Elemental Assassin 01 - Spider's Bite

moment, I looked away from the name. I was too shocked to puzzle out the old man’s motives tonight, so I set the sheet aside and reached for the photo. It had landed facedown on the floor. I stared at it a few seconds before my hands felt steady enough to pick it up. There was a date on the back written in Fletcher’s tight hand. August of this year. Only a few weeks ago. I turned the photo over—
    And my heart stopped.
    Because the woman smiling out of the picture looked like my mother. Long, blond hair, cornflower blue eyes, rosy skin. But it wasn’t my mother. Her nose was a touch too long, her mouth a bit wide, her eyes harder than I remembered. But I still recognized her face, even though I’d only been thirteen the last time I’d seen her and she had just been eight. Seventeen years had passed since then. The terrible night I’d thought she’d died along with our mother and older sister.
    My eyes latched on to the necklace she wore. A silverstone pendant rested in the hollow of her throat. A rune, shaped like a primrose. The symbol for beauty. The same rune I had up on my mantel.
    “Bria,” I whispered. “Bria.”
    My baby sister was alive. 

Web of Lies 
    Jennifer Estep
    Turn the page for a sneak peek at the next book in the Elemental Assassin series,
    Coming soon from Pocket Books

    “Freeze! Nobody move! This is a robbery!”
    Wow. Three clichés in a row. Somebody was seriously lacking in the imagination department.
    But the shouted threats scared someone, who squeaked out a small scream. I sighed. Screams were always bad for business. Which meant I couldn’t ignore the trouble that had just walked into my restaurant—or deal with it the quick, violent way I would have preferred. A silverstone knife through the heart is enough to stop most trouble in its tracks. Permanently.
    So I pulled my gray gaze up from the paperback copy of The Odyssey that I’d been reading to see what all the fuss was about.
    Two twentysomething men stood in the middle of the Pork Pit, looking out of place among the restaurant’s blue and pink vinyl booths. The dynamic duo sported black trench coats that covered their thin T-shirts and flapped against their ripped, rock star jeans. Neither one wore a hat or gloves, and the fall chill had painted their ears and fingers a bright, cherry red. I wondered how long they’d stood outside, gathering up the courage to come in and yell out their trite demands.
    Water dripped off their boots and spread across the faded blue and pink pig tracks that covered the restaurant floor. I eyed the men’s footwear. Expensive black leather, thick enough to keep out the November cold. No holes, no cracks, no missing bootlaces. These two weren’t your typical, desperate junkies looking for a quick cash score. No, they had their own money—lots of it, from the looks of their pricey shoes, vintage T-shirts, and designer jeans. These two rich punks were robbing my barbecue restaurant just for the thrill of it.
    Worst fucking decision they’d ever made.
    “Freeze!” the first guy repeated, as if we all hadn’t heard him before.
    He was a beefy man with spiky blond hair held up by some sort of shiny, hair-care product. Probably a little giant blood in his family tree somewhere, judging from his six-foot-six frame and large hands. Despite his twentysomething years, baby fat still puffed out his face like a warm, oozing marshmallow. The guy’s brown eyes flicked around the restaurant, taking in everything from the baked beans bubbling on the stove behind me to the hissing French fryer to the battered, bloody copy of Where the Red Fern Grows mounted on the wall beside the cash register.
    Then, Beefcake turned his attention to the people inside the Pork Pit to make sure we were all following his demands. Not many folks to look at. Mondays could be slow, made even more so today by the cold bluster of wind and rain outside. The only other people in the restaurant besides me and the would-be robbers were my dwarven cook, Sophia Deveraux, and a couple of customers—two college-age women wearing skinny jeans and tight T-shirts not unlike those the robbers sported.
    The women sat shocked and frozen, eyes wide, barbecue beef sandwiches halfway to their lips. Sophia stood next to the stove, her black eyes flat and disinterested as she watched the beans bubble. She grunted once and gave them a stir with a metal spoon. Nothing much ever bothered Sophia.
    The first guy raised his hand. A small