"According to my sources, you've become LaFleur's number one priority," Finn said, taking another sip of his coffee. "Mab wants you dead yesterday, Gin. And if Elektra can't get the job done in the next few days, then Mab's going to show her how it's done-starting with Elektra."

I nodded. I'd expected nothing less after last night's escapade. I'd infiltrated Mab's newest little fiefdom, snatched Natasha right out from under her nose, burned her potential nightclub to the ground, and escaped from her assassin. Not a good night to be Mab. A great one for the Spider, though.

Finn had already told me that the other power players in Ashland had been sniffing around Mab, ever since I'd killed Jake McAllister in the Fire elemental's own home a few weeks ago. For the first time in a long time, the city's other underworld sharks sensed weakness around the Fire elemental, a weakness that they wanted to exploit. And now all this had happened.

A few more nights like this one, and I wouldn't have to make a run at Mab. Her other enemies would do it for me. Not that they would succeed, of course, as Mab was no pushover. But my small victories would make them bold enough to try. That was something, at least.

I thought back to all the things that I'd overheard Mab and Elektra talking about last night in the railcar. Finding the Spider. Killing the Spider. Doing the same to Gin Blanco. And most importantly, murdering my sister, Bria. There was only one way I could prevent all of that from happening-I had to kill Elektra LaFleur. I'd been planning on doing it anyway, and I might have taken my shot at her last night, if I hadn't had Finn and Natasha to think about.

But taking out the other assassin had morphed into a necessity. LaFleur was one of the best, and now she was on Mab's ticking timetable. The assassin would torture and kill anyone she thought might know who I was in order to find me. Which meant there were three people in the most danger right now-Roslyn, Xavier, and Bria.

Roslyn and Xavier because Mab suspected they were somehow connected to Elliot Slater's death and Bria because, well, she was her. The woman that Mab thought was destined to kill her. So Roslyn and Xavier had to be warned, and Bria, well, I wasn't sure what to do about her. I knew that Xavier would help watch my sister's back, since the giant was her partner on the Ashland police force. But there were just too many other times, too many other places, someone like LaFleur could get to her, kill her. There was really only one way to solve this particular problem.

"Well, then," I murmured. "I guess I'll just have to kill LaFleur first."

"And how are you planning to do that?" Jo-Jo asked.

"Yeah," Finn chimed in. "How are you going to do that? Because my sources tell me that Mab's holed up on her estate and that she's not coming out until Elektra brings her your head on a silver platter. The train yard was tricky enough. They weren't expecting you to know about it, much less actually show up there. But Mab's mansion is locked down tighter than Fort Knox. There's no way you're getting close to the Fire elemental on her own turf. And apparently, LaFleur's in there with her as well."

I thought about everything I knew about Elektra LaFleur. All the information in that file that Fletcher had compiled on her. All my interactions with her over the last few days. How she thought, how she killed, the things she seemed to want out of life. I thought back to the conversation I'd overhead between her and Mab, the one where they had talked about all the people the Fire elemental wanted dead.

"Oh, I don't think I have to worry about getting into Mab's estate," I said, echoing the words I'd told Sophia just last night. "Sooner or later, LaFleur's going to come to me."

Owen frowned. "Why do you think that? Do you think she knows who you really are?"

I shook my head. "No. There's no way she got a good look at me last night. Not in the dark with everything that was going on. Even if she did, I was wearing that ski mask, at least until it got ripped off when I fell into the river. But Elektra will come to the Pork Pit sooner or later."

"But why?" Finn asked, his walnut-colored brows drawn together in confusion.

I told the two of them about everything I'd heard Mab and Elektra talk about in the railcar-namely, the untimely demise of one Gin Blanco, soon to be followed by that of Bria Coolidge.

"So you're going to set yourself up as bait," Owen said. "Okay. I guess I can understand that. But how do you know that LaFleur will show? She's supposed to be hunting down the Spider, not spending her time assassinating you."

I shrugged. "There's no guarantee that she'll come after me. But I was an assassin for a long time, and I ran into more than a few of my comrades over the years. Some of them were like me and Fletcher. They killed for the money or because it was a job that they were good at."

Finn, Owen, and Jo-Jo all nodded.

"But LaFleur's different," I said. "She kills for the thrill of it. Because it amuses her. That's why she toasted the dwarf at the docks. Because it gave her a charge, at least for a few minutes. She doesn't think that Gin Blanco, simple restaurant owner, is any kind of threat to her at all. Hell, she bragged to Mab that killing me wouldn't take up more than half an hour of her precious time. LaFleur will want, no, she'll need some kind of little victory after letting me get away from her last night. Some little something she can take back to Mab that she accomplished, that she got right. But even more than that, she'll need a kill for herself. Something to quiet that twitchy itch in her if only for a few hours."

"And you think that Gin Blanco will be it," Owen said, the worry loud and clear in his voice.

I nodded. "I do. Jonah McAllister wants me dead in the worst way. He just doesn't want to get his hands dirty doing it. LaFleur will be all too happy to do the job for him."

We sat in the kitchen in silence. In the den, Natasha's cartoon played on, the high jinks and yuk-yuk laughter sounding cheerily obscene next to the grim reality facing me-kill or be killed. But like it or not, it was the story of my life. It had been ever since I was thirteen. So far, I'd been the one who'd done the killing, and it was a tradition I planned to continue.

"Say that she does come for you, that she comes to the Pork Pit to murder Gin Blanco," Owen said. "What are you going to do?"

I stared at him with my flat gray eyes, letting him see the cold violence that always lurked there in the depths, just below the calm surface. "My plan is simple really. Kill the bitch before she kills me."

Chapter 21

We stayed in the kitchen for another ten minutes, hashing out how things might go down when LaFleur came to the Pork Pit to murder me. Not much to hash out really. I'd kill her, then Sophia would help me dispose of her body. Simple, efficient, deadly. Those were always the best kinds of plans.

Finn and Owen offered to watch the restaurant, to be lurking in the shadows waiting to provide backup when LaFleur called, but I turned them down. I did my best work alone, when I didn't have other people to think about, when I didn't have other people to worry about. If I had one second of distraction, one second of hesitation with LaFleur, I'd be the one who ended up dead instead of the other assassin.

Finn and Owen didn't like it, but they understood my reasoning. When they realized that I wasn't budging or changing my mind, the two of them reluctantly relented to my decision and left the kitchen. Finn went off to call Roslyn and Xavier and tell them to lie low and watch their backs for the next few days, while Owen checked in with Eva to give her an update on how I was doing.

I stayed behind in the kitchen with Jo-Jo. The middle-aged dwarf had remained silent during most of Finn's debriefing, but now she turned her pale, colorless eyes in my direction.

"What's bothering you, darling?" Jo-Jo said.

I sighed. In addition to her healing skills, Jo-Jo also had a bit of precognition. Most Airs did, since their magic let them listen to and interpret all the feelings and emotions that swirled along with the wind. It was just another way in which the dwarf's power was the opposite of mine. Jo-Jo's elemental Air magic gave her glimpses of the future, while my Stone power let me see into the past and what had happened in a particular place.

Thanks to Jo-Jo's precognition, I never could really hide anything from the dwarf, so this time I didn't even bother to try.

"Elektra LaFleur and her electrical magic," I said. "She's strong, Jo-Jo. So strong. Maybe even stronger than I am. LaFleur almost got me last night, almost broke through my Stone magic and fried me alive right there in the rail yard with her electricity. And even though she didn't kill me, her magic-it hurt so much. It took every bit of strength that I had to keep going after she blasted me with it that first time."

"You're worried she might kill you," Jo-Jo said in a soft voice.

I shrugged. "It's a distinct possibility. She almost got me last night. Hell, I would have frozen to death anyway if Owen hadn't found me and brought me here."

Jo-Jo gave me a thoughtful look. "I don't know about all that, Gin."

I stared at her. "What are you talking about?"

The dwarf took a sip of the hot chocolate that she'd made while I was arguing with Finn and Owen. "You don't really remember much about last night, do you?"

I shook my head.

"I didn't think so," Jo-Jo replied. "Sure, you were in bad shape when Owen brought you in, but you weren't nowhere near close to dying."

I frowned. It had certainly felt like I was dying, especially since I hadn't been able to feel any part of my body, there at the end. "What do you mean? I was half-frozen to death, from what I remember."

"Oh, you were definitely that," Jo-Jo agreed. "But not because of the river or LaFleur weakening you with her electrical magic. The frozen thing? You did that to yourself, Gin."

Unease curled up in my stomach. "What do you mean?"

Jo-Jo tilted her head to one side and stared at me with her clear eyes. "I mean that when Owen brought you into my beauty salon last night, you were holding on to enough magic to turn this whole house into a block of solid elemental Ice."

I blinked. I didn't remember doing anything like that. I didn't remember doing much of anything except drifting in and out of consciousness. "But I couldn't have done that. I couldn't feel anything, anything at all, not my fingers, not my toes, and certainly not my Ice magic."

Jo-Jo shook her head. "Maybe that's what you think, maybe that's how it felt to you. But somehow, you were using your Ice magic. A lot of it. More than I've ever seen you use before."

This time I shook my head. "I don't think so. If anything, I should have made myself move, should have made myself get up and start running and stay warm until I could get somewhere safe. Not turn myself into a human Popsicle."

That's what I'd done the last time I'd taken a late-night plunge into the cold depths of the Aneirin River after leaping off one of the balconies of the Ashland Opera House. That had been a few months ago when Brutus, aka the assassin Viper, had tried to kill me before I'd stiffed him instead. Brutus had managed to sneak up on me and put a gun to the base of my skull. All the other assassin had to do to kill me was just pull the trigger, but Brutus had wanted to gloat first about getting the drop on me. I'd kept him talking and had managed to turn things around. In the end, I'd left Brutus's body in the opera house and made my getaway.

For a second, Brutus's face flashed in front of my eyes. A short, stocky, Asian man with a black ponytail, a rune tattoo of a viper curling up his neck, and a scar slashing down his face to meet it.

I frowned. Thinking about the other assassin reminded me of something, of some small memory, of something that had to do with Elektra LaFleur-

"No," Jo-Jo said, making me lose my train of thought. "You were too wet, too cold, for that, and you instinctively knew it. So you did the only thing that you could. You grabbed hold of your Ice magic and used it to insulate your body, to wrap yourself in the cold until someone could come and find you and get you warm again. You've heard stories about kids up north falling into frozen lakes, getting fished out, and then miraculously being resuscitated a few hours later, right? With almost no damage whatsoever?"

I nodded.

"Well, that's what you did. You used your Ice magic to lower your body temperature enough to preserve yourself," the dwarf explained. "Those spider rune scars on your hands were glowing as bright as cold stars with your elemental power. I had a hell of time getting you to let go of it enough so that I could start healing you. Gin, you plumb wore me out last night."

Jo-Jo Deveraux was one of the strongest elementals I'd ever met, certainly the strongest Air healer. She was the kind of elemental that even someone like Mab Monroe would think twice about taking on. And somehow I'd tired the dwarf last night fighting her Air magic with my own Ice power?

I just didn't believe it. More importantly, I just didn't want to believe it. But Jo-Jo had always claimed I had more raw elemental magic than anyone she'd ever seen before-including Mab. I'd never been comfortable with that thought, and once more it made me shiver, even in the bright, cheery warmth of the dwarf's kitchen.

Because really, when it came right down to it, the cold, hard, rocky truth was that my mother and sister had died because of my elemental power. Because of what I could do with it. To say that I had some guilt about that would be an understatement. Ever since I'd found out that I was the cause for all of this, for all the misery and suffering in my own life, I'd felt sick over it. Just-sick.

Still, despite what Jo-Jo and even Mab thought, I wasn't foolish enough to think that I was the greatest elemental power that had ever been born. There was always somebody stronger out there, somebody quicker, tougher, smarter. All you had to do was be unlucky enough to meet them, have an off day, and then you got dead.