I put the list aside to give to Finn to see what connections he might be able to make between the guests back then and what Salina might be up to now. For all I knew, she was working with someone on the list besides McAllister.
Finally, I got to Fletcher's recap of that fateful night. Benedict, an Ice elemental, had thrown an elegant dinner party at his mansion. Just before the soup course, he'd tried to take out Mab by stabbing her in the back with a silverstone knife - only he'd failed. Naturally, the Fire elemental had made an example out of him for his foolishness.
The more I read, the more I remembered that night, until it seemed like every line, every word, caused another image to pop into my mind.
Then I got to the photos.
Fletcher had somehow gotten his hands on police images of Dubois's body. You couldn't even tell that the ashy, smoking thing in the photos had once been a man. It just looked like a collection of blackened bones strung together, topped by a skull baring charred teeth.
I'd seen similar pictures before. Hell, I'd witnessed such things myself when Mab murdered my mother and older sister. My stomach twisted, and the phantom stench of seared skin filled my nose, making me gag, as if Benedict Dubois's corpse were freshly burned and still smoldering at my feet.
I forced myself to flip past the photos and keep reading, but there wasn't anything else to discover. After she tortured and murdered Dubois, Mab hadn't had any more problems for a good long while.
I slid the pictures back in the file, closed it, and put a crystal paperweight shaped like my spider rune on top of the folder. The information might be a window into the past, but it didn't tell me what had really happened with Kincaid and Salina or, more important, what she was doing back in Ashland. So I turned off the light and went back upstairs.
I went through the motions of getting ready for bed - taking a shower, towel-drying my hair, putting on some shorts and an old T-shirt.
Even though I hadn't killed anyone tonight, I was still exhausted from everything I'd learned about Owen, Salina, Kincaid, and their convoluted history. I was so tired I thought I might fall asleep immediately, but as soon as I closed my eyes, the dreams started, the way they always did. Except they weren't dreams so much as glimpses of my past, memories of all the bad things I'd seen and done. I'd been having the dreams ever since Fletcher's murder last year, and I had no idea when they might stop, if ever. I supposed these particular images were triggered by reading through the Dubois file. . . .
No one was supposed to die tonight.
It was supposed to be a simple assignment, one that Fletcher, the assassin known as the Tin Man, could do in his sleep. Slip onto the estate of Benedict Dubois during a dinner party and gather intel on Peter Delov, an Ashland drug lord. See who Delov spoke to, who he snubbed, how close his guards stayed to him. All in preparation for a hit that was to take place later on.
I moved through the halls of the Dubois mansion, calmly, quickly heading toward my destination. As usual, I wore dark clothes, although I'd been forced to don a white tuxedo vest and a matching bow tie over my black shirt, pants, and shoes. The pale fabric felt like a bull's-eye on my chest, and the fact that I was carrying an empty tray instead of one of the knives Fletcher was teaching me to use made me feel even more vulnerable. Still, the vest and the tray were an effective part of my disguise, that of a simple waiter.
Tonight, instead of skulking around in the shadows, I boldly strode down the corridor, passing one giant guard after another and nodding to them all in turn. A few eyed me with obvious curiosity, probably wondering exactly how I'd gotten this job, since at fifteen I was a bit younger than the other workers. But no one stopped or questioned me. Finally, I reached the entrance to the kitchen and showed the guard there my tray. He politely opened the door for me, and I stepped inside.
The kitchen was a madhouse. Several chefs were busy chopping, cutting, peeling, boiling, steaming, and sauteing everything from potatoes to pasta to peaches, and my nose itched from the red pepper, cinnamon, and other spices in the air. The chefs called out orders to each other and the dozens of waiters who were busy moving through the cramped aisles, grabbing trays of champagne and hors d'oeuvres before scurrying back out to the party to serve up the delicacies.
"Soup's up!" one of the chefs called out.
I handed my empty tray off to one of the dishwashers, got a clean one filled with white china bowls, and headed toward the back of the kitchen to the chef who'd spoken. The overhead lights brought out the silver threads in his walnut-colored hair, while the heat from the ovens and burners had made his cheeks even ruddier than usual.
I put the tray down on the counter next to his elbow and watched while the chef ladled a scrumptious-smelling, gourmet broccolini soup into the bowls.
"Anything interesting?" Fletcher murmured as he used some freshly grated Parmesan cheese and sourdough croutons to garnish each bowl of soup.
"Not really," I replied. "Just Delov moving through the crowd, eating, drinking, and greeting his business associates. The usual. Although Delov looks to be in the market for a new mistress. He's barely glanced at the woman he brought along tonight. Instead, he's been fawning all over one of the women who came with Beauregard Benson."
"Benson won't like that, but I doubt it will stop Delov," Fletcher said. "See if you can find out who she is. Might prove useful later on."
I nodded, pleased he was trusting me with such an assignment. Fletcher often hired himself out for events like these as a way to surreptitiously study potential targets. Usually, he worked as a waiter, but tonight he'd been needed in the kitchen to cook, so the old man had brought me along to be his eyes and ears at the party, which was being held on the lawn outside. It was something he was doing more and more of these days, now that I was two years into my training with him.
Fletcher said that soon I'd be ready to start doing solo scouting jobs. Serving food and drinks to the puffed-up power players of Ashland wasn't exactly the most thrilling way to spend my nights, but Fletcher said that blending in with a crowd and getting close to my targets was a necessary skill to learn. That it would prepare me for more violent, bloodier things later on. I wasn't quite sure I believed that, but the old man had been right about so many things so far that I wasn't going to argue with him. Besides, the waiter money was decent enough, and I almost always got to take home a bag or two of leftovers.
"Be careful," Fletcher warned as he finished garnishing the last bowl of soup. "Be quiet and be invisible just like always. Don't get yourself noticed by anyone, especially not tonight."
The worried tone in his voice made me look at him. "Is something wrong?"
He shrugged, but his green eyes were dark and troubled. "I heard some rumors that something big might go down at the dinner - "
A scream erupted, cutting through the noise and clatter in the kitchen.
Everyone froze, wondering if we'd all just imagined the sound - but we hadn't. More sharp screams sounded, along with a couple of loud, booming crack-crack-cracks of gunfire. But the most troubling thing was that even here in the kitchen, a hundred feet from the doors that led out to the party, I could feel the crackle of magic in the air. A blast of frigid Ice power, followed by an intense wave of Fire, both of them rubbing against my skin like invisible sandpaper.
Fletcher noticed the grimace on my face. "What is it, Gin?"
"Some elementals are using their power," I said in a low voice. "Ice and Fire. They must be strong, really strong, for me to sense their magic all the way in here."
He nodded. "We need to get out of here - "
But it was already too late. The kitchen doors flew open, and giants stormed into the room. Every single one of them had a gun in his hand. There was nothing Fletcher and I could do, no way we could escape without drawing attention to ourselves and making things worse, so we bowed our heads and put our hands up like everyone else did.
The giants marched the entire kitchen and waitstaff outside onto the lawn. When I'd been out here five minutes ago, the area had been pristine, and everything had gleamed, from the fine crystal and china to the elegant, blue-green tablecloths. Now, tables and chairs were overturned, platters of food had been upended, and splintered shards from the broken champagne glasses glinted like razor blades underfoot.
The dinner party guests had been herded into a tight group out on the lawn, and the giants ushered us in that direction as well. No one spoke, although several folks unsuccessfully tried to hold back frightened sobs and whimpers.
"Good," someone purred in a low, feminine voice. "More witnesses."
I couldn't see exactly who was speaking through the crowd of people in front of me, but I saw the shimmer of copper-colored hair and the flash of a gold necklace around a woman's throat. I looked at Fletcher.
"Mab Monroe," he murmured in my ear. "I'd heard Dubois was planning to make a move against her tonight. Looked like he didn't plan well enough. Poor bastard. He'll pay for it now - more than he ever imagined."
I didn't have to ask Fletcher what he meant. The old man had told me all about Mab and her ruthless reputation.
Two giants dragged a man across the lawn, causing murmurs to ripple through the crowd. He was a handsome man with blond hair, but his once-impeccable tuxedo jacket hung in smoking tatters on his shoulders, while his white shirt was charred. The holes in his shirt showed the blistering burns on his skin. The giants stopped with him in front of a beautiful stone fountain shaped like a mermaid. Twinkling white lights had been wrapped around the mermaid's elegant form, although they seemed to make the shadows darker, rather than lighter.
It took me a moment to gather my courage enough to drag my gaze away from the mermaid and look at the injured figure again. I knew what was going to happen now. Everyone did.
"Tie him down." Mab's command floated through the air.
Two of the giants moved off to the left and pulled some metal hoops out of the ground and picked up some wooden mallets. A croquet set. I'd seen it on the lawn when I'd been serving champagne earlier. That was what the giants had grabbed, although I had no idea what they planned to do with it.
I got my answer a few seconds later. Four giants held the man down spread-eagled, while two more positioned the metal hoops over his arms and legs and then pounded them into the ground.
Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap.
The light, ringing sounds were so at odds with what was happening, and every blow the giants struck took on a somber, sinister note in my mind, until all I heard were death knells. We all knew that was what they really were, and so did Benedict Dubois, who started swearing and screaming at the giants to let him go. When that didn't work, he reached for his Ice magic, trying to blast his captors with it. But the giants were ready for that. They punched and kicked him over and over again, breaking his concentration, his ribs, and his nose, and hurting him until he was too bloody and battered to summon any more of his power.
Finally, Dubois raised his head off the ground and looked out at his dinner guests, his friends and business partners. He started yelling at them to help him. But no one stepped forward - no one dared to, not with Mab staring at them.
No one wanted to share Dubois's fate.
Finally, the giants finished their work and stepped back. A hush fell over the crowd, and even Dubois grew silent as Mab walked across the grass toward him.
"Daddy?" a voice called out. "Daddy!"
A girl a few years older than me sprinted across the lawn, her long, blond hair streaming out behind her like ribbons of silk. She must have been in some other part of the mansion, because I hadn't seen her before at the party. A boy with black hair chased after her, catching her just before she reached her father. He wrapped his arms around the girl and held her tight, even though she struggled against him. Smart guy. He knew it was already too late for Dubois, even if the girl didn't.
"Let me go!" she yelled. "We have to help him! Someone please help him!"
But no one did. Instead, they all looked at the girl with pitying eyes.
A couple of the giants moved toward the young couple, probably to try to get the girl to shut up, but Mab held up her hand.
"No," she purred. "Let her watch. Let it be a lesson to her - and everyone else here tonight."
Mab held out her hand, and elemental Fire sparked to life on her fingertips, hissing and crackling with evil intent. I could see the glow of the flames through the crowd, and once again, I felt the invisible waves of her power pressing against my skin. I couldn't tell for sure, but I got the impression that Mab smiled before she bent down.
And then she started torturing Dubois.
I couldn't see everything that was going on, but I didn't need to. I didn't want to. Dubois's screams let everyone know exactly what was happening to him - and just how much it hurt.
The stench of burning flesh filled the warm spring air, reminding me of the night that a Fire elemental had done the same thing to my mother and older sister, how she'd burned them to death. My stomach roiled, and bile coated my throat. For a moment, I thought I might vomit, but I managed to swallow down the bitter liquid that choked me. Other people in the crowd didn't manage to do the same, turning to the side and retching up the food and drinks they'd just downed.
Fletcher put his arm around me and held me close, trying to tell me that it was okay, that he was here with me, that we would get through this, but there was nothing he could do - for me or Dubois.
But the worst part wasn't the stench or the memories or Dubois's pleas for mercy or the heat of the elemental Fire scorching my face. No, the worst part was that through it all, I could hear his daughter screaming - screaming for her family just like I had.
