Unraveled

by Jennifer Estep

  I cursed, realizing that I was about to lose my one and only lead on the Circle. I’d considered the possibility that someone might come here to silence him, but part of me hadn’t thought that it would actually happen since everything else I’d tried to track down the members of the Circle had been a dead end.

  “Not a meeting,” I growled. “They’re here to kill him.”

  Since Fedora was already past the gate, I didn’t have time to ease out of the van, sneak through the shadows, and stab the giants in the back the way I normally would have. So I dropped my binoculars, kicked my door open, barreled out of the vehicle, and ran down the street toward the SUV.

  “Gin! Wait!” Phillip shouted, scrambling to get out and follow me.

  But I needed to get to the man in the mansion before Fedora did, so I tuned him out. The giants whirled around at the sound of Phillip’s voice and spotted me racing toward them. They cursed, pulled guns from inside their trench coats, and snapped up the weapons.

  Pfft! Pfft! Pfft!

  I zigzagged, and the first round of bullets went wide. But when the giants paused to take more careful aim, I reached for my Stone magic and hardened my skin into an impenetrable shell.

  Pfft! Pfft! Pfft!

  The second round of bullets also went wide. The giants had come prepared, and the silencers on the ends of their weapons muffled the sounds of the shots. No lights snapped on inside the neighboring mansions. They wanted to keep this quiet? Well, so did I.

  Pfft! Pfft! Pfft!

  Two of the shots went wide again, but the third punched into my right shoulder, spinning me around. Still, thanks to my magic, it didn’t blast through me the way it otherwise would have. I skidded on the ice coating the street, but I managed to regain my balance and charge forward again.

  Instead of heading toward the giants, I ran straight at the SUV. When I was in range, I leaped up onto the bumper, then the hood, then scrambled up onto the roof. Before the giants realized what I was doing, I raced forward and leaped off the vehicle’s roof, pushing off hard and trying to get as high in the air as possible. Lucky for me, they’d parked close to the curb and the narrow sidewalk. A second later, my hands hit the top of the wall that fronted the mansion, and I dug my boots into the slick stones so that I could pull myself up onto the ledge. Fedora wasn’t the only one who could do gymnastics.

  I rolled off the top of the wall and dropped ten feet down to the other side, landing in a crouch. I palmed one of the silverstone knives tucked up my sleeves, surged to my feet, and darted forward across the lawn. The ice-crusted grass crunched like brittle bones under my boots.

  The light spilling out from the office perfectly illuminated Fedora, who was fifty feet ahead of me and moving fast, her breath streaming out behind her in a trail of frosty vapor. She must have heard the disturbance out on the street because she picked up her pace, pulled a gun out of her trench coat, and shot through the lock on the patio doors with one smooth motion. A second later, she was inside the mansion.

  “Hey!” a man’s voice shouted from inside the office. “Who are you? What do you think you’re doing?”

  I didn’t hear her reply, if there even was one.

  Pfft! Pfft! Pfft!

  Pfft! Pfft! Pfft!

  More and more shots sounded on the street behind me, but the giants weren’t aiming at me anymore. Phillip must have gotten into the fight. He could take care of himself, so I focused all my energy on sprinting across the lawn, trying to get to the mansion, even though it was already too late.

  Pfft! Pfft! Pfft!

  Sure enough, gunfire flashed inside the office, as bright as the holiday lights had been earlier. Someone had just been shot.

  A second later, Fedora stepped through the doors and out onto the stone patio. I squinted, but the office lights were behind her, and all I could see in the darkness was the pale glitter of her eyes above the black scarf wrapped around her face. She gave me a mocking salute with her gun before ducking back inside the mansion. Now that her mission was accomplished, no doubt she’d leave through one of the back doors and disappear into the woods. All without my even getting a good look at her face.

  I cursed. Even though I wanted to rush inside the mansion, I forced myself to slow down and approach the patio doors with caution, just in case she might be lying in wait to try to kill me too. I also grabbed hold of even more of my Stone power, hardening my skin as much as possible, on the off chance that she decided to blast me with bullets and elemental magic. As a final precaution, I reached out with my power, listening to all the emotional vibrations that had sunk into the stone walls of the mansion.

  Harsh, shocked mutters echoed back to me, from the shots the woman had just fired. Alongside that was a high, whiny chorus of worry, fear, and paranoia. But there were no sly whispers or dark murmurs of evil intent that would have signaled that she was hiding in the office, ready to put a bullet in my head the second I stepped inside. Whoever the woman was, she was long gone.

  Still, I was careful as I eased into the office, my knife still in my hand, my other hand up and lightly glowing with my Ice magic, ready to blast whoever might attack me.

  But only one person was in the office: the man I’d been watching.

  Jonah McAllister, my old nemesis, lay sprawled across the floor.

  2

  I stared down at Jonah, who remained absolutely motionless, his arms flung out to his sides, his legs twisted awkwardly beneath his body. Frustration filled me that Fedora had gotten to him, that she’d infiltrated his house as quickly and easily as, well, I could.

  My plan had been to stake out McAllister’s mansion and capture anyone the Circle might send to kill him, since he was the most obvious—and so far only—loose end that might lead back to them. Then I would have taken my sweet, bloody time questioning that person about her bosses. But Fedora had been faster and far more clever than I’d expected, and I was once again left with nothing. Just another in my growing string of failures when it came to the shadowy group.

  I was sick and tired of losing to those bastards, whoever they really were.

  I started to move past McAllister and leave the office to search the rest of the mansion for Fedora, even though I knew that she was already gone. But then I noticed that no blood had pooled under his body. In fact, I didn’t see any blood anywhere—not oozing across the floor, not spattered on the chairs, not even sprayed on top of the papers that had slipped off his desk and fallen around him like oversize snowflakes. So I stopped and took a closer look at him.

  Jonah McAllister was much thinner than the last time I’d seen and confronted him in this office. Black circles ringed his eyes, and his cheekbones poked out like arrows trying to punch through his face, as though he’d lost thirty pounds overnight. Even his skin, which he took such pride in and kept young, tight, and baby-smooth with a strict regimen of expensive Air elemental facials, seemed old, loose, and wrinkled, like wet paper that was barely clinging to the rest of his skull.

  His silver mane of hair was as glorious as ever, though, artfully styled and as bright and burnished as holiday tinsel even when the rest of him was littering the floor like a broken toy. I wondered how much product he’d used to keep his hair so firmly, perfectly anchored in place even as he’d been shot. Even Finn would have been impressed with his do.

  But the thing that caught my eye was the Christmas sweater that covered his chest—bright green with a grinning brown reindeer stretching across the front, complete with a red-sequined nose. Not McAllister’s usual slick suited style at all. In fact, the sweater looked handmade, although I couldn’t imagine who would take the time and trouble to knit Jonah a sweater—any sweater, much less one this hideous.

  Given how skeletal the rest of him was, the sweater seemed suspiciously thick and bulky, and I realized exactly what was underneath it. Of course. McAllister might be a weasel, but he was a smart weasel. He
knew exactly how angry folks still were with him over the Briartop robbery, and he would have taken precautions against being murdered in his own mansion.

  So I crouched down, drew back my hand, and slapped him across the face. McAllister winced at the sharp, stinging blow, but he didn’t open his eyes.

  So I slapped him again, harder this time.

  McAllister let out a little squeak of pain, but he still didn’t open his eyes, determined to play possum as long as possible.

  “Wakey, wakey, Jonah,” I drawled. “You can either open your eyes, or I can keep slapping you. I’m okay with that. I still need to get my cardio in for the day.”

  McAllister’s brown eyes popped open at my threat, then narrowed to slits as he recognized me. “Blanco?” he said. “What are you doing here?”

  “Well, I was hoping to capture your would-be assassin, but she managed to escape. I can’t decide if I’m happy or disappointed that you’re still alive.” I nodded at his ugly Christmas sweater. “I didn’t realize that Rudolph came equipped with a bulletproof silverstone vest these days.”

  “It seemed like a wise precaution.” He wet his lips and glanced around the office, as if he was worried that Fedora was going to come back and finish what she’d started.

  I almost wished that she would. Even now, despite how useful McAllister might be, part of me wanted to raise my knife and just end him for all the times he’d tried to have me killed. That would have been the smart move. But I’d been anything but smart these past few weeks. Why start now?

  “Gin! Gin!” Phillip called out, his voice growing louder and louder. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine!” I yelled back. “I’m here! In the office!”

  I got to my feet and went over to the patio doors. Phillip ran up to me, a gun clutched in his hand. His breath steamed in the air, and his cheeks were tomato red from the cold. I looked past him at the iron gate, which was standing wide-open now, but the black SUV that had been parked outside McAllister’s mansion was gone.

  “The giants banged off a few shots at me, then got in their car and left before I could get close to them. I tried to shoot out their tires, but . . .” Phillip shrugged.

  I nodded, disappointed but not surprised. Given the way she’d so easily infiltrated the mansion, Fedora had proven that she was clever. Of course she would have told her men to skedaddle at the first sign of trouble, especially if that trouble was me. She wouldn’t have wanted to risk the giants getting captured and questioned about her and the Circle. But frustration surged through me all the same. Once again, all I’d accomplished was a big fat lot of nothing, but I forced myself to focus on what was important right now.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Are you okay?”

  Phillip nodded. “Yeah. Just a little winded from trying to catch up.” His gaze flicked over to McAllister, who was slowly getting to his feet. “I see that he managed to survive after all.”

  “Seems our good friend Jonah likes to pad out his holiday sweaters by wearing a silverstone vest underneath them.”

  “How practical,” Phillip said, “given how many people want to kill him.”

  “Indeed.”

  McAllister looked down and pulled his sweater away from his chest. The reindeer’s left eye, right over McAllister’s heart, had been obliterated, and I could see the glint of the three bullets caught in the black vest underneath. Fedora hadn’t been messing around. All of those were kill shots, and the tight grouping was especially impressive. So she could shoot too, in addition to her acrobatics. She’d definitely wanted him dead, which only made me more curious as to what, if anything, he might know about the Circle.

  Jonah McAllister had been the personal lawyer for Mab Monroe, the Fire elemental who’d run the Ashland underworld for years before I’d killed her. Mab had also been the bitch who’d murdered my mother, Eira, and my older sister, Annabella.

  For years, I’d thought that Mab had killed my family because of a long-standing feud between the Snows and Monroes, as well as her worries about my Ice and Stone magic potentially overtaking her Fire power someday. But Hugh Tucker had claimed that Eira had been making trouble within the Circle, so he and the other members had given Mab the go-ahead to murder her. Something else that had come as a stunning, horrifying revelation, and something else that had made me even more determined to get answers about my mother, the Circle, everything.

  Starting right now.

  McAllister grimaced and let his sweater drop back down into place, even though the one-eyed reindeer looked anything but cheerful now. He glanced back and forth between me and Phillip, his mouth pinching in thought. I could almost see the wheels turning in his brain as he wondered what we were doing here—and how he could best twist the situation to his advantage.

  I was still holding my knife, so I stabbed it at the couch along the wall. “Sit.”

  McAllister swallowed, but he moved over and plopped down on the couch. I grabbed a chair that was beside the desk and moved it into the open space in front of the couch. Then I turned it around, sat down, and leaned my elbows across the back of it. Phillip stayed by the patio doors, glancing outside and keeping watch, just in case Fedora and her giants decided to double back and take another shot at us.

  I looked at McAllister, and he stared back at me, wetting his lips over and over, as well as repeatedly dry-washing his hands. If he knew how desperate I was for information—any information—about the Circle, he wouldn’t tell me a damn thing, just like I’d told Phillip earlier in the van. So I kept staring at McAllister, my face calm and blank, waiting for him to crack and start talking to fill the tense silence.

  It didn’t take long.

  “What do you want, Blanco?” McAllister snapped.

  “Well,” I said, still keeping my easy tone and casual posture, “in case you haven’t heard, locked up here in your ivory tower, I am officially the queen bee of the ­underworld these days.”

  He scowled, but he didn’t say anything.

  “It has come to my attention that there are some folks who want you dead, Jonah. Well, more so than usual, anyway. Given my new position, you would think that these people would check in and get my permission for the hit, especially when it’s so well-known how very much I want you to stand trial for your crimes at the Briartop art museum back during the summer. But these folks didn’t get that okay from me, so I decided to come by and spoil their little assassination party.”

  It was complete bullshit. The only reason I wanted McAllister to keep on breathing was so I could pump him for information, but he didn’t need to know that.

  “Now, I’ll admit that these folks actually surprised me, actually got the better of me. I didn’t think that they would be quite so smart, quick, and determined. But that only makes me more curious about who’s decided to stir things up in my sandbox.”

  “Your sandbox?” McAllister sneered. “It’s not your sandbox, and it never will be. Not the way that it was Mab’s. The other underworld bosses were too afraid of her to make much trouble. At least, not so openly. You, my dear, are a completely different story. Queen or not, you’ve killed enough of their friends that they all want you dead.”

  I snorted. “Please. My body count isn’t nearly as impressive as Mab’s. She fried people just for looking at her the wrong way.”

  “Certainly,” McAllister agreed. “But Mab never pretended to be anything other than the stone-cold, ruthless bitch she truly was. Everyone’s sick and tired of your little moral code and annoying self-righteousness. Sooner or later, one of the other bosses is going to succeed in taking you out. I just hope that I’m still alive to see that day when it comes.”

  “Going to dance on my grave, Jonah? That’s a bit cliché.”

  He scowled at me, anger staining his cheeks and making them almost as red as the reindeer nose on his garish sweater.

  I shrugged. �
�You’re probably right. I never wanted the job, but now that it’s mine, I’m going to make the best of a bad situation and all the bad, bad folks who come along with it.” I leaned forward. “Now, tell me what you know about the Circle.”

  He frowned. For once, his forehead actually wrinkled the way a normal person’s would, despite all his years of Air elemental facials. “The Circle? What Circle?”

  McAllister was a good lawyer and more than capable of all sorts of theatrics, including lying to my face. I studied him, but for once he seemed genuinely confused.

  “The Circle,” I repeated, trying to keep my voice smooth and even and not let him know how important this was to me. “They’re the ones who sent that assassin after you tonight.”

  He shook his head. “Never heard of them.”

  I glanced at Phillip, who shrugged back at me. He thought that McAllister was telling the truth too.

  “The Circle,” I said for a third time, a bit of annoyance creeping into my tone. “Some secret group that Mab was involved with. I want to know everything you know about them.”

  McAllister shook his head again. “Sorry, but I’ve never heard of any Circle. What kind of idiotic nickname is that anyway? Sounds like a yoga group.”

  I had to grind my teeth to keep from leaping up out of the chair, shoving my knife up against his throat, and screaming at him to give me some answers. It took me a moment to unclench my jaw.

  “Okay, say that I actually believe that you’ve never heard of the Circle. What about Hugh Tucker?” I asked, trying a different avenue. “Vampire, black hair, goatee, really fast. Tends to blend into the background most of the time.”

  McAllister chewed on his lower lip. “Hugh Tucker, Hugh Tucker. Why do I know that name . . .” He snapped his fingers. “Tucker. I remember him. Mab used to go out with him from time to time. Smug, smarmy bastard. I never did understand what she saw in him.”