Elemental Assassin [9] Heart of Venom

by Jennifer Estep

  I was relaxing in one of the cherry-red salon chairs when something warm, wet, and slightly rough touched my foot. I leaned to one side, and Rosco, Jo-Jo’s basset hound, licked my toes again, then gave me a hopeful woof . I stretched out my foot and rubbed it against his side. Rosco let out a loud, contented sigh and collapsed in a wrinkled puddle of black and brown fur, perfectly happy to let me rub his round tummy for as long as I would.

  “Hold still, darling,” Jo-Jo drawled as she put another coat of paint on my fingernails. “I’m almost done.”

  Rosco and the salon were the pride and joy of Jolene

  “Jo-Jo” Deveraux, the dwarven Air elemental who healed me whenever I got banged up or almost shot, stabbed, beaten, or magicked to death as the Spider. Given my current notoriety in the Ashland underworld and the legion of would-be murderers targeting me, I was over here more days than not. Then again, I would have been over here anyway, since Jo-Jo was a mother figure to me and part of my extended family.

  Since we were having a girls’ day at the salon, I’d forgone my usual long sleeves, jeans, and boots in favor of a red tank top, some white cutoff shorts, and a pair of black sandals that immediately got kicked off over into the corner when I’d first arrived an hour earlier. Jo-Jo, however, enjoyed dressing up, and she had on one of her prettiest

  pink dresses, along with her usual strand of pearls. Her

  white-blond hair was curled just so, her soft, understated

  makeup would have put any beauty queen to shame, and

  her bare feet showed off the perfect raspberry pedicure

  that she’d just given herself.

  “You know, you really don’t have to give me a manicure,” I said. “You should be relaxing today too.”

  Jo-Jo raised her head and gave me an amused look.

  Laugh lines fanned out from the corners of her clear, almost colorless eyes. “You did all the cooking, darling.

  That’s more work than this is. Besides, I like pampering you, Gin. You don’t take nearly enough time for yourself.

  Especially not these days.”

  “I know, I know,” I said. “But it’s a shame that you’re doing up my nails so neat and pretty when they’ll probably be chipped by this time tomorrow. Or probably before I leave here today. I never seem to be able to keep the polish on them for very long.”

  I held up my hand. Jo-Jo had painted my short nails a deep, dark red that was definitely my color. If nothing else, it would help hide the blood that was sure to get on my hands the next time some idiot tried to murder me.

  “Well, I have to agree with Jo-Jo,” a light, lilting voice chimed in. “I’d rather have your cooking than a manicure any day. This dark chocolate mousse pie is to die for, Gin.”

  I looked to my right where my baby sister was eagerly digging her fork into a piece of said pie. Like me, Detective Bria coolidge had dressed down today, in a pale blue T-shirt, gray cargo shorts, and brown sandals, although she was still beautiful, with her blond hair, rosy skin, and cornflower blue eyes. But just because Bria was off the clock didn’t mean that she wasn’t armed. I knew that her gun and her gold detective’s badge were stuffed into the oversize straw bag that she’d brought along, just like my knives were laid out on the buffet table within easy reach.

  Bria took another big bite of the pie and made the same sigh of contentment that Rosco had a minute ago.

  “What all did you make besides the pie?” she asked, her eyes going from one covered dish on the table to the next.

  “Well, since it’s girls only today, I decided to go all out,” I replied. “There’s the dark chocolate mousse pie you are currently enjoying, along with some chocolate truffles, double-chocolate-chip cookies, and dark-and milk-chocolate-dipped strawberries, kiwis, pineapples, and mangoes.”

  Bria gave me a wry grin. “I’m sensing a chocolate theme.”

  I returned her grin with one of my own. “You might say that. But there’s some real food too, in case we get tired of dessert. Plus, Roslyn is bringing some fresh veggies from her garden.”

  Jo-Jo glanced at the clock on the wall, which was shaped like a puffy cloud, her rune and the symbol for her Air magic. “Where is Roslyn?”

  Roslyn Phillips, another one of our friends, was also supposed to come to the salon today, along with Sophia

  Deveraux, Jo-Jo’s younger sister.

  Bria waved her fork in the air. “She called me this morning and said that she’d be a little late, that we should go ahead and start without her.”

  “And you went for the food first. You’re picking up some of Finn’s bad habits,” I teased. “How was your date with him the other night?”

  Bria’s fiery blush told me everything that I needed to know. “I plead the Fifth,” she murmured, and took another bite of pie.

  “Well, when you’re finished with that, come over here, darling, and tell me what color you want on your nails,” Jo-Jo said.

  My sister nodded, but her eyes were fixed on the glass cake stand that was filled with the chocolate-dipped fruit.

  Bria turned her attention back to the buffet, while Jo-Jo put the cap on the polish she’d used on my nails. She had started to lean over and put the bottle back into a tub with the others when she paused and frowned. She stared at the bottles of nail polish, but her eyes were cloudy and unfocused, as though she wasn’t really seeing what she was looking at.

  “Jo-Jo?” I asked. “Is something wrong?”

  The dwarf used her magic to heal wounds, but her power also gave her a bit of precognition, as it did with most Air elementals. While the stones whispered to me of all the things that people had done in a certain spot, the breeze whistled in Jo-Jo’s ear about all the things that folks might do in the future.

  Jo-Jo shook her head, making her soft, springy curls bounce around before they settled back into place. The cloudy, vacant look vanished from her eyes, although she put her hand up against her right temple and started massaging a small spot there, as if she suddenly had a head— ache.

  “I can’t put my finger on it exactly,” she said. “I’ve just . . . I’ve had a bad feeling these past few days. Actually, it’s been more than a few days. More like ever since that mess at Briartop a couple of weeks ago.”

  I grimaced. Jo-Jo was being kind.

  Mess didn’t adequately describe what had happened at the Briartop art museum, when a ruthless giant named clementine Barker had decided to use her army of underlings to rob the exhibit of Mab Monroe’s loot—and try to murder me to boot.

  Of course, I’d killed good ole clem and her gangster family, but my victories had come at a price: Jillian Delancey, the innocent woman who’d died because she’d had the bad, stupid, fatal luck to be wearing the same dress that I was wearing that night, causing one of clementine’s men to mistake her for me and shoot her.

  Jo-Jo noticed me frowning, and she leaned over and patted my hand. “Don’t worry, darling. It’s probably nothing. Sometimes I take these spells where it seems like something bad is going to happen at any second. Most of the time, it turns out to be nothing more than a little bit of heartburn.” Despite her words, her clear eyes grew cloudy and troubled once again. “I’ll just . . . I’ll be glad when Sophia’s here.”

  Like Roslyn, Sophia was running a little late that morning, since she’d wanted to get rid of the two dead giants in the cooler. I’d given all the restaurant staff the day off with pay, so both Sophia and I could enjoy our time at the salon, and I’d told Sophia that the giants’ bodies could wait another day, or at least until after our salon time, but she had insisted that she was going to dispose of them that morning. Or maybe she was simply being practical.

  Odds were that someone else would jump me at the Pork Pit sometime in the next few days, and, well, that cooler could only hold so many bodies. As it was, Finn and I had had to pack the two giants in like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle just so we could close the lid.

  Sophia had disposed of dozens of bodies for me and for my mentor, Fl
etcher Lane, before I’d taken over the assassination business from the old man. She could handle two giants with her eyes blindfolded and one hand tied behind her back. But Jo-Jo looked so worried that

  I wrapped my hand around hers and gave it a gentle squeeze, careful not to smear the polish that she’d put on my nails.

  “Do you want me to call Sophia and see where she’s at?”Jo-Jo shook her head. “No, that’s all right. Like I said, it’s probably just heartburn. I think I had one too many cups of Finn’s chicory coffee this morning. That stuff will knock your teeth plumb out of your mouth, it’s so strong.”

  She gave me a chipper smile, grabbed the plastic tub, put it on her lap, and started sorting through the many bottles of polish. Jo-Jo held up first one pink, then another, trying to find one that she thought Bria might like, but the cheery colors did little to brighten my mood.

  Maybe it was the way Jo-Jo’s sculpted eyebrows were pinched together in worry, or maybe it was how quickly her smile slipped back into a frown when she thought that I wasn’t looking at her anymore. I couldn’t see the future like she did, but Jo-Jo had been right about too many things in the past for me to dismiss her dread as nothing more than caffeine overload. If she thought something ominous was gathering on the horizon, then no doubt, the wind was blowing storm clouds in our direction right now.

  Despite my unease, the next half hour passed by in a blur of cheery conversation and good food. Jo-Jo opened one of the doors set into the back wall of the salon, and Rosco dutifully heaved himself to his feet and slowly waddled outside to do his doggy business. Bria finally finished her pie and sat down in my spot in the salon chair so Jo-Jo could do her nails while we waited for Roslyn and Sophia to arrive.

  I wandered over to the buffet table, piling my plate high and then taking a bite of everything in turn. The fried chicken salad on the mini sourdough rolls. The salty, crunchy, homemade potato chips. And then, of course, the mousse pie, which melted on my tongue bite after sinfully rich, decadent, delicious bite, as though I were eating a light, frothy cloud made of dark, luscious chocolate. I’d gotten up early that morning to put everything together, but it had been worth it. cooking was a passion of mine, a chance for me to show the people I cared about exactly how much I loved them—and a way for me to deal with whatever was bothering me.

  Like Jillian Delancey’s death.

  Not for the first time, Jillian’s face flashed before my eyes. Dark brown hair, dark eyes, great smile. All gone because of me, because of the dumb luck that seemed to delight in messing with me and mine time and time again.

  “What are you thinking about, Gin?” Bria asked, walking over to me and waving her strawberry-pink nails in the air to help dry them.

  I looked away from the patch of wall that I’d been aimlessly staring at and down at my plate of food, which I’d set on the table. “I’m thinking that I should have put some more kosher salt on the potato chips.”

  Bria shook her head, causing her blond hair to glimmer like strands of spun gold in the sunlight streaming in through the windows. “No, you’re not. You’re thinking about something else, something important. What happened at Briartop? Or is it Owen?”

  I grimaced at the mention of Owen Grayson, my, well, I didn’t know exactly what Owen and I were these days.

  Not together but not as far apart as we’d been. Owen had brought Jillian to the museum for Mab’s gala. She’d been his friend and business associate and had wanted to be more, although Owen had told me that he didn’t think of her like that. Either way, Jillian had still ended up dead because of me—the second woman associated with Owen to meet that particular fate in a matter of weeks.

  Bria laid a hand on my arm. “You know you can talk to me, right? About anything?”

  I nodded. I did know that, although it always amazed me. After years of thinking that Bria was dead, she’d reappeared in my life several months ago. It wasn’t easy, her being a cop and my being an assassin, but we were making it work, and we were closer now than ever before.

  “I know, and I appreciate it. What can I say? I like to

  brood over my food.”

  Bria laughed, but then her face turned serious, as if she wanted to ask me something. She started toying with the silverstone pendant around her throat. A primrose, the symbol for beauty, her rune.

  Watching her fiddle with her necklace made my fingers curl into my palms, touching the scars on my skin there, a small circle on either hand, each mark surrounded by eight thin rays. The same symbol was also stamped into the middle of the silverstone ring that I wore on my right index finger. My rune, a spider rune, the symbol for patience—and so many other things to me.

  It too had once been a necklace, until Mab had used her Fire magic to superheat the silverstone and melt the pendant into my hands, her brutal, effective way of torturing me and marking me in more ways than either one of us had known at the time.

  “Gin?” Bria asked.

  I snapped out of my memories. “I’m sorry. I spaced out there for a minute. Was there something that you wanted to ask me?”

  Bria drew in a breath, but before she could tell me whatever was on her mind, the sound of a door banging open at the front of the house cut her off. A moment later, footsteps sounded. I recognized the heavy tread as belonging to Sophia, but the odd thing was that it didn’t sound like she was walking normally. Instead, a series of scrape-scrape-scrapes screeched across the hardwood floor, as if Sophia was dragging one of her feet yet moving fast at the same time. Before I could puzzle out why she would be walking that way, she appeared in the salon doorway.

  Jo-Jo might be a sweet Southern lady with her pink dresses, polish, and pearls, but Sophia had a different style altogether: Goth. Today, as usual, she wore black from head to toe—boots, jeans, and a T-shirt with a big pair of puckered crimson lips on it. A crimson leather collar spiked with silverstone ringed her throat, and her lipstick was a flat black that matched her hair.

  Normally, I found Sophia’s style to be dark but also cool, quirky, and funky. The problem now was that her black clothes kept me from noticing the blood on her arm and leg for several crucial seconds.

  “Sophia?” I asked.

  Her black eyes met mine, and I saw something there

  I’d never seen before: fear.

  “Run,” Sophia rasped in her low, broken voice.

  Then she collapsed without another word.

  Chapter Three

  “Sophia?” Jo-Jo said. “Sophia!”

  Jo-Jo dropped the bottle of nail polish she’d been holding. The glass shattered on the floor, splattering the bright, glossy, strawberry liquid everywhere, but Jo-Jo didn’t notice as she ran past us to where Sophia lay. Bria and I started forward too, but we’d only taken two steps when the front door banged open again, as though someone had kicked it wildly and sent it flying into the wall. A second later, more footsteps, multiple sets, all heavy, loud, and determined, all headed our way.

  Whatever trouble Sophia had gotten into had followed her home.

  Bria and I glanced at each other, then both lunged for the buffet table. Bria went for the gun in her straw bag underneath the table, while I reached for my silverstone knives atop its far end. But before we could get to our weapons, six men burst into the salon, all carrying guns.

  Two of the men grabbed Jo-Jo and hauled her away from Sophia. The dwarf tried to fight back, but the men were strong, and they easily lifted her off her feet and pinned her against the closest wall. Two more men stood over Sophia, pointing their guns down at her, while another stepped forward, dug his hand into Bria’s golden hair, and yanked her up against his body. The sixth man grabbed my left arm and leered at me, but he didn’t drag me away from the buffet table. His first mistake—and his last.

  If it had just been me, I would have instantly gone on the attack, grabbing my knives and using them to cut into the men until there was nothing left of them but bloody chunks. But I couldn’t do that, not while they were holding guns on Bria, J
o-Jo, and Sophia. My Stone magic would let me survive being shot in the chest, but Bria’s Ice and the Deveraux sisters’ Air power wouldn’t.

  No, I’d have to be smart about things and wait for the right time to strike. Maybe I’d even keep one of the men alive long enough to question him. Because I wanted to know whom these bastards worked for and who’d sent them after me. That was the only reason I could think of for why they’d stormed into Jo-Jo’s salon: because they knew that the Spider was here, and their boss wanted my head as a prize.

  I coldly eyed the men. They were of varying shapes, sizes, and coloring, but they were all fit, trim, and tanned, as though they spent a lot of time outdoors. My gaze dropped to their hands, which were also rough, tan, and callused. Whoever they were, these guys were used to hard physical labor, which seemed at odds with the formality of their dress. They all wore old-fashioned brown suits, along with starched white shirts, heavy brown boots, and matching brown fedoras. All put together, they reminded me of some sort of Roaring Twenties gang, the kind that ran mountain moonshine back during Prohibition.

  My gaze dropped to the gun the man holding me had shoved into my side, an old-fashioned revolver. The sort of large, sturdy hand cannon that would put a good-size hole in anyone—dwarf, giant, vampire, elemental. They weren’t messing around when it came to their weapons.

  Good for them.

  Bad for them that they’d used the guns to burst into Jo-Jo’s salon. It was one thing to attack me at the Pork Pit or even at Fletcher’s house. I expected that these days. But my friends, my family, were off limits—period. Perhaps I’d let one of the men live long enough to crawl back to his boss and tell him that. Or maybe I’d deliver the message in person—along with the men’s bodies.

  One of the guys standing over Sophia turned and yelled over his shoulder. “We’ve got ’em, boss! It’s all clear now!”

  So the boss was here too. Good. That would save me the effort of tracking him down later or letting any of his men live.