Spider's Bite

by Jennifer Estep

  His eyes glittered. “Well, maybe I’m an exception.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe. But it doesn’t much matter.”

  Sebastian stepped even closer to me, his voice dropping to a low, husky murmur. “Doesn’t it? Wouldn’t you like to find out? Because I certainly want to know more about you, Gin.”

  I should have given him another derisive snort. Should have made some harsh, biting comment about his lame lines. Should have shoved past him and headed back to the dining room without another word. But something in his intense gaze made me hold my tongue, something in his handsome face made me take another look at him, and something in his tall, strong stance made me want to put my tray down, run my hands over his shoulders, and see if his muscles were as firm as they looked.

  Sebastian must have sensed my hesitation, because he reached out, gently tugging on the end of my dark brown ponytail. “You know,” he said in that same husky tone, “I bet you would look even more amazing with your hair down.”

  “Certainly. But that’s something you’ll never find out.”

  Sebastian grinned and clutched his hands over his heart in mock exaggeration, as though I’d mortally wounded him with my words. If only he knew how easily I could do that with one of the knives tucked up my sleeves, he wouldn’t be giving me such smoldering looks. No, he would have been sweating, screaming, and running away from me as fast as he could.

  Of course, I wasn’t exactly being smart right now either. I should have meekly excused myself from this conversation long ago, not stood here trading mocking insults and flirty banter with the son of the man I was planning to kill. Fletcher had taught me better than that. He would have been horrified by how many of his rules I’d broken in the last five minutes: Don’t be memorable. Don’t do anything to attract attention to yourself. Don’t engage potential enemies or targets in any way.

  But for some reason, tonight, I just didn’t care about the old man’s rules.

  Maybe it was how handsome Sebastian looked with the light glinting off his black hair. Maybe it was the way he focused all of his attention on me. Or maybe it was the simple fact that I enjoyed being with someone who actually gave as good as he got. But I liked talking to him—far more than I should have.

  Other waiters and waitresses enjoyed quick dalliances with guests at these dinners all the time. Tonight, for the first time, I wanted my own seven minutes of heaven, and it took me longer than it should have to quash this wild, reckless feeling that Sebastian stirred in me.

  He gave my ponytail another gentle tug. “I don’t know, Gin,” he murmured again, his dark gaze locking with my light one. “I can be very persuasive when I put my mind to it.”

  And I could be very deadly, although I didn’t tell him that. Instead, I tightened my grip on my tray.

  “I’m sure you can be . . . on some other girl. Now, I really have to get back to work. Please excuse me.”

  This time, I finally did move past him, careful not to spill the champagne. I strode down the corridor as fast as I could without rattling the delicate glasses. All the while, though, I was aware of Sebastian standing behind me, and it almost seemed like I could feel his eyes on me, tracking the soft swing of my hips. More heat simmered through my veins at the thought of him watching me.

  “You’re going to change your mind about me, Gin,” he called out. “I’ll come by your restaurant and take you out one night. Count on it.”

  I reached the end of the corridor. The smart thing would have been to keep right on walking, but I stopped and turned around to face him.

  “I never count on anything. Especially not promises from cute rich guys.”

  He grinned. “Not just cute. Gorgeous, remember?”

  Oh, yes. Sebastian Vaughn was far too handsome and far too egotistical for his own good. Still, I found myself grinning back at him before I shook my head and hurried around the corner.

  • • •

  I made it back to the dining room without running into anyone else, including Meredith, the event planner. The cocktail portion of the evening had come to a close while I’d been talking to Sebastian, and I had to hustle over to where the chefs were set up so I could get in line with the other servers.

  Sebastian came strolling into the room a minute later. His gaze zoomed over to me, and he flashed me another cocky grin. A few of the other waitresses gave me sour looks, no doubt thinking that I’d been off fucking one of the guests instead of doing my job and jealous that it had been someone as handsome as Sebastian. I ignored their petty stares and disapproving sniffs. Let them think what they wanted to. It didn’t matter to me in the slightest.

  But there was one person’s opinion that I did care about—Fletcher’s—and the hard set of his wrinkled features told me that he wasn’t too happy with me. He stabbed his index finger at me, then jerked it to the right. I sighed, knowing that I was probably going to get a lecture, but I followed him over to the far end of the serving line, out of earshot of the other chefs and waiters.

  “Where have you been?” he asked, plucking the champagne flutes off my tray and replacing them with baskets of hot buttered bread. “I was getting worried.”

  “Recon,” I murmured. “Vaughn snuck off to have a secret meeting with Mab Monroe in the library.”

  I glanced around, but I didn’t see Mab in the dining room, although Dawson and Slater had both returned and taken seats at the head of the table. I wondered if the Fire elemental had left as soon as she’d delivered her threats to Vaughn. While Fletcher piled baskets of bread onto my tray, I quickly and quietly told him everything that Mab had said to Vaughn and all the shaky promises that he’d made to her in return. Fletcher would want to know, and I hoped that the intel would cut off any potential lecture before it ever got started.

  “Do you think that Mab is behind the hit on Vaughn after all?” I asked when I’d finished.

  Fletcher put a final basket of bread on my tray. “I’m not sure. I wouldn’t put it past her, but she usually prefers to do that sort of dirty work herself. She likes the message that it sends to all of her enemies about how powerful she is. Besides, if she really wanted Vaughn dead, she could have used her magic, killed him in the library, and gotten Slater and Dawson to dispose of his charred remains. I’ll see if I can find out any more information about who wants Vaughn dead. Now, scoot. You can tell me the rest of it on the drive home.”

  “The rest of what?”

  He arched his eyebrows. “Like why Sebastian Vaughn is eyeing you like you’re part of the dinner menu.”

  I should have known that I couldn’t get anything past Fletcher. He could be annoyingly perceptive at times. I also knew better than to glance over my shoulder, but I did it anyway. Sebastian was staring at me. He raised his wineglass to me in salute before giving me another sly wink. Heat flooded my cheeks, and I had a difficult time looking Fletcher in the eye.

  “It’s nothing,” I mumbled. “I ran into him in the hallway outside the library when I was heading back this way. He flirted with me, so I flirted back so he wouldn’t think too much about what I was doing there. That’s all.”

  Fletcher didn’t say anything, but disapproval radiated off him like the heat from the bread. He didn’t tell me that I should have known better, that he had taught me better, because we both knew that he had. One of the keys to being an assassin was being as invisible as possible. Not only when you did the actual hit on your target but also in all the moments leading up to that final, fatal one.

  More than one assassin had been caught because he’d made himself too visible in the target’s world. Like being the recently hired mechanic who’d worked on the target’s car hours before the brakes had catastrophically failed and the car had plunged off the side of a mountain road. Or being the new pool boy when the target had slipped, hit his head, and drowned in the shallow end. Or even being seen out on a date with the target the night he mysteriously got mugged and beaten to death walking home from dinner.

  Killing someone was easy
—getting away with it was what was truly challenging.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I thought that it wouldn’t hurt to talk to him. He probably would have thought it odder if I had completely brushed him off.”

  I didn’t add that Sebastian had seemed to enjoy our conversation as much as I had or the promise that he’d made to track me down for a date. Fletcher would have pulled me off the job immediately if he’d known about any of that. But I was going to be the one to kill Vaughn, not him. I wanted to be the one to do the hit, for Charlotte’s sake.

  “All right,” Fletcher replied. “You did the best you could. I know his type. A pretty boy who thinks that he’s entitled to whatever he wants. Just ignore him. He’ll move on to someone else soon enough.”

  I nodded, picked up the tray of bread, and hurried over to the table with it. I moved behind the row of guests, stopping every few feet to deposit baskets in the appropriate spots. All too soon, though, I reached Sebastian’s seat. Instead of ignoring me like all the other diners had, he turned in his chair and took the basket from me, his fingers brushing against mine for the briefest instant.

  Once again, that strange, unwanted heat flooded my face, before the flush spread down my neck, but it was nothing compared with the warmth racing through the rest of my body. Sebastian noticed my embarrassment, and his lips curved up into a smile. I hurried on with the rest of the bread, but all the while, I was aware of his gaze on me, and I couldn’t help but glance in his direction. He was still staring at me, that same small, satisfied smile on his face, his eyes dark with some sort of secret triumph.

  I swallowed and continued with my serving duties, but I couldn’t help but think that ignoring Sebastian Vaughn was easier said than done.

  7

  The rest of the night passed by in a blur—except for the heated looks that Sebastian kept giving me.

  His gaze stayed on me most of the evening, long enough that his father noticed and started frowning, as though he didn’t like the thought of his son making googly eyes at a lowly waitress. I wondered if Vaughn would have changed his mind if he knew exactly who and what I was.

  Probably not.

  But I kept my head down and blended in with the other waiters, serving soup, salad, and the main course, which was some sort of seared bear steak that Dawson had flown in special from Alaska. Naturally. I wondered if he’d gone out there and killed the bears himself so he could add their heads to his collection.

  Finally, three hours later, I cleared away the remains of the dessert course, the chocolate soufflés that Fletcher had made earlier, along with fresh summer berries topped with a light, airy vanilla bean pudding and garnished with thin, crispy shortbread cookies. The party was over, and Dawson stood by the open doors, shaking hands with his guests as they headed out to their limos, which were waiting in the front drive to whisk them back to their own mansions.

  Sebastian hesitated, like he wanted to come over and flirt with me one final time, but his father clapped his hand on his son’s shoulder and led him out of the room. Good. That was good, despite the strange sense of disappointment that filled me. I didn’t know why I felt that way. Sebastian Vaughn wasn’t the first pretty boy ever to chat me up, but he’d definitely made more of an impression than most.

  Fletcher and I helped the rest of the staff clean up, and it was after one in the morning when we got into his van and left Dawson’s estate. We drove in silence for about ten minutes before the old man spoke.

  “I shouldn’t have to say this,” Fletcher began, a small note of reproach in his voice. “But you need to stay away from Sebastian Vaughn.”

  I sighed. “Like I told you before, we talked outside the library. That’s all.”

  “That didn’t look like all it was in the dining room. The two of you were staring at each other all through dinner.”

  I sank a little lower in my seat and crossed my arms over my chest. “It’s nothing,” I repeated. “He was having a little fun. Amusing himself with the help. You know how it goes.”

  “And what were you doing?”

  I rolled my eyes. “So maybe I was having a little fun too. A cute guy wanted to talk to me. Sue me for enjoying the attention. But that’s all it was. He won’t even remember what I look like tomorrow.”

  “Maybe,” Fletcher murmured. “Maybe not. Either way, things are starting to get complicated. I don’t like how exposed you were tonight. Vaughn noticed you too, or at least he noticed his son staring at you. I think it’s time to pull the plug on the job, return the up-front money, and tell the client to find someone else.”

  I straightened up. “No! You can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  Charlotte’s sorrowful face filled my mind.

  “Because . . . because . . . it would be unprofessional,” I finished in a weak voice. “You told the client that you would do the job—that I would do the job. You can’t back out now. Besides, we’re trying to build up my reputation as an assassin, remember? I’m finally starting to make a quiet name for myself, and my asking price is slowly rising. Passing on this job will set us back months.”

  “Is this about protecting your burgeoning reputation as the Spider or something else?”

  “What else would it be about?”

  “Charlotte Vaughn.”

  Damn. No, that one word wasn’t enough to adequately express my surprise and frustration. Damn . . . and . . . and . . . double damn. I should have known that I couldn’t hide anything from Fletcher, especially not my own murky motivations. Still, that didn’t keep me from trying.

  “Of course not,” I insisted. “I don’t make jobs be about people, and I don’t let anyone’s situation influence me in any way, shape, or form. Book the assignment, do the research, complete the hit, take the money, and walk away. That’s what assassins do. That’s what you’ve taught me to do as the Spider. Nothing else matters.”

  “Not even a girl being abused?” Fletcher asked again in a soft, knowing voice. “Being hurt like you were hurt, Gin?”

  Every muscle in my body tightened with tension, until I felt like a taut bow string about to snap from the strain. The memories roared up in my mind, trying to crack my calm façade from the inside out. Memories of heat and smoke and fire and death and, most of all, the unending, unrelenting, unbearable agony in my hands. The spider rune scars embedded in my palms itched and burned with the phantom pain, the way they so often did when I thought about that horrible night and the torture that I’d endured. But I didn’t give in to the searing sensation and start rubbing the marks. Instead, I made myself slowly flatten my palms against my legs and kept my features schooled into a perfect mask of blank indifference.

  Fletcher had never really asked what had happened to my family or how I’d ended up living on the streets with silverstone branded into my hands, although I suspected that he’d found out on his own. The violent, gruesome deaths of the Snow family had been big news at the time, and it wouldn’t have been too hard for him to connect the thin, ragged homeless girl digging through the Dumpsters behind the Pork Pit with Genevieve Snow, the middle daughter who’d supposedly perished in the fiery collapse of the family mansion, along with her mother and two sisters.

  But he’d never asked, and I’d never told him. Fletcher respected my privacy that way, just as I respected his. The old man had his secrets, and I had mine, and we both had enough care, concern, and love for each other not to try to uncover them. Or at least to pretend that we weren’t secretly prying and to keep all the facts that we did discover to ourselves.

  “Gin?” Fletcher asked. “Is this about Cesar Vaughn? Or you and Charlotte?”

  I turned so he could see how cold and hard my gray eyes were. “It’s about doing the job, getting paid, and walking away. Nothing else. Now, are we going to talk about how I can best get close to Vaughn, or do you want to discuss my feelings some more?”

  Fletcher stared at me, watching the play of light and shadow on my face. Given the late hour, there was darkn
ess more than anything else. There always was.

  “All right,” he said, the earlier reproach in his voice melting into tired resignation. “Tell me everything you learned from watching Vaughn tonight.”

  • • •

  Fletcher quizzed me about Vaughn the rest of the ride home, but he seemed satisfied with my answers. Yeah, maybe I’d been a bit more charmed by Sebastian than I should have, but I’d been there to do recon on my target, and I’d followed through with that.

  I always did what was needed.

  He pulled into the driveway, and we stepped into the house and went our separate ways. Fletcher ambled back to the den to watch some TV and unwind before going to bed, while I headed upstairs and took a long, hot shower.

  As I brushed out my wet hair, I couldn’t help but lean closer to the bathroom mirror and peer at my own reflection, trying to see myself through Sebastian’s eyes. Oh, I was pretty enough, with my dark brown hair, pale skin, and gray eyes, but I was certainly no great beauty. Not like my mother, Eira, and Annabella had been, with their golden hair, rosy skin, and cornflower-blue eyes. And Bria would have been even more beautiful than both of them, if she’d gotten the chance to grow up.

  My body was lean, fit, and strong, thanks to all the years training with Fletcher and then my time on the job as the Spider. My breasts weren’t large, but they were decent enough, and I had a few soft curves here and there. All put together, it was a nice package, but I didn’t know that it was enough to hook someone like Sebastian Vaughn and get him to look past my seeming lack of money, magic, and social standing—at least, not for very long.

  But the way he’d smiled, laughed, and flirted with me . . . no man had looked at me like that . . . well, ever, really. Oh, I got enough attention from the guys at Ashland Community College, where I took some classes, but all they were interested in was banging me in between beers and ballgames. And the professors, well, they just wanted to feel young again by sleeping with a coed. Neither option exactly screamed romance. But more important, no one had really seemed interested in me, and absolutely none of them had sparked my own interest like Sebastian had.