“I’m glad you agreed to meet me here,” Lorelei said.
“I like it here. It’s a good place to think.”
“Yeah.” She stared toward her mother’s tombstone a moment longer, then focused on me again. “I have some information for you.”
“What sort of information?”
Lorelei hesitated, then reached into the pocket of her jacket and drew out a folded piece of paper. “I found this among Raymond’s effects. Your sister, Bria, brought them to me yesterday.”
“I know. She told me that she and Xavier cleaned out Pike’s penthouse.”
Management at the Peach Blossom had finally realized that he wasn’t coming back and had called the cops. Bria had arranged it so that she and Xavier caught the case and could bury it just like we had buried Pike.
“Bria thought that I might want his stuff, and I went through everything, just in case he had set something else in motion that I didn’t know about. Some plan to be executed in case he disappeared or died or both.”
Worry flooded through me. “Had he?”
She shook her head. “Not that I’ve been able to uncover. Seems he was too confident that he would be able to kill me. But he’d been writing to someone, and they had sent him a letter back. I thought it was a little weird, since most folks just text or email now. But Raymond liked to be old-fashioned that way, just like our father. I remember him writing letters too.”
Lorelei handed me the folded sheet of paper. I opened it and read the short note:
Mr. Pike,
Glad to hear that things are progressing on schedule in Ashland. Please keep me apprised of your situation. Happy hunting.
No signature was scrawled across the paper, but a rune had been stamped onto the bottom of the letter: a heart made of jagged icicles fitted together like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
The letter said nothing important, nothing that gave me any clue about who had written it, although I was willing to bet that it was the woman Pike had referred to in the gardens. But a cold chill crawled up my spine all the same, as though someone had just walked over one of my graves. Because I’d seen that rune before, and I knew exactly where.
On a file in Fletcher’s office.
One of the hidden folders that I’d pulled out from a trick drawer in the bottom of his desk. The only one that had been secreted away in that particular spot, as if he hadn’t wanted anyone to find it, not even me. Ever.
Lorelei stared at me. “You know something about it.”
I shook my head. “Not exactly. But the rune . . . it might be a lead. I have a feeling that I’ll find out more about it sooner or later.”
Definitely sooner, since Fletcher had kept a file on this person, whoever she was.
I held up the letter. “Can I keep this?”
“Sure. It’s a copy.”
I tucked it into my back jeans pocket. “Thanks. And I have something for you too.”
I reached into another pocket and held out my hand. A red rose-and-thorn pin sparkled in the center of my palm, right on top of my spider rune scar.
Lorelei blinked. She recognized the pin as one she’d been wearing at the cabin all those years ago. Her hand trembled a bit as she reached out, carefully plucked the pin out of my hand, and traced her fingers over it. The motions made the diamonds in her rose-and-thorn rune ring glimmer. The ring matched the pin almost exactly.
“Where did you get this?” she whispered, running her fingers over it. “I thought I’d lost them all in the woods that day.”
“Apparently, Fletcher found one of them. It was in his house. I thought you might like it back.”
Her lips curved up, but her smile was sad. “My mother gave me a set of these pins for my fourteenth birthday, a few weeks before she died. That’s why I chose it as my rune.”
Tears glistened in her eyes, but she blinked them back and slid the pin through the bottom of her braid, admiring the way it shimmered in the fading sunlight.
When she looked at me again, her eyes were clear. Another gust of wind swept through the cemetery, stirring up the leaves and swirling them through the air between us.
“You know, I never did thank you for what you did for me that day in the woods,” Lorelei said. “And everything that you’ve done over the past several days, including this.”
I shrugged. “It’s what I do. It’s what Fletcher taught me to do, even if I didn’t realize it way back then.”
She smiled, her expression warmer than I’d ever seen it before. “Well, I’m glad that he did.”
I smiled back at her. “Yeah. Me too.”
* * *
Lorelei and I said our good-byes, and then I got into my car and drove home to Fletcher’s house. It was full-on dark now, but instead of taking a shower and going to bed, I grabbed a glass and a bottle of gin from the kitchen. I had a feeling I was going to need them. Then I headed back to the old man’s office, flipped on the light, put down the glass and the bottle, and grabbed the hidden file, the one with the icicle heart rune on it.
I laid the file flat on Fletcher’s desk, staring at the rune he’d drawn on the tab. Maybe it was my imagination, but the rune seemed darker than the ones on the other files, as if he’d sat in this very seat and had traced and retraced it onto the folder. Curiouser and curiouser. What had bothered him about this person more than all the other dangerous people he’d spied on over the years?
Time to find out.
I drew in a breath and opened the file, expecting . . . well, I wasn’t quite sure what I was expecting. Maybe another blast from the past, like Raymond Pike. Somebody related to some job Fletcher and I had done way back when. But it was just like any other file in the office. A detached recitation of facts about a certain individual.
I didn’t see her name listed anywhere right off the bat, so I leaned back in the chair and started reading through all the information.
She was a wealthy Ice elemental from a prominent, old-money family in Ashland—the Shaws. I frowned. I’d never heard of that family before, and I didn’t remember Fletcher ever mentioning them. That was strange—very strange—especially since Fletcher knew everyone who was anyone in Ashland, no matter how legitimate or crooked they were.
So I kept going through the file, reading and absorbing all the information. And there was a lot of it. Whoever the Ice elemental was, Fletcher had spent more time monitoring her than anyone else, even Mab. I wondered what it was about her that had interested, and concerned, him so much.
In many ways, she was exactly like Mab—wealthy, powerful, ruthless—but apparently without the Fire elemental’s driving need to make everyone aware of exactly how deadly she was.
This woman . . . she was like me.
Or, at least, how I used to be before I’d inadvertently outed myself as the Spider by killing Mab. Someone who spent her time in the shadows and struck out at her enemies before they even realized what was happening. That was enough to make a cold ball of worry form in the pit of my stomach.
Then I came to the final thing in the file, a picture.
She looked to be in her fifties, a timeless beauty with blond hair and blue eyes that were so pale they bordered on gray. Fletcher must have been doing surveillance on her, because the photograph looked to have been taken from quite a distance, as though he hadn’t wanted to risk getting any closer to her. But she wasn’t happy with the person she was staring at. Her mouth was set in a firm frown, and her eyes almost seemed to be glowing, as though she were getting ready to reach for her Ice magic and use it to freeze the person she was sitting with.
I stared at the photo, then slowly turned it over, knowing—or at least hoping—that something would be written on the back.
Oh, there was something written on the back, all right. Just a few sentences that only took me a few seconds to read, but they were more shocking than anyth
ing I’d found in Fletcher’s office—ever.
Once again, I sucked in a breath. Because once again, I’d been completely wrong. I’d thought that Raymond Pike had been after me when Lorelei had been his real target all along. And once again, I’d thought that whoever had sent him to Ashland had been targeting me.
But this wasn’t about me at all.
It was about Finn.
With shaking hands, I read the note again. And then again, just to be sure that I wasn’t dreaming the words. But I wasn’t, even though I really wished that I was.
Her name is Deirdre Shaw, Fletcher’s handwriting spelled out. She is a very powerful Ice elemental who will do whatever it takes to get what she wants. She is not to be trusted, under any circumstances.
And she is Finn’s mother.
That was it—that was all the note said—but it was more than enough to rock my world to its foundation.
I sat back in my seat, my eyes wide, staring at the photo. Fletcher had always told me that he was a widower, that his wife had died when Finn was just a baby. Jo-Jo, Sophia, Finn—none of them had ever mentioned Fletcher’s supposed wife, Finn’s mother, except in passing, and I’d always assumed that it was because she’d died many years ago.
But according to Fletcher’s file, she was very much alive. And, from what Raymond Pike had said, she was extremely interested in the goings-on in Ashland. Deirdre Shaw . . . she must have been the person Lorelei had done business with. She must have somehow recognized Lorelei during their dealings together and then sicced Pike on her. But why? How would Pike killing Lorelei benefit her? What was she up to?
And how much was it going to affect Finn?
The questions swirled around and around in my mind, but there were no answers, and certainly nothing that would help me figure out how to tell Finn about this. Or even if I should tell him about this.
I would always be haunted—and somewhat trapped—
by my past, both as Genevieve Snow and as the Spider. The people I’d killed, the ones who’d tried to kill me, and all the hurt, damage, and fallout from that. I didn’t want that for Finn. Any of it. And I especially didn’t want
him to be dragged down some dark, ugly road involving his own mother. It would only end in heartache
for him.
But once again, Fletcher had left me with a mystery to solve and a dangerous enemy to deal with. The old man wasn’t around anymore to look out for Finn, but I was. And I would protect my foster brother from this as long and as best as I could.
I sat back in my chair, considering my options. Then I reached out, poured myself a glass of gin, and downed the whole thing in one gulp. The liquor slid down my throat, then flared to life, burning in the pit of my stomach. But it was nothing compared with the determination roaring through me to get to the bottom of this.
I pulled the file on Deirdre Shaw closer, and I read through the information again.
The Spider had work to do—and secrets to dig up.
Turn the page for a sneak peek at the
next book in the Elemental Assassin series
TITLE TK
by Jennifer Estep
Coming soon from Pocket Books
1
Digging up a grave was hard, dirty work.
Good thing that hard, dirty work was one of my specialties. Although this was a bit of a role reversal. As the assassin the Spider, I’m usually putting people into graves instead of uncovering them.
But here I was in Blue Ridge Cemetery, just after ten o’clock on this cold November night. Flurries drifted down from the clouds that blanketed the sky, the small flakes dancing on the gusty breeze like delicate, crystalline fairies. Every once in a while, the wind would whip up into a howling frenzy, pelting me in the back with swarms of snow and spattering the icy flakes against my chilled cheeks.
I ignored the latest wave of flurries stinging my face and continued digging, just like I’d been doing for the last hour. The only good thing about driving the shovel into the frozen earth was that the repetitive motions of scooping out the dirt and tossing it onto a pile kept me warm and limber, instead of cold and stiff like the tombstones surrounding me.
Despite the snow, I still had plenty of light to see by, thanks to the old-fashioned iron streetlamps spaced along the access roads throughout the cemetery. One of the lamps stood about twenty feet away from where I was digging, its golden glow highlighting the grave marker in front of me, making the carved name stand out like black blood against the gray stone.
Deirdre Shaw.
The mother of my foster brother, Finnegan Lane. A strong Ice elemental. And a potentially dangerous enemy.
A week ago, I’d found a file that Fletcher Lane—Finn’s dad, and my assassin mentor—had hidden in his office. A file that claimed that Deirdre was powerful, deceitful, and treacherous—and not nearly as dead as everyone thought she was. So I’d come here tonight to find out whether she was truly six feet under. I was hoping she was dead and rotting in her grave, but I wasn’t willing to bet on it.
Too many things from my own past had come back to haunt me for me to leave something this important to chance.
Thunk. My shovel hit something hard and metal. I stopped and breathed in, hoping to smell the stench of decades-old decay. But the cold, crisp scent of the snow mixed with the rich, dark earth, creating a pleasant perfume. No decay, no death, and most likely, no body.
I quickly cleared off the rest of the dirt, revealing the top of the casket. A rune had been carved into the lid—jagged icicles fitted together to form a heart. My stomach knotted up with tension. Fletcher had inked that same rune onto Deirdre Shaw’s file. This was definitely the right grave.
I was already standing in the pit that I’d dug, and I scraped away a few more chunks of earth so that I could crouch down beside the top half of the casket. The metal lid was locked, but that was easy enough to fix. I set down my shovel, pulled off my black gloves and held up my hands, and reached for my Ice magic. The matching scars embedded deep in my palms—each one a small circle surrounded by eight thin rays—pulsed with the cold, silver light of my power. My spider runes, the symbols for patience.
When I had generated enough magic, I reached down, wrapped my hands around the casket lid locks, and blasted them with my Ice power. After coating the locks with two inches of elemental Ice, I sent out another surge of power, cracking away the cold crystals. At the same time, I reached for my Stone magic, hardening my skin. Under my magical assault, the locks shattered, and my Stone-hardened skin kept the flying bits of metal from cutting my hands. I dusted away the remains of the locks and the elemental Ice, took hold of the casket lid, dug my feet into the dirt, and lifted it.
The lid was heavier than I’d thought it would be, and the metal didn’t want to open, not after all the years spent peacefully resting in the ground. It creaked and groaned in protest, but I managed to shove the lid up a couple of inches. I grabbed my shovel and slid it into the small opening I’d created, using it as a lever to lift up the lid the rest of the way.
Dirt rained down all around me, mixing with the snowflakes, and I wrinkled my nose to hold back a sneeze. I wedged the length of the shovel in between the lid and the edge of the casket, so that it would stay open. Then I wiped the sweat off my forehead, put my hands on my knees to catch my breath, and looked down.
Just as I expected, snow-white silk lined the inside of the casket, with a small square matching pillow positioned at the very top, where a person’s head would rest. But something decidedly unexpected was situated next to the pillow, nestled in the middle of the pristine fabric.
A box.
It was about the size of a small suitcase and made out of silverstone, a sturdy metal that also had the unique property of absorbing and storing magic. The box’s gray surface gleamed like a freshly minted coin, and it looked as clean and untouched as the rest of the white
silk.
I frowned. I’d expected the casket to be completely empty. Or for there to be a decaying body inside; if I had been extremely lucky, Deirdre Shaw would have been in there, dead after all.
So why was there a box in it instead? And who had put it here?
I kept staring at the box, more and more knots forming in the pit of my stomach and then slowly tightening together. I’d recently gone up against Raymond Pike, a metal elemental who had enjoyed planting bombs before I’d helped plant him in some botanical gardens. Raymond had received a letter with Deirdre Shaw’s rune stamped on it, and had bragged that the two of them were business associates—and that she was the most coldhearted person he’d ever met. I wondered if he’d booby-trapped the box in Deirdre’s casket as some sort of favor to her, to blow up anyone who might come investigate whether she was truly dead.
So I reached out, using my Stone magic to listen to all the rocks in the ground around the casket. But the rocks only grumbled about the cold, the snow, and how I’d disturbed their final resting place. No other emotional vibrations resonated through them, which meant that no one had been near the casket in years.
I crouched down and brushed away the dirt that had fallen on top of the box when I had opened the casket lid. No magic emanated from the silverstone box, although a rune had been carved into the top of it—the same small circle and eight thin rays that were branded into both of my palms.
My spider rune.
“Fletcher,” I whispered, my breath frosting the air.
The old man had planted the box here for me to find. No doubt about it. He was the only one who seemed to know that Deirdre Shaw wasn’t actually dead. More important, Fletcher had known me. He had realized that if Deirdre ever made an appearance back in Ashland, back in Finn’s life, I would find his file on her and come to her grave to determine whether she was dead and buried.
Once again the old man had left me with clues to find from beyond his own grave, which was located a hundred feet away. For whatever reason, he and Deirdre hadn’t been buried side by side. Something I hadn’t really thought too much about until just tonight. I wondered why Fletcher hadn’t buried the supposedly dead mother of his son next to his own cemetery plot. Something must have happened between him and Deirdre—something bad.