By a Thread

by Jennifer Estep

  I pulled back, stood on my tiptoes, and gently kissed Owen. He returned my kiss, drew back, and rested his forehead against mine—just holding me like I was holding him. I closed my eyes and concentrated on the feel of his body against mine, letting his warmth spill into the cold, dark places in my heart and mute the horrors I’d faced last night. And then I sighed with relief, with love, with everything I felt for him but always had so much trouble putting into words.

  “I know,” he whispered again. “Me too.”

  I could have spent the rest of the day in Owen’s strong, comforting embrace, but as tempting as that was, it wouldn’t solve the problem of how to kill Dekes. Like it or not, it was time for me to put on my game face again. So I opened my eyes and pressed another kiss to Owen’s lips before slipping out of his arms and heading into the kitchen.

  I pulled open the refrigerator door and eyed all the vittles inside that we’d brought home from the grocery store yesterday, before moving over and doing the same thing to the cabinets. Once I’d taken stock of everything, I started grabbing the items I wanted. Buttermilk, flour, cornmeal, chicken, olive oil, shortening, salad fixings, and more soon crowded onto the kitchen counters.

  “You’re not seriously going to cook now, are you?” Bria asked, eyeing the boxes and bottles that I’d lined up in neat rows. “Shouldn’t you still be resting?”

  “I think I’ve rested enough,” I said. “Besides, I’m starving. Being drained by a vamp will do that to a girl.”

  My sister didn’t smile at my gallows humor, but she did step into the kitchen and start rifling through the drawers, looking for dishes, glasses, silverware, and more. Finn, Owen, Sophia, and Jo-Jo settled themselves around the long, square table in the dining room that branched off the kitchen.

  I washed my hands and got to work. First I added a generous dash of salt and black pepper to the flour that I’d poured into a small, shallow dish. Then I cleaned and soaked the chicken in a bowl full of buttermilk before dredging it in the flour mixture. A few seconds later, the first piece sizzled when I put it in the skillet full of olive oil that I’d heated on the stove. More pieces joined that first one, until the smell of meat filled the kitchen. Once I got all the chicken in the skillet, I took the rest of the buttermilk that was left in the carton and mixed it with the remaining cornmeal, forming a thick, creamy batter, while a black cast-iron skillet went into the preheated oven so that the shortening I’d coated it with would melt.

  Cooking was one of my passions in life, and it never failed to make me feel better, even if I’d almost had my neck chewed off by a vamp last night. The familiar motions of mixing and stirring soothed me, as did the aromatic smells of the hot oil and spicy seasonings in the air. By the time I slid a pan of cornbread into the oven to bake, I was starting to feel like my old self.

  While I got started on a spring spinach salad, I told the others what had happened at Dekes’s mansion. How the vamp had known who I was thanks to McAllister and how Dekes had used Vanessa and Victoria as hostages against me and drugged me into submission. How I’d pretended to be dead and had found my way through the marsh over here to the other side of the island. The only things I skimmed over were the brutal details of the vamp’s attack on me and that he’d almost torn my throat open in order to get every drop of magic he could out of my blood.

  “So he’s using the two women against each other,” Finn said. “Vanessa can’t leave or fight back because Dekes has Victoria as leverage.”

  “And he’s draining the blood and their magic out of them again and again,” I said. “That’s probably why I didn’t sense Vanessa’s magic, because Dekes had recently fed off her. And Victoria was in really bad shape: thin, unconscious, and anemic. It won’t be long before Dekes kills her. Then he’ll do the same thing to Vanessa because he won’t have her sister to keep her in line anymore. After that, he’ll find some more elemental women, bring them to his mansion, and do the same thing to them. He’s one sick bastard.”

  “Sick,” Sophia rasped.

  The sound of the Goth dwarf’s hoarse, broken voice reminded me that I wasn’t the only one here who’d been tortured. Many years ago, Sophia had been kidnapped by a man named Harley Grimes and had been forced to submit to all the unspeakable things Grimes had done to her, including making her breathe in elemental Fire, which had destroyed her vocal cords. Jo-Jo could have easily healed Sophia and made her voice whole once more, but the Goth dwarf had refused her sister’s offer. I supposed Sophia felt the same way about her ruined vocal cords as I did about my spider rune scars. They were both reminders of what we’d gone through—of what we’d survived.

  I looked at Sophia and saw the sadness that always glittered in her black eyes. My suffering at the hands of Dekes had been nothing to what she’d endured with Grimes. Somehow, the dwarf had found the strength to survive all the horrors Grimes had inflicted on her. She was one of the strongest people I knew, and she made me want to be just as tough as she was. I was going to be, I vowed. Because I’d be damned if I left Blue Marsh while Dekes was still alive.

  “So what happened on your end?” I asked, turning the pieces of chicken over in the skillet so that the other sides could brown.

  Finn shrugged. “We could all tell that Dekes’s giants were getting a little too interested in us, especially after you left with the man himself. So I suggested to Bria and Owen that we make good our getaway. We slipped away from the pool, but two of the giants followed us. They chased us into another wing of the mansion, well away from the press conference.”

  “Did you have any trouble with them?” I asked.

  “Not after I blasted the first one’s brains out of his skull with the help of my new silencer,” Finn said in a not-so-modest voice.

  My foster brother might be a slick, polished investment banker, but he also could shoot the wings off a fly with any gun he picked up. Finn was even better with firearms than I was, and he always had one or two tucked away on his body somewhere, just like I did my knives.

  I thought of my knives lying on the mantel in Dekes’s library. That was something else the vampire was going to pay for—taking away my weapons.

  “As you can imagine, the other guy got a little upset that his buddy’s blood was all over his face,” Finn continued. “Which gave Owen enough time to pick up a nearby candlestick and do his thing with it.”

  “It was solid silverstone,” Owen said. “A couple of good whacks across the back of the head, and the second giant went down.”

  Not too long ago, I’d seen Owen take on a group of giants using a blacksmith’s hammer, so I knew just how skilled a fighter he was. He could wield heavy, blunt weapons just as easily as I could knives.

  “It was a thing of beauty, wasn’t it, Owen?” Finn asked.

  The two men exchanged a high five across the table. Bria rolled her eyes and shook her head at their antics.

  “And while the boys were congratulating themselves on their awesomeness,” Bria said, “I grabbed another candlestick and took care of a third giant who’d snuck up behind them and was about to squeeze Finn’s head between his hands like it was an oversize lemon.”

  Finn draped his arm over my sister’s shoulders and pulled her close. “Something that I will be forever grateful for, cupcake.”

  “If you don’t stop calling me cupcake, I’ll hit you with the candlestick next time,” Bria groused, but she couldn’t hide the smile on her face.

  “Anyway,” Owen said. “We came back here to the beach house to wait for you.”

  “But I didn’t show up.”

  Owen’s eyes met mine. “No, you didn’t show up.”

  Nobody said anything, but I could see just how concerned the others had been about me. Just thinking about what Dekes had done to me last night made their faces tighten with worry—even Bria’s.

  Owen cleared his throat. “So we got some more guns and some more weapons, and we went back out to Dekes’s mansion. But everything seemed normal there. None of the guar
ds looked worried, and there was nothing to indicate that anything out of the ordinary had happened. It didn’t even look like there was much of a fuss being made over the giants we’d killed earlier. We didn’t know what to think, and we were about to storm the mansion when Finn got a call from Sophia, saying you’d come here to the house after all. We got back as quickly as we could.”

  I knew what had happened after that. Jo-Jo had healed me, and the others had tried to get some sleep while they waited for me to wake up.

  By the time we all got caught up, the food was ready. Buttermilk fried chicken, hot, crusty cornbread, a baby spinach salad with diced tomatoes, shredded cheddar cheese, red onion, and crispy bacon crumbles, a roasted veggie medley of red potatoes, carrots, and zucchini. I even used the limes in a basket on the counter to make a tart, tangy limeade.

  We fell silent as we ate, and I relished every single bite, enjoying the play of sweet and salty, hot and sour, on my tongue. I hadn’t been kidding when I’d said I was starving, and I ate more than everyone else combined. But no matter how much I ate, it didn’t quite fill in the hollow ache I felt deep down inside, in the place where my magic would normally be. Still, I stuffed myself, knowing I’d need the energy for the long night ahead—because Dekes wasn’t living to see another sunrise.

  Not when he had two women under his thumb and could kill them at any time. At first, I’d only wanted to protect Callie from the vamp, but Vanessa and Victoria needed my help as well. And after what had happened last night, things were personal between me and Dekes, and there was only one way they were going to end—with the vampire dead at my feet.

  We’d just finished eating when a sharp rap sounded on the front door.

  A second later, we were all in motion. Finn and Bria pulled guns out from against the smalls of their backs and took up positions close to the front door, while Owen and Sophia slipped into the rear of the house to see if there was anyone waiting to come in from that direction. Jo-Jo stood against a wall out of Finn’s and Bria’s lines of fire, her Air magic making her eyes glow a faint, milky white, ready to either attack or heal with her power. I grabbed a knife out of the butcher’s block in the kitchen and stood at an angle behind the front door.

  The rap sounded again, a little harder this time. Whoever was outside knew we were in here and wasn’t going to take no for an answer. Worst mistake they’d ever made, even if they didn’t know it yet.

  Finn looked at me and raised his eyebrows in a silent question. I nodded back, telling him I was ready. Finn put his gun down by his leg and opened the door, ready to smile and send whoever was outside on their merry way if they’d knocked on our door by mistake—or raise up his weapon and blast them if it wasn’t a mistake. And if Finn didn’t finish the job, I’d step up with my knife and make sure that they got the point.

  But instead of Dekes or his goons, Donovan stood outside on the porch. The detective glared at Finn a second before shoving his way into the beach house.

  Finn shook his head. “Stand down!” he called out so that Sophia and Owen would hear him in the back of the house.

  “Where the hell is Gin?” Donovan muttered, moving deeper into the hallway inside the front door. “I know she’s here, since this is the address where Bria told Callie you all were staying at. I need to talk to Gin—right now.”

  I stepped out from behind the door. “Right here, Detective. Is there something I can help you with?”

  Donovan whirled around in surprise. His eyes fell to the knife that I clutched in my hand, and his face hardened that much more.

  “You’re not as clever as you think you are,” the detective said in a harsh voice. “You never are.”

  “What do you mean by that?” I asked.

  “It means that Randall Dekes is still alive and well.”

  I shrugged. “So? If I remember correctly, you didn’t want me to kill the vamp in the first place.”

  “I didn’t then, but things have changed.”

  My eyes narrowed at his cold, angry, frustrated tone. “What happened?”

  Donovan sighed and ran a hand through his black hair. “The bastard came to my house and took Callie.”

  20

  Donovan pointed his finger at me, anger making his eyes glimmer like gold coins in his face. “Dekes took Callie, and it’s your fault. He wasn’t scared off by you at all. Instead, your little talk with him only made him that much more determined to get her restaurant no matter what, and the sooner the better.”

  Yeah, I’d fucked up and underestimated Dekes, but the detective’s self-righteous tone still grated on my nerves. Donovan had no idea what I’d been through in the last few hours—and the horrors that were in store for Callie if we didn’t get to her in time.

  “Actually, Dekes and I didn’t do much talking,” I snapped. “Since he already knew who I was and that I was coming for him.”

  My sharp words penetrated some of Donovan’s anger, making him frown. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that Dekes used my neck like it was his own personal blood bank last night,” I said. “Jonah McAllister tipped him off that I was an assassin, that I was the Spider, so Dekes and his men were waiting for me. I barely got out of his mansion alive.”

  I didn’t tell Donovan all the gory details about Dekes’s frenzied attack on me. There was no point in it. The detective would secretly think I’d gotten exactly what I’d deserved, and it would only make him worry that much more about Callie. As convoluted as my feelings were for Donovan, Callie didn’t deserve what was going to happen to her at Dekes’s hands, and I wasn’t going to paint the detective a picture just to get back at him for all the hurt he’d caused me. I might be a coldhearted bitch, but I tried to keep my pettiness in check. Most of the time, anyway.

  “You know, Donovan, you look exceptionally well for a man whose fiancée was kidnapped,” Owen drawled, walking over to stand by my side.

  Sophia slipped into the room behind Owen, and Jo-Jo came in from the kitchen. The two dwarven sisters sat down on one of the couches while Finn and Bria moved to stand behind them, guns down by their sides.

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Donovan snapped.

  “It means that you don’t have a mark on you, Detective,” Owen said in a soft voice. “Not a single scratch. Some of us fight back to protect the people that we love. But somehow, you never seem to.”

  The detective’s face tightened until his lips were just a thin white slash against his bronze skin. Owen wasn’t just talking about Callie, and we all knew it—especially Donovan.

  “I wasn’t there when it happened,” Donovan ground out the words through clenched teeth. “I got called out on a case this morning. Vandalism and broken windows at an empty vacation home on the other side of the island. Now I know it was obviously a ruse to lure me away. When I came back, the front door was kicked in, the house was a mess, and Callie was gone. She wasn’t in the house, she wasn’t at the restaurant, and she wasn’t answering her cell. One of the neighbors finally told me that she’d seen a couple of giants drag Callie out of the house kicking and screaming and shove her into the back of a black town car—and that Dekes got inside after her.”

  The detective’s hands curled into fists, and he glared at Owen, daring him to say another word. Owen’s violet eyes narrowed in response, and his lips quirked up into a hard smile, a clear indication that he was ready to rumble. I stepped in between the two men and held up my hands.

  “Oh, cut the macho bullshit,” I said. “Fighting among ourselves won’t do a damn thing to help Callie, and we all know it. Rescuing her is what’s really important, especially after what happened last night.”

  Donovan glared at Owen for several more tense seconds before turning his gaze to me. “And what was that? What did Dekes do to you?”

  I shrugged. “The usual. Crowing about what a badass he was. Threats of torture. Some other assorted violence before I made good my escape.”

  My words were light, but Donovan must h
ave realized there was more that I wasn’t telling him. For a moment, I almost thought I saw a flicker of concern in his eyes, but his face hardened once more, smothering the soft emotion.

  “Gin’s right,” Bria said. “Dekes has Callie. We should be focusing on how we’re going to get her back, not wasting time pointing fingers at each other.”

  “We’re not going to do anything,” Donovan growled at her. “Callie’s my fiancée. I’ll get her back on my own terms. I don’t need your help, and I especially don’t want Gin’s so-called help. You’re a detective, Coolidge. You should man up and act like a real cop instead of just pretending to care about the law whenever it suits you.”

  Bria stiffened, and anger blazed in her blue eyes—more anger than I’d ever seen her show before, except maybe when she’d first realized that I was the Spider. Her hand tightened around the gun that she was still holding, and I got the distinct impression that my baby sister would love nothing more at that moment than to raise up the weapon, pull the trigger, and put a few bullets into Donovan’s chest. Instead, she shoved her gun at Finn.

  “Hold this,” she growled.

  Bria stalked around the couch and walked up until she was standing nose to chest with Donovan. The detective glared down at her, still spoiling for a fight.

  “Callie might be your fiancée, but she’s my friend,” Bria spat out the words. “She’s my best friend, and I love her like a sister. Now she’s in the hands of a very bad man, and instead of asking us for our help to get her back, you’re bitching at me about the fucking law. What the hell is wrong with you?”

  For the first time since he’d stormed into the beach house, uncertainty filled Donovan’s features, and some of the anger in his eyes dimmed.

  “You’re a cop,” he said. “You should understand where I’m coming from.”