Elemental Assassin 01 - Spider's Bite

asked. “Once this is over? It’s yours now.”
    Finn shrugged. “I don’t know. I haven’t gotten that far yet. I suppose it depends on what we find out—and whether or not we get killed in the process.”
    I nodded. The thought of dying didn’t scare me. I’d seen too much of it, dealt out too much of it, to fear it. It was the torture that could be inflicted before the kill that worried me. That’s where the real pain was. And if you got unlucky and didn’t die, the memories needled you that much more, each one a fresh set of pins pricking your heart.
    Death was a release, in so many ways. An end to suffering. An escape to something else. What that something else was, I didn’t know. Maybe heaven. Maybe hell. Maybe nothing at all. But I doubted it could be any worse than some of the things I’d seen and done in my lifetime.
    Or the ones I was going to have to do to make sure Finn and I survived the next few days.
    When he was certain no one was following us, Finn headed back to my apartment. He left the stolen SUV six blocks out. Using a circuitous route, we walked the rest of the way, arm in arm, heads close together, like a couple of lovers oblivious to the rest of the world.
    Our route took us past the Pork Pit. The tattered awning looked the same, but the neon pig was dark, sad, broken. Just like Fletcher. Guilt and grief filled me, and I concentrated on my breathing, trying to squash the feelings. But instead of frying grease and spices, tobacco smoke filled the air, adding to my discomfort. A cigarette dangled from the thin lips of the man standing in front of the restaurant. He held a tape measure in one hand and took a swig from the Dr. Enuf soda pop he had clenched in the other. A toolbox sat on the cracked sidewalk next to his booted feet. A bored glazier, fixing the pane I’d smashed.
    My eyes flicked past the man, and I spotted Sophia Deveraux inside the storefront. The Goth dwarf wore her usual black jeans and boots, although today, her T-shirt of choice was white with a giant black skull and crossbones on the front. A collar set with silver spikes ringed her neck. Her black lipstick was a dark slash in her pale face.
    Sophia was too busy cleaning to notice me. She pushed a mop back and forth across the floor. The thick muscles in her arms tightened and relaxed with every movement. Sophia gazed at the floor as though she could clean it with the force of her mind, if not her powerful strokes. I’d never seen the dwarf do any magic, but Sophia’s steadfast black stare made me wonder if she’d gotten any of the Air elemental power her sister Jo-Jo had—and what she might be able to do with it.
    Each of the four elements lent themselves to various things. Some Airs could control the weather. Others became healers. Stones often worked in construction or the coal mines that lay north of the city. Most of the Ices were fond of artistic leanings, like sculpture. Some of the Fires were also artists, using their heat to forge pottery and other things. Elementals could do too many things to name, and this wasn’t even counting the folks with aptitudes for offshoots of the elements like metal, water, and electricity. I looked at Sophia, and I wondered.
    Finn spotted Sophia too. It took him a few seconds to realize what she was doing—and exactly what she was cleaning up. Impossible to miss. Fletcher’s blood had long ago turned the thick, white mop strings a rusty pink. The rhythmic slop and swish of the mop splatting against the floor was like a knife in my heart. Twisting and turning until there was nothing inside me that hadn’t been ripped to ribbons.
    Finn’s steps slowed and faltered. I tightened my grip on his arm and dragged him across the street, before he could do something stupid, like stop. Or worse, try to go inside the restaurant. The Air elemental might not have men watching the restaurant since Fletcher was dead, but it was a chance I wasn’t going to take.
    “Soon,” I whispered in his ear. “Soon.”
    Finn nodded, and we strolled on.
    We took the elevator up to my floor and approached my door. I pressed my hand against the stone, letting the rough texture dig into my palm. No notes of alarm, no sudden bursts of distress. The stone murmured in a low voice, like usual. No one had been near the place all day.
    “Clean,” I said.
    Finn shivered and put his key in the lock. “You know how creepy that is, right? You listening to a pile of rocks? It’s just not