Black Widow

by Jennifer Estep

  “Good. And have the driver bring the car around. I’ve seen all that I care to here.”

  The two of them strolled down the sidewalk in the opposite direction, turned the corner, and disappeared from sight.

  For a mad, mad moment, I thought about palming one of the knives hidden up my many, many sleeves, charging after them, and burying the blade in Madeline’s back. But I resisted the temptation. I didn’t know what other deadly webs she might have woven, and I wanted to be sure that I knew each and every one of her schemes before I moved against her. Besides, even if I could have killed her, there were still far too many cops around for me to hope to get away with it.

  So Madeline would live through this night, but not too many more.

  I’d make sure of that.

  * * *

  When I was certain that Madeline and Emery weren’t coming back, I got to my feet and shuffled off in the other direction to start my long, cold trek up to Jo-Jo’s house.

  So many things in my life had changed since Fletcher had taken me in when I was thirteen. It was strange to be right back where I’d started, so to speak, roaming the streets, looking out for danger, and trying to stay warm for the night. But in many ways, it was all too familiar.

  The gang members clustered together at the corners, jeering at everyone who dared to scurry by them. The vampire hookers making their endless rounds up and down the sidewalks before ambling over to the cars that pulled over to the curbs. Their pimps, lounging against the storefront walls or hidden back in the alleys, waiting to take all the cash that their girls and guys earned plying their bodies for the night. The scent of fried food and puffs of warmth that escaped from the restaurants as people moved inside and back out again, greasy sacks of burgers and fries clutched in their hands. The dim glow of lights from the businesses that were still open that couldn’t quite banish the darkness on the streets beyond.

  Oh, yes. It was all too familiar, and in a way strangely comforting. I almost felt like I’d stepped back in time to a younger version of myself, before Madeline had come to town, before I’d killed Mab, before I’d ever dreamed about becoming the Spider. Back when I was just trying to survive and get through one day at a time without getting murdered in my sleep for my threadbare clothes. Or maybe this was the same-old, same-old version of myself, since I was still just trying to get through one day at a time without getting murdered just for being me.

  A few of the gangbangers thought about hassling me, but the stench of the garbage wafting off my body had them wrinkling their noses, cursing, and yelling at me to take a bath already. Normally, I might have flashed a knife at them, telling them exactly what they could do with their suggestions, but I kept my head down and shuffled on. Because Madeline had probably put the word out that she wanted to know about anyone and anything unusual or suspicious happening around the Pork Pit, and a homeless bum brandishing a silverstone weapon would be more than enough to ping her radar.

  After I made it out of the downtown loop, the people, businesses, and lights got fewer and farther in between, replaced by cars that whiz-whiz-whizzed by me on the highway. I stayed well away from the edge of the road and kept my pace slow and steady. I hated wasting a second in letting everyone know that I was okay, but it couldn’t be helped, not without attracting unwanted attention to myself. They would understand. I hoped so, anyway.

  It took me more than three hours to walk from the Pork Pit up to Jo-Jo’s house in Northtown. It would have taken even longer if I’d stuck to the roads, but I cut through several patches of woods, climbing up ridges and then sliding back down them again, taking the most direct route possible.

  Finally, I reached the last leg of my journey. I entered Jo-Jo’s subdivision and slid into the trees along the side of the main street, peering out into the night. Just because Emery had told her men to leave their watchers’ posts didn’t mean that they had yet—or that Madeline hadn’t had another hinky feeling and sent them right back out. She seemed to be as paranoid as I was, and with good reason this time.

  But I didn’t see any cars parked on the street below the hill that led up to Jo-Jo’s place, and I didn’t spot anyone stationed in the thick patches of trees that ran between the homes, training a pair of night-vision goggles on the three-story, white plantation house.

  When I was sure that the watchers had all gone, I climbed the hill, keeping to the trees and low bushes and skulking from shadow to shadow as much as I could. I hadn’t come this far just to get spotted by a nosy neighbor.

  I paused again outside the house, staring at all the cars clustered in the driveway. Finn, Bria, Owen, Roslyn, Xavier, even Phillip Kincaid, Warren T. Fox, and Cooper Stills. All of their vehicles were here, along with Sophia’s classic convertible. Silvio must have been able to bail her out of jail after all.

  I let out a long, tired breath because I knew that I was finally safe and shuffled forward, somehow feeling both exhilarated and more bone-weary than ever before.

  To my surprise, the front door was unlocked, and the knob turned easily in my hand. I stepped inside and shut the door behind me. The front of the house was dark, but light, sound, and fury emanated from the kitchen, so that’s where I headed.

  That’s where they were all gathered—Finn, Bria, Owen, Eva, Jo-Jo, Sophia, Xavier, Roslyn, Phillip, Cooper, Violet, Warren, Silvio, Catalina. All crammed into Jo-Jo’s kitchen, and all talking at the same time.

  “I say we go kill that bitch right fucking now,” Finn said, his voice the loudest. “What are we waiting for?”

  “For once, I second Lane’s opinion,” Phillip agreed.

  Cooper, Warren, Sophia, Roslyn, and Xavier all nodded their heads in grim agreement. Silvio stood by the refrigerator, silent as always. Eva, Violet, and Catalina looked back and forth at everyone with wide eyes, while Jo-Jo rubbed her head, as though it was aching. Yeah. Mine too, and I’d only been here a few seconds. Judging from the empty pot of chicory coffee and the mugs scattered everywhere, they must have been in here arguing for hours.

  Bria let out a brittle laugh. “You know we can’t do that. Madeline will be expecting us to retaliate. I’m sure she already has a plan in place for that. It seems like she’s had one for everything else so far.”

  “Forget about Madeline right now,” Owen said. “We don’t need to do anything except wait for Gin to come home.”

  He was standing by himself at the back of the kitchen. Everyone quieted at his words, and one by one, they turned to look at him with shocked expressions. Finally, Finn jerked his head at Phillip, who ran a hand over his blond ponytail before stepping forward.

  “Listen, man,” Phillip said, his blue eyes locked onto his best friend’s face. “I know you don’t want to believe that she’s gone, but you saw the restaurant. There’s no way that anyone could have survived that fire, not even someone as tough and strong as Gin.”

  Owen’s violet eyes crinkled, and his lips lifted a fraction. “If you believe that, then you obviously don’t know Gin at all. But I do. And I know that she’ll be here just as soon as she can.”

  Tears pricked my eyes at the ringing certainty in his soft voice. He hadn’t given up on me. Even when everyone else had, even when they all thought that I was dead, Owen had believed that I would find some way to survive.

  He had believed in me.

  I stepped into the kitchen, wanting to rush straight into his arms, despite the furniture and people that separated us. A floorboard creaked under my weight, and everyone whipped around in my direction.

  Finn was faster than all the others. In an instant, he’d grabbed the gun under his suit jacket and had it pointed at my head. “Who are you? How did you get in here?”

  “The front door was open, so I figured that y’all wouldn’t mind if I came right on inside.”

  Finn’s face paled at the familiar sound of my voice, and he did something I’d never seen him do before in all the years I’d known and trained with him—he dropped his gun. The weapon slid from his grasp and cl
attered to the floor, even as he swayed back and forth, as though he might faint.

  Bria clutched his arm, and everyone turned to stare at me again, still wondering who I was and what was going on. I guess my grimy disguise was better than I’d thought.

  So I reached up and peeled the black toboggan off my head, letting my dirty, dark brown hair flow down around my shoulders as I used the knit fabric to wipe some of the soot off my face. Then I raised my head.

  Everyone let out a collective gasp.

  I leaned against the doorjamb, crossed my arms over my chest, and grinned. “What’s wrong?” I drawled. “Y’all look like somebody died or something.”

  19

  For another long, drawn-out moment, my friends and family regarded me in shocked, absolute silence. They really, truly thought that I’d been dead this time. Yeah. Me too there for a while.

  Then Jo-Jo screamed. So did Eva, Violet, and Catalina, and everyone stampeded toward me, or at least tried to, but they all couldn’t get around the butcher-block table in the middle of the kitchen. At least, not all of them at the same time.

  But even as my friends surrounded me, I looked at Owen, still standing in the back of the kitchen, his hand lying flat over his heart, as though some terrible ache there had abruptly ceased. Yeah. Mine too.

  My gray eyes locked with his violet ones, and he winked at me, as if to say, I told them so. I smiled and winked back.

  Then I was swallowed up by the rest of my loved ones.

  Just like before, Finn was the fastest, nimbly zipping past the others and skidding to a stop right in front of me. He started to reach over to hug me but abruptly stopped.

  “What is that smell ?” he asked, wrinkling his nose. “What’s on your clothes, Gin? Is that . . . coleslaw in your hair?”

  I opened my mouth to tell him that, yes, that was spoiled coleslaw in my hair since I’d been Dumpster-diving for the better part of the day, but his face split into a wide, happy grin before I could speak.

  “Aw, fuck it,” he declared. “I don’t care.”

  Finn wrapped his arms around me in a fierce bear hug and lifted me off my feet, making me laugh. One by one, the others piled on, until we were all cheering, talking, laughing, yelling, and crying at the same time. Finn put me down.

  Bria nudged him out of the way, and her arms went around me just as tightly as his had. “I thought I’d lost you again,” she mumbled.

  “You’ll never lose me,” I whispered in her ear, returning her hug with an even fiercer one of my own.

  Eva, Violet, and Catalina were next. Then Roslyn and Xavier, and Phillip, Cooper, and Warren. Even Silvio gave me a firm, lengthy pat on the shoulder, which was about as demonstrative as I’d ever seen him be.

  Jo-Jo was too choked up to say anything as she hugged me, but so many tears streamed down her face that they made her waterproof mascara run. A hand grabbed my shoulder, turning me to the right, and Sophia pulled me into her tight embrace.

  “I . . . can’t . . . breathe,” I wheezed.

  She loosened her grip. “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay. Hug me again so I can really feel it this time.”

  Her raspy laughter rang out through the kitchen.

  One by one, the others fell back, until it was finally Owen’s turn. He slowly crossed the kitchen and stopped before me, his eyes sweeping over my body from my dark, matted, coleslaw-dusted hair down to my muck-covered boots and back up again. His relieved sigh was as soft as a whisper, but it made my heart quiver more than a joyous shout.

  Owen reached out and cupped my face in his hands, carefully stroking his thumbs down my soot-smeared cheeks and staring at me with ferocious intensity, as though I were a most delicate thing of absolute beauty and wonder, instead of just covered with more dirt, filth, and grime than any person had a right to be. Tears pooled in his eyes, making them gleam like violet stars in his rough, rugged face. Without a word, he drew me into his arms and crushed his lips to mine, even as our friends hooted and hollered and clapped and cheered all around us.

  It was one of the best moments of my life.

  * * *

  It took a while—it took a long while—but everyone finally calmed down, and we trooped back into the beauty salon. The area looked a bit worse for wear, given all the paint chips and pieces of paneling that littered the floor and all the holes that had been punched through the walls during that phony health inspection. But it was still more or less intact, right down to Rosco, Jo-Jo’s basset hound, snoozing in his basket in the corner. The sight cheered me.

  I sank down onto one of the padded, cherry-red chairs, with Owen still right beside me, holding my hand. He hadn’t let me go since he’d kissed me, and I didn’t want him to.

  Jo-Jo washed her hands in the sink, then pulled a chair up to me. She reached for her Air magic, and a familiar, milky-white glow filled her clear, colorless eyes, as well as the palm of her hand. She moved her hand back and forth and up and down my body, looking for injuries, and I felt her Air power prick my skin. But the sensation didn’t bother me at all tonight. I was far too happy to be alive, to be with the people I loved, to care about anything else.

  After a minute, she let go of her magic and dropped her hand. Jo-Jo shook her head, making her white-blond curls fly out before they settled perfectly back into place. “Looks like you already took care of everything, darling. I can’t find anything major to repair.”

  Finn cleared his throat, and we all looked at him. “Well, if you’re done with Gin already, I could certainly use a caffeine fix.” He waggled his eyebrows at Jo-Jo.

  She laughed and got to her feet. “All right, another pot of chicory coffee coming up for you. Gin, everyone else, how about some hot chocolate?”

  “That would be great,” I said.

  The others murmured their agreement. While Jo-Jo went into the kitchen to fix the drinks, I leaned back in the chair and told my friends everything that had happened since I was arrested at the police station and carted off to the bull pen.

  I was just finishing up when Jo-Jo returned with a large tray. She passed out the drinks, handing me a mug of dark hot chocolate piled high with miniature marshmallows and sprinkled with dark-chocolate shavings.

  “Just like you like it, darling,” she said, winking at me.

  I nodded and held the mug between my hands, letting the warmth seep into the spider rune scars in my palms. Then I slowly took a sip, enjoying the decadent richness of the dark chocolate mixed with the frothiness of the melting marshmallows. The sweet concoction slid down my throat, then spread its pleasant heat through my stomach and out into the rest of my body, chasing away the last of the night’s lingering chill.

  Finn slurped down half his coffee in one gulp, then shook his head. “Only you would think of using boxes of frozen peas to survive a fire. And then hiding in that Dumpster, almost in plain sight, while all the cops and firefighters walked right by you.”

  “Believe me, it wasn’t by choice,” I muttered. “So what happened on your end? What’s been going on?”

  Bria looked at Finn and Owen, then at me. “The three of us were at the station for hours, along with Silvio, Sophia, and Xavier, trying to bail you out, but of course not having any luck. Dobson was nowhere to be found, and Xavier texted me to say that he’d heard a rumor that there was going to be a fight in the bull pen. We all knew it was you. But there was no way that we could get to you, not without getting into a firefight in the middle of the station.”

  “Which was probably exactly what Madeline wanted,” I murmured.

  Finn shot his thumb and forefinger at me. “Winner, winner.”

  “So we were trying to figure out a way around the cops,” Bria said. “Then we heard and felt this huge explosion, and I could sense you using your magic.”

  “After that, everything was a mess,” Owen chimed in. “Cops shouting and yelling, and everyone inside the station running everywhere. We’d heard that you escaped, but by the time I got your call, and we drove
over to the Pork Pit, the restaurant was on fire, and there was no sign of you.”

  His voice cracked on the last few words, and his hand tightened around mine. No one said anything for several seconds.

  Finn cleared his throat. “After that, it was a lot of running around and screaming at people. We tried to go into the restaurant to find you and get you out of there. But Madeline and Emery were running the show, and they told the cops to keep us back, even if they had to shoot us. So we stayed by the restaurant all night until . . .”

  “Until they brought that body out of the back this morning,” Bria said, her voice dropping to a ragged whisper. “Madeline was all too happy to let us see that.”

  “I heard you scream,” I said. “I was right there the whole time, hiding in that Dumpster next to the back door, watching everything through a hole that had rusted in the side. But my burner phone was broken, so I couldn’t text you, and I couldn’t get out of the Dumpster and let you know that I was okay. Not with all the cops around. I’m sorry about that—so sorry.”

  Bria nodded. So did the others. They understood, but guilt still filled me that I hadn’t been able to spare them all that pain.

  “So what’s your next move?” Xavier asked.

  “Yeah,” Phillip chimed in. “Because from what I’ve already heard, Madeline hasn’t wasted any time letting everyone know that she’s the reason why you’re dead.”

  “I had a lot of time to think about that while I was waiting in that Dumpster. And I say we give Madeline exactly what she wants. I say we let her keep right on thinking that I’m good and dead.”

  “And then?” Silvio asked.

  I smiled at my friends. “And then we give that bitch the surprise of her life.”

  * * *

  We worked out a few of the details, most of which we’d have to wait until the morning to actually get started on, then I went upstairs, took a long, hot shower, and put on a blue, fluffy robe that was patterned with Jo-Jo’s white cloud rune.