I rolled my eyes at his snotty, superior tone. Finn had recently turned twenty-three and was finishing up his MBA with his internship and some sort of accounting program that he was taking online through a university in Bigtime, New York. With his new job and fancy suits, Finn thought that he was it on a stick—and then some.
“Whatever. I’d rather be cooking in the Pork Pit than sitting in some stuffy old bank day after day.”
Finn sniffed again, but he didn’t respond to my taunt this time.
Fletcher didn’t comment on our sniping. He’d long ago given up trying to referee the two of us.
“Come on,” the old man said. “I want to go home and get some supper.”
• • •
The three of us climbed down the ridge using some rope that Fletcher had brought along, piled into his beat-up white van, and headed back to the city. Thirty minutes later, Fletcher dropped Finn off at his apartment building downtown.
“You coming by the restaurant for lunch tomorrow?” Fletcher asked through his open window.
Finn hesitated. “I’ll try, but it depends on work. I’ll call and let you know, okay?”
Fletcher nodded and smiled, but not before I saw the flicker of hurt that pinched his face. Finn hadn’t been around much this summer, spending more time at that stupid bank than he had with his dad. Anger sizzled in my chest that he could be so thoughtless toward Fletcher. Finn should be grateful that he still had a dad, especially one like Fletcher. But I kept my mouth shut. There was no use arguing with Finn. He was even more stubborn than I was.
Finn waved at his dad, then headed into his building. He didn’t wave at me or tell me good-bye, though. He was still pissed that I’d beaten him so many times tonight. I grinned. Too bad.
Fletcher threw the van into gear, pulled away from the curb, and drove through downtown, going by the Pork Pit. Since it was after nine now, the restaurant was closed, although the neon pig sign over the front door burned with bright, multicolored lights. The sight never failed to cheer me up.
“You know, I noticed that there are a couple of apartments for rent in that building across from the Pit,” I said, trying to make my voice light and casual as I pointed out the window. “See the sign right there? I thought I might call about one and see how much the rent is.”
Fletcher harrumphed in the back of his throat, but that was his only reaction. Finn had his own apartment, and I was itching to move out of Fletcher’s house too. I loved the old man, really, I did, but I was an assassin. I was the Spider. Fletcher had been sending me on solo jobs for a while now, and I felt like I should have my own place, my own space, and not what I’d carved out for myself in his cluttered house.
“So?” I asked, impatience creeping into my voice. “What do you think? About the apartment?”
Fletcher stared out the windshield, instead of looking at me. “We’ll see.”
I wanted to pester him about it and get him to say yes right then, but I forced myself to wait, even though I ended up grinding my teeth the whole time.
But that was all he said.
If Finn and I were stubborn, then Fletcher was doubly so, and I knew that nothing short of being quartered by wild horses would make him say another word before he was ready to.
It was difficult, but I made myself unclench my jaw, although I couldn’t keep from tapping my fingers against the open window frame in frustration. As I watched the passing scenery, I wondered how much longer it would be before the old man realized that I was all grown up.
3
Twenty minutes later, Fletcher stopped the van in front of his house, which perched on top of one of the many ridges that ran through and around Ashland as part of the Appalachian Mountains.
I hopped out of the vehicle and headed toward the front porch, ready to wash away all of the grime, dust, and sweat from our war games. But Fletcher stayed by the van, as was his usual routine, scanning the dark woods that lay to one side of the house before his gaze moved across the yard and over to the rocky cliff that marked the edge of the property.
I didn’t know why he bothered. Fletcher was extremely careful as the Tin Man, using all sorts of cutouts, aliases, and back doors to book jobs and then being even more careful to leave no evidence behind at the scenes of his crimes, much less any clues to who he really was. There was no way that anyone could trace what he did—what we did now—back to us, but every time we came home, he still stopped, looked, and listened like he expected an attack at any second.
I sighed and waited by the front door, my arms crossed over my chest and my right foot tapping a staccato pattern against the weathered wooden porch. I was all for being cautious, but this bordered on the ridiculously paranoid.
After about three minutes, Fletcher was finally satisfied that no one was lying in wait to try to kill us, and he left the van and headed toward the house. He inserted his key in the lock, turning the knob to open the door, but the wood wouldn’t budge.
“Stupid door,” he muttered. “The wood always sticks in this humidity. I should go ahead and get that black granite one installed like I’ve been thinking about.”
I rolled my eyes. The house was already a hulking monstrosity. Several folks had owned it over the years, and each of them had added on a room or two. All in different styles, colors, and materials, including white clapboard, brown brick, and gray stone. And Fletcher had only added to the oddness by installing a bright, shiny tin roof and coal-black shutters a few months ago. I always wondered why he didn’t remodel the entire structure and give it some sort of cohesive style, but he seemed to like the strange angles and mismatched pieces of wood and stone. I supposed that a black granite door would fit right in with the eclectic feel of the rest of the house.
Fletcher put his shoulder into the wood, and the door finally wrenched open with a violent screech.
We stepped inside the house, which had as many odd corners and incongruous styles as the outside did, and went our separate ways. I headed upstairs, took a shower, and threw on a thin blue cotton robe over a white T-shirt and some short pink pajama bottoms patterned with garish green limes. Then I went back downstairs to the kitchen to get something to eat.
I rustled around in the refrigerator, grabbing cold cuts, cheese, and more, before taking everything over to the counter, where a fresh loaf of Sophia’s sourdough bread was waiting. I hummed under my breath as I built my meal. Thin slices of smoked turkey and honey ham; thick slabs of sharp cheddar cheese; sweet, crispy romaine lettuce; a couple of rings of red onion; sliced fresh tomatoes sprinkled with salt and pepper; all of it topped off with a hearty layer of mayonnaise, a dollop of mustard, and another piece of bread. Three minutes later, I had the perfect sandwich.
Too hungry to get a plate, I stood at the counter and sank my teeth into the layers of goodness. The tomatoes were like a bright burst of summer in my mouth, brought out by the creamy mayonnaise. The meats were the ideal blend of smoky and sweet, while the lettuce and onions gave every bite a healthy bit of crunch. I quickly finished that sandwich and made myself another one.
Fletcher entered the kitchen, still dressed in his blue work clothes, although he’d taken the time to wash his hands and face. He wandered over to the counter.
“That looks good.” His stomach rumbled in time with his words.
I gave Fletcher the second sandwich and fixed a third one. He put it on a napkin, poured himself a glass of sweet iced sun tea that I’d made this morning, and carried everything into the den. I thought he might turn on the TV, but the area remained quiet. I stayed in the kitchen, finished my sandwich, and opened the fridge again, wondering what I could whip up for dessert. I had some chocolate chip cookies that I’d baked yesterday. Maybe I’d use them and a pint of fudge ice cream to make some quick and easy ice cream sandwiches—
“Gin,” Fletcher called out. “Come here, please.”
I sighed at the interruption, but I closed the refrigerator and trooped into the den, where he was sitting on the worn pla
id sofa. “Yeah?”
He hesitated, then picked up a manila folder from the scarred wooden coffee table and waved it at me.
I perked up, forgetting all about dessert. “What’s that?”
“A job—maybe.”
I sat down on the sofa next to him. “Why is it just a maybe?”
He shrugged.
Fletcher wasn’t an elemental, so the stones never whispered to him of any potential dangers like they did to me. But more than once, he’d turned down a job because something didn’t feel right to him. And more than once, he’d found out after the fact that he’d been right to refuse it. That the assignment had been some sort of trap or double-cross or that the client was only going to pay half the money and then try to take him out after the job was done. I might have my magic, but Fletcher had his instincts.
He hesitated a moment longer, then handed me the file. “I was going to wait on this. At least until I could check out a few more things, like exactly who the client is and why they want this person dead. But apparently, the client wants to remain as anonymous as I do, because I haven’t been able to find out anything about them so far.”
“How did they make contact?” I asked.
“I answered a rather cryptic newspaper classified ad asking for information about pork prices, followed up by some more pointed conversations through one of my anonymous e-mail accounts.”
Newspaper ads, untraceable e-mails, and throwaway cell phones were some of Fletcher’s standard ways of booking jobs, while the mention of pork prices was one of his codes. Other codes included more tongue-in-cheek references to Wizard of Oz memorabilia, given that the Tin Man was Fletcher’s assassin alias. That way, all he had to do was scan the newspaper every morning to see if someone might want the services of an assassin and then follow up on the info he spied there. Even then, he remained anonymous, and he still screened potential clients as much as possible, in case of setups and traps.
“There was nothing unusual about how the client contacted me, but something still feels a little off.” He shrugged. “But the down payment is already sitting in the bank, and everything else seems legit, so I figured that we might as well talk about it.”
“Who’s the target?”
“Cesar Vaughn. A Stone elemental.”
I frowned. “Why do I know that name?”
“He owns Vaughn Construction,” Fletcher replied. “It’s become a big firm in Ashland in recent years. You’ve probably seen the name on signs at construction sites around the city. Vaughn and his company have put up a lot of the new office buildings downtown.”
I opened the folder. The first item inside was a photo of Cesar Vaughn, taken at some groundbreaking event. He was wearing a business suit, holding a shovel full of dirt, and grinning at the camera. He looked to be younger than Fletcher, maybe fifty or so, with a shock of peppery hair, tan skin, and dark brown eyes. He was beaming in the photo, giving him a proud, pleasant appearance, but I knew how deceiving looks could be.
More photos showed Vaughn at various construction sites. It looked like he was more than a corporate figurehead, given the fact that several of the pictures featured him loading bags onto trucks, driving nails into boards, and even pouring concrete. He seemed happy sweating alongside his crew, and his smiles were even wider in these photos, as if he actually enjoyed the hard, physical labor of building something from the ground up.
One close-up shot showed the logo for Vaughn Construction. The words were simple enough, written in a plain font, although what looked like two thorns curved together to form the V in Vaughn. That must be his business rune. Curious. I would have expected a stack of bricks or something similar for a Stone elemental. I wondered what the thorns represented to Vaughn.
“So what’s he done?”
It was the same question I always asked. Oh, I knew that what we were doing wasn’t right. We were assassins, after all, trained, ruthless killers for hire to anyone who had enough money to meet our asking prices. But the people we took out were usually worse than we were. Someone didn’t pay hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars to off their kid’s piano teacher or the barista who made them a lousy cup of coffee. Well, not usually. You had to do something to someone, royally piss them off, be a dangerous threat, or stand in the way of whatever they wanted. That’s when we got called in.
Besides, Fletcher had his own set of rules as an assassin, ones that he’d taught me to live by: no kids, no pets, no torture. So you didn’t get on the Tin Man’s radar by being innocent.
Sometimes I thought that we did everyone a favor by taking out the folks that we did. It didn’t make us the good guys by any stretch of the imagination, but we weren’t the most evil folks around either. Not by a long shot. Not in Ashland.
Fletcher shrugged again. “It could be any number of things. Maybe Vaughn didn’t spread enough bribe money around to the right people, and they’re angry about it. Maybe he took a job that a competitor wanted. Maybe he’s building on someone’s land who wants his project to disappear.”
As with most other businesses in Ashland, there were certain rules when it came to the construction industry. Certain people you had to pay off for everything from building plans to zoning permits to construction materials. Such things helped to keep . . . accidents from happening—to you and yours.
“But I’m guessing that the assignment has something to do with that incident up in Northtown a couple of months ago,” Fletcher continued. “The one at that new shopping center.”
“I remember that. Some enormous third-story stone terrace collapsed at a restaurant on opening night. It was all over the news.”
“Five people died, and a dozen more were injured,” Fletcher said. “They’re still investigating the cause. But guess who built the restaurant and the rest of the shopping center?”
“Cesar Vaughn.”
He nodded.
“So what? You think someone blames him for the accident?”
“It’s possible,” Fletcher said. “Especially if Vaughn used substandard building materials or cut corners. That’s what the rumor is, anyway. That he skimped on supplies, labor, and more, and that’s why the terrace collapsed. Supposedly, the families of the victims are getting ready to sue him over it, bankrupt him over it.”
I waved the folder at him. “Yeah, but if someone wants Vaughn dead now, then it sounds like they don’t want to wait around for a lawsuit or any money they might get. They just want his blood.”
Fletcher nodded. “Or maybe they realize that a lawsuit will probably drag on for years, if it doesn’t get thrown out of court somewhere along the way. Look at who his lawyer is.”
I flipped past the photos and scanned through some court documents that Fletcher had included in the file. “Jonah McAllister? But I thought he was Mab Monroe’s personal lawyer. That he worked for her and her alone.”
“He is, and he does,” Fletcher replied. “But Mab happens to own a significant stake in Vaughn’s company. So she has a vested interest in making sure that any trouble Vaughn is in disappears. It wouldn’t surprise me if she’s already gotten Elliot Slater to go pay visits to some of the victims’ families to make them reconsider filing their lawsuits.”
Slater was the giant who served as the head of Mab’s security detail and oversaw her bodyguards. At least, that’s what he was on paper. But everyone in the underworld knew that Slater was her top enforcer, who carried out all of her ruthless commands. No visit from Slater was ever pleasant, and most ended with blood and broken bones—at the bare minimum.
“You think Mab wants Vaughn dead? With him gone, that might make it a little harder for the victims’ families to sue.”
Fletcher shrugged a third time. “Maybe. But Vaughn’s company is a cash cow for Mab. He’s probably worth more to her alive and running things smoothly than he is dead and buried.” He hesitated again. “But there’s something else.”
“What?”
“According to our mysterious client, Vaughn has b
een under some serious stress for months now, and he’s been taking that stress out on his daughter, Charlotte. Hitting her, slapping her, screaming at her.”
“Where’s her mom?” I asked. “Why isn’t she protecting Charlotte?”
“Samantha Vaughn died in a car crash several years ago,” Fletcher answered. “I checked it out with some of my sources. Vaughn has had an Air elemental healer over to his mansion to see to his daughter four times in the last six months, three times for broken bones and once for a concussion. Supposedly, she fell down some stairs, fell off her bike, et cetera, et cetera.”
I snorted. “Yeah. Right.”
I kept going through the file until I found a photo of Charlotte Vaughn. She was a pretty girl, with the same brown eyes that her father had and glossy black hair that had been pulled back into two messy pigtails. She was staring at the camera, but her lips were barely curved up, and her gaze seemed dark and troubled, too dark and troubled for someone so young.
“How old is she?” I asked.
“Thirteen.”
Thirteen. The same age I’d been when a Fire elemental had stormed into my house and murdered my mother, Eira, and my older sister, Annabella. Before torturing me. Before I’d used my magic to collapse the stones of our mansion, accidentally killing my younger sister, Bria, in the process.
My fingers curled inward, my nails digging into my left palm and the spider rune scar there, that small circle surrounded by eight thin rays. Once upon a time, the rune had been a silverstone pendant, which I’d worn until the Fire elemental had superheated the rune with her magic, searing it into my palms like a cattle brand.
For a moment, the stench of charred flesh filled my nose, and I was back in the smoky, ruined remains of my family’s home, trying to swallow down my screams, my palms still burning, burning, burning from the silverstone that had been so cruelly, so brutally, melted into my skin—
“Gin?” Fletcher asked. “What are you thinking about?”
“Nothing.”