Elemental Assassin 01 - Spider's Bite

appear. No kids, no pets, no torture, no framing someone else for what I did. The way the elemental had tortured Fletcher … she deserved to be punished for that alone. Put down like a rabid dog before she did it to someone else.
    Fletcher was gone, but I was still here. So was Finn. And I was going to do everything in my power to keep it that way. The old man had drilled survival into my head above all else—emotions, conscience, fear, regrets. If that made me a hypocrite, so be it. Worse things to be. Like dead.
    I forced myself to go through the motions of my late-night rituals. Washing my body, shampooing my hair, drying off, slipping into my softest flannel pajamas, the ones Jo-Jo had given me with the puffy blue clouds on them. Guilt, tears, and emotional breakdown aside, I’d need to be at my best tomorrow. And for the foreseeable future. Oh, I wasn’t worried about the bounty. Fletcher had taught me how to be careful, how to be invisible, a skill I’d perfected these last seventeen years. Which made it all the stranger that someone had been able to target us. I still didn’t understand how or when we’d been that careless, that sloppy. But somebody, somewhere, sometime had talked about what the three of us did. When I got up close and personal with the Air elemental, I was going to ask how she’d found Fletcher—and I wasn’t going to ask nicely.
    Before I went to bed, I shuffled around the apartment and pressed my hand to the stone around the door frame and all the windows one more time, checking my protection runes. The stone murmured in response before falling back down to its usual, low hum.
    As added insurance, I tucked a silverstone knife under both my pillows and put a few more on the nightstand within easy reach. Then I curled into a tight ball underneath the soft sheets. The tension in my body slowly unknotted, and I dreamed …
    Great, heaving, breath-stealing sobs wracked my body, shaking me from head to toe. Tears rushed down my chapped face in an endless torrent, mixing with the dirt on my hands. I drew in a ragged breath and licked my cracked lips, tasting my own salt.
    “That’s not doing you any good,” a low voice cut through my misery.
    Footsteps sounded on the blacktop, and I glanced up, sniffling. A man stood in front of me, middle-aged and tall, with dark brown hair. A greasy apron hid his blue work shirt and pants. Brown boots covered his feet, and a black trash bag dangled from his right hand.
    “Tears are a waste of time, energy, and resources,” he said in a serious tone, as though imparting some great, mystical secret to me.
    My mother and sisters were dead. People wanted to kill me. I was alone and living on the streets. Cold. Tired. Hungry. So hungry. I had plenty to cry about.
    The man looked at me, his green gaze taking in my dirty face, matted hair, and ripped clothes. He sighed, then reached into the black trash bag.
    I tensed, reaching for the magic flowing through my veins. If he pulled out a knife and came at me, I would use my power on him. Make the bricks fly out of the alley wall and smash him in the face. Form an Ice dagger with my bare hands and stab him with it. Whatever it took. Even if it meant using my magic to kill—again.
    The man pulled out a crumpled, white paper bag. I was sitting down, my knees drawn tight to my chest. My eyes were just level with the pig logo printed on the side of the bag.
    “Here.” The man held out the bag. “There’s a burger in here. Takeout somebody didn’t pick up. Baked beans, too. You can have them, if you want.”
    My stomach screamed yes, but I shook my head no. Nobody gave you anything for free on the streets of Ashland. He’d probably want me to blow him here in the alley. I wasn’t desperate enough to do that. Not yet. I didn’t have much to offer at thirteen, besides barely developed breasts and thin hips, but I’d realized most men looking to get laid didn’t care, as long as they got off.
    The man shrugged. “Suit yourself, kid.”
    He opened the Dumpster and threw away the black bag. The white one followed. Whistling, he opened the back door to the restaurant and disappeared inside. I counted the seconds in my head. Ten, twenty, thirty … When I reached forty-five, I got to my feet, ran to the Dumpster, and plucked the white bag out of the smelly, shadowy depths.
    I darted back across the alley and slipped into a black hole. The crack was big enough for me to worm into, but not so large that