Haints and Hobwebs

by Jennifer Estep

  Chunks of bloody rubble blew back onto Graves, who lost his footing and went down on the floor.

  I was on him a second later.

  I cut and cut and cut him, making Ice knife after Ice knife as they broke and shattered in my hands, but the vampire just wouldn’t die. He wasn’t even bleeding, no matter where or how deep I cut him, and I couldn’t figure out why. All that appeared on his skin were these thin silver lines, like I had dipped my fingers into a bucket of liquid silver and painted stripes all over him.

  I let out a low growl of frustration, and Graves just laughed in my face.

  “Let me know when you get tired,” he said. “I’ll be happy to kill you then.”

  A ghostly hand waved at me, and I turned my head to see Tess standing in the middle of the shack, right where the table had been. She held her hands out wide and whirled around and around, the faint shimmer of her body reflecting like moonlight off the snow globes. It took me a second to realize what she was trying to tell me.

  “The souls,” I whispered.

  Somehow Graves was drawing his power from the trapped souls. That was why I couldn’t kill him—because he couldn’t be killed until they were all free.

  Graves saw me hesitate, then used his Air magic to blast me off him the same way he had blasted Owen. I let him. I crashed into one of the shelves, then slumped down onto the floor and stayed there.

  Graves got up, straightened his tie, and stepped toward me. “And now I think it’s time for you to die, my dear.”

  I ignored him. Being smug was a quick way to get dead in my experience. Instead, I stretched up a hand, reaching for the closest globe. It only took a second for me to use my magic to make it Ice over. I kept concentrating, and my elemental Ice quickly spread from one globe to the next. In seconds, the Ice had coated all of them, and the shack looked like a snowstorm had suddenly erupted inside.

  “What are you…what you are doing?” Graves asked, but it was already too late.

  “Killing you,” I snarled.

  I sent out a final brilliant burst of Ice magic and shattered each and every one of those damn snow globes.

  Chapter Six

  For a second, nothing happened. Then, one by one, the globes erupted like mini-volcanoes, until the smashing symphony of glass was all I could hear.

  Well, that and Graves’s screams.

  As the globes broke, all the trapped souls spilled out. One by one, they woke from their long slumber and winked back to life, until the whole shack pulsed with their bright, beautiful lights.

  And then they went after Graves.

  It was like watching a swarm of killer bees attack a wounded animal. One after another, the lights—the souls—slammed into Graves until they covered his entire body.

  The vampire screamed and screamed, but the souls kept attacking. He fell to his knees and then onto his back, but the souls kept on with their psychic swarm, feasting on him the same way the vamp had once feasted on them.

  I couldn’t really see what was happening, but I got the impression that the souls were taking back whatever pieces of themselves Graves had stolen in the first place.

  It seemed to go on and on, although it couldn’t have lasted much more than a minute, two tops. Finally, the souls started to peel off. In ones and twos, they flew out of the shack, escaping up into the atmosphere—to the stars, to heaven, or maybe someplace else entirely.

  Either way, they were finally free.

  And when it was over and the last of the silvery souls was gone, I got to my feet, dug one of my knives out of the rubble, and walked over to where Graves lay spread-eagle on the floor.

  The vampire was a mere husk of his slick self—literally. However he’d used his Air elemental magic to trap the souls in the first place, however they’d been sustaining his existence over the years, all that power was gone now—and him along with it.

  His skin was dry, splotchy, and shriveled, like he was severely dehydrated. His black hair slid out of his scalp in clumps, and his formerly white fangs were now brown and brittle-looking.

  I’d seen photos before of vampires who’d been starved, who’d been denied the blood they needed in order to survive. That was what Graves looked like now. It was nothing less than he deserved and far kinder than what he’d inflicted on his victims.

  Soft whimpers rasped out of the vampire’s throat, and he looked like he was about a minute away from dying. As the Spider, I was good at judging things like that. His desperate gaze fixed on me, and I leaned over him just like he’d done to me earlier.

  “You know what the difference is between you and me, Graves? I don’t give people a choice about where I cut them,” I said. “I know it’s not very sporting, but one slice is usually all I need.”

  Then I leaned over a little more and cut the bastard’s throat, just to be sure.

  This time, he bled, and his blood was just as red as mine.

  * * *

  Once I was sure that Graves was dead, I helped Owen to his feet, and the two of us stumbled out of the shack and into the yard. We found a rickety iron bench half hidden in the weeds, and the two of us sat down until we got our breath back.

  Owen picked glass and other debris out of his hair, while I lifted up my shirt and looked at the wound on my stomach. Still bleeding, but I’d be all right until I got to Jo-Jo and she healed me.

  I turned to Owen. “Jo-Jo called you, didn’t she? And told you where I was going?”

  He winced. “She said she had a feeling you might need help and sent me after you. Are you mad at her? Or…me? For coming after you? I know you like to…work alone.”

  I might have been angry before, back when I’d been the Spider full-time and still killing people for money. But since then, I’d learned that it was okay to rely on other people—sometimes, anyway.

  If anything, today proved that Owen’s feelings for me were real—and so were mine for him. Owen had come after me when I needed him to, and I knew that if I didn’t find a way to kill Graves, the vamp would have sucked out Owen’s soul and stuck it in one of those eerie snow globes. And that upset me more than anything had in a long, long time.

  “I don’t want to crowd you, Gin,” Owen said, taking my silence for disapproval. “But I’m always going to come for you, no matter how much danger you’re in, and no matter how much danger that puts me in. I hope you know that. I hope you know just how much you mean to me. You’re just…everything.”

  The intensity burning in his violet eyes took my breath away. I reached over and squeezed his hand in mine, trying to put all my feelings into that one simple gesture. Owen squeezed back, telling me that he understood—and that he always would.

  “I do know that,” I said in a soft voice. “And I feel the same way about you. I’m glad Jo-Jo told you what I was doing. Believe me, I was happy you showed up when you did.”

  Owen grinned. “You know, we make a pretty good team. I come in as the distraction, and then you take care of the bad guy. Or something like that.”

  I shook my head and laughed. We sat there, holding hands and resting, for a few more minutes. I was just about to suggest that we hike down the holler to my car when a shimmering light caught my eye and Tess strolled out of the shack.

  And this time, she wasn’t alone.

  The mountain girl was holding hands with a man who was just as pale and translucent as she was. Thomas Kirkwood. I recognized him from the photo Finn had shown me at Jo-Jo’s salon.

  The two of them drifted away from the shack, then stopped. Thomas stared down at Tess, and she beamed right back at him.

  “Wow,” Owen whispered.

  I eyed him. “You can see them?”

  “I can,” Owen said in a low voice. “They look so…happy. So…in love.”

  And they did. Thomas gently brushed a strand of Tess’s hair back over her shoulder, his fingers lingering there like he couldn’t believe she was real, like he couldn’t believe they were finally together again after all these long years apart
.

  Tess clamped her hands over her mouth like she was trying not to cry, then threw her arms around Thomas’s neck. She rained kisses on her lover’s face, and a silver star exploded with each press of her lips against his skin. Thomas turned his head and caught Tess’s lips in his, and a whole shower of stars flickered and danced around them.

  “Wow,” I whispered, echoing Owen’s sentiment.

  We sat there and watched the two lovers.

  Finally, Owen spoke again. “Do you think that’ll be us in a hundred years?”

  I arched an eyebrow. “You mean, will we finally be reunited after you’ve spent almost a century being a soul-sucking vampire’s power source and lightning bug? I sincerely hope not.”

  Owen bumped me with his shoulder. “You know that’s not what I mean.”

  “I know,” I said, laughing.

  I turned my attention back to Thomas and Tess. They had their arms wrapped around each other. Somehow I knew that they’d never be apart again.

  Tess saw me staring and gave me a happy wave. Her smile was so wide and bright that I thought she’d never stop glowing. Maybe she never would, in whatever afterlife she was headed to now that she’d been reunited with her long-lost love.

  “I don’t know if that will be us or not,” I said, my voice thick with all sorts of emotions that I didn’t want to think about too much right now. “But it’s a nice thing to hope for, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is,” Owen murmured. “Yes, it is.”

  He slipped his arm around my shoulder and pulled me close. I laid my hand on his heart and rested my head on his shoulder.

  Quiet, still, bruised, and bloody, we sat there on the bench until the sun set and Tess and Thomas finally faded away for good. Finally at peace and with each other as they belonged, as they were always meant to be—and as they’d always stay from now on.

  Now and always.

  GIN BLANCO WILL RETURN

  About the Author

  Jennifer Estep is a New York Times, USA Today, and international bestselling author, prowling the streets of her imagination in search of her next fantasy idea. She is the author of the following series:

  Elemental Assassin: The books focus on Gin Blanco, an assassin code-named the Spider, who can control the elements of Ice and Stone. When she’s not busy battling bad guys and righting wrongs, Gin runs a barbecue restaurant called the Pork Pit in the fictional Southern metropolis of Ashland. The city is also home to giants, dwarves, vampires, and elementals—Air, Fire, Ice, and Stone.

  Crown of Shards: The books focus on Everleigh Blair, who is seventeenth in line for the throne of Bellona, a kingdom steeped in gladiator tradition. But when the unthinkable happens, Evie finds herself fighting for her life—both inside and outside the gladiator arena.

  Mythos Academy spinoff: The books focus on Rory Forseti, a seventeen-year-old Spartan girl who attends the Colorado branch of Mythos Academy. Rory’s parents were Reapers, which makes her the most hated girl at school. But with a new group of Reapers and mythological monsters on the rise, Rory is the only one who can save her academy.

  Mythos Academy: The books focus on Gwen Frost, a seventeen-year-old Gypsy girl who has the gift of psychometry, or the ability to know an object’s history just by touching it. After a serious freak-out with her magic, Gwen is sent to Mythos Academy, a school for the descendants of ancient warriors like Spartans, Valkyries, Amazons, and more.

  Black Blade: The books focus on Lila Merriweather, a seventeen-year-old thief who lives in Cloudburst Falls, West Virginia, a town dubbed “the most magical place in America.” Lila does her best to stay off the grid and avoid the Families—or mobs—who control the town. But when she saves a member of the Sinclair Family during an attack, Lila finds herself caught in the middle of a brewing war between the Sinclairs and the Draconis, the two most powerful Families in town.

  Bigtime: The books take place in Bigtime, New York, a city that’s full of heroic superheroes, evil ubervillains, and other fun, zany, larger-than-life characters. Each book focuses on a different heroine as she navigates among the city’s heroes and villains and their various battles.

  For more information on Jennifer and her books, visit her website at www.JenniferEstep.com. You can also follow her on Facebook, Goodreads, BookBub, and Twitter, and sign up for her newsletter.

  Happy reading, everyone!

  Other books by Jennifer Estep

  The Crown of Shards series

  Kill the Queen

  The Mythos Academy spinoff series

  featuring Rory Forseti

  Spartan Heart

  Spartan Promise

  The Mythos Academy series

  featuring Gwen Frost

  Books

  Touch of Frost

  Kiss of Frost

  Dark Frost

  Crimson Frost

  Midnight Frost

  Killer Frost

  E-novellas and stories

  First Frost

  Halloween Frost

  Spartan Frost

  The Black Blade series

  Cold Burn of Magic

  Dark Heart of Magic

  Bright Blaze of Magic

  The Bigtime series

  Karma Girl

  Hot Mama

  Jinx

  A Karma Girl Christmas (holiday story)

  Nightingale

  Fandemic