Elemental Assassin 02 - Web of Lies

her magic filled me, crossed my mind that maybe it would be . . . nice to be and I knew nothing more.
    chased, to just be . . . wanted, without any guilt or strings or morals attached. Either way, I knew I hadn’t seen the The next time I woke up, I was lying in a bed that wasn’t last of owen. Whatever his interest in me was, it wasn’t my own. I felt better, but bone-tired at the same time, going away anytime soon.
    which told me that my body was still recovering from He gave me another grin before Sophia put me into the trauma I’d been through and being blasted with JoEstep_Web of Lies_1P EP.indd 370-371
    12/17/09 9:32 PM
    372 JENNIFER ESTEP
    Web of Lies 373
    Jo’s healing Air magic. I shuddered to think how much
    “. . . can’t believe the amount of power she used, how the dwarf had had to use to put me back together again. much magic she was able to tap into.”
    But while I’d been unconscious, someone had bathed I stopped where I was in the hallway. Jo-Jo was talkand dressed me in a pair of oversize black sweatpants, a ing—about me.
    matching long-sleeved T-shirt, and thick socks.
    “I wouldn’t have believed it myself if I hadn’t felt it,”
    I threw back the blanket on top of me, got to my feet, Warren T. Fox replied in his high, reedy voice. “Felt like and stumbled over to the dresser in the corner. I stared at the whole mountain was going to tear itself in two. Worse my reflection in the mirror. I looked the same as always, than an earthquake.”
    dark chocolate brown hair, gray eyes, light skin, a few
    “Gin’s only just now coming into the full extent of her freckles on my nose and cheeks. I wiggled my jaw. Perpower,” Jo-Jo replied. “She’s only going to get stronger.”
    fect as always, and all my loose tooth felt attached once
    “I’d hate to get on her bad side,” Warren muttered. more. However terrible I’d looked when I’d come out of I waited in the hallway, but the two of them didn’t the mountain, Jo-Jo Deveraux had healed me—all of me. say anything else. So I padded into the den where they I’d have to get Finn to give the dwarf a bonus for going were sitting. Both of them looked at me. Sophia and Finn above and beyond this time.
    were nowhere to be found, and Violet was probably still I opened the door to the bedroom and looked around. at Eva’s. The television flickered in front of Warren and I was upstairs in the Foxes’ house, from the look of all the Jo-Jo, showing scenes of the collapsed mine, although the pictures of Warren, Violet, and the rest of their family on sound was muted.
    the walls. I headed right and padded down a set of narrow
    “Feeling better?” Jo-Jo asked.
    stairs. I’d just stepped onto the landing when something I shrugged. “Some. I’m still tired, though.”
    shimmering outside through the window caught my eye.
    “You will be,” the dwarf replied. “It took me quite a The small creek that ran by the Foxes’s house and country long while to patch you up this time. Whatever you did store had turned into a large pond. It stretched out perhaps in that mine shaft, it took its toll on you.”
    a quarter of a mile, settled into a new dip in the ground. I didn’t respond. Instead, I looked at Warren. “I’m sure Probably right over the spot where the cavern with the you’ve guessed by now, but Tobias Dawson is dead. So are diamonds had been. The pond was another sign of how two of his giants. He won’t be bothering you anymore.”
    my magic had altered the landscape, of how I’d done this The old man nodded and rocked back and forth in his thing without even thinking about the consequences. recliner. “I figured as much.”
    “Fuck,” I whispered.
    “What happened down there, Gin?” Jo-Jo asked. “In I shook my head and went down the stairs. Soft voices the mine.”
    drifted out from the den, so that’s where I headed. I sat on the sofa and curled my feet up underneath my Estep_Web of Lies_1P EP.indd 372-373
    12/17/09 9:32 PM
    374 JENNIFER ESTEP
    Web of Lies 375
    body. “Dawson knocked me out at Mab Monroe’s party. Warren hit the remote, and the sound came on. He recognized my magic somehow. When I woke up, I
    “They’re saying it was an earthquake. That Dawson was in the mine with the dwarf and two of his giants. We and his men were doing a late-night inspection and got were in this cavern, this beautiful cavern. That’s where the trapped inside. They’re still digging for them, although diamonds were, hundreds