And so had Sydney.
The girl and her parents had lived in the next house over, and when the men got through at Gentry's place, they went next door and started in on Sydney and her family. They'd decided to hole up there and wait for Gentry to return so they could kill her.
Sydney was the one who'd actually killed the men, somehow getting hold of one of their guns, but not before they'd raped and murdered her mother and killed her father. Finn hadn't been able to tell me what the men had done to Sydney herself during the time they'd held her captive-and I wasn't sure that I wanted to know.
Gentry had come home three weeks later to find Sydney living in the ruined remains of Gentry's home and half out of her mind with grief. Despite her own heartbreak, her own loss, Gentry had taken the girl under her wing. That had been more than two months ago, and the two had been inseparable ever since. I imagined all that was why they'd come to Ashland in the first place-Gentry had needed the bounty on Bria to get back on her feet and to provide a better life for Sydney.
Gentry nodded. "Fair enough. But what about the girl? Sydney's caused you quite a few problems as well."
"I don't kill kids-ever."
Sydney straightened her spine. "I'm not a kid. I'm sixteen years old."
I gave her an amused look. "Sure you are, sweetheart. Enjoy it while it lasts."
Sydney opened her mouth to protest, but one stern look from Gentry shushed her.
I gestured at their clothes. "Well, I see that you're treating yourselves to the nicer things in life, since you collected on your bounty. A million dollars can go a long way toward making life more comfortable."
Gentry winced a little at my pointed barb. "I don't care so much for the money myself. I've never needed much. But the girl here is a different story. Her parents came to an unfortunate end, and I'm looking after her. Now I've got enough money to take care of her-even send her to college so she can get a real job."
"But I want to be a bounty hunter like you, Gentry," Sydney protested.
Gentry gave her a fierce look. "You might be a fair enough shot for it, but a girl needs to know more than just how to shoot guns. There's book learning too, you know."
Sydney didn't say anything, but I could see the determination in her face. No matter if Gentry sent her to a dozen colleges, she'd always want to be a bounty hunter, just like the old woman. I stared at the girl, and, once again, I saw myself at that age. With a dead family and a strange new mentor that I didn't know quite what to make of. I wondered where Sydney would be in seventeen years. If our roles would be reversed, and I'd be in Gentry's shoes by then.
The thought made me smile.
Still looking at the girl, Gentry stuck her hand into her jacket pocket.
"Gently," I cautioned her. "I'm feeling a might twitchy today. So is Sophia here."
"Hmph." Beside me, the dwarf grunted.
"Of course you are," Gentry murmured.
She grabbed something in her jacket pocket and came out with it slowly, keeping her movements small and steady. Then she handed me a business card with a cell phone number on it. A rune was also stamped on the card in black foil. A revolver. The symbol for deadly accuracy. Fitting, given what I knew about the bounty hunter.
"Sydney and I have decided to leave Ashland behind for a warmer climate. If you're ever down in Charleston, give me a call," Gentry said. "Because based on what I saw in that courtyard, I'd sure as hell like to buy you a drink someday."
I probably should have ripped the card into pieces. Or better yet, stuck it on the end of my knife and then put them both through Gentry. After all, this was the woman who'd kidnapped my sister and carted her off to be tortured by Mab. But Gentry was also the reason that Bria was still breathing, which was something I just couldn't overlook. So I took the card and slid it into the pocket of my jeans.
"I just might do that."
"Well, Gin, I can't say that it's been a pleasure doing business with you, but it's certainly been an experience."
"I would say the same thing about you, Gentry. You certainly gave me a run for my money, and you earned every penny of that million that Mab paid you."
"Ah, now you're just flattering an old woman," she said, but a pleased blush crept up her leathery neck.
"That's something else you should know about me. I don't flatter people-ever."
A grin creased her wrinkled face. "Either way, Sydney and I need to be going. There's a bus that leaves for Charleston in an hour, and we plan to be on it. So you take care now, Gin. I hope we meet again someday."
"You too, Gentry, Sydney," I said and meant it. "You take care too."
Gentry nodded, before she and the girl turned and left the restaurant for the final time.
The rest of the day passed uneventfully. People came and went, eating, talking, laughing, gossiping, but no one entered the restaurant looking like they wanted to do me immediate harm. I enjoyed the calm, even though I knew it wouldn't last.
Finally, about six that afternoon, more customers left than came in, and I thought about closing early. After being cooped up in Jo-Jo's house for the better part of a month, I found myself with a case of spring fever. I wanted to take a walk, do some yoga in the park, anything that would get me outside into the fresh air and sunshine. I'd just turned around to tell Sophia to shut off the stoves, when the front door opened, causing the bell to chime, and a young girl stepped inside.
I watched her, waiting for her mother or father to come inside after her, but no one did. After a moment, I realized that no one was going to. She was here all by her lonesome. She was twelve, maybe thirteen, far too young to be wandering around this close to Southtown by herself.
But what caught and held my attention was the puffy bruise on her face. It was blue, black, and every shade of green in between. There was only one way that you got a bruise like that-by someone planting his fist in your face. I stared at the girl, wondering who she was and what she wanted. There was a hardness in her face, a pinched set to her features that told me she'd already seen some bad things in her time. I knew that look. It was one I'd had ever since I was thirteen-the same one I saw every time I looked in the mirror.
The girl looked around carefully, staring at the other diners, as if she was measuring what kind of threat they might be. Apparently, she thought that she could take them, because she walked over to the counter. The girl hopped up on a stool close to the cash register and looked at first Sophia, then at me.
"Can I help you, sweetheart?" I asked.
The girl just stared at me. "That depends. Are you the Spider?"
Are you the Spider?
I'd been expecting someone to ask me that question all day long, but no one had. No one had dared to-until now.
I didn't answer the girl, but I didn't tell her that I wasn't the Spider either. If Jonah McAllister or someone else had sent her in here, I wanted to see what kind of game she was playing, and how I could twist it around to my advantage. If she had come in on her own, I still wanted to know what the hell she thought she was doing.
Some of the toughness in the girl's face melted under my hard, gray stare. She dropped her eyes from mine and drew in a breath, as if to bolster her fading courage.
"I heard that there's a lady here called the Spider who helps people," the girl said. "And I want to hire her."
Of all the things she might have said, that was one I'd never expected. I didn't help people, I killed them. The two were not necessarily one and the same. I looked at Sophia, but the Goth dwarf just shrugged. She didn't know what to make of the girl either.
"And who told you that?" I asked. "About the Spider?"
The girl reached out and fiddled with one of the silver napkin holders. "It was just something that I heard from some people."
She drew in another breath, then reached into the pocket of her jacket and came out with a wad of crumpled bills. She shoved them across the counter to me. I eyed the bills. It looked like she had maybe a hundred bucks there, total. Not exactly my going rate before I'd retired.
"There are some bad men who are hurting my mom," the girl said. "I want the Spider to make them stop. If you're not her, then do you know who she is? Do you think that she'll help me? Please?"
I should have told the kid no. Should have told her that there was no Spider here and to get lost. Maybe it was seeing the parallels between Sydney and Gentry, and me and Fletcher. Maybe it was this strange mood I'd been in ever since my ghostly talk with the old man, this strange feeling I had that I was at some kind of crossroads. Maybe it was because I thought being retired sucked. Hell, maybe it was just the damn please she tacked on at the end. But I didn't tell the girl no.
The truth was that part of me felt adrift now, restless and at loose ends. Mainly because my finally killing Mab wasn't turning out to be quite as fulfilling as I'd imagined it would be.
Oh, I was glad she was dead. More than glad. Ecstatic, really. But now that she was gone, now that my rehab was finished, I didn't quite know what to do with myself. Sure, I had the Pork Pit to run during the day, Owen to go home to at night, and the rest of my friends and family to fill in the time between. But so much of my life these past few months had been tied up in the Fire elemental, in killing Mab. Now that she was dead, I just felt... empty. Adrift, without purpose. Hell, bored, even.
Killing Mab had been my goal for so long that I wasn't quite sure what to do with myself now, what to say, even what to feel.
And now here was this girl, asking for the Spider, wanting me to pull out my silverstone knives and jump into the fray once more. Her simple words and the desperate plea in them stirred something in me, something I couldn't deny, something I didn't want to deny. Not any longer. For the first time, I realized how Fletcher must have felt. How the old man had realized that maybe there was another use for his particular skill set instead of just killing people for money. One that was far more satisfying in the end.
And I knew what I had to do. Maybe it was what I'd always had to do, what I'd always been doing. The path that Fletcher had set me on all those years ago, even if I hadn't realized it at the time or along the way. Even if I hadn't thought about it until this very moment.
"Put your money away," I told the girl. "There's no need for it here."
She stared at me, hesitating, before she scraped up the bills and stuck them back into her pocket.
"So you're her, then?" the girl asked. "You're the Spider?"
I slowly nodded.
"And you'll help me?" she asked. "And my mom?"
I nodded again. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Sophia shake her head. I turned my head and winked at her. The dwarf grumbled something under her breath, but her lips turned up into a smile.
Meanwhile, the girl sat there and stared at me, the briefest glimmer of hope swimming up in the dark depths of her eyes. "But how will you help me? What can you do?"
I palmed one of my silverstone knifes and laid it on the counter in front of her. The girl's eyes widened in surprise, and maybe a touch of fear too, but I just grinned at her.
"My name is Gin, and I kill people."
