"Sorry," I mumbled. "If you want to get right down to things ..."
A small smile lifted Roslyn's lips. "Relax. I'm just teasing you, Gin."
Her soft voice somehow made me feel even worse than before.
The vampire took a sip of her blood and leaned back against the booth. "As for how I'm doing, okay, I guess. Still trying to figure things out. Some days, I'm fine. Others, I can't even breathe. And nightmares. I'm having a lot of nightmares. Most of them involve Slater walking through the front door of the club, grabbing me, and beating me to death on the dance floor."
Roslyn's voice was cold, flat, and calm, just the way it had been the day that she'd told me that Slater was stalking her, that the giant was making her pretend to be his girlfriend while he worked himself up to raping and killing her. It made my heart ache for her that much more.
I knew all about nightmares. I'd had more than my share over my years, but especially since Fletcher's murder a few months ago. Living on the streets, Fletcher taking me in, my earliest days with the old man and Finn. I'd dreamed about all that and more. It was like the old man's death had opened up a floodgate of emotion deep inside me, one that I could close during the day but still had problems dealing with at night-at least until I woke up in a cold sweat, my mouth open in a silent scream.
"It'll get better." An easy lie that I'd told too many times to too many people over the years-especially myself.
"Really?" Roslyn whispered, doubt filling her toffee eyes.
I shrugged. "Well, Slater's dead and burning in hell right now. He's never going to bother you again, so it's not going to get worse. I can promise you that much."
She gave me another small smile. "I guess that will have to do for now."
It always did in Ashland.
We sat there for a few more minutes. My eyes scanned the crowd, looking through the faces, before moving on to whom I was really here to see tonight-Vinnie Volga.
One of the main features at Northern Aggression was the elaborate Ice bar that took up a good portion of one of the walls. The bar was a single, solid sheet of elemental Ice with a variety of runes carved into the frosty surface. Suns and stars mostly, symbolizing life and joy. The runes glittered like diamond chips in the Ice, making it seem more like a beautiful work of art than a functional, working bar. But the Ice more than held up to all the people who sat next to and leaned on it, and the others who clustered three deep in some places waiting to get their latest round of liquid courage.
My gaze locked onto the man standing behind the bar-the Ice elemental responsible for making sure his creation stayed in one piece for the night.
Vinnie Volga had swarthy features-tan skin and a mop of curly hair that could only be described as dirty brown. A neat, trimmed goatee covered his pointed chin, although his mouth and forehead both had a pinched look to them, as though he was constantly worried about something. Vinnie was short for a guy, only about my height, five seven or so, with a thin, wiry body.
But the most striking thing about Vinnie was his eyes, which glowed blue-white in the semidarkness, thanks to his elemental magic. Vinnie held on to his Ice power at all times, even while mixing and serving up drinks. He had to keep feeding a small, steady trickle of magic into the bar, or his creation would start to melt, given all the bodies and heat packed into the club.
It's rare that an elemental can use his magic without other elementals sensing it, and Vinnie wasn't trying to hide what he was doing. Even across the room, I could feel the cool caress of his power call out to me. It made me want to reach for my own Ice magic and let the cold energy fill every part of my being, but I pushed the longing aside. I wasn't letting the bartender know that I had any kind of magic-until it was too late.
"So tell me about Vinnie," I asked Roslyn.
The vampire's eyes tracked my gaze across the club to where the bartender stood, shaking up another round of martinis. She shrugged. "Not much to tell. He's worked for me for a couple of years now. Emigrated here from Russia with his daughter. The mother died in Russia before they came to the States. Very quiet, keeps to himself. A hard worker. Always on time. Doesn't seem that interested in my girls, but he'll go out with one occasionally. I've never had any problems with him. He comes in, makes sure the bar is in one piece, mixes drinks, takes a few quick breaks to go check on his daughter, and leaves. He's the best bartender that I've ever had. I'd really hate to lose him."
I gave her a cool look. After a moment, Roslyn nodded.
"But if it can't be avoided, I suppose that I can find another Ice elemental to take over for him," she said. "What I really want to know is if Vinnie's spying for Mab Monroe. If he is, he's out. Nobody who works for Mab is going to be on my staff or welcome in my club-ever."
Roslyn's toffee eyes glittered with anger, and her mouth flattened into a hard, ugly slash in her beautiful face. The vampire had just as much reason to hate Mab as I did, because Mab had been Elliot Slater's boss, the one who pulled all his crazy, twisted strings. The Fire elemental had known that Slater was stalking and terrorizing Roslyn, and she'd done nothing to stop it. As long as Slater had done Mab's bidding, she hadn't cared what he did to anyone else-or who got hurt in the process.
"What about Vinnie's Ice magic?" I asked. "Will that be a problem?"
"He has enough to keep the bar in one piece," Roslyn said. "But I think that's about it. I've never seen him do anything else with it. He's certainly not as strong as you are."
I shifted in the booth. Everybody always said how strong my magic was, like it was something to be proud of. But I knew that I wasn't that powerful. Alexis James. Tobias Dawson. Elliot Slater. Each one of them had come far too close to killing me in the last few months for me to believe that I was invincible. Death came to us all in the end, no matter how tough we thought we were.
Still, every time someone commented on my magic, I couldn't stop this uncomfortable shiver that swept through my body. It was like they were all setting me up for the fall that I knew was coming up fast on the day that I went toe-to-toe with Mab with my magic.
And lost.
"So can we get on with this?" Finn asked, his green eyes locked onto a redhead gyrating on the edge of the dance floor. "Because if we hurry, we can still learn everything that Vinnie knows before closing. Which would leave me plenty of time to find someone to keep me warm for the rest of the night. You wouldn't want me to be lonely, now, would you?"
I rolled my eyes. Finn's propensity to think with his dick first was going to get him into deep trouble one day. Especially since he didn't mind seducing women who were already taken. He saw a wedding ring as a challenge more than anything else. I always found it amazing that some angry husband hadn't hired me to kill Finn long ago.
But my foster brother was right. It was time to get on with things. The sooner we squeezed Vinnie for info, the sooner I could start planning how to find and take out LaFleur-before she found me first.
I'd just started to slide out of the booth when a peculiar ripple in the crowd caught my eye. A wave of people parted for someone in their midst. A moment later, a woman stepped up to the Ice bar in the exact spot where Vinnie was serving drinks.
A petite, slender woman with a short bob of glossy black hair. A wide headband of flat emeralds held her hair back off her face, so that everyone could get a good look at her delicate features. The gems winked at me underneath the black lights of the club.
Unlike me, she was dressed for a night out on the town. A tight, black, sleeveless top showed off her creamy, muscled arms, while a lime green miniskirt hugged her bony ass. Black leather boots with stiletto heels crawled up to her knees. She didn't appear to be carrying any weapons, unless she had a couple of knives tucked into her boots. But given what I'd seen her do with her electrical magic last night, she didn't really need any.
She leaned against the Ice bar and said something to Vinnie, whose head snapped up from the martinis he was making. His jaw dropped open at the sight of her and, for a moment, the blue-white glow of his Ice magic completely vanished from his eyes before sparking and sputtering back to life. The bartender's shocked reaction was understandable.
After all, he was talking to LaFleur.
Chapter 5
"Fuck." I let out a soft curse.
"What are you-" Finn's eyes narrowed. "Wait a minute. Is that who I think it is?"
I nodded. "That would be her. LaFleur."
Finn let out his own curse.
Roslyn looked back and forth between the two of us. "LaFleur? As in the assassin that you guys think Mab hired to come to Ashland and kill Gin?"
"The one and the same," Finn murmured, his green gaze on the other woman. "And she's talking to Vinnie."
The three of us stared at them. LaFleur crooked her finger at Vinnie, who swallowed before moving forward. LaFleur leaned across the Ice bar a little more and whispered something into his ear. Whatever she said, it wasn't good, because Vinnie's blue-white Ice magic leaked out of his eyes once more. LaFleur was breaking his concentration with her words.
I tensed, my thumb tracing over the hilt of the silverstone knife that I'd palmed under the booth table. I wondered if the other assassin was going to kill Vinnie right here, right now, in the middle of the nightclub since no one had shown up for her staged meeting last night. Because the Spider hadn't made an appearance like LaFleur had wanted me to. She could easily kill Vinnie. One blast of the assassin's electrical elemental magic would be enough to cut through any Icy defense that the bartender might be able to muster.
That's how elementals fought-by flinging their raw power, their raw magic, at each other. By measuring their strength against each other. Dueling each other, until one person weakened, and the other's magic washed over the loser and killed her. Suffocated by Air, burned by Fire, frozen by Ice, encased in Stone. The end result for the weaker elemental was never a good one, and death by elemental magic was never pretty, easy, or painless.
But instead of forming a ball of green lightning in her hand and shoving it into Vinnie's face, LaFleur did a most curious thing. She patted the Ice elemental on the cheek, gave him a sly wink and a sexy smirk, then turned and disappeared into the crowd.
Leaving him alone and unharmed.
Vinnie blinked, then sagged against the bar as though his body were made out of water and he were melting all over the place. He stayed like that for about thirty seconds, before a waitress stepped up in the spot where LaFleur had been and slid her empty tray over to him. The waitress said something, probably telling him about her latest order. Vinnie shook his head, then picked up his martini shaker once more. But the blue-white magic flickering in his eyes was weak, dim, and faint. Whatever LaFleur had said to him, it had utterly demoralized the Ice elemental.
Since Vinnie wasn't going anywhere, I tracked LaFleur's movements through the crowd. To my surprise, the assassin headed toward the front door. Leaving. She was actually leaving. It was too good an opportunity to pass up. I wanted to see where she was off to in such a hurry.
"Watch Vinnie," I told Finn, slipping out of the booth. "Call me on my cell phone if he makes a move to leave. I want to see if LaFleur's here with anyone."
"Gin?" Finn said.
I looked at him.
"Be careful." Concern filled his face, and I knew he was thinking about LaFleur's magic. What we'd seen her do with it last night and what she might do to me tonight.
I flashed him a grin. "Don't worry about me. I always come back, Finn."
I just hoped this time it wouldn't be in a pine box.
I didn't immediately charge through the crowd after LaFleur. Because if I were her, I would have a couple of guys stationed in the nightclub keeping an eye on Vinnie, seeing who might wander over to talk to him, and most especially who might be interested in following the assassin outside. So my first move was to make a detour by the Ice bar.
I walked down the length of it, weaving in and out of the clusters of people. Everyone was laughing, talking, drinking, and necking, so it was easy enough for me to grab a martini that a dwarf was blindly reaching for before his stubby fingers closed over it. I also swiped a pack of cigarettes and a lighter off the bar that belonged to a giant who had his back turned to them. Props in hand, I headed for the front door and stepped outside.
The night had grown even colder while I'd been in the club, and now bits of hard snow gusted along, pushed on by a breeze that slapped my cheeks and cut straight through my jeans, T-shirt, and fleece jacket. But the cold hadn't driven anyone away. The line to get inside had doubled since I'd arrived.
Xavier stood in his same spot by the door, clipboard still in hand. The giant didn't even glance up as LaFleur strolled by him. He was too busy herding the mass of people in front of him inside to care about who was leaving early.
The assassin skirted around Xavier and set off across the parking lot. Keeping one eye on her, I paused right outside the entrance long enough to light a cigarette and make sure that my martini glass was up where everyone could see it so people would think that I was here to party, despite my dressed down clothes. I also ran a hand through my dark chocolate brown hair, mussing it up, as though I'd already had a hell of a good time inside.
Then I headed in LaFleur's general direction, my steps slow and wobbly, my body swaying from side to side. Just another tipsy smoker desperate for a nicotine fix and getting some fresh air before I went back inside the club for another drink, another fuck, or whatever I was indulging in tonight. An easy enough role for an assassin to play and one that I'd used for camouflage dozens of times over the years.
