Venom

Sophia was an inch or so taller than Jo-Jo and had a much more muscular figure than her big sister did. At a hundred and thirteen, the younger Deveraux sister was in her prime, instead of firmly entrenched in middle age like Jo-Jo was. Sophia plopped down in the chair to my left and nodded at me. I nodded back.

And then the three of them stared at me. Finn, Jo-Jo, Sophia. Hell, even Rosco turned his head back in my direction. All of them looking steadily at me, expectation shining in their eyes. Oh, f**k. They actually expected me to talk about what had happened tonight. To share my feelings. I sighed again. I’d much rather have hacked and slashed my way through a platoon of Mab Monroe’s giants than explain how I was dealing with my emotions.

But they were my family, for better or worse. They deserved to know what had happened tonight-and how it could affect them tomorrow.

"All right," I said. "Here’s the short version."

I recapped the events of the evening, starting with Jonah McAllister and Elliot Slater bracing me, Slater beating me, and Mab Monroe stepping in and leading her goons off into the dark night. And then there was the biggie-my unexpected meeting with Bria, my long-lost younger sister.

"So Bria’s a detective? Working in Ashland?" Jo-Jo asked. "Why didn’t we know this before?"

"Because she’s a new transfer, only started a week ago," Finn said, taking another sip of his chicory coffee. "I did some checking while you were healing Gin."

In addition to (mis)handling other people’s money, Finn was also something of an information trader. If you wanted dirt on someone, Finnegan Lane could get it for you-in a hurry.

"Bria has been working down in Savannah, Georgia, ever since she graduated from the police academy a couple of years ago. She moved up to Ashland a few weeks back." Finn hesitated and stared at me. "She took Donovan Caine’s position in the police department."

My hands tightened around the padded arms of my salon chair. A man’s face flashed before my eyes. Black hair, hazel eyes, bronze skin, and a lean, hard body that had felt marvelous pressed against my own. Detective Donovan Caine. One of the few honest cops in Ashland who actually tried to fight crime, rather than taking a bribe to look the other way. Caine had also been my sometimes lover, until he’d left town a few weeks ago.

Detective Donovan Caine had been upstanding to a fault, with a strict code of justice and morals that never, ever bent. He’d had a hard enough time dealing with the fact that I used to be an assassin-and that I’d killed his former partner, Cliff Ingles, for raping a thirteen-year-old girl. But when I’d gone after coal mine owner Tobias Dawson for threatening an old friend of Fletcher’s, Donovan hadn’t handled it well at all. He’d known I’d planned to assassinate Dawson, and he’d done nothing to stop me.

After I killed Dawson, well, Donovan’s morals, his ideals, started eating away at him. He’d come down to the Pork Pit one night and said he couldn’t be the man he wanted to be and be with me at the same time. Donovan Caine had broken off our complicated affair and left town to get away from me and the attraction between us-and the fact that he still wanted to f**k me despite a) his precious morals and, b) all the bad things I’d done.

I’d been willing to share my life, my heart, with Donovan, and he’d walked out on me. On the possibility of us. Maybe it was a good thing he’d left town. Otherwise, I might have been tempted to do something stupid. Like try to seduce him into giving us just one more chance. And be pissed off all over again when he said no.

"Gin?" Finn asked. "Are you still with us?"

I shook my head to banish my troubled, unwanted thoughts. "Yeah, I’m still here. So my mysterious sister took Donovan’s place in the department. What else do you know about her?"

Finn shrugged. "Not much. I’ve only been digging for an hour. But Bria’s got a reputation for being a real hard-ass. Cleaning up corruption, sticking up for the little people, that sort of thing."

So Bria was a crusader, just like Donovan Caine had been. Just what I needed. Another honest cop complicating my life. Especially when I was still trying to figure out why Mab Monroe had murdered my mother and older sister all those years ago-and how I could kill the Fire elemental now without getting dead myself.

"And, of course, we know that Bria is drop-dead gorgeous," Finn said in a dreamy tone. "That picture of her that Dad somehow got his hands on does not do the woman justice."

Finn was referring to a photograph Fletcher Lane had left for me. It had been in a thick folder, along with all the other information about my mother’s and older sister’s murder at the hands of Mab Monroe. Autopsy photos, police reports, newspaper clippings. Jo-Jo had given me the file after the old man’s death. Bria’s picture-which made me realize she was still alive-had been the only nice thing in the gruesome folder.

I rolled my eyes. "Do me a favor, Finn. Don’t look like that when you talk about my sister."

"Like what?"

"Like you’re thinking about her naked and in your bed."

Finn grinned. "Would I do something like that?"

"Absolutely."

"Mmm-hmm." On my left, Sophia grunted her agreement. That was about as expressive as she ever got. Unlike most folks, the Goth dwarf preferred to communicate in short, monosyllabic bursts.

Finn put his hand over his heart. "Oh, Gin, you wound me with your jaded cynicism."

"Yeah, yeah," I said. "My words are like knives. Just let me decide what I want to do about Bria before you start hitting on her, okay?"

Finn gave a reluctant nod of his head. "All right. But figure it out soon. You know I have a thing for hot blondes."

I snorted. "You have a thing for anyone with br**sts."

We might have kept squabbling, but Jo-Jo cleared her throat. I turned my head to look at the dwarf.

"So what are you going to do about your sister?" the older dwarf asked in a soft voice. "Are you going to tell her who you really are? What you’ve been doing all these years? What your plans are?"

"You mean am I going to tell Bria that I’m her long-lost, big sister, Genevieve Snow? That I was a renowned assassin known as the Spider? Or that Mab Monroe killed our mother and sister and that I’ve sworn to take my revenge on the Fire elemental?" I shook my head. "Call me crazy, but I think that might be a bit much to process all at once."

Just the thought of telling Bria who I really was made my stomach tighten and the spider rune scars on my palms itch and burn. Even though I didn’t often feel it, I knew what the emotion was. Dread.

"I don’t know. Bria’s your sister, after all. That counts for a lot," Jo-Jo murmured.