Spider's Bite

"Good. I'm going to need you to run the Pork Pit the next few days." I swallowed the acid that once again coated my throat. "And call the cops in the morning." I told Sophia about everything that had happened tonight. The dwarf didn't say anything. But for a moment, something dark and soulful sparked in her gaze. It might have been sorrow. Hard to tell with Sophia. She was even colder than I was.

Once I made the arrangements with Sophia, I thanked Jo-Jo for her hospitality and skills, and promised to have Finn wire her the usual amount. Then I stood up, put the hooker's bloody shirt back on, and roused Finn, who was taking a catnap in the salon chair.

"Come on," I said. "We've still got things to do tonight." "Like what?" Jo-Jo asked.

I ran a hand through my hair. My fingers caught on a clump of blood. "We took some things off the guys at Finn's apartment. I want to go through them. I also want to see what's on the news and what's been leaked to the press. Gordon Giles's attempted murder is going to be a big story, and we need to stay on top of it." Jo-Jo nodded, her blond curls bobbing. "Well, y'all be careful. Fletcher Lane was one of my oldest, dearest friends. If you need anything, anything at all, just give me or Sophia a holler."

A grim smile tightened my face. "Thanks. But I don't think we'll need you again, especially not Sophia. Because once I get my hands on the person responsible for all this, there won't be enough left of her to put under a microscope, much less dispose of."

Across the room, Sophia Deveraux grunted her disappointment.

Chapter Ten

Before we left, Jo-Jo promised to take care of Fletcher's funeral arrangements. I was happy to cede that task to her. I needed to focus on finding his killer, not the raw emotions the old man's death had infected me with. Jo-Jo also gave me some tubs of her magically infused healing ointment in case Finn and I had any lingering issues in the morning.

Thirty minutes later, after stashing his Benz in an anonymous parking garage a few blocks away, Finn and I were in my apartment. I'd checked the building and the stone around the door before we'd entered, but the vibrations had been low and steady as usual. Whoever had hired Brutus didn't know where I lived. Otherwise, she would have been camped outside by now. Despite Jo-Jo's ministrations, I was glad for the respite. I really didn't want to deal with any more blood or bodies tonight.

Even I had limits.

But I still took the precaution of using my magic to trace runes into the stone outside the door. Small, tight, spiral curls-the symbol for protection. The runes shimmered with a silver color before sinking into the stone. If someone tried to get into the apartment tonight, my magic would trigger the runes and echo through the stone-rising to a shrill shriek that would wake me from the deepest, deadest sleep.

Finn and I sat at the kitchen table rifling through the wallets and other items we'd taken from the men at his apartment. I flipped open Shortie's wallet and stared at the driver's license inside.

"Fake," Finn pronounced.

I stared at the laminated card. "How can you tell?"

"The Ashland city seal's on the wrong side. It should be on the right, away from the photo, not on the left on top of it."

In addition to handling other people's money, Finn was also rather good with documents. He'd done all my fake

IDs and could lay out a paper trail so thick and elaborate it would fool the most studious forensic accountant.

Something gold glinted underneath the pile of wallets. I snagged my fingers on the metal and pulled out the chain Finn had torn off Shortie's neck. A small medallion hung off the end-a triangular-shaped tooth with sharp, jagged, sawlike edges done in polished jet.

"What does this look like to you?" I asked. "A tacky piece of man jewelry."

"Come on. Be serious. Look at it again."

He peered at it. "A tooth. No, wait, that could be a rune. A tooth ... the symbol for strength and prosperity. You think an elemental is involved in this?" Finn's gaze flicked to the three drawings on my mantle. The snowflake, the ivy vine, the primrose. The symbols of my dead family. His green eyes dropped to my hand and the spider runes burned into my palms. Finn knew I was a Stone and Ice elemental, although I'd never told him anything about my family. But I was sure Finn had researched the runes I'd drawn and found out who they belonged to. Information was like an aphrodisiac to Finn. Uncovering people's secrets an amusing game.

Fletcher had been the same way. But neither one of them had ever asked me about the runes or my past.

Don't ask, don't tell. The only rule the three of us had had.

"Yeah, an elemental's involved in this."

"How do you know?" Finn asked.

"There was some damage at the Pork Pit. Overturned tables, broken chairs, busted windows, like a tornado had ripped through the storefront. Looked like Air elemental damage to me." A smooth, easy lie. "But I've never seen this exact symbol before, and I know the runes of all the major elemental families in Ashland."

The extremely rich elementals, anyway. They were the only ones who could afford my services. Their feuds alone could have kept me busy the rest of my life. Members of opposing elemental families, like Stone and Air or Fire and Ice, rarely mixed unless forced to by business or the occasional ill-fated Romeo and Juliet love affair. Those elementals were always jockeying for position, money, power, along with the wealthy humans, vampires, giants, and dwarves who comprised the city's upper crust. If the elementals couldn't get what they wanted with money, they used their magic, often with vicious results. The others did too. Duels at dawn were not uncommon in the city. When that failed, well, that's when they hired someone like me to clean up the mess.

The weaker elementals and other magic users of more modest means led simpler lives. They worked jobs and put their kids through school. Lived out in the cleaner suburbs and drove minivans to ballet class. Some of them rarely used their power at all.

In contrast, the poor and the downtrodden elementals used their magic the most.

They performed parlor tricks on the street corner for the amusement of passersby and spare change to feed whatever habit they had. Drugs, booze, sex, blood. The constant struggle to survive and use of their magic burned them out-or drove them crazy. I'd seen more than one psychotic elemental during my stay in Ashland Asylum.

Magic had that affect on some people, some elementals. Using their power gave them a high better than alcohol, better than drugs, until they were hooked on it. But elementals were much more dangerous than your common junkies, because they'd lost control but still had all that raw magic running through their veins.

"Well, it's not a sunburst, so it's not Mab Monroe's symbol," Finn said.

I thought of the rune I'd seen on Mab's necklace earlier tonight. A sunburst. A ruby surrounded by gold, curled, wavy lines. So much like my own spider rune, but so different.

"I don't know," I murmured. "She could be involved in this. Gordon Giles did work for one of her companies. Maybe Mab found out he was doing something she didn't approve of. Rumor has it she killed the previous head of the company, the James sisters' father, for making too many waves when she took over."

"And so Mab did what?" Finn scoffed. "Hired you to take care of it, then decided to take care of you? Doesn't make sense. You just said it yourself. Mab's never been afraid of getting her hands dirty. Everybody knows she killed that federal judge three months ago because he was merely thinking about trying to indict her. If Mab didn't like whatever Gordon Giles was up to, she would have taken care of it herself. Not set you up to take the fall."

Finn was right. Mab Monroe ran this town. She wouldn't have cared about getting caught. She would have killed Gordon Giles, stood over his body, and blown off her smoking fingers in front of everyone at the opera house. No, Mab Monroe hadn't gotten to where she was by being sneaky. This was someone else's handiwork.

Someone who didn't have the guts to accept the consequences of her actions.

Cowardly bitch.

"We can't rule Mab out completely. But she's probably not the one pulling the strings." "Who does that leave us with?" Finn asked.

I shrugged. "Most of our clients are motivated by sex, money, or revenge. According to Fletcher's file, Gordon

Giles didn't have a wife or steady girlfriend. He preferred to buy and pay for his sexual entertainment."

"Hookers?"

I nodded. "Hookers. Lots of them. But no hooker in her right mind would promise to pay me five mill to kill Giles. Only a few would even be able to put their hands on enough money for the down payment, much less the back end. So that pretty much rules out sex as a motive. Fletcher said Giles was stealing money, so I'd have to go with Haley James."

"His boss at Halo Industries?"

I nodded again. "She could have found out about the embezzling and decided to kill Giles rather than let the info go public. It wouldn't be good for her company if word got out she was being bilked by her top paper pusher."

"Maybe. But Giles dying any sort of way isn't going to look good for Halo Industries.

And embezzling is down the list as far as crimes go. We need more information." Finn looked at the jet tooth again. "A tooth rune ... that could be any elemental.

Stone, Air, Fire, Ice. Or even someone with a minor talent for metal or water or something else. It's not specific enough."

Most elementals chose runes that represented their magic. Like my mother's snowflake for her Ice magic, or Mab Monroe's sunburst for her Fire power. A tooth would be better suited for a vampire, for obvious reasons. Finn was right. There was no way to tell which kind of elemental it belonged to. The rune didn't mean anything in and of itself, just like they had no real power unless you created or imbued them with magic.

I might have dismissed the tooth rune as a mere trinket, if not for the gruesome way Fletcher had been tortured. I'd seen just about all the bad things people could do to each other, and I knew the signs of Air elemental magic when I saw them. Shortie had been working for someone. It made sense he would wear his employer's symbol, whoever she might be.

"We'll figure it out," I promised. "Let's see what else is here."

We went through the rest of the items. More fake IDs, a few credit cards, and several hundred bucks in cash. Nothing useful. The television droned on in the background while we worked. At five in the morning, the early news program blared on. The top story was the incident at the opera house. Finn and I sat on the couch and watched the spectacle.

A reporter stood outside the opera house. Red lights flickered in the background. "A tragedy occurred last night at the Ashland Opera House, as a deranged woman attempted to kill one of the attendees. The target was believed to be Gordon Giles, a wealthy Ashland businessman and the chief financial officer of Halo Industries." The same headshot of Giles that was in Fletcher's file popped up on the screen. The reporter recounted the events of the evening, albeit with a great deal of spin. Now, instead of busting into the box seats, detective Donovan Caine had prevented me from entering, with an innocent bystander tragically losing his life in the process.

Media bullshit. I wondered how they would explain the bloodstains being inside the box instead of out in the hallway.

"Even though Giles was not harmed in the initial incident, he was involved in a traffic accident on his way home. A large SUV hit his limo. Police say the impact ignited the gas tank, and the vehicle exploded. Giles and his driver were pronounced dead at the scene."

The television cut to a shot of a limo engulfed by flames. Killing Giles, torturing Fletcher. Busy girl, our mysterious Air elemental.

"They killed Giles anyway," Finn murmured. "They really must have wanted him dead."

The reporter appeared on the screen again. "Giles was attacked by this woman, believed to be the businessman's disgruntled former lover and a possible prostitute.

She is also believed to have been behind the car accident that led to his death. Police are not releasing her name, but a detective on the scene provided officials with this sketch."

I snorted. They weren't releasing my name because they didn't know it. But a moment later, my face appeared on the monitor. Or at least, what might have passed for my face if you tilted your head just right and squinted real hard. It wasn't a completely inaccurate rendering. Donovan Caine had at least gotten my eyes and the hard set of my mouth right, even if the black toboggan had hidden my bleached blond hair. Still, I wasn't worried about someone recognizing me from the sketch. It was too rough for that. Besides, people never really looked at those things anyway or remembered them after the fact. Not in a city like Ashland where everyone could be a potential threat.

Speaking of Caine, his was the next face to flicker onto the screen. He stood behind one of the Ashland Police

Department's senior captains, who was speaking into a microphone. More cops flanked the two men.

"... and although she did not succeed in harming Mr. Giles initially, she is still wanted for his murder."

That was the captain speaking. Stephenson was his name, according to the ID on the screen. Wayne Stephenson. A giant with pale eyes and stubby, salt-and-pepper hair, whose once trim physique was going to fat. Perhaps it was the media spotlight, but Stephenson looked stressed. A greenish hue tinged his pasty skin, and he blotted a sheen of sweat off his forehead with a white handkerchief.

A reporter waved her hand, shouting Donovan Caine's name and trying to get him to answer a question. The detective scowled and opened his mouth to respond, but the captain stepped in front of Caine, blocking him from view.