Tangled Threads

8

Two more doors opened on the SUV. Xavier got out on the driver’s side, while Roslyn hopped out of the back. They, along with Finn, hurried over to me.

Finn stopped in front of me, his green eyes sweeping over my blood-spattered clothes and the silverstone knives glinting in my hands. Assessing what he could see of my body and injuries, just like his father, Fletcher, used to do back when the old man was my handler.

“Is any of that blood yours?” Finn asked.

“Not enough to matter.”

He nodded. “Good.”

My eyes cut to Xavier. “Nice driving. The vamp never knew what hit him.”

The giant dug his hands into his pants pockets and grinned at me. “What can I say? I’m a closet NASCAR fan at heart.”

I grinned back at him and shook my head before turning to Finn. “Well, the party’s over now. I was beginning to think that you weren’t coming, since I called you more than twenty minutes ago.”

“Sorry, Gin,” Finn said in an apologetic tone. “I would have been here sooner, but Roslyn decided that she wanted to tag along to see what was happening with Vinnie. And then Xavier saw us leaving Northern Aggression and offered to drive.”

I looked over at the vampire and the giant. “You didn’t have to do that, Roslyn, Xavier. Neither one of you. This is my fight with Mab. Not yours. Do yourselves a favor and don’t get involved. I already know that it’s going to end badly for me. Call me crazy, but I’d rather not see you two end up as collateral damage.”

Roslyn stepped forward, her eyes hard behind her silver glasses, her mouth a thin, determined line in her face. “That’s where you’re wrong, Gin. It’s our fight now too. It has been ever since that first day Elliot Slater came into my club and started stalking me.”

A few weeks ago, the giant had gone to Northern Aggression to question Roslyn about how one of her heart-and-arrow rune necklaces had ended up around the neck of a fake hooker who’d killed one of Mab’s flunkies. The fake hooker had been me, of course, and I’d used the necklace to sneak into one of Mab’s parties so I could take out Tobias Dawson, the greedy mine owner who’d been threatening Violet Fox and her grandfather.

But the Fire elemental didn’t believe that I’d died in a mine collapse along with Dawson, so she’d sent Slater to lean on Roslyn. The vampire hadn’t cracked, hadn’t given me up, but she’d been exposed to something much worse — Slater’s creepy fascination with her.

Once again, my heart ached for everything that had been done to Roslyn, for all the pain and anguish and fear that she had suffered because of me. But being sorry didn’t change the past. All I could do now was keep going until either Mab or I was dead. Maybe if I was lucky, things would end there, and I’d at least get to take the Fire elemental out with me when I kicked off to hell. And I’d have the satisfaction of knowing that everyone else I was leaving behind, everyone that I cared about, was safe from Mab — forever.

“Gin?” Roslyn asked in a soft voice, cutting into my thoughts.

I just nodded my head, accepting her help and Xavier’s, at least for this night. Even though I didn’t deserve it. “Thanks for stopping by. Now, let’s go see if Vinnie is still alive.”

I sent Finn over to the tree to make sure that the vampire was dead, while Xavier, Roslyn, and I walked back to the playground. I went first to the giant who was still sprawled on the merry-go-round. He’d bled out from his cut throat, and his body was already starting to cool, given the chill in the December air. My next stop was the giant who was buried under the remains of the swing set. He was unconscious but surprisingly still alive. I must not have wounded him as badly as I’d thought. Didn’t much matter, since I pulled his head out from underneath the chains and cut his throat to finish the job.

Roslyn stood by the sandbox, looking down at Vinnie. Disgust, horror, and sympathy filled her beautiful face, and she held her hand over her mouth like she was seconds away from vomiting. She probably was. It wasn’t hard to see that Roslyn was remembering her own brutal beating at the hands of Elliot Slater. Xavier had already stepped inside the sandbox and was kneeling by the Ice elemental, who had his eyes closed and was lying on his side, curled into a loose ball.

Vinnie Volga was a mess. The giants’ beating had been bad enough, but the vampire had only compounded the damage during their scuffle. Starting with his face and going down his body, there wasn’t much left of Vinnie that wasn’t covered with blood, blackening bruises, and crusty sand.

I looked at Xavier and raised my eyebrows.

“Still alive,” Xavier said, answering my silent question. “What do you want to do with him, Gin?”

Earlier tonight, my plan had been to take Vinnie somewhere quiet and find out exactly why he’d betrayed Roslyn, why he was working for Mab, and what he might know about my real identity as the Spider. And I’d planned on getting the information any way that I had to. Just as the giants had done, truth be told. Except I would have used my knives instead of my fists.

But that was before I knew what kind of leverage Mab had on Vinnie — his daughter, Natasha — and the Fire elemental’s horrible plans for the little girl. That was before I’d seen the rage, helplessness, and anguish in Vinnie’s eyes as he listened to the vampire brag about how he was going to rape Natasha. That was before Vinnie had used the last of his Ice magic, risen up, and tried to take the vampire down with him. He’d tried to spare his daughter one horror, at least.

Besides, I could always kill him later, should the need arise.

“Put him in the car,” I said. “Let’s get Vinnie to Jo-Jo’s before he dies.”

While Xavier and the others loaded the unconscious Vinnie into the back of the SUV, I retrieved my dropped knife, then crouched down in the middle of the sandbox. I hadn’t planned on killing anyone but the bartender tonight, but I wasn’t going to miss this chance to let Mab know exactly who had taken out her men — again. It was easy enough for me to use my silverstone knife to draw my spider rune in a patch of blood-soaked sand. A couple of passes with my blade and it was done.

My eyes studied the symbol that I’d carved. A small circle surrounded by eight thin rays. It wasn’t a flashy rune by any stretch of the imagination, certainly not like Mab’s gold and ruby sunburst necklace. But the spider rune was the symbol for patience — something that I hoped the Fire elemental was running short on these days. Because impatience made you sloppy, and sloppy got you dead. The second she made a mistake was the second I’d make my move.

“We’re ready, Gin!” Finn called out from the window of Xavier’s SUV. “Let’s go!”

I got back to my feet, wincing at the pain in my hip, and limped over to the waiting vehicle.

It took Xavier about twenty minutes to drive from the Northtown park out into the surrounding suburbs. The giant steered his black SUV with its now-crumpled front fender into a subdivision bearing the name Tara Heights before turning onto a street marked Magnolia Lane. I didn’t have to give him directions. Xavier knew the way. We all did.

A minute later, Xavier drove up a long driveway before stopping in front of a three-story, plantation-style house perched on top of a grassy hill. The rows of white columns on the front of the house gleamed despite the late hour, and the cobblestones that made up the driveway seemed as pale as bleach in the darkness.

The four of us got out of the car. Xavier reached into the back and slung Vinnie over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, before we all walked up the three steps leading to a wide, wraparound porch. Green, glossy kudzu vines curled around a trellis that partially obscured the porch. So did a thick cluster of rose bushes, although their branches were bare for the winter, except for the long, curved, black thorns that glittered like polished jet.

I opened the screen door. A knocker shaped like a fat, puffy cloud rested on the heavier, interior wooden door. The cloud was Jo-Jo’s personal rune, denoting her as an Air elemental.

I’d just reached for the knocker when footsteps scuffled inside, the door opened, and Jo-Jo Deveraux stuck her head outside.

“I thought I heard someone out here,” the dwarf said in her voice that was as light and sweet as syrup.

Despite the late hour, Jolene “Jo-Jo” Deveraux looked like she’d just finished getting ready to go out courting on Saturday night. A string of pearls hung around her throat, the same size as the pink polka dots on her fuchsia dress. Her bleached blond white hair curled around her head just so, and the perfect amount of understated makeup softened the lines of her middle-aged face. The smell of her Chantilly perfume filled the night air. I breathed in, enjoying the sweet, soft scent.

At exactly five feet, Jo-Jo was tall for a dwarf, with a figure that was still stocky and muscular despite her two hundred and fifty-seven years. Even though it couldn’t have been more than ten degrees outside, Jo-Jo’s feet were bare, showing off the raspberry pedicure that she’d given herself. The dwarf hated to wear socks, no matter how cold the weather got. One of the many quirks that I loved about her.

Jo-Jo stared at the five of us on her porch. The dwarf’s eyes were clear and almost colorless, except for the pinprick of black at the center of her irises. She raised a tweezed eyebrow. “Quite the crowd tonight, Gin. Usually, it’s just you and Finn.”

I shrugged. “What can I say? I seem to attract minions wherever I go these days. Kind of like the Pied Piper.”

Behind me, Finn huffed out his displeasure. “Minion? I am most certainly not a mere minion. Head minion, perhaps. At the very least.”

Jo-Jo let out a soft chuckle and stepped back. “Minion or not, why don’t y’all come on in and let me have a look at that fellow there with you — preferably before he bleeds all over my front porch. I just had it painted last week, you know.”

I entered the house first, trailed by Finn, Roslyn, and finally Xavier, still carrying Vinnie over his shoulder. Following Jo-Jo, we walked down a long hallway opening up into a room that took up the back half of the house.

Jo-Jo Deveraux made her living by being what she called a “drama mama.” That is to say, a purveyor of all things related to beauty. The dwarf used the back half of her antebellum house as a salon, offering every purifying, exfoliating, tweezing, plucking, dyeing, curling, cutting, perming, and waxing ritual known to Southern women. And even a few that the Yankees had invented. Jo-Jo also used her Air elemental magic to augment many of the treatments, which is what made her salon so popular. Oxygen facials and other Air beauty regimens were great for smoothing out unwanted crow’s feet and erasing stretch marks.

Beauty magazines, scissors, combs, curlers, hair dryers, and more filled the wide room, fighting for space on the tables and counters, along with more tubs of makeup and bottles of pink nail polish than you could find at Mab Monroe’s best-stocked Sell-Everything superstore.

At the sound of our footsteps, a dog sprawled in a wicker basket by the door raised up his head. Rosco, Jo-Jo’s fat, lazy basset hound. The brown and black beast gazed at us with dark, hopeful eyes. But when he realized that no one had any food that they planned on feeding him, he snorted once, put his head back down, and returned to his previously scheduled nap. Rosco didn’t like to overexert himself — ever.

“Put the poor fellow over there, Xavier.” Jo-Jo pointed to one of the cherry red, padded swivel chairs in the middle of the salon. “So I can take a look at him.”

Xavier put Vinnie down where Jo-Jo had instructed. The rest of us made ourselves comfortable in the other chairs scattered around the room, except for Finn, who headed into the kitchen on a coffee run.

I sat in the chair closest to Vinnie’s so I could keep an eye on the Ice elemental. Just because he’d been beaten to within an inch of death didn’t mean that he couldn’t rise up and do something stupid while Jo-Jo was healing him — like try to get away.

Once I was sure that Vinnie was out of it, I glanced around, half-expecting to see a dwarf dressed in all black come strolling into the salon. But Sophia, Jo-Jo’s younger sister, didn’t appear.

“Where’s Sophia?” I asked.

Jo-Jo went over to the sink and washed her hands. “She went out to see a Clint Eastwood film festival at that old theater over on St. Charles Avenue. She won’t be back until late.”

I nodded. In addition to Sophia’s Goth tendencies, she also happened to be a huge film buff.

Jo-Jo dried her hands, then clicked on a free-standing halogen light and angled it so that it illuminated Vinnie Volga’s bloody face. She let out a low whistle. “Giants?”

I nodded. “Some of Mab’s men. They were disappointed in Vinnie’s job performance and decided to show him exactly how much.”

Jo-Jo clucked her tongue and shook her head. Then she raised her hand up so that her palm hovered over Vinnie’s face, not quite touching his bloody, bruised skin. The dwarf’s eyes began to glow an opaque, buttermilk white, and the same sort of magical glow coated her palm. Jo-Jo’s Air magic crackled through the room like lightning, making me shift in my chair.

Jo-Jo was an Air elemental, which meant that her magic was the polar opposite of my Ice and Stone power. Two elements always opposed each other, like Fire and Ice, just as two elements always complemented each other, like Fire and Air. I always felt uncomfortable when I sensed so much of an opposing element being used, even if I knew that Jo-Jo was healing Vinnie instead of hurting him. Her magic just felt wrong to me, as foreign and alien as eating fried green tomatoes would to a Yankee.

Not only that, but Jo-Jo’s power also made the spider rune scars on my palms itch and burn, the way they always did whenever I was around so much elemental magic. The silverstone metal that had been melted into my flesh was highly prized for its ability to absorb and store all kinds of magic, and it always seemed to me that the silverstone in my hands actually hungered for power. That it was almost like a living thing, a parasite whose sole purpose was to soak up more and more magic until it just couldn’t contain another molecule of power. Sort of like a greedy vampire sucking down all the blood that he could get his fangs into.

Lots of elementals had rings, bracelets, or other jewelry made out of the metal for the sole purpose of containing bits and pieces of their power in the items — power they could then draw upon at a later time. Like when they were dueling another elemental. Wear your favorite silverstone ring, have that extra bit of juice handy when you needed it to destroy your enemy. It was all just a deadly form of magical batteries more than anything else.

“So who is this guy?” Jo-Jo asked in a soft voice.

The dwarf moved her hand back and forth across Vinnie’s face, not quite touching his battered features. With every pass of her hand, the swelling on Vinnie’s face went down a little more, the black bruises greened out and faded away, and the bloody cuts drew together and sewed themselves shut. Jo-Jo was using her Air elemental magic to force oxygen into Vinnie’s body, using her power to put all those broken molecules and blood vessels back together and make him whole once again. That’s how Air elementals healed — by using all the natural gases in the atmosphere, especially oxygen.

“He’s somebody who’s been spying on Roslyn for Mab,” I said.

Jo-Jo looked at me. “So why am I healing him?”

“Because he might have some useful information, and he seems to be in as much trouble as the rest of us.”

While Jo-Jo finished healing Vinnie, I told the others what I’d overheard in the park. Everything that the vampire had said about Vinnie spying on Roslyn, about the trap LaFleur had set for me with the fake rumor about the drug shipment, and how Mab had big plans for Vinnie’s daughter, Natasha.

“They said that about Natasha?” Roslyn asked. “That Mab was going to put her in some kind of whorehouse? She’s eight, maybe ten. She doesn’t deserve that.”

Roslyn’s face tightened, and she pressed her lips together, as though she was trying to keep from being sick again. Some might have thought that it was hypocritical of Roslyn to have any kind of objection about whatever sort of prostitution that Mab was involved in. After all, she ran her own stable of hookers at Northern Aggression. Most of the guys and girls at the club were vampires, just like Roslyn. The vamps pretty much owned the sex trade in Ashland. That’s because for a lot of them, having sex was just as stimulating as drinking blood. Humans needed vitamins to keep going, and vamps needed sex and blood. Get laid, get your B₁₂ for the day. Or something like that. For the most part, it was win-win for the vamps and their clients.

But vamp or not, everyone who worked at Northern Aggression was there because they wanted to be. Roslyn didn’t force them to do anything they didn’t want to, and she made sure that her giant bouncers kept the club’s clients from hurting anyone. Roslyn also let her hookers keep what they made, instead of taking it all for herself like so many of the vampire pimps did on the Southtown streets. If you had to be a hooker, you wanted someone like Roslyn watching out for you, and not some gangbanger pimp who’d take all your money and then beat the shit out of you just for fun.

Jo-Jo dropped her hand from Vinnie’s face. “There. He’s as good as new. Your turn, Gin.”

I sighed. As much as I hated being injured, sometimes I thought that getting healed by Jo-Jo was worse. But I leaned back in my chair and let the Air elemental work her magic on me.

Jo-Jo placed her hand close to my hip, and her palm began to glow milky white with her Air magic once again. A hot tingle sizzled to life deep inside my body, centered in my aching hip joint. Then another, then another. It was like being pricked with thousands of tiny red-hot needles all at once. I gritted my teeth, clamped my hands around the armrests of the chair, and suffered through it. The spider rune scars on my palms reacted to Jo-Jo’s magic and began to itch and burn even worse than before, as she used her power on me. Sweat beaded on my forehead, and I bit back a primal scream. Even though I knew that Jo-Jo was helping me, healing me, the deep, dark elemental part of me wanted to lash out at her with my own magic just to get her to stop. Just so I wouldn’t feel the wrongness of her power one second longer.

“Dislocated hip, some minor cuts and bruises. An easy night for you,” Jo-Jo murmured.

“Yeah,” I muttered. “It was just a walk in the park.”

A few minutes later, the glow faded from Jo-Jo’s palm, the magic evaporated out of her eyes, and she dropped her hand. I let out a quiet sigh of relief and leaned back against the chair, grateful that I couldn’t feel her Air magic anymore.

I let myself relax and recover for two minutes before I sat upright again and got on with things. I turned my attention to Vinnie, who was still unconscious in the next chair over.

Normally, I would have let someone who’d been so severely injured as Vinnie sleep until morning. Being magically healed always took a toll on a person, as you went from being close to death to suddenly being healthy again. It pretty much zapped all your strength until your body could switch gears and catch up with itself again. Hell, even I would have liked to crawl into bed myself and not come out until morning. But I wanted answers, and I wanted them now. So I reached over and poked Vinnie in the shoulder.

It took about a minute of prodding before the Ice elemental’s eyes fluttered open, and he became aware of his surroundings. Vinnie looked at Jo-Jo and frowned with confusion.

“You’re welcome,” the dwarf said, before getting to her feet, going over to the sink, and washing her hands again.

Vinnie sat up in his chair, his gaze flicking around the room, taking in all the beauty supplies, obviously wondering how he’d gotten from the park to Jo-Jo’s salon. He froze when he spotted Xavier and Roslyn sitting together on a loveseat against the far wall. After a moment, his blue eyes cut to me, lingering on all the blood on my clothes, before going back to his vampire boss and her giant bouncer.

Vinnie opened his mouth, but I beat him to the punch.

“Before you start spouting some lame-ass lie about what you’ve been up to these past few days, let me tell you what we know,” I said in a cold voice. “We know that you’ve been spying on Roslyn for Mab Monroe. We know that an assassin who goes by the name LaFleur came to see you at Northern Aggression tonight and that it wasn’t the first time that you’ve talked to her. We know that she told you to tell everyone about a shipment of drugs that were coming in down at the docks, in hopes that the Spider would show up and LaFleur could take her out. How am I doing so far?”

Vinnie didn’t say anything, but he swallowed once and nodded his head.

“Good. You’ve decided to be reasonable.” I crossed my arms over my chest and gave him a hard stare. “Here’s the deal. You tell us everything that you’ve told LaFleur and Mab, and everything that they’ve said to you or threatened you with. And, at the end of your story, if I like what I hear, I may just let you live. So start talking.”

Vinnie just kept staring at me, his eyes wide in his face.

“Now!” I barked.

The Ice elemental looked at his boss again, but Roslyn’s face was even harder and colder than mine. So was Xavier’s. After a moment, Vinnie slumped back against his chair.

“I didn’t want to do it, Roslyn.” Vinnie’s Russian accent was even more pronounced than before, probably from all the stress he was feeling right now. “You have to believe me. You’ve been so good to me. I never wanted to betray you like this.”

“I know, Vinnie,” Roslyn said in a soft voice. “Now tell us what you know.”

He drew in a shaky breath. “A week ago, I’m at the club, working the bar like usual. I go outside to take out the trash, and this woman comes up to me. At first I think she’s just drunk or outside smoking something she shouldn’t, you know? But she calls out to me, calls me by my name. And she starts telling me all these … things. Like what time I get off work every night, and where Natasha and I like to eat dinner. Where Natasha goes to school.”

Vinnie’s voice dropped to a whisper. He swallowed again and forced himself to continue.

“And then she tells me that her name is LaFleur and asks me if I’ve heard of her. I say no. And she says that after tonight I’ll never forget her. She turns and calls out to someone, and this guy steps forward. He was just a guy, somebody that I’d never seen before. She stares at him a second and starts smiling. And then she raises her hand up, and she — and she just—”

“Electrocuted him,” I finished. “Right there in front of you.”

Vinnie stared at me in surprise. “Yeah, how did you know?”

I gave him a grim smile. “Because unlike you, I have heard of her. Go on.”

Vinnie nodded. “Anyway, LaFleur tells me that she’s working for Mab Monroe on a special assignment. To find and kill the Spider. And that I’m going to help her do this. At this point, I am freaking out. But I can’t exactly leave, not without her killing me too.”

He shuddered at the memory of the other assassin threatening him. Couldn’t blame him for that. Not when LaFleur had thrown in a demo of her electrical magic right there on the spot.

“So she approached you about working for her. Then what happened?” I asked.

Vinnie swallowed again. “This woman, LaFleur, said that unless I wanted to end up like her friend, I was going to start watching Roslyn for her. Going to see who Roslyn was hanging out with, who she talked to at the club every night. She wanted me to make a list of every woman that I saw Roslyn with. She said that one of them had to be the Spider, and it was just a matter of narrowing it down.”

Well, he’d just confirmed what Brown, the vampire, had said in the park. I didn’t know if LaFleur had been ordered to do all this by Mab or if the assassin had come up with the plan all on her own. Either way, it wasn’t good news for me.

“I told her that I was just a bartender, that I didn’t know about anything that had happened with Roslyn or Elliot Slater or the Spider or any of it. But she wouldn’t take no for an answer. LaFleur said that if I didn’t do exactly what she said, she’d kill Natasha and make me watch while she did it. And then she’d kill me.”

Vinnie’s voice dropped to a whisper and was so soft that I had to strain to hear him. “I just — I didn’t have a choice. You didn’t see what she did to that man. You didn’t smell it or hear him scream. So yeah, I did what she said. I started watching Roslyn. And when LaFleur came back to the club a few days ago and told me to start talking about the drug shipment, I did that too.”

“Why didn’t you come to me, Vinnie?” Roslyn asked. “I would have believed you. I would have helped you.”

The Ice elemental gave her a wan smile. “I know that you would have tried. But Elliot Slater almost killed you, and this woman makes him look like Santa Claus. And Natasha, she comes first with me. She always has. I couldn’t risk her. I’m sorry, Roslyn. So very sorry.”

The vampire nodded, accepting his apology. “I know, Vinnie. Believe me, I know.”

“So what did LaFleur say to you tonight?” I asked. “When she came into the club?”

Vinnie looked back at me. “She told me that no one had shown up at the drug meeting last night, which meant that I must not have done what she asked me to. She said that she was going to dance for a few minutes before she left to go over to my apartment, and kill Natasha and her babysitter. I was just — desperate. I didn’t know what to do, so I left to go home and try to get to my daughter before LaFleur did. But she had men inside the club waiting for me.”

“I know,” I said in a wry tone. “I’m wearing little bits and pieces of them right now.”

Vinnie stared at me, his blue eyes once again taking in the blood on my clothes, hands, and face. “What’s going on?” he asked. “Who are you? Why were you in the park tonight?”

The bartender had been pretty out of it when I’d shown myself to Mab’s men earlier, all of his attention focused on taking down Brown, the vampire, not with who I was.

So I stared at him, letting him see just how cold, flat, and hard my gray eyes really were, and made the introduction once more. “I’m the woman you’re looking for, Vinnie. I’m the person LaFleur wanted you to find. I’m the Spider.”