I thought of Owen, and my chest tightened. “Yeah, I tend to do that to people.”
He looked at me, but he didn’t get up to leave. Instead, he stared at me, an amused smile on his face. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten already.”
“Forgotten what?” I asked, having no idea what he was talking about.
“We had a deal, remember? You kill Salina, and I get the folks gunning for you to back off. As many as I can, anyway. You held up your end, and I intend to do the same with mine.”
I frowned. “That dwarf? He was one of yours?”
“Of course not. I would never be so crass as to send a hit man after you. Let’s just say I’ve let it be known that I’ve developed something of a grudging fondness for you. He saw me, and he thought better of things. That’s all.”
I might have mocked him about it on the riverboat, but Kincaid was one of the few people in Ashland who actually had that kind of clout. If he wanted to throw a little goodwill my way, fine by me. Still, I couldn’t help but point out the obvious.
“Technically, we never had a deal because I never agreed to kill Salina for you.”
He grinned. “I know, but she’s dead all the same. And I couldn’t be happier about that.”
I snorted. “Despite how happy you are, it won’t last, and you know it. I’m too tempting a target for folks to ignore me for very long.”
“I know,” he replied. “But I figured you could use a break, after everything that’s happened the past few days.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
I worked at the restaurant the rest of the day, then went home. Normally, I didn’t mind being alone, but tonight, Fletcher’s house felt especially empty, despite all the odd knickknacks stuffed inside. Or maybe that was just because my heart felt like a hollow shell now that Owen and I were . . . well . . . I didn’t know what we were right now, but we weren’t together.
And it fucking hurt.
I didn’t have an appetite, so I poured myself a glass of gin and took it and the rest of the bottle into the den in the back of the house. I downed the drink, relishing the sweet burn of the liquor as it slid down my throat. I reached for the bottle to pour myself another round, but I stopped. Getting stinking drunk wouldn’t ease the ache in my heart, and it sure as hell wouldn’t make me feel better in the morning. So I pushed it aside and leaned back against the couch.
My eyes lifted to the mantel and the four framed drawings there. My mother, Eira’s, snowflake, representing icy calm. Annabella’s ivy vine for elegance. Bria’s beautiful primrose. The one of the neon sign outside the Pork Pit that was my homage to Fletcher. My gaze lingered on each one of the runes, and a strange mood seized me.
It had been a while since I’d taken any art classes at the community college, but I still had some supplies on hand. I rummaged through one of the drawers in a table in the den and found a sketchpad and some pencils I’d stuffed in there when I’d moved back into Fletcher’s house last year.
I put the pad on my lap, grabbed a pencil, and started drawing. Thirty minutes later, I had a fifth rune—Owen’s hammer. The symbol for strength, perseverance, and hard work. All things he had, all things he excelled at. My fingers traced over the symbol, and I wished that I could show it to Owen, wished he was here with me now.
But he wasn’t—and I didn’t know if he would ever be here again.
I was sitting there staring at the rune when a sharp knock sounded on the front door, followed by a key turning in the lock. Besides me, only a few people had a key to the house—and Owen was one of them.
Heart pounding, I put the drawing aside, got to my feet, and went out into the hallway, hurrying toward the front of the house. I skidded to a stop just inside the door, waiting for whoever was outside to come on in and show himself. The lock clicked open, and the door swung forward.
But it wasn’t Owen standing on the other side—it was Bria.
My baby sister stepped inside the house and held the door open for someone coming in behind her—Roslyn. Both women were carrying canvas bags full of . . . something. I couldn’t quite tell what.
“Hi, Gin!” Roslyn called out, putting both of her bags into one hand so she could pull the door shut behind her.
“Roslyn. Bria. What are ya’ll doing here?”
Bria raised an eyebrow. “You told me to come by anytime.”
“Me too,” Roslyn chimed in.
I shook off my confusion. “Of course, and you’re always welcome. Both of you—you know that. I’m just . . . surprised, that’s all.”
Bria and Roslyn exchanged a look. Then they both came in farther, passing me in the hallway and heading toward the kitchen. They dumped their bags on the table and started unpacking the items inside, which included some cheeses, crackers, chocolates, fresh fruit, a bottle of wine, and a couple of books.
“What’s all this?” I asked.
I picked up one of the books and turned it over so I could see the cover. The words Little Women glinted in silver foil.
“Book club,” Roslyn said, opening the kitchen drawers in search of something.
“Book club?”
“Remember, you were joking the other day at the Pork Pit that we should start our own book club. Well, I talked to Bria, and we both thought it was a fine idea, especially now . . .” Roslyn winced, and her voice trailed off, but I knew what she’d been about to say.
Especially now that you and Owen are having problems.
My heart twinged with pain, but I was gracious enough not to call her on it.
“We thought it would be fun,” Bria said in a quiet tone. “For all of us. Roslyn and I have spent the last few days reading Little Women.”
The two of them looked at me, the question of whether they should go or stay clear in their eyes. They were obviously trying to cheer me up, and their gesture touched me. I knew they wouldn’t have read the book if Roslyn hadn’t seen me with it at the restaurant. I hadn’t had many true friends in my life, and I was glad that I’d found them. So even though I didn’t really want company, I plastered a smile on my face.
“I think book club sounds like a great idea. Thanks for thinking of it—and me.”
“Excellent!” Roslyn said and turned her attention back to the drawer she was rifling through. “Although where’s your corkscrew? I don’t see one in here.”
“I think Finn stuffed it in one of the drawers in the den the last time he was here. I’ll get it.”
Bria and Roslyn started chatting about how good the food looked and what sort of plates they should put everything on, while I went into the den. After a couple of minutes of searching, I found the corkscrew stuffed down behind one of the couch cushions.
“Finn,” I said, laughing a little and shaking my head.
I’d just turned to go back to the kitchen when my eyes landed on the drawing I’d done of Owen’s hammer rune. I stopped and picked up the paper, my fingers tracing over the rune, a sharp, pulsing ache in my heart once more.
But like it or not, the pain and the uncertainty were things that I just had to live with, like I had so many other hard, painful things in my life. Owen and I had hit a rough patch, thanks to my actions, and his too. Now we had to deal with the consequences and fallout as best we could. Owen had asked for some time, and I needed the space and separation too. Maybe more than he did. Time to realize that Owen had loved someone before me. Time to realize that part of him would probably always love Salina. Time to realize that her death had hit him harder than I’d thought it would—harder than I thought it should. But who was I to judge? I wasn’t exactly the poster child for emotional health. Quite the opposite.
Besides, Jo-Jo had said that everything would work out the way it was supposed to. I’d taken her words to mean that Owen and I weren’t done, that she saw a future for us. It might take a while, and there might be a lot of heartache along the way, but we’d get there. I knew we would. I had to believe we would.
I just had to.
I
carefully tore the sheet with Owen’s rune out of my sketchpad and propped it up alongside the others on the mantel. Maybe it was time for a change regarding the drawings. I’d always thought of them as the runes of my dead family, but maybe, maybe I could start thinking of them as tributes instead. A way to celebrate the people I loved.
Or maybe the love Owen and I had shared was just as dead as my mother, sister, and Fletcher.
No, I thought. Our love wasn’t dead. It was just a little battered and bruised. It would eventually heal, and I was determined to do everything I could to help it along. If that meant giving Owen time and space to himself, then that was what I was going to do—no matter how much I just wanted to be in his arms right now.
“Come on, Gin,” Bria said in a loud voice. “The wine isn’t going to open itself!”
“Be right there!” I called back.
My friends had come to cheer me up, and I was going to let them. So I had a broken heart—so what? I’d gotten through worse, and I’d get through this too. This time, I was just grateful that there were people here for me, people who cared about me.
I looked at Owen’s rune a final time, then fixed a smile on my face and headed into the kitchen to eat, drink, talk, and laugh the night away with my friends, my family.
Turn the page for a sneak peek at the next book in the Elemental Assassin series
DEADLY STING
by Jennifer Estep
Coming soon from Pocket Books
1
“That would look fabulous on you.”
Finnegan Lane, my foster brother, pointed to a tennis bracelet in the middle of a glass case full of jewelry. The shimmer of the gemstones matched the sparkle of greed in his eyes.
I looked at the price tag beside the diamond-crusted monstrosity. “You do realize that the cost of that bracelet is within spitting distance of my going rate as an assassin, right?”
“You mean your going rate back when you were actually killing people for money,” Finn said. “Or as I like to call them—the good ole days.”
Finn gave the diamond bracelet one more greedy glance before moving over to a display of shoes. He grabbed a purple pump off a shelf and waggled the shoe at me before holding it up and inspecting it himself. He gazed at the shoe with a rapt expression, as though it were a work of art instead of merely overpriced pieces of leather sewn together.
“It’s the latest style,” he said in a dreamy voice. “Hand-stitched lavender suede with custom-made, four-inch heels. Isn’t it marvelous?”
I arched an eyebrow. “Have I ever told you how scary it is that you know more about shoes than I do?”
Finn grinned, his green eyes lighting up with amusement. “Frequently. But my impeccable fashion sense is one of the many things you love about me.”
He straightened his gray silk tie and winked at me. I snorted and moved over to look at some dresses hanging on a rack near the wall.
The two of us were out shopping, which was one of Finn’s favorite things to do. Not mine, though. I never paid too much attention to what I was wearing, beyond making sure that my jeans and boots were comfortable enough to fight in and that my T-shirt sleeves were long enough to hide the knives I had tucked up each one. As the assassin the Spider, I’d learned a long time ago not to invest too much money in clothes that were only going to end up with bloodstains on them.
But here I was, along for the consumer ride. Finn had shown up at the Pork Pit, my barbecue joint, just after the lunch rush ended and had dragged me all the way up to Northtown, the part of Ashland that housed and catered to the wealthy, social, and magical elite. We’d spent the last hour traipsing from store to store in an upscale shopping development that had just opened up.
Now we were browsing through Posh, the biggest, fanciest, and most expensive boutique on this particular block. Racks of ball gowns and evening dresses filled the store, starting with all-white frocks on the left and darkening to midnight black ones on the right, like a rainbow of color arcing from one side of the store to the other. There wasn’t a dress in here that was less than five grand, and the shoes arranged along the back wall went for just as much. Not to mention the minuscule handbags that cost ten times as much as a good steak dinner.
“Come on, Gin,” Finn wheedled, holding the pump out to me. “At least try it on.”
I rolled my eyes, took the shoe from him, and hefted it in my hand. “Lightweight, nice enough color. Not the worst thing you’ve shown me today. And that skinny stiletto would make a decent weapon, if you took the time to snap it off the rest of the shoe and sharpen the end of it.”
Finn sighed and took the pump away from me. “Have I ever told you how scary it is that you think of heels in terms of their possible shiv potential?”
I grinned at him. “Frequently. But my impeccable sense of improvised weaponry is one of the many things you love about me.”
This time, Finn rolled his eyes, and then started muttering under his breath about how he couldn’t take me anywhere. My grin widened. I loved needling Finn as much as he enjoyed teasing me.
“Tell me again why I have to go to this shindig with you?” I asked when he finally wound down.
“It’s not a mere shindig,” he huffed. “It’s the opening gala for an exhibit of art, jewelry, and other valuable objects from the estate of the late, not-so-great, and certainly unlamented Mab Monroe. Everyone who’s anyone will be there, underworld and otherwise, and it’s going to be the social event of the summer. Besides, aren’t you the least bit curious to see what the old girl stashed away over the years? The things she collected? What she thought was beautiful or valuable or at least worth hoarding? She was your nemesis, after all.”
Mab Monroe had been a little more than my nemesis—the Fire elemental had murdered my mother and older sister when I was thirteen. She’d also tortured me. But I’d finally gotten my revenge when I shoved my silverstone knife through the bitch’s black heart back in the winter. Killing Mab had been one of the most satisfying moments of my life. The fact that she was dead and I wasn’t was the only thing that really mattered to me.
“Sorry,” I said. “I have no desire to go gawk at all of Mab’s shinies. They’re not doing her any good now, are they? I’m quite happy simply knowing that she’s rotting in her grave. And I still don’t understand why you insisted on dragging me out to buy a dress. I have plenty of little black numbers in my closet at home, any one of which would be perfect for this event.”
Finn snorted. “Sure, if you don’t mind wearing something that’s ripped, torn, and caked with dried blood.”
I couldn’t argue with that. Funny how killing people inevitably led to ruined clothes.
Finn sighed and shook his head at my lack of interest in Mab’s many treasures. “I can’t believe you won’t go out of simple curiosity and unabashed greed. Those are certainly the reasons I’m going. And probably half the folks on the guest list. We’ve just covered why you need a new dress. As to why you have to go with me, well, naturally, I asked Bria first, but she has to work. I need someone to drink champagne with and make snide comments to about everyone else in attendance. You wouldn’t deny me that pleasure, would you?”
“Perish the thought,” I murmured. “But what about Roslyn? Or Jo-Jo? Why don’t you take one of them instead?”
“Roslyn is already going with someone else, and Jo-Jo has a date with Cooper.” Finn used his fingers to tick off our friends and family. “I even asked Sophia, but there’s some classic Western film festival that she’s planning to catch that night. Besides, she’d probably insist on wearing black lipstick, a silverstone collar, and the rest of her usual Goth clothes instead of an evening dress. Since I don’t want to be responsible for any of the old guard having conniptions or coronary episodes, you’re it.”
“Lucky me.”
“Besides, it’s not like you have plans,” he continued as though I hadn’t said a word. “Other than sitting at home and brooding over lost love.”
My eyes n
arrowed, and I gave Finn a look that would have made most men tremble in their wing tips. He just picked up a strappy, canary-yellow sandal and admired it a moment before showing it to me.
“What do you think? Is yellow your color? Yeah, you’re right. Not with your skin tone.” He put the shoe back on the shelf and turned to face me.
“Look,” Finn said, his expression serious. “I just thought it would be good for you to get out of the house for a night. You know, dress up, go out on the town, have a little fun. I know how hard this last month has been, with you and Owen on the outs.”
On the outs was putting it mildly. I hadn’t spoken to Owen Grayson, my lover, since the night he’d come to the Pork Pit a few weeks ago to tell me he needed some time to himself, some time away from me, from us.
But that’s what happens when you kill your lover’s ex-fiancée right in front of him. That sort of thing tended to make a person reassess their relationships—especially with the one who’d done the killing.
No matter how much I missed him, I couldn’t blame Owen for wanting to take a break. A lot of bad stuff had gone down in the days leading up to me battling Salina Dubois, a lot of terrible secrets had been revealed, and he wasn’t the only one who’d needed time to process and come to terms with everything. I might understand, but that didn’t make it hurt any less.
Even assassins could have their hearts broken.
“Gin?” Finn asked in a soft voice, cutting into my thoughts.
I sighed. “I know you’re just trying to help, but I’m fine, Finn. Really, I am. The important thing is that Salina is dead, and she can’t hurt anyone else ever again. Owen and I . . . we’ll eventually work things out.”
“And if you don’t?”
I sighed again. “Then, we’ll both move on with our lives.”
I kept my face calm and smooth, although my heart squeezed at the thought. Finn started to say something else when one of the saleswomen sidled up to him.