Tangled Threads

20

I sighed and looked back at Owen. “Rain check?”

He leaned forward and pressed a quick kiss to my lips. “I’ll hold you to that.”

And I would have been holding him, if I’d had my way. But Finn was here now, no doubt to check on me, and I knew that the others would be wondering how I was doing as well. The romantic reunion and thank-you-for-saving-my-life sex would have to wait until later. I sighed and stepped out of Owen’s embrace.

By this point, most of the pins and needles had vanished from my legs, but I still wasn’t rock steady on my feet, which is why I held on to the polished banister as the three of us went downstairs.

Since it was Sunday, Jo-Jo’s beauty salon was closed, but that’s still where I found the middle-aged dwarf, painting Natasha’s fingernails a sweet little-girl pink. Vinnie held his daughter on his lap, his hands around her waist, his head perched on her shoulder, as if he couldn’t quite believe she was back here with him instead of dead and buried. Rosco, Jo-Jo’s basset hound, was snoozing in his basket in the corner as usual, his fat, stubby legs twitching with some sort of dream.

The three of them looked up at the sight of me standing in the doorway. Vinnie got to his feet and set his daughter back down in the cherry red salon chair. Natasha gave me a tiny smile, then held out her other hand so Jo-Jo could paint the rest of her nails. She seemed to be doing well, all things considered. At least she was safe now and back with her father, where she belonged.

Vinnie came over and stood in front of me. He looked just as tired as I felt, although his seemed to be more of a happy relief than anything else. The Ice elemental hesitated, then held out his hand. I took it, and we shook. His palm felt cool against mine.

“Gin, the Spider, whatever you call yourself, anything you ever need, anything I have, it’s yours,” Vinnie said in a low voice. “All you have to do is ask.”

The bartender didn’t owe me a thing for saving his daughter, not one damn thing. Rescuing the little girl from the horrors and death that had awaited her at the train yard had been my pleasure. But even more than that, I thought that Fletcher Lane, my murdered mentor, would have been proud of me for doing it. The old man had had a bit of an altruistic streak, helping people with certain messy problems. Pro fucking bono, as it were. Of course, I hadn’t known about Fletcher’s side business until after he’d died, but I still thought the old man would have approved of my actions last night.

“Whatever you want,” Vinnie said again. “It’s yours.”

I would have told Vinnie that we were square, but I knew his fatherly pride dictated that he find some way to pay me back. And as much as I was starting to enjoy following in Fletcher’s pro bono footsteps, I was never one to turn down a favor.

“I just might hold you to that.”

He returned my stare. “I hope you do. I really hope you do.”

“Daddy?” Natasha said in a soft voice, interrupting us. “Aren’t my nails pretty?”

The little girl held out her hands for us to inspect. Vinnie gave me another smile, then turned, went back to his daughter, and hugged her close once more.

“They’re beautiful, honey. Just beautiful,” he whispered against her hair.

And they were.

Jo-Jo settled Natasha in the downstairs den with some chocolate chip cookies that I’d baked yesterday at the Pork Pit, a glass of milk, and some old Scooby Doo reruns on one of the cable networks. Vinnie sat on the couch with his daughter, giggling right along with her at the slapstick antics on television.

The rest of us — Jo-Jo, Finn, Owen, and I — retreated to the next room over, the kitchen, which was one of my favorite rooms in the house. A rectangular butcher’s block table surrounded by several tall stools took up most of the area, while appliances done in a variety of pastel shades ringed three of the walls. Runelike clouds, Jo-Jo’s symbol, could be found everywhere in the room, from the place mats on the table to the dish towels piled next to the sink to the fresco that covered the ceiling.

My eyes went to the cloud-shaped clock on the wall. Just after one in the afternoon, more than twelve hours since I’d taken my swan dive into the Aneirin River. My thoughts turned to all the time I’d lost — and what might have happened while I’d been unconscious.

“What about the Pork Pit?” I asked Jo-Jo.

“Sophia’s covering for you,” the dwarf replied, bustling around the kitchen, pulling plates, silverware, and more out of the drawers and cabinets.

I nodded. The Goth dwarf knew just as much about running the barbecue restaurant as I did. I only hoped she wouldn’t have to work too hard today, prepping all the holiday orders, since I wasn’t there to help her.

Jo-Jo reached for an oven mitt and opened the stove door. The mouthwatering smell of fresh-baked lasagna drifted out to me, and I scooted off my stool.

“Here,” I said. “Let me help you with that.”

Jo-Jo gave me a hard stare with her clear, almost colorless eyes. “You just sit back down right now, darling. I can cook for you today. I was doing it for years before you came along, Gin.”

Properly chastised, I sank back onto my stool.

Jo-Jo dished up the lasagna, along with a Caesar salad and some garlic breadsticks. The others had already eaten. Good thing, since I attacked the food with unrestrained gusto, going back for three helpings. Then again, it had been the better part of day since I’d last had a meal.

When I was finished, Jo-Jo cleared everything away. In the den, Natasha had finished her cookies and milk and was now taking a nap. Vinnie snored along with his daughter. Not surprising. He’d been through just as traumatic an ordeal as she had, when he thought he’d lost her.

“So lay it out for me,” I said, once everything was squared away. “What happened last night? And what’s been going on while I’ve been out of it?”

Finn took a sip from the mug of chicory coffee that he’d set down on the counter. By my count, that was the third cup he’d had since I’d woken up. “After you ran back into the train yard, I told the kid to stay put and hung around for a few minutes, covering your back. Which was considerably easier to do once you started that fire. It lit up the whole depot like it was the Fourth of July. I popped a couple of the giants and dwarves who were headed your way. I looked for LaFleur and Mab, hoping to take them out too, but I didn’t have any angles on them. So I did all the damage that I could, then grabbed the girl and got the hell out of there.”

I thought that the goons had been shooting at me last night, but it had really been Finn, picking off a few more of Mab’s men, trying to add even more confusion to the scene.

“I got the kid back to my car,” Finn continued. “I drove around, trying to figure out where you might be, or how I could help you, but you were already gone, and I had no idea where. At least not until Owen called me. I told him where to start looking for you, while I brought Natasha over here. Jo-Jo patched her up, and Vinnie hasn’t let his daughter out of his sight since then.”

I looked at my foster brother. “Thank you for that.”

Finn shrugged. “You’re the one who did all the heavy lifting. I just killed a couple of Mab’s men and drove the girl over here.”

I nodded.

“As for the aftermath,” Finn said. “Well, things have gotten really interesting in the last few hours.”

“How so?” Owen asked.

Finn stared at him. “Well, for starters, that little fire that Gin started? It completely gutted the old train depot. Mab won’t be building any kind of nightclub there anytime soon.”

“It was just a little gasoline,” I said. “Surely, it didn’t do that much damage.”

Finn raised his eyebrows. “A little gasoline mixed with paint and all that other flammable shit that was lying around the depot. You started a four-alarm fire. The whole place went up like kindling, and Mab’s men freaked when they couldn’t contain it. They had to call the fire department to come out and handle it. Evidently you could see the flames and the smoke a mile away.”

I frowned. “Why didn’t Mab just take care of it herself? Fire’s her element. Surely, she could have put out the flames or at least helped contain them.”

Finn shrugged. “Maybe, but apparently she was too busy screaming at Elektra LaFleur for failing to kill you and bring back your head to care that her building was burning to the ground right in front of her. Rumor has it that Mab was a wee bit upset with her hired gun.”

Despite the fact that I’d almost been electrocuted and frozen to death last night, I couldn’t help but grin. Maybe it was petty of me, but I loved thwarting Mab’s best-laid plans.

“According to my sources, you’ve become LaFleur’s number one priority,” Finn said, taking another sip of his coffee. “Mab wants you dead yesterday, Gin. And if Elektra can’t get the job done in the next few days, then Mab’s going to show her how it’s done — starting with Elektra.”

I nodded. I’d expected nothing less after last night’s escapade. I’d infiltrated Mab’s newest little fiefdom, snatched Natasha right out from under her nose, burned her potential nightclub to the ground, and escaped from her assassin. Not a good night to be Mab. A great one for the Spider, though.

Finn had already told me that the other power players in Ashland had been sniffing around Mab, ever since I’d killed Jake McAllister in the Fire elemental’s own home a few weeks ago. For the first time in a long time, the city’s other underworld sharks sensed weakness around the Fire elemental, a weakness that they wanted to exploit. And now all this had happened.

A few more nights like this one, and I wouldn’t have to make a run at Mab. Her other enemies would do it for me. Not that they would succeed, of course, as Mab was no pushover. But my small victories would make them bold enough to try. That was something, at least.

I thought back to all the things that I’d overheard Mab and Elektra talking about last night in the railcar. Finding the Spider. Killing the Spider. Doing the same to Gin Blanco. And most importantly, murdering my sister, Bria. There was only one way I could prevent all of that from happening — I had to kill Elektra LaFleur. I’d been planning on doing it anyway, and I might have taken my shot at her last night, if I hadn’t had Finn and Natasha to think about.

But taking out the other assassin had morphed into a necessity. LaFleur was one of the best, and now she was on Mab’s ticking timetable. The assassin would torture and kill anyone she thought might know who I was in order to find me. Which meant there were three people in the most danger right now — Roslyn, Xavier, and Bria.

Roslyn and Xavier because Mab suspected they were somehow connected to Elliot Slater’s death and Bria because, well, she was her. The woman that Mab thought was destined to kill her. So Roslyn and Xavier had to be warned, and Bria, well, I wasn’t sure what to do about her. I knew that Xavier would help watch my sister’s back, since the giant was her partner on the Ashland police force. But there were just too many other times, too many other places, someone like LaFleur could get to her, kill her. There was really only one way to solve this particular problem.

“Well, then,” I murmured. “I guess I’ll just have to kill LaFleur first.”

“And how are you planning to do that?” Jo-Jo asked.

“Yeah,” Finn chimed in. “How are you going to do that? Because my sources tell me that Mab’s holed up on her estate and that she’s not coming out until Elektra brings her your head on a silver platter. The train yard was tricky enough. They weren’t expecting you to know about it, much less actually show up there. But Mab’s mansion is locked down tighter than Fort Knox. There’s no way you’re getting close to the Fire elemental on her own turf. And apparently, LaFleur’s in there with her as well.”

I thought about everything I knew about Elektra LaFleur. All the information in that file that Fletcher had compiled on her. All my interactions with her over the last few days. How she thought, how she killed, the things she seemed to want out of life. I thought back to the conversation I’d overhead between her and Mab, the one where they had talked about all the people the Fire elemental wanted dead.

“Oh, I don’t think I have to worry about getting into Mab’s estate,” I said, echoing the words I’d told Sophia just last night. “Sooner or later, LaFleur’s going to come to me.”

Owen frowned. “Why do you think that? Do you think she knows who you really are?”

I shook my head. “No. There’s no way she got a good look at me last night. Not in the dark with everything that was going on. Even if she did, I was wearing that ski mask, at least until it got ripped off when I fell into the river. But Elektra will come to the Pork Pit sooner or later.”

“But why?” Finn asked, his walnut-colored brows drawn together in confusion.

I told the two of them about everything I’d heard Mab and Elektra talk about in the railcar — namely, the untimely demise of one Gin Blanco, soon to be followed by that of Bria Coolidge.

“So you’re going to set yourself up as bait,” Owen said. “Okay. I guess I can understand that. But how do you know that LaFleur will show? She’s supposed to be hunting down the Spider, not spending her time assassinating you.”

I shrugged. “There’s no guarantee that she’ll come after me. But I was an assassin for a long time, and I ran into more than a few of my comrades over the years. Some of them were like me and Fletcher. They killed for the money or because it was a job that they were good at.”

Finn, Owen, and Jo-Jo all nodded.

“But LaFleur’s different,” I said. “She kills for the thrill of it. Because it amuses her. That’s why she toasted the dwarf at the docks. Because it gave her a charge, at least for a few minutes. She doesn’t think that Gin Blanco, simple restaurant owner, is any kind of threat to her at all. Hell, she bragged to Mab that killing me wouldn’t take up more than half an hour of her precious time. LaFleur will want, no, she’ll need some kind of little victory after letting me get away from her last night. Some little something she can take back to Mab that she accomplished, that she got right. But even more than that, she’ll need a kill for herself. Something to quiet that twitchy itch in her if only for a few hours.”

“And you think that Gin Blanco will be it,” Owen said, the worry loud and clear in his voice.

I nodded. “I do. Jonah McAllister wants me dead in the worst way. He just doesn’t want to get his hands dirty doing it. LaFleur will be all too happy to do the job for him.”

We sat in the kitchen in silence. In the den, Natasha’s cartoon played on, the high jinks and yuk-yuk laughter sounding cheerily obscene next to the grim reality facing me — kill or be killed. But like it or not, it was the story of my life. It had been ever since I was thirteen. So far, I’d been the one who’d done the killing, and it was a tradition I planned to continue.

“Say that she does come for you, that she comes to the Pork Pit to murder Gin Blanco,” Owen said. “What are you going to do?”

I stared at him with my flat gray eyes, letting him see the cold violence that always lurked there in the depths, just below the calm surface. “My plan is simple really. Kill the bitch before she kills me.”