Black Widow

by Jennifer Estep

  I was still clenching the hundred-dollar bill in my other fist, and I deliberately held it up in the air, right in front of her smug face, and then tore it in two. The sound of the paper ripping was as loud as a gunshot in the hushed quiet of the restaurant.

  But I didn’t stop there. I put the two halves of the bill together and then ripped them apart, until I had four pieces.

  Rip-rip-rip-rip.

  I did that over and over again, until I had reduced the hundred-dollar bill to tiny pieces. Then I dusted them all off my hands, watching the green and white bits float down to the counter like confetti.

  By this point, my fingers felt like they were nothing more than brittle bones about to dissolve from the searing strength of Madeline’s acid magic, even though my skin remained unblistered and unblemished. But the scorching pain was nothing compared to the cold rage beating in perfect sync with my heart.

  For the first time since I’d met her, a bit of uncertainty flickered in Madeline’s eyes. She’d deliberately coated the money and order ticket with her acid magic, another of her little traps, but I wasn’t reacting the way she had expected. She might play games, but so could I.

  “You made a mistake,” I said in a calm tone. “Several, actually.”

  Madeline arched a dark, delicate eyebrow. “Really? And what would those be?”

  “You dragged my friends and family into this. Roslyn. Finn. Owen. Eva. You shouldn’t have done that.”

  She shrugged, unconcerned by the ice in my voice. “It’s not my fault that your friends are having such . . . difficulties.”

  “Of course not. You would never stoop to actually getting your hands dirty yourself unless you absolutely had to. That’s why it took you so long to come at me. You had to set all your little cogs and wheels into motion to screw with me and the people I care about. Like getting Dobson in your pocket, and having him browbeat that poor health inspector into going along with this sham here today.”

  “You give me far too much credit, Gin. I might have made some new friends since I’ve been in town, but what you’re talking about sounds like a grand conspiracy. I’m just an employer who was concerned about a worker. That’s why I reported my maid missing this morning, nothing more. Emery was nice enough to contact Captain Dobson for me, since he was an old friend of her uncle Elliot’s. Dobson promised to look into things, and he drew his own conclusions from the information I gave him.”

  “Sure he did.”

  But Madeline didn’t miss a beat. “I hate to point this out, darling, but you sound a bit . . . paranoid. As if the whole world is arrayed against you. Perhaps you should take some time off while the restaurant is closed. Talk to someone about these feelings of persecution you have.”

  “You’re right,” I said, disdain dripping from each and every one of my words. “I have given you far too much credit. I thought that you would do something grander, more impressive. But this”—I waved my hand out at the restaurant—“this is nothing. Rather disappointing, actually. Mab would have been so much more direct about things. Why, your mama would have burned this place to the ground with her bare hands already. Not spent all her time and energy bribing, wheedling, and batting her eyes to get my restaurant shut down by a crooked cop.”

  “I am nothing like my mother,” Madeline snapped, her calm façade finally cracking at the mention of Mab. “She was a grand fool.”

  “Mab was many things, but she was never, ever a fool. Not when it came to me. She once hired a whole squad of bounty hunters to come to Ashland just to hunt me down. And when she finally figured out who I was, well, she called me out herself, face-to-face, elemental to elemental, villain to villain. You could have done the same. You should have done the same. Challenged me to a duel and tried to kill me yourself with your acid magic.”

  I snorted and gave another dismissive wave of my hand. “But you? With your sly little schemes? You’re just a pale, weak imitation of her, sugar.”

  Madeline couldn’t stop herself from sucking in a ragged breath at my insult, but I wasn’t done yet.

  I leaned over the counter so that our faces were inches apart. “You should have killed me the second you had the chance. That’s the other mistake you made, and that’s the one that’s going to cost you—everything.”

  Madeline’s green eyes burned with anger, and I could almost see the gears grinding in her mind as she debated whether to reach for her acid magic and try to take me out, right here, right now, all her elaborate schemes be damned. But after a moment, she blinked, then blinked again, and the hot rage in her gaze cooled, congealed, and crystallized into icy, calculating hate. Yeah. Mine too.

  I stayed up in her face a few seconds longer to let her know that I’d seen her hesitation, then drew back behind the cash register. “You should have come at me head-on, but you just had to play a little game with me instead.”

  “Perhaps I like my games,” Madeline replied, her voice and features mild and unruffled again.

  “Oh, I know you do. But there’s one problem with playing games.”

  She arched her eyebrow at me again. “Oh, really? What’s that?”

  I smiled, showing her my teeth and all the cold, cold venom in my heart. “There’s always a chance that you can lose.”

  Another flash of uncertainty darkened her eyes before she was able to hide it. “I never lose, Gin. And I don’t intend to now.”

  “Intentions are for fools. You do, or you don’t. Or in your case, you just die.”

  Her crimson lips pulled back, and she returned my smile with an even wider, toothier one of her own. “Oh, I think that you’re talking about yourself in this case, Gin. After all, you’re the one in trouble with the law, not me.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “Yes, we will,” she murmured. “Yes, we will.”

  We stared at each other a few more seconds before Madeline tilted her head at me.

  “As much as I enjoy our little chats, I’m afraid I must be going. I’ve still got that dedication to attend. And you . . .” She stared around the deserted restaurant. “Well, you’ve got a lot of problems to take care of, don’t you?”

  I didn’t respond.

  “But don’t let this little bit of unpleasantness get you down. I do hope that you enjoy the rest of your day, Gin. I know I certainly will.”

  Madeline gave me one more arrogant smirk before she pivoted on her white stiletto and sashayed out of the Pork Pit.

  8

  I would have liked nothing more than to palm a knife, run around the counter, and bury the blade up to the hilt in Madeline’s back. But I couldn’t do that. Not without getting even more stuck in her web than I already was.

  Besides, Emery and Dobson were peering in through the windows, waiting for me to attack Madeline. Attempted murder would land me in a jail cell lickety-split, and if that happened, then the acid elemental would get exactly what she wanted.

  I wasn’t about to fall into that trap, so I let her walk away—for now.

  A few seconds later, the front door opened, and Silvio stepped inside.

  I untied my apron, pulled it off, and tossed it onto the counter. “Now what?”

  He came over to me, grabbed his silverstone briefcase from where he’d left it on the counter, and opened it, sliding his tablet inside. “They’re taking Sophia down to the main police station to book her for assaulting Dobson. Given the situation, I suggest that we follow them and be waiting when they process her so we can bail her out as quickly as possible.”

  I nodded, scanning the storefront, but Catalina was nothing if not efficient. In addition to cashing out the customers, she’d also gone ahead and turned off the appliances, put the extra food away, and stacked the dirty dishes into plastic tubs. All I had to do was walk out the front door, lock it behind me, and the restaurant would be closed.

  The only loose end was the dead woman in the freezer, but it wasn’t like I could move her body to a better location right now. Not with Dobson and the cops milling aro
und outside and peering in through the windows. I didn’t even dare to leave the storefront and go stack some boxes on top of the freezer. The cops might notice, come back in, and search the restaurant again.

  But instead of leaving, I settled my gaze on the framed, blood-spattered copy of Where the Red Fern Grows that hung on the wall close to the cash register. My own little tribute to Fletcher, since that was the book he’d been reading the night he was tortured to death in the Pork Pit.

  I hadn’t been able to save Fletcher, but I wouldn’t lose his restaurant too. I would find a way to beat Madeline at her own game, as dark, dangerous, and twisted as it was. I wasn’t going to leave anything to chance, not anymore, so I went over and took the framed book off the wall, along with a photo of Fletcher and his friend Warren T. Fox, taken back when they were young.

  “Gin?” Silvio asked, wondering what I was doing.

  I came around the end of the counter and handed him the frames. “Here. Keep these safe for me. Please.”

  Most folks would have thought it strange that I was so concerned about a battered book and an old photo, but Silvio nodded and took them without a word, slipping them both into his briefcase.

  “My car is down the block,” he said. “I’ll wait for you there.”

  He nodded, then turned and left the restaurant, opening and closing the door so carefully that the bell barely made a whisper at his passing.

  I walked over to the door and started to follow him, but something made me stop and turn around.

  My gaze swept over the storefront, so familiar with its booths and tables and the pig tracks curling across the floor, but yet so very different right now, with its empty seats and dirty dishes and crushed napkins that littered everything. Even though the sun was shining brightly outside, beating in through the yellow notices taped up to the windows, the interior still seemed dim and dull and sad.

  Hollow, just like my heart.

  But there was nothing I could do to fix it right now, and Sophia needed my help.

  So I clicked off the lights, turned the sign on the door over to Closed, and left the Pork Pit.

  * * *

  I locked the front door behind me, hurried down the sidewalk, and slipped into the passenger’s seat of Silvio’s navy-blue Audi. A blue-and-pink pin shaped like the neon pig sign outside the restaurant dangled from the car’s rearview mirror. Of course, the real sign above the front door was dark now, since I’d turned off all the lights, but the crystals in the pin sparkled in the afternoon sun, as bright, colorful, and vibrant as ever. It comforted me.

  Silvio cranked the engine and pulled away from the curb. While he drove toward the station, I pulled my phone out of my jeans pocket and hit one of the numbers in the speed dial.

  She answered on the third ring. “Yes, darling?”

  Jolene “Jo-Jo” Deveraux’s voice filled my ear, but it wasn’t the soft, sweet, Southern drawl I expected. Instead, Jo-Jo’s voice was harsh, clipped, and angry. I opened my mouth to answer her, but a loud screech-screech-screech cut me off, followed by a series of bang-bang-bang-bangs.

  I frowned. “Jo-Jo? What’s that noise? What’s wrong?”

  She huffed in my ear. “Apparently, someone didn’t like the perm I gave her last week and is claiming that I burned her scalp and made all her hair fall out. A bunch of folks from the health inspector’s office are here, plowing through the salon, scraping paint off the walls, and making a mess of everything. Now they’re saying that I’ve got black mold everywhere, even though I just remodeled the entire salon a few months ago.”

  My hand tightened around my phone. So Madeline had sicced the health department on Jo-Jo too, and from the sound of things, they were demolishing the dwarf’s beauty salon in the back of her antebellum home. I’d wondered why Madeline had spent so much time ingratiating herself with all the civic and other groups in town. Now she was making all those connections and all that money she’d spread around work for her.

  “And, to top it off, I’ve got a bunch of stuck-up snobs from the historical association here,” Jo-Jo went on, her voice getting louder, sharper, and angrier with every word. “They’re claiming that I haven’t been taking proper care of my house—the house that’s been in my family for more than a hundred and fifty years—and that there’s some silly ordinance that says that unless I bring it up to code in thirty days, that the historical association can take ownership of it. Over my dead body, that’s what I say.”

  “Jo-Jo, listen to me—” I started to warn her to just go along with them for now, but I didn’t get the chance.

  “Hey!” she snapped. “There’s no mold on that wall. Don’t you dare punch that sledgehammer through my brand-new paneling!”

  Thump-thump-thump.

  Crash-crash-crash.

  Bang-bang-bang.

  More and more demolition noises rang out, along with the sharp, distinctive tinkle-tinkle-tinkle of breaking glass.

  “Great. Now there’s a giant hole in my wall, and one of these idiots has managed to upend and break an entire tub of nail polish all over the floor. I’m sorry, Gin, but I have to go. I’ll call you back when I get these morons out of my salon.”

  She hung up before I could tell her about the trouble Sophia was in—or how Madeline was screwing with all of us today, including her.

  I thought about calling her back, but she probably wouldn’t answer. Besides, Sophia was in more danger right now than Jo-Jo was. Still, I sent a text to Finn, asking him to check in with Jo-Jo when he got a chance. I waited, but the phone didn’t beep back. Looked like Finn was busy dealing with his own problems. I sighed and put my phone down on the console in the center of the car.

  Silvio cleared his throat. “I take it that Ms. Deveraux is having some trouble as well?”

  “Another surprise visit from the health inspector,” I muttered. “And the historical association. Madeline hit her with a double whammy.”

  “She has certainly been effective in planning her attacks to target all of you at once. A classic divide-and-conquer tactic.”

  “I know,” I muttered again. “And I didn’t even see it coming. I thought that she would send a swarm of giants into the restaurant or hire a passel of assassins to attack me. This is Ashland, after all. Instead, the bitch is trying to legalese me to death.”

  “The law can be as effective a weapon as anything else,” Silvio pointed out in an annoyingly calm tone. “Sometimes, even more so than direct brute force or overwhelming numbers.”

  I slumped in the leather seat, put my head back, and closed my eyes, trying to rein in my temper and growing frustration. I didn’t do legal. I did black-of-the-night, launch-myself-from-the-shadows, cut-your-throat attacks. Not this . . . this political maneuvering.

  It disgusted me that Madeline wouldn’t come right out and face me herself, elemental to elemental, but there was nothing I could do about it. Right now, she had the advantage, and my friends and I were scrambling to playing catch-up. No, scratch that. We weren’t playing catch-up. We weren’t even playing defense. Madeline had blindsided all of us, and we were sprawled every which way on the battlefield, flat on our backs, trying to find enough strength to shake off all the punishing, head-spinning blows she’d landed on us one after another.

  I brooded the few blocks over to the station. Like many buildings in the downtown loop, the main headquarters of the Ashland Police Department was located in a large, sprawling prewar building made of dark gray granite that took up an entire block. With its columns, crenellations, and curlicued carvings of leaves and vines, it was a lovely structure, despite the ugliness that passed through the doors daily.

  Silvio pulled into the lot attached to one side of the building and parked. But instead of getting out and going into the station right away, I sat in the car.

  Thinking.

  If there was one thing I’d come to know about Madeline, it was that she always had a backup plan, usually two or three or four or more. Dobson hadn’t been able to drag me away fr
om the restaurant in handcuffs, but here I was at the police station all the same. If this was where she had planned to spring the next part of her trap for me, whatever it was, then I was sure that Madeline had already adjusted her scheme accordingly. Something bad was waiting for me inside the station—I just didn’t know exactly what it might be.

  So I went through various scenarios in my mind, most of which ended up with me either being trapped in a jail cell or shot to death in the middle of the station while the crooked cops of Ashland looked on and cheered. But one thing was certain. I couldn’t go into the station armed. Not with all the metal detectors and scanners. That would be a quick way to get arrested and carted off to that cell that was sure to be waiting for me.

  So as much as it pained me, I palmed first one knife, then the other, setting them next to my phone on the center console. I leaned forward, removed the weapon from the small of my back, then reached down and plucked the two knives out of the sides of my boots.

  “Here,” I said, straightening back up and handing the three blades over to Silvio. “Take these, and keep them safe for me. Please.”

  He nodded and took the knives from me, careful of the sharp edges, then picked up the other two weapons from the console. “I have a hidden compartment built into the bottom of the trunk. I’ll put them in there.”

  I nodded, then slipped the ring off my right index finger and passed that over to him too. Then came the final, most difficult thing—unhooking the necklace from around my throat.

  I pulled the chain out from underneath my T-shirt and held it out, staring at the spider rune pendant—that small circle surrounded by eight thin rays. The symbol for patience. Something I needed right now more than ever before.