I poured the shake into a glass, stuck a straw in it, and took it over to the table.
“There you go,” I said, talking to the girl in the same soft, soothing tone that Jo-Jo had used.
“It’s too early for a milkshake,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
I scooted it a little closer to her. “Just try it, okay?”
She dutifully took a sip. She stopped and frowned, as if she was surprised by how good it was or how hungry she was after all. But she must have liked it, because she kept sipping and sipping it. She didn’t act like she wanted to talk, so I made a second chocolate shake for myself.
When the girl wasn’t looking, I reached over, grabbed one of the kitchen knives out of the butcher’s block on the counter, and slipped it into one of the back pockets on my jeans. It wasn’t as good as one of Fletcher’s silverstone knives, but it was better than no knife at all.
I finished making my own milkshake and poured it into a glass. Outside, I heard car doors slamming shut, then an engine rumbling to life and tires crunching on gravel. Fletcher, Jo-Jo, and Sophia must finally be leaving—
Beep-beep-beep-beep.
The horn on Sophia’s convertible blared and blared, as though someone were hitting it over and over again in warning. I froze, but the horn was quickly drowned out by the squealing of tires and the screeching of metal slamming into something.
“Fletcher,” I whispered.
I dropped my milkshake, not caring that the glass shattered on the floor, and ran out of the kitchen. I skidded to a stop at the front cabin windows, with the girl right next to me.
Sophia’s convertible was wrapped around a tree—
literally.
Somehow the car had slammed into and then curled around the tree trunk like a plastic tie twisted on the end of a loaf of bread. Broken glass and bent pieces of metal littered the ground, while black smoke boiled up from the hood. I couldn’t see through the smoke, so I couldn’t tell how badly Fletcher and the Deveraux sisters might be hurt.
“Oh, no,” the girl whispered, her trembling finger pointing out the window. “He’s here.”
A man was walking up the gravel driveway toward the cabin. He was dressed in a dark blue suit, with a silverstone ring flashing on his finger. Both were at odds with the old-fashioned weapon he was carrying, a long, thick wooden stick topped with a spiked metal ball. His black hair was swept back from his face, revealing the bright blue burn of magic in his eyes.
The man didn’t give the crumpled car a second look as he passed it, and he kept striding toward the house with steady, certain steps. No emotion showed on his face. No hate, no rage, nothing but the cold, certain promise of pain and death.
“That’s your dad?”
The girl nodded, tears streaming down her pale face.
Another plume of smoke caught my eye, and hot, hungry flames started shooting out of the hood of Sophia’s convertible. My heart twisted, and I sucked in a breath, waiting for the doors to wrench open and for Fletcher, Jo-Jo, and Sophia to spill out of the wrecked car and sprint away from the growing fire.
But they didn’t.
“Your friends are probably dead,” the girl said in a dull voice. “He can control metal. That’s what he did to their car. Crushed it around them like a tin can. He’s done it before. My mom . . . he used that mace on her. He beat her to death with it right in front of me, and he laughed the whole time. Now he’s going to kill us too. There’s no stopping him. There never is.”
More and more tears streaked down her face, her gaze locked onto her father as he drew closer to the cabin.
Cold rage pulsed through me, overpowering my grief and fear. This man, this Renaldo Pike, had murdered his wife, beaten his daughter, and hurt Fletcher, Jo-Jo, and Sophia. Maybe even killed them.
I’d be damned if he was going to do the same thing to us.
This was exactly the sort of situation Fletcher had been training me for. So I could take care of myself. And if the girl wouldn’t do the same, then I’d just have to do it for her. I glanced around the room for a weapon, but Fletcher, Jo-Jo, and Sophia had taken everything with them.
“He’s reaching for his magic,” the girl whispered. “He’s going to play with us first. He likes to do that.”
At her words, a nail worked its way loose from the wall and tinked to the floor at my feet, rolling around and around, almost like a grenade waiting to explode.
And it wasn’t the only one.
The closer Renaldo Pike got to the cabin, the more nails ripped out of the walls, shooting out of the wood like bullets. They hit the couch, the chairs, even the TV, shattering the monitor. Everything shuddered, splintered, and cracked apart, and glass, fabric, and other shrapnel flew through the air. It was like being in the center of a bomb that kept exploding over and over again.
I ducked down, but the girl stood at the windows, as if she’d already accepted the fact that there was nothing she could do to keep him from killing her.
I yanked her down beside me, out of the path of the flying nails. “Do you have a death wish?” I hissed. “Move!”
I grabbed the girl’s hand. Still crouching low, I headed toward the kitchen, dragging her along behind me, determined to get out of the cabin before her father killed us both—
My eyes snapped open, the squealing of all those nails tearing out of the cabin walls still echoing in my mind, the scent of sawdust still filling my nose, and the cold, sweaty feel of the girl’s hand still imprinted on my skin as though I’d touched her just a moment ago.
I remembered now—I remembered everything.
The girl, her father, all the terrible things that had happened that day.
But with the dream, the memories, came some startling revelations.
I wasn’t the one Pike wanted to kill. I hadn’t been the target of the bomb on the Delta Queen.
In fact, this wasn’t about me at all.
It was all about her.
* * *
I lay in bed for several minutes, thinking about the day I’d met the girl, reviewing all the facts from back then and trying to piece them together with what I knew—or at least suspected—now.
Then I threw back the sheets, pulled on my black skull robe, and hurried downstairs to Fletcher’s office. I slapped on the lights, went over to one of the cabinets, and yanked open a drawer of files still organized by Fletcher’s old method.
This time, I didn’t look for the name Pike or the mace rune. No, this time, I looked for a completely different rune—a rose wrapped in thorns dripping blood—a warning about how deadly beauty could be.
And I found it, right where I thought it would be. Looked like I’d finally gotten my wish about finding the correct file on the first try. Lucky me.
I stared at the rune Fletcher had drawn on the folder’s tab. I’d never noticed it before, but the very top corner of the tab had been creased down. Something that couldn’t have been done by accident. Unease pooled in the pit of my stomach, and I slowly flipped it up with my thumb.
My spider rune was inked on the hidden part of the tab.
I had been so sure that a ghost from my past had come back to haunt me. But this time, the ghost wasn’t mine—it was hers.
My hands were shaking, and I took several deep breaths to steady myself. Then I plopped down in the old man’s chair, snapped on the light on his desk, opened the file, and started reading.
It wasn’t an excessively thick file, not compared with the one he’d compiled on Mab Monroe, but there was still plenty of heft to it. The first several pages outlined all her criminal enterprises. Gambling, money laundering, the occasional art or jewelry theft.
It wasn’t until I got close to the back of the file that the information changed. Because it wasn’t about her anymore; it was all about her dead mother. Several pages had been torn from a noteboo
k, and all of them featured Fletcher’s distinctive handwriting. Just seeing the old man’s script made my heart squeeze, and it took me a few seconds to focus on the words enough to actually read them.
Lily Rose Pike. Contact made through Jo-Jo’s beauty salon. Married to an abusive man. Afraid for her life and her daughter’s life. Desperate to leave her husband but worried what he might do if he catches her. Only in town for a few more days before heading back to Cloudburst Falls, West Virginia. Need to extract the mother and daughter at the same time . . .
Fletcher went on from there, mulling over various plans to get Lily Rose and her daughter safely away from her husband. I flipped through a few more pages, which detailed Lily Rose’s murder and everything that had happened that day at the cabin. Another one of the old man’s scribbled notes jumped out at me.
Girl sent to live with her grandmother here in Ashland. New name/identity given to the girl for added protection.
A photo of the grandmother was included, one that made me blink in surprise. I knew her—she was one of Finn’s clients. In fact, I’d seen her at more than one society event over the years, even though I’d never actually spoken to her.
But it was the very last thing in the file that held my attention: a photo of the girl.
It was an old Polaroid, one that Jo-Jo or maybe Sophia had taken when the girl had first arrived at the cabin, since her face was still a bruised, bloody mess in the shot. A little arrow marked the white strip at the bottom of the photo, pointing to the back.
I drew in a breath and flipped the photo over. Sure enough, Fletcher had taped a note to the back of the picture, along with one of the red rose-and-thorn pins the girl had worn in her hair that day. I ran my fingers over the sharp edges of the pin before focusing on the note.
Gin—Remember the cabin in the woods. And that even an enemy can sometimes need our help. Fletcher.
This wasn’t the first message the old man had left me from beyond the grave, but it was one of the most surprising. So many questions crowded into my mind, but he wasn’t around to answer them. So I flipped the photo back over, studying the girl’s features. Even though it had been taken more than fifteen years ago, I still recognized her.
The sad, haunted, battered face of Lorelei Parker stared back at me.
13
I sat in the dark and waited, just as I had so many times before.
After reviewing Lorelei Parker’s file several times, I’d gone back to bed. But my sleep had been fitful, so I’d gotten up, dressed, and come to the one place where I might get some answers: Jo-Jo’s beauty salon. Now I was politely waiting for the Deveraux sisters to wake up.
Jo-Jo and Sophia must have been dead asleep, because they hadn’t heard me open the front door an hour ago, slip inside, and rustle around in the kitchen before taking my seat in one of the salon chairs. Even Rosco, Jo-Jo’s basset hound, hadn’t roused at my intrusion, and he was still grunting and snoring softly in his basket in the corner. Then again, I was very good at being quiet and invisible. Fletcher hadn’t dubbed me the Spider for nothing.
Oh, I could have gone upstairs and woken up the sisters the second I’d arrived, but that would have been rude. Besides, sitting alone in the dark gave me more time to think and try to wrap my mind around what was happening.
Because of all the things I’d done, suffered, and lived through, what had happened at the cabin had seemed to be finished long ago. But now it had reared its ugly head again, proving once again that the past was never truly past, at least not where my life was concerned.
Upstairs, a bedframe creaked, as someone turned over on her mattress, telling me that she was finally waking up. Sure enough, a few minutes later, soft footsteps padded down the stairs, and a loud, sleepy yawn sounded. The footsteps crept closer, and a familiar figure appeared in the hallway, heading in my direction.
“Sophia?” Jo-Jo’s soft voice floated over to me as she entered the room. “Did you put on the coffee already? I swear that I smell chicory—”
She snapped on the lights. The bright glare revealed me sitting in a cherry-red salon chair, my legs crossed at the ankles, a manila file folder in my lap.
Jo-Jo sucked down a breath, staggered back, and clutched a hand to her heart. “Gin! You scared me!”
It was just after seven on this chilly November morning, and the dwarf was bundled up in a pale pink microfleece robe, although her feet were bare, as usual. Her middle-aged face was free of makeup, but her white-blond hair was done up in pink sponge rollers. She never went to bed without rolling up her hair for the next day.
At the sound of Jo-Jo’s voice, Rosco raised his head, wondering who his mistress was talking to. But the basset hound realized that it was just me, woofed at us for interrupting his sleep, laid his head back down, and started snoring again.
“Gin?” Jo-Jo asked. “What are you doing here?”
I held up the photo that had been in Fletcher’s file. “Lorelei Parker.”
Jo-Jo frowned, making the laugh lines around her mouth deepen. “Lorelei Parker? Why would you want to know about her . . .” Her face cleared, and understanding flashed in her eyes. “The metal elemental. The one who planted that bomb on the riverboat.”
“His last name is Pike, and I watched him kill a man last night using nothing but a spoon and a little bit of his metal magic. And all the while, I kept thinking that I knew him from somewhere. That he was connected to me somehow. I finally found the answer in one of Fletcher’s files, but it wasn’t the one that I expected. Turns out that Pike doesn’t care about me at all. He’s here for her.” I raised the photo of Lorelei again.
Jo-Jo rubbed her forehead. “I was always afraid this might happen. That he might find her and finally make good on his promise.”
“What promise? Who is he, exactly?” I asked. “And what does he want with Lorelei?”
Jo-Jo sighed. “His name is Raymond Pike. He’s Lorelei’s half brother, and he vowed to kill her for murdering their father.”
* * *
The sound of our voices woke Sophia, who came downstairs wearing a black skull robe just like mine. Jo-Jo told her why I was here, and the three of us ended up in the kitchen. The Deveraux sisters sipped the chicory coffee I’d put on earlier, while I whipped up some buttermilk biscuits and peppery gravy. The sizzling sounds and the smoky scent of sausage frying were enough to get Rosco to abandon his warm, comfy basket, trot into the kitchen, and plop down at my feet, hoping that I’d slip him some scraps.
Sophia dug into my breakfast feast, with Rosco now perched at her feet, his stubby tail thumping against her legs as if the steady motion would make a spoonful of gravy magically jump off her plate and into his waiting mouth.
I fixed myself a plate too. Normally, I would have enjoyed the food, but I kept thinking about that day at the cabin and the absolute terror in Lorelei’s eyes when her father had come for her. That was enough to ruin my appetite, but I made myself choke down the food anyway. It was most likely going to be a long day, and I needed to keep up my strength for whatever bad thing might happen next.
Similar memories must have haunted Jo-Jo, because she only picked at her food before pushing her plate away. Rosco whined, and she absently plucked a small piece of sausage off her plate and tossed it down to him. The basset hound downed it in one gulp.
Jo-Jo cradled her coffee cup in her hands, the tiny clouds painted on her pale pink nails matching the larger ones on the blue mug, all of them symbols of her Air magic. She studied the wisps of steam curling up out of the dark chicory brew for the better part of a minute. Then she drew in a breath, let it out, and finally raised her eyes to mine.
“Her name was Lily Rose,” Jo-Jo began. “She was a sweet little girl who used to spend summers in Ashland with Mallory, her grandmother, who was and still is a client of mine. Mallory is a dwarf like me, so there were actually several generations in between her and Li
ly Rose, and Mallory was the girl’s great-grandmother several times over. But she adored Lily Rose and would bring the girl here whenever she got her hair and nails done.”
I nodded. Dwarves had long life spans, and most of them just went with grandmother and grandfather, instead of trying to keep track of all the generations in between them and their kinfolk.
“Mallory would be the grandmother you and Fletcher sent Lorelei to live with after her mother was murdered,” I said.
“Mallory Parker. You might know her. She’s one of—”
“Finn’s clients at his bank,” I finished. “I’ve seen him talking to her at various events.”
Jo-Jo nodded. “Anyway, the years passed, and Lily Rose grew up. Mallory mentioned that she had moved away, married a man named Renaldo Pike, and had a daughter, but I didn’t see Lily Rose again for a long time.”
“Until?”
“Until one day, someone started pounding on my door, about an hour before the salon was supposed to open,” Jo-Jo said. “It’s not unusual. Sometimes my clients come early if they have a special event they need to get dolled up for. So I opened the door, not thinking anything of it.”
“And Lily Rose was there,” I guessed.
She nodded again. “At first, I didn’t think that anything was wrong, and I took her back to the salon. Then I noticed how much makeup she was wearing. She was trying to cover up a black eye. And she was all bundled up, in these thick, long clothes, even though it wasn’t all that cold. She was hiding other marks too. Deep scratches and puncture wounds, all over her arms, legs, and chest.”
“Nails,” Sophia rasped in her eerie, broken voice. “From where he’d tortured her.”