Elemental Assassin 01 - Spider's Bite

dish towel filled with ice covered his right eye, and an old black-and-white movie flickered on the television in front of him. Jezebel with Bette Davis. Caine moved the ice to the other eye and winced.
    “Want me to look at your face?” I asked the detective. “I’m pretty good at patching people up.”
    “Yeah,” Finn agreed. “When she’s not killing them.”
    Donovan Caine grimaced at his bad joke. But evidently the detective wasn’t afraid of me and what I could do to him, because he got to his feet.
    “Sure,” he said. “It can’t feel much worse than it does right now.”
    He could be dead and not feeling anything at all, but I let the matter slide.
    Caine followed me into the spare bathroom, and I directed him to sit on the closed toilet lid while I fetched one of the tubs of healing ointment Jo-Jo Deveraux had given me.
    “Spread your legs,” I said.
    “Excuse me?”
    I gestured to his legs. “Open your legs, so I can shimmy in between them. I can get to your face easier that way.”
    “Oh. Right.”
    The detective spread his legs wide, and I got down on my knees in front of him. Once again, the warmth of his body washed over me. Despite all the blood he’d come into contact with, the detective still smelled of soap. Squeaky clean to the bitter end. I’d never thought such a simple aroma could be so intoxicating. But Donovan Caine smelled so good I wanted to bury my face against his neck and just breathe in his scent. Mmm.
    I grabbed the tub off the counter. The only marking on the white container was Jo-Jo’s cloud rune painted in a vivid blue on top of the lid. I unscrewed it, and the soothing smell of vanilla wafted up out of the tub. In addition to healing with their hands, Air elementals like Jo-Jo could also infuse their magic into other products, like this ointment, and give them a little extra kick.
    I dipped my hand into the ointment. It felt warm and slick against my fingers, and tingles spread up into my hands and arms, just like they did when Jo-Jo worked her magic on me. The spider rune scars on my palms didn’t itch and burn quite as bad as they had in the salon, mainly because the magic in the ointment wasn’t as strong as Jo-Jo’s raw, undiluted power. But it would do the job on Donovan Caine’s bruised face.
    I leaned forward and brought my anointed fingers near his face. Caine flinched and jerked back just before I touched him. What did he think I was going to do? Come up with a knife and slash his jugular? As if I would have made such a mess in my own apartment. As if I couldn’t have killed him half a dozen times already tonight.
    It was late, and I was tired. So I grabbed Donovan’s chin, yanked his head down when he tried to pull away, and rubbed the ointment into his skin. After a few seconds, the healing, Air elemental magic started working on him. The bruises on his face yellowed and faded, while the cuts closed themselves up. Donovan felt his injuries easing and relaxed—as much as he could with his partner’s killer within arm’s reach.
    “You have a very firm grip,” Caine said. “Very hard. Very strong.”
    “Is that a compliment?”
    He shrugged. “Just an observation.”
    I massaged ointment into the rest of his face, including his lips. The lower one had been split, and I swiped my thumb across the wound the way a lover might. Donovan stiffened at the intimate contact, but he didn’t pull away. Instead, the detective studied me as I worked. His flat cop eyes took in everything from my posture to the circular motion of my hands to my breathing. Filing the information away for future use. When our truce was over, and he could come after me like he really wanted to—guns blazing.
    “What’s that on your hand?” he asked. “It looks like silver.”
    The rune. He must have seen one of the silverstone spider runes burned into my palms. The small circle surrounded by eight thin rays. Something else he didn’t need to know about. I curled my fingers into a loose fist.
    “It’s nothing,” I said. “Just an old scar. I’ve got lots of them.”
    “I bet you do,” he murmured.
    I finished with the ointment, stood up, and handed the detective a bottle of superstrength aspirin. “You might want to take a few of these too.”
    He took the bottle from my hands, careful not to touch my skin. His amber eyes caught and held my gray ones. I leaned against the sink, crossed my arms over my chest, and waited for him to say whatever he wanted to