I turned around and grabbed some clean white plates to put their food on, which meant that I was facing out toward the restaurant again.
To my surprise, Elektra LaFleur had slid over in the booth so that her back was up against the storefront glass and she could see the whole restaurant. Her green eyes moved slowly over the interior, checking out every single thing inside, from the floor and walls to the long counter to the swinging doors that led to the back of the restaurant.
Finally, her eyes landed on me, and she watched me assemble the food. Her sharp green gaze took in everything about me, from the way that my hands moved to the greasy blue apron that covered my long-sleeved black T-shirt and jeans. She didn't sneer at me the way that Jonah had done earlier, though. All she did was watch me, a thoughtful, calculating expression on her beautiful face.
It was a look that I knew-a mask I'd worn on more than one occasion. And I realized what she was doing, why she was here in the first place. She was scoping out the restaurant-and me.
Sizing up her latest target, just like assassins did.
Just like she was going to come back and kill me later.
Of course.
Jonah McAllister hated me. He had ever since I'd dared to stand up to him when he'd tried to pressure me into forgetting that his son, Jake, had tried to rob my restaurant and kill the innocent diners inside. The lawyer had wanted me to drop the charges against Jake, but I hadn't played ball, which had annoyed him to no end. Plus, McAllister thought that I knew something about Jake's murder. That's why he'd had Elliot Slater almost beat me to death a few weeks ago at the community college. And McAllister had wanted Slater to go ahead and finish the job when I'd run into the two of them again a few days after that.
That's why Jonah McAllister had come here tonight and brought LaFleur along with him. He wanted the assassin to kill me, Gin Blanco. She was in town anyway to take care of the Spider. Why not have LaFleur get rid of me while she was at it? The arrogant lawyer just didn't realize that I was the Spider as well.
A cold, hard smile curved my lips. Irony. What a bitch. But something that could actually be useful to me in this instance.
With Sophia's help, I finished the orders, grabbed the plates, and took everything over to the booth. Again, I felt LaFleur's eyes on me, watching the way I moved, calculating my strength, balance, and stamina, just the way I would have if I were looking at a person that I was planning on killing later.
I dumped the platters on the table much the same way that I had their drinks. But there was no water slopping around, so LaFleur couldn't shock me again this time. "Enjoy."
I hoped they both choked on their food, but I knew that was just too much to ask. Especially with my bad luck.
"Oh," LaFleur drawled. "We will."
I looked at her, careful to keep the calm, cold violence out of my face. LaFleur stared at me a second longer before turning to her food. Apparently she thought that she knew everything there was to know about me. She just didn't realize I could wear the mask of a simple restaurant owner as well and easily as she wore her expensive clothes. That I'd been taught how to do so by Fletcher Lane, by the Tin Man, one of the best assassins there had ever been.
One of the other couples was ready to leave, so I went back to the cash register, took their money, and sent them on their way. Then I plopped down on my stool behind the counter and picked up the latest book that I was reading, The Iliad. Winter classes weren't due to start back up at Ashland Community College until after the first of the year, but I was getting a head start on the classic Greek literature course I'd already signed up for.
Everything was quiet for the next thirty minutes. I read my book, Sophia cooked her latest batch of beans, the other couple gobbled up their dinner, and my enemies dug into theirs.
Finally, Jonah McAllister and Elektra LaFleur finished their meal and headed over to the cash register. McAllister reached into his wallet and handed me some bills. I was vaguely surprised that he was even bothering to pay at all, but I supposed that he wanted me to think he'd come here tonight only for the food. As if I could be that stupid.
"Keep the change, Gin," McAllister said in a smarmy, mocking voice. "Consider it an early Christmas present."
"Aw," I drawled. "A whopping thirteen cents. You're too kind, Jonah. Why, you'd put Ebenezer Scrooge to shame with your bighearted generosity."
McAllister's smooth face darkened at my insult, but LaFleur looped her arm through his, and the anger glittering in Jonah's brown eyes melted into sly certainty.
"Well, you should spend it while you can, Ms. Blanco," McAllister said. "You just never know what might happen in these uncertain times."
He and the assassin headed toward the door. Just before they stepped outside into the cold, Elektra LaFleur turned back to me, her green eyes as bright and hard as jade in her face.
"The food was excellent. I imagine that I'll be coming back here soon, Gin. Real soon."
With a smirk, Elektra walked out the door after Jonah. I watched them leave.
"Not if I kill you first, bitch," I muttered. "Not if I kill you first."
Chapter 14
Sophia came over to stand beside me, her black eyes still fixed on the front door that Jonah McAllister and Elektra LaFleur had just walked out of.
"Assassin?" she rasped.
"Yeah, that was LaFleur," I said. "Did you see the way that she was checking out the place?"
Sophia nodded instead of actually answering me. The Goth dwarf spoke as little as possible, since her broken, raspy voice sounded like she'd spent her entire life downing rotgut whiskey, puffing on cigarettes, and gargling gasoline. Sophia didn't have any of those vices, at least not that I knew of, and I always wondered what had happened to the dwarf to so completely ruin her voice. But I never asked her. Whatever it was, I knew that it couldn't possibly be good. Sophia's secret pain was her own to share or not. Just like mine was.
"Problem?" Sophia asked, cutting into my reverie.
"Yeah, LaFleur's going to make a run at me here at the Pit," I said. "That's the only reason I can think of that McAllister brought her here. She was planning the best way to kill me, probably sometime in the next few days. McAllister wants me dead, and he's asked her to do it while she's in town."
"Ready," Sophia said, reached over, and squeezed.
I squeezed back and smiled at the dwarf. "I know you'll be ready. And I will be too. Elektra LaFleur's going to get the surprise of her life when she comes here to kill Gin Blanco-and finds the Spider waiting for her instead."
Sophia and I went back to work, cleaning up the restaurant for the night. The other couple paid up and left, and I was thinking about flipping the sign on the door over to Closed when the front bell chimed and a woman stepped inside the Pork Pit. As always, her appearance startled me and took my breath away at the same time-as well as filling me with a touch of cold dread.
Detective Bria Coolidge. My baby sister.
Like so many others moving about on the frosty streets this evening, Bria wore a long coat over a pair of jeans and thick but stylish black Bella Bulluci boots. Her V-neck sweater was a Christmas green in keeping with the season, while a gold badge winked on the leather belt around her slender waist. In contrast, her gun looked like a blob of black ink next to it.
The badge marked Bria as a detective with the Ashland Police Department, but she didn't really look like a cop. She was far too pretty for that, with her longish shag of blond hair, cornflower blue eyes, rosy cheeks, and rocking figure.
Besides the badge and the gun, Bria also wore a silverstone medallion on a short chain around her neck. A delicate primrose, the symbol for beauty. The same rune, the same necklace, that our mother had given her as a child, one that I'd never seen her without, even now as an adult. Three rings also gleamed on her left index finger, thin silverstone bands each sporting tiny runes. Snowflakes ringed the bottom band, while ivy vines curled around the middle one. The final ring, the top one, was stamped with a single symbol in the middle-a spider rune. My rune, the symbol for patience. I supposed that the rings were Bria's way of remembering our shattered family, just as the drawings on the mantel at Fletcher Lane's house were mine.
"Gin," Bria said in her high, lilting voice. "Good to see you again."
She nodded at me, and I returned the favor. Bria and I hadn't exactly started off on the right foot. I'd first seen her a few weeks ago, the night that Slater had attacked me at the community college. To say that it had been a shock would be a serious understatement. I'd known that my sister was alive, after thinking her dead for years, but seeing her in the flesh had been something else. Enough to make me cry, especially since I'd been looking for her myself with no success. But there she had been, as large as life and back in Ashland after so many long years gone.
Bria had also been the detective assigned to find out what had happened to me that night, and she'd dogged my steps after that, trying to get me to tell her who had hurt me and why. She'd also suspected me of somehow being involved with Roslyn Phillips, of keeping the vampire's location from her when Roslyn had been hiding from Slater. But since everything had turned out all right in the end, with Roslyn living and Slater rotting in the ground, Bria's icy attitude toward me had thawed a bit. As had my wary one toward her.
"You too, detective," I said and meant it. "What can I do for you this evening?"
She moved closer, putting her hands up on the counter beside the cash register. The lights made her silverstone rings wink at me one after another, like all-seeing eyes that knew every one of my deep, dark secrets. "I called earlier. I'm here to pick up my takeout."
That must have been the order that Sophia had taken over the phone before McAllister and LaFleur had come into the Pork Pit. But she hadn't bothered to tell me it was Bria's, even though Sophia knew all about my sister. I looked at the dwarf, who gave me a small grin and went back to wiping down the counter. I supposed that this was Sophia's way of getting me to talk to Bria. The Goth dwarf could be sneaky when she put her mind to it.
"I would have been here to get it sooner," Bria said, leaning against the counter. "But I got stuck late working a case."
"Really?" I asked, moving to get the white bag that Sophia had packed Bria's food in. "Which case was this?"
As a whole, Ashland was a violent city, full of lots of powerful people with lots of powerful grudges against each other, as well as your more mundane criminals just trying to make a buck. There was so much crime here that it was hard to tell what kind of case Bria might be working. It could be everything from a domestic dispute to a gangbanger drive-by to a missing person-
"The Spider killed three more men last night. Or, at least, someone left her symbol behind at the crime scene," Bria answered.
Years of Fletcher's training kept me from showing any emotion, but once again, I cursed luck. Of all the detectives in Ashland, my sister had to be the one investigating my nighttime activities as the Spider. First, Jonah McAllister had brought Elektra LaFleur by so that the assassin could put her bull's-eye on my forehead, and now Bria was joining the firing squad. Irony was really kicking me in the teeth tonight.
"Oh." Once again, I was the conversational genius.
I set the bag of takeout on the counter between us, as if that would somehow derail Bria's train of thought. Not likely. I might not have seen her in the last seventeen years, but since her arrival back in Ashland a few weeks ago, she'd been nothing but tenacious, showing me exactly what kind of strong, confident, dedicated woman she'd grown up to be.
Then there was the fact that Bria was also one of the few honest cops in the city. With all the crime in Ashland, it was far easier for members of the police department to take bribes to look the other way than to actually investigate crimes and arrest the perpetrators. A couple of C-notes in their fat wallets made for far less paperwork. But Bria was different. She didn't turn a blind eye to crimes or bury her head in the sand-ever. Even more than that, she actually tried to help people, tried to bring some comfort to victims and put as many bad guys as she could behind bars. And now she was gunning for me, the Spider. Despite the fact that Bria knew that the assassin and her long-lost sister Genevieve Snow were one and the same.
While I admired Bria's strength and determination, her dedication to her day job also had the unfortunate reality of interfering with my plans to kill Elektra LaFleur, Jonah McAllister, Mab Monroe, and anyone else who threatened the people I loved.
Instead of reaching for the bag or digging into her jeans for some cash to pay for the food, Bria stared at me with her blue eyes-eyes that reminded me of our mother and older sister. They'd all had the same beautiful features and coloring. I was the only one who'd gotten our father, Tristan's, gray eyes and chocolate brown hair-along with his Stone magic.
My Ice magic had come from our mother, and Bria had inherited it as well. I'd seen her use her Ice power only a few times, most notably to try to save herself from being murdered by Elliot Slater and his giants. They'd paid her a late-night visit when she'd first come to Ashland a few weeks ago, but luckily, I'd been there to take care of them instead. Still, Bria's magic had felt strong to me, just as strong as our mother's had been.
"Have you heard anything?" Bria asked me in a low voice. "Any ... talk in the neighborhood about the Spider and this vendetta that she has against Mab Monroe? Because the men that she killed last night were giants, two of them anyway, and from what I can tell, they worked for the Fire elemental."
"Why would you think that I would know something?" I asked.
