Kiss of Venom (Page 8)

Oh, I knew that I couldn’t have done anything to save Jillian, that she’d been killed before Clementine and her giants had taken everyone prisoner, but I still felt the weight of her death – and Salina’s too. They were dead, and I wasn’t, and I wasn’t sure how to move forward from that cold, inescapable fact.

Someone bumped into me, snapping me out of my thoughts. Gin was still staring at me. I hesitated, then waved at her. I pointed toward Phillip and then at the front doors of the club, as if I was getting him and we were leaving and going home for the night.

We were going home – eventually. I just had a little problem to take care of first. Two of them, actually.

After a moment, Gin returned my wave, before swiveling around on her seat and facing the Ice bar. Bria glared at me a few more seconds before doing the same.

I sighed, knowing that I’d screwed up again without even meaning to. But there was nothing I could do about it, so I waded over to where Phillip was still boogying the night away. Now his two dance partners were practically draped over him, one on each arm, and the grin on his face told me exactly how much he was enjoying their attention.

I waved my hand, catching his eye, and jerked my thumb toward the doors. Phillip started to protest, but he must have seen the tension in my face, because he smoothly kissed one woman’s hand, then the other, before murmuring some excuses and regretfully leaving them behind.

He followed me to the edge of the dance floor. I risked a glance over my shoulder. Gin was still sitting at the bar, her back was to me, and she was chatting with Bria again.

"You know, you could always go over there and buy her a drink," Phillip murmured. "I thought that things had gotten a little better between the two of you after the Briartop heist."

"They are better," I said. "I just don’t know how to get them back to where they were, to where we were before . . ."

"Before Salina."

I shrugged. Phillip knew the rest of the whole sad, twisted story as well as I did.

"You should make some grand romantic gesture," he said in a confident, knowing tone. "Women love that. Flowers, candy, jewelry."

I didn’t tell him that I’d already done that – sort of – by giving Gin the rune necklaces that had belonged to her mother and her older sister. The snowflake and ivy-vine pendants had been among Mab’s things at the Briartop museum. Mab had murdered Gin’s family when Gin was thirteen and had kept the necklaces as some sort of sick trophy.

I’d noticed Gin staring at the necklaces and had realized what they were before Clementine and her men had taken everyone hostage. After the crisis was over, I’d found the rune pendants stuffed into a garbage bag with some of the other jewels that the giants had taken off the partygoers. It had taken me a couple of days and a lot of hard work to clean up the runes and make the silverstone shine again, but it had been more than worth it to see the look of amazement and wonder on Gin’s face when I’d given the necklaces back to her at the Pork Pit –

"Flowers, candy, jewelry," Phillip repeated in a firm voice. "Those three things have gotten me out of more sticky situations than any gun ever has."

I shook my head. "That’s because you’re so utterly charming that you convince every woman who crosses your path that she’s going to be Mrs. Phillip Kincaid. Naturally, they get upset when that doesn’t happen."

For a moment, his face grew somber. "There’s only one woman who’s going to be Mrs. Phillip Kincaid."

I knew that he was talking about Eva. I could see it in his eyes, but I made myself snort, as though I didn’t care one way or the other about the burgeoning relationship between the two of them. "If she wants you."

"Oh, she’ll want me," Phillip said with a confident grin. "Everyone does."

"Now you sound like Stuart."

"Who is Stuart?" he asked, a puzzled look on his face.

"I’ll tell you all about him and his friend Richie – outside," I said. "Now, come on. We have some peacocks to deal with."

Chapter 5

Phillip and I left the bump and grind of the dance floor behind and stepped outside. I breathed in, enjoying the freshness of the summer night air after all of the smoke and sweat inside the club.

The interior of Northern Aggression might have been all lush elegance, but the exterior was surprisingly featureless, like a corporate office building. The only thing that set the building apart was the neon sign over the entrance, which was shaped like Roslyn’s rune. The heart with an arrow through it burned a bright, bloody red, then a sunny yellow, then a burnt orange, casting its intense light out over the folks waiting to get past the red velvet rope at the entrance to the club.

A few people looked up from their phones, cigarettes, and conversations as we walked past but quickly lost interest and turned their hopeful attention back to the giant bouncer manning the velvet rope. I filled Phillip in on Stuart the giant and Richie the dwarf and their plans for Gin as we headed toward the parking lot.

When I finished, Phillip let out a low whistle. "So now they’re following her around Ashland, just waiting for her to let her guard down long enough to try to kill her? Sounds like some folks are getting a little desperate to get rid of the Spider."

"I don’t know why. It’s not like Gin is trying to take Mab’s place or anything like that. All she wants is to be left alone."

Phillip shook his head. "That’s not going to happen, and we both know it. Not until someone steps up and takes control of the underworld. Right now, everyone is just trying to hold on to what they have and position themselves as best they can. As much as I hate to say it, at least with Mab around, there was some semblance of order. You don’t want to know how many men I’ve lost these past few months to fools storming onto the riverboat, thinking that they can rob me and intimidate my customers. Not to mention what happened to Antonio."

A shadow passed over his face, causing guilt to cut through my stomach like one of Gin’s knives. Antonio Mendez had been Phillip’s right-hand man on the Delta Queen, but more important, the giant had been Phillip’s friend. Salina had used her water magic to suck all of the moisture, all of the life, out of Antonio, and he’d died on the riverboat’s main deck. Salina might have been the one who actually killed the giant, but I still felt responsible for his death – the same way that I felt responsible for all of the hurt that Eva, Phillip, Cooper, and Gin had experienced because of Salina.

Because of my foolish faith and trust in her.

There was nothing that I could do for Antonio. Not now. But the same wasn’t true for Gin, so I pulled my keys out of my pocket and popped open the trunk of my Mercedes-Benz. The trunk was a mess, full of tools and odd bits of metal I had picked up here and there, but I knew exactly what I was looking for and precisely where it was. Like Gin and her knives, I never went anywhere without my weapon of choice these days. I reached down into the mess, and my hands closed around a smooth, firm, familiar hilt. A moment later, I pulled my blacksmith’s hammer out of the trunk and into the neon glare cast by the heart-and-arrow sign.