Elemental Assassin 01 - Spider's Bite

earrings sparked and flashed like smoldering embers. The gems matched the blue-green of her eyes.
    Alexis James followed her sister inside. Alexis was several inches taller, with the same light coloring, although her hair was cropped short. She wore a simple black cocktail dress. A string of pearls ringed her throat, while black gloves crawled up to her elbows. A pearl bracelet hung off her right wrist. Understated class, compared to Haley’s emerald flash.
    Haley James called out to Mab, and the two women paused to exchange meaningless pleasantries. Alexis stood off to one side, her face expressionless.
    According to Fletcher’s file, Haley James was the chief executive officer of Halo Industries, with Alexis serving as the head of marketing and public relations. The company had been in their family for years and dealt in a variety of areas, but the main focus was magical speculation, specifically harnessing Air elemental magic for a variety of medical and cosmetic products. The James sisters employed a whole staff of the elementals, but they weren’t known to be magic types themselves.
    I wondered if Haley James was the one who’d discovered Gordon Giles cooking the books. If she’d put the contract out on him to cover it up. To make an example of him. Or to keep Mab Monroe from finding out she was getting bilked out of millions and avoid the Fire elemental’s wrath. If Mab discovered Giles’s embezzlement, she’d not only take her ire out on the accountant, but on the James sisters as well for letting themselves get bamboozled. There were any number of reasons Haley James could have decided to eliminate Giles.
    But I put the conjecture out of my mind. It didn’t matter to me who had put the hit out on Giles, as long as the rest of the money appeared in a timely fashion after the fact. If it didn’t, well, then I’d get interested in who wanted Gordon Giles dead. But not before.
    Speaking of Mr. Giles, he’d finally arrived. He shuffled through the lobby and up the grand staircase, just as Mab Monroe had done, although with far less fanfare.
    Gordon Giles wore a tuxedo that was just a bit too large for his small frame. He was so thin, his shoulder bones poked up through the fabric of his suit. His face was tight and pinched, as though the very act of breathing pained him. He continually dry-washed his hands, and his eyes flicked back and forth over the lobby, moving from Haley James to Alexis to Mab Monroe, through their sea of onlookers, and back again. Trying to see which direction the danger would come from. What shadow the bullet would whiz out of. But he wouldn’t see it, wouldn’t see me, until it was too late.
    But really, it had been too late as soon as the client had contacted Fletcher. Because I was the Spider. I always followed through.
    And I never, ever missed. 

4
    People started drifting into their boxes to watch the performance. Gordon Giles slipped into a box marked A3, the one I’d been told was his.
    I climbed back up to the top floor, created another pair of lock picks with my Ice magic, then used them to open the door to the stairs that led to the catwalk. I paused inside the door and stripped off my thick white shirt, revealing a long-sleeved black T-shirt underneath. The white garment got stuffed inside the cello case, and I pulled out a snug-fitting, black vest filled with my usual supplies: cash, disposable cell phone, credit cards, a couple of fake IDs. A black toboggan I’d had folded in my pocket went on my head, hiding my bleached blond hair.
    I made my way up the steps and strode out onto the catwalk. It wasn’t a true metal catwalk but a carpeted balcony, a narrow, walled strip ringing the entire opera house in a giant circle, just as the floors below did. The houselights had already gone down, and several spotlights focused on the stage, highlighting the gleaming instruments of the orchestra. The musicians sat silent on the wide, semicircular stage, waiting for the cue from the maestro.
    I crept down the catwalk. From this high vantage point, I could look down over the entire complex—and straight into the second-floor VIP boxes, including the one that belonged to Gordon Giles.
    Giles was already seated. He must not have found the program for the evening very interesting, because he’d rolled it up. Giles shook his hand, and the paper baton slapped against his knee in a rapid, staccato pattern. The nervous twitch of a man who knows he’s in trouble.
    The maestro