fast.

Finn and I sat there and threw out a few ideas, but neither one of us came up with anything that seemed remotely plausible. I was ready to give up, and Finn was ready to leave to see what else he could dig up from his sources, when the bell over the front door chimed again and my baby sister, Bria, walked into the restaurant.

Ashland Police Detective Bria Coolidge was a beautiful woman. Or maybe I was just a little biased, since she was my younger sister.

Bria’s mane of blond hair, cut into a series of lush, shaggy layers, just skimmed her slim shoulders, while her blue eyes glinted in the soft curves of her face. The frosty air had painted her cheeks a pleasing pink that showed off her skin’s perfection. Given the bitter chill outside, Bria wore a long, black wool coat over a pair of black boots, jeans, and a royal blue turtleneck sweater that further brightened her stunning eyes. Her detective’s badge glinted a cold gold on her leather belt, right next to the inky blackness of her gun.