Spider’s Revenge

  No one moved on the deserted downtown Ashland street except for me, and no cars crawled through the foot-deep snow. The flakes were coming down harder now, as heavy and wet as teardrops on my face, but I trudged on, eager to get to my destination. I turned the corner, and the familiar multicolored sign of the Pork Pit came into view, burning like a beacon through the dark night.

  Home—I was finally home.

  Light spilled out from the storefront windows, looking like pure liquid silver streaming down the snowbanks outside. I paused a moment and trailed my fingers over the cold, battered brick. The muted murmurs of clogged contentment sounded back to me the way they always did. I smiled and opened the door. The bell chimed a single cheery note, announcing my presence.

  Inside, an old man with a wispy thatch of white hair leaned over the counter next to the cash register, reading a blood-stained book. Where the Red Fern Grows. One of his all-time favorites—and mine too.

  Joy filled my heart at the sight of him, a burst of happiness so intense it was like I hadn’t seen him in months, instead of just a few hours. After a moment, the feeling faded away, replaced by a darker, more ominous sensation.

  And then I remembered.

  He wasn’t here anymore. Not really. No, he was dead, killed months ago in this very spot. Murdered in his own restaurant. I remembered crouching over his body, my tears dripping down and mixing with the blood on his ruined face. I remembered the pain of losing him, the pain that I still felt every time I woke up in his house and realized he was gone.

  But here the old man was, and so was I—back together again. Or so it seemed.

  He looked up at the sound of the bell chiming and used one of the day’s credit card receipts to mark his spot in the blood-stained book. Then his bright green eyes met mine, and a grin creased his wrinkled face.

  “About time you got here, Gin,” Fletcher Lane said.

  I stood there just inside the door, staring at the old man and struggling to make sense of this, of where I was and what was happening to me.

  I remembered—I remembered— Fire. Mab’s elemental Fire, washing over me, burning me to the core. My own Ice magic reaching out to hers, holding it at bay, and then finally, my driving my silverstone knife into Mab’s chest as the flames consumed both of us.

  I sighed. “So I’m dead then, right? This is heaven or hell or limbo or whatever?”

  Fletcher didn’t answer me. Instead, the old man moved over to the stove and came back with a plate of food. He set it on the counter, then picked up his book by the cash register once more, going back to his reading.

  “Better start eating before it gets cold,” he said.

  I wasn’t sure what was going on—if this was real or a dream or something else entirely—but I wasn’t about to pass up a chance to be with Fletcher. Not now. Not after I’d spent the last few months missing him so terribly and feeling so guilty over his death—and that I hadn’t been able to save him. Not from being tortured, not from being murdered.

  So I took a seat at the counter and started eating the food. A half-pound hamburger dripping with mayonnaise and piled high with smoked Swiss cheese, sweet butter-leaf lettuce, a juicy tomato slice, and a thick slab of red onion. A bowl of spicy baked beans followed, along with a saucer of carrot-laced coleslaw. I remembered the last time that I’d had this meal—the night before Fletcher had died.

  I dug into the food, a little hesitant at first, but soon I was relishing the play of sweet and spice, salt and vinegar, on my tongue. It was a simple, savory meal that I’d had hundreds of times before, one I’d cooked a thousand times more, but somehow it had never tasted as good as it did right now. It seemed like I’d barely started eating before my plate was clean. I pushed it back and sighed.

  “That was the best meal I’ve ever eaten,” I said in a wistful tone.

  “I know,” Fletcher said. “Everything tastes better here.”

  I wasn’t sure where here was, and I sensed that he wouldn’t tell me even if I asked. So I just sat there and looked at him, staring at the wrinkled face that I’d loved so much, that I’d missed so much. And I realized I had questions for Fletcher—all these burning questions I’d wanted to ask him for so many months now.

  “Why did you give me that folder of information on Bria? Why didn’t you just tell me that she was alive? Why wait until after you died? Why buy the land where my childhood house was? And did Mab really hire you to kill my family? Is that why you wanted her dead all these years? Because she tried to have you killed when you turned her down?” One after another, the questions tumbled from my lips.

  Fletcher marked his place in his book again, then looked up at me. His green eyes were sharper, clearer, brighter than I remembered and free of the rheumy film that had started to cloud them as he’d aged.

  “That’s what you want to know?” he asked in an amused voice. “The murky, mysterious actions of an old man? Not the big stuff? You know, about life and death and if there’s really a heaven or not?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t care about any of that. I just want to know about you, Fletcher. I want to know all about you.”

  The old man grinned. “That’s my girl, Gin, always focusing on the important things.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest and snorted. “Only because you turned me into the same curious sort that you are. Or were. Or whatever.”

  His grin just widened.

  Fletcher didn’t ask me about killing Mab. He didn’t have to. We both knew that I wouldn’t be here if the job hadn’t been done. Finally, finally done.

  “Well,” he rumbled. “I thought I explained it well enough in that letter I left for you in my office. But to answer your questions, yes, Mab did hire me to kill your family. At first, it was just your mother, but then Mab got greedy and wanted me to throw in you and your two sisters for free. And you know that I didn’t kill kids—ever.”

  I nodded.

  Fletcher shrugged. “Mab was a bit upset when I turned down her offer. She knew me only as the Tin Man, not as Fletcher Lane, but that didn’t stop her from ordering some of her men to track me down and kill me. When I took the initiative and killed them instead, she sent a few more, but I took care of them too. As for why I bought the land, it was yours—yours and Bria’s. Mab had already taken so much from the two of you. I didn’t want her to take that too. You know everything else that happened. The rough outlines anyway. My trying to save your family that night but realizing I was already too late. My finding Bria roaming in the woods around your burning, crumbled house, giving her to her foster family, and then you, showing up at my back door…”

  His voice trailed off, and his green eyes clouded over, lost in his memories, just like I was.

  “But why keep me in the dark about Bria for all these years?” I asked. “Why even take me in? Why train me to be an assassin? You could have just shipped me off to Savannah to live with Bria and her foster family. That would have been the easiest thing for you to do. The simplest thing, for everyone.”

  “Maybe I could have, maybe I should have,” Fletcher murmured. “I thought about it when you first came here.”

  “So what changed your mind?”

  He looked down at the pages of his book, and for a moment, I thought that he wouldn’t answer me. But he finally raised his gaze to mine once more.

  “Do you remember the night that Douglas, that giant, came to the Pork Pit? He was one of Mab’s men, one of those searching for me. He spotted me while I was out scouting another job, and he followed me back here to kill me. Do you remember that, Gin?”

  Oh, I remembered, probably better than Fletcher did, because Douglas was the first person I’d killed inside the Pork Pit. I’d taunted the giant, lured him over to me, and then I’d stabbed him to death with the knife I’d been using to chop onions. The first time I’d ever used a blade that way—the first of many.

  “When you killed Douglas, I realized how I could make things up to you, for your family being gone. I realize
d that I could train you to be an assassin, to survive. Even back then, you had that same cold, iron will you do now,” Fletcher said. “I’d heard about Magda’s prophecy, so I knew why Mab had wanted you and your sisters dead, because supposedly one of you would grow up to kill her. And I thought that maybe—that maybe this was what the prophecy was all about in the first place. That maybe you were meant to be with me, instead of with Bria. At first, anyway. Until you grew up. Until I could train you. Besides, by that point, I just loved you too damn much to let you go.”

  We fell silent. I thought back to what I’d said to Mab, when I’d asked her if she thought that she’d brought all this on herself.

  “It’s all very Greek, isn’t it?” I quipped. “Prophecies, tragedies, destinies. Just like in all those old mythology books we read over the years.”

  Fletcher shrugged. “Hard to beat the classics.”

  I nodded. “And what about all that talk of my retirement right before you… died?”

  Fletcher shrugged again. “Being an assassin is all well and good, but I wanted you to start thinking about other things, to realize that there was more to life than killing people, no matter how good you are at it. I’d taught you how to survive. I guess I wanted to put you on a happier path before I died.”

  “The one that led me to Bria,” I finished.

  He nodded. We didn’t speak. Outside the snow continued to fall, coating everything in its cold, wet embrace.

  “So what now?” I finally asked. “Because Mab’s dead. I made sure of that. And if I’m not already, then I’m probably on my way to join her—and you.”

  The old man snorted. “What now? That’s up to you, Gin. Just like it always has been.”

  “So I can go back then? Back to being… alive? Or whatever?”

  The old man stared at me with his bright green eyes. “You’re Gin Blanco, Genevieve Snow, and the Spider all rolled into one. You can do whatever you want to, sweetheart.”

  I bit my lip and looked away. “I don’t want to lose you again, Fletcher. I don’t want to leave you behind. Especially since it’s my fault that you died in the first place. My fault that Alexis James tortured you to death.”

  A hundred agonizing emotions tightened my throat, but for once, I forced out the words. “I—I failed you that night.”

  “And I failed you when I didn’t stop Mab from killing your mother and older sister,” the old man snapped right back at me. “We all make mistakes, Gin, even the best of us. I like to think that it all evens out in the end. Remember that, and you’ll be fine.”

  “But what should I do?”

  “I can’t tell you that,” Fletcher said. “But it seems to me like there are a lot of people out there who care about you. It would be a shame to up and die on them, especially when they’re working so hard to try to save your life.”

  I thought about everything that I’d gone through in the last few months. Grieving over Fletcher’s death, my messy affair with Donovan Caine, taking on bad guy after bad guy, finding Bria, connecting with her, and now with Owen too, and all the things I felt for him. Fletcher was right. I’d worked too damn hard to get through all of that, to build a real life for myself, to give it up now.

  Still, I got to my feet with a heavy heart. I should have headed for the door, but I lingered at the counter. I breathed in, and the old man’s scent filled my nose—sugar, spice, and vinegar all mixed together, with just a hint of chicory coffee. The caffeine fumes comforted me the way they always did.

  “Well, then, I guess this is good-bye.”

  Fletcher gave me a sly smile. “For now.”

  I nodded, turned, and walked over to the front door. For a moment, my hand hovered over the doorknob, and I wondered once more if this was the right thing to do. It would be easy to stay here with Fletcher—so easy. But like the old man had said before, I was Gin Blanco, Genevieve Snow, and the Spider. Easy wasn’t in my vocabulary. It never had been.

  I twisted the knob, opened the door, and stepped out into the cold. But I wasn’t ready to go—not yet. I turned and stared back through the storefront windows, looking at the old man.

  Our gazes met and held through the glass. Green on gray. Our love and respect for each other glowing as bright as the neon pig sign above the door.

  Fletcher raised his hand to me in a silent wave, which I returned. Then the snow swirled between us once more, and he was gone.

  I shuddered in a breath and found myself staring into a pair of bright green eyes—eyes that were pinched tight with worry and fear.

  “Fletcher?” I mumbled, my voice hoarse and raspy and broken. “Fletcher?”

  I wheezed in another breath and wished that I hadn’t. Pain flooded my body, snapping me out of whatever dream or limbo I’d been in. I was dimly aware of the agony coursing through my veins, of the sheer misery surging through me with every slow, erratic beat of my singed heart. But at the same time, I felt completely disconnected from myself, as though I were standing over my own body, watching my limbs twitch and writhe with pain with a dispassionate eye. I imagined the sensation probably had something to do with the fact that all of my nerve endings, hell, all my skin, had been seared off by Mab’s elemental Fire.

  But I’d gotten the bitch. I’d finally gotten her. I thought that I smiled then. I certainly wanted to, even as the blackness crept up on me again.

  “No, it’s Finn,” my foster brother’s familiar voice said. “Gin? Stay with me, Gin!”

  Some indistinct murmurs sounded, and footsteps scuffled in the snow. But I didn’t see anyone because my eyes were sliding shut again.

  “She’s alive!” Finn screamed. “Get Jo-Jo over here! Now!”

  The world went black once more.

  The next time I woke up, I felt like I was being stabbed with a hundred thousand red-hot needles—all at once. I cried out from the pain, screaming and thrashing. At least, I thought that I did. I certainly wanted to. Even Mab’s elemental Fire hadn’t felt as bad as all this, as painful, as agonizing, as brutal. It was like every last molecule of my skin was being ripped off and then stitched back on, one cell at a time. And there was no stopping it, no escaping it. Just pain, pain, and more pain.

  “Hold her steady,” someone muttered. “I can’t have her thrashing around and tearing up what I’ve already healed.”

  It might have been my imagination, but I thought that the pressure on my arms and legs increased that much more.

  “You’re exhausted,” someone else rasped in a broken voice that sounded vaguely familiar. “Help you.”

  “Me too,” a higher, lighter, lilting voice chimed in. “I don’t have Air magic, not like you do, but you can use my Ice power. I’ll feed it to you however I can. Maybe it’ll help. I have to do—something to help her. I can’t—I can’t stand to see her like this. So broken and melted—”

  The voice cut off in a choked sob. After that, silence.

  “All right,” the first voice said, sounding more tired and weary than any person had a right to be. “Let’s just hope that mashing all our magic together doesn’t kill her outright. Because I’m running on empty at this point.”

  For a moment, the needles faded away. I sighed with relief. But I’d barely drawn in a breath when they returned, even sharper and hotter than before. More and more of them, stabbing me over and over again in an unrelenting wave of agony.

  I threw my head back and screamed and screamed and screamed into the blackness.

  A soft, cool hand stroked my forehead, and I felt the faintest trickle of Ice magic glide over my body, enveloping me in its cold, sweet caress. I sighed with relief and tried to lean into the touch, but something stopped me. My whole body felt like it was immobilized, wrapped, bandaged, and strapped down like I was one of the poor souls languishing away in Ashland Asylum. Maybe the powers that be had fitted me for my straitjacket already, as crazy and jumbled as my mind was right now. I didn’t have the strength to fight against whatever was weighing me down. I didn’t have the streng
th to do anything.

  “Rest, Gin,” that high, lilting voice murmured in my ear, the same exhaustion that I felt coloring her words as well. “Just rest.”

  So I did.

  The next time that I woke up, it was for good. I opened my eyes and found myself staring up at a cloud-covered fresco on the ceiling. I sighed with relief, and more than a few tears slipped out of my eyes. I was safe at Jo-Jo’s house once more. Somehow, I’d done the impossible—killed Mab Monroe and lived to tell the tale. Wow. Sometimes, I surprised myself. I grinned. But in a good way.

  Dark cloaked the room, although it was slowly giving way to dawn. A soft snore rumbled close to my left ear, and my eyes flicked over to find Owen asleep in the rocking chair next to the bed, a blanket covering him.

  I wondered how long Owen had been sitting there, watching over me, waiting for me to wake up. He looked as exhausted as I felt. Deep lines grooved into his face, purple circles ringed his closed eyes, and a thick growth of black stubble covered his face, as though he hadn’t shaved in a week. I couldn’t see his clothes, but I imagined that they’d be just as rumpled as the rest of him.

  Still, the sight of him sitting there, watching over me even when he was so obviously exhausted himself, made me happier than anything had in a long, long time.

  But instead of waking him up, I carefully turned over onto my side. Blankets had been piled on top of me too, so I couldn’t see what kind of shape I was in. Curious and a little afraid of what I might find, I lifted the covers.

  White gauze covered me from head to toe, wrapped around my legs, arms, torso, toes, and everything in between. I’d never considered myself to be a particularly vain person, but my fingers trembled just a bit as I put my hand up to my face.

  More gauze there too, although at least it wasn’t an inch thick like it was on the rest of me. I felt like a mummy. Give me a pyramid and some dusty treasure to guard, and I’d be right at home in a horror movie. I looked like a monster too, given all the gauze and the ointment that I could feel underneath it soaking into my skin—or what was left of it.