Elemental Assassin 02 - Web of Lies

skinny island divided it from a small den that the light coalesced into a couple of Ice cubes, which I contained a television, stacks of books, a sofa, and a coudropped into the tart beverage. ple of recliners. Copper pots and pans hung from a metal I took my lemonade into the den, plopped down in rack over the island. A brand new, high-end stove, refrigone of the recliners, and put my socked feet up on the erator, and freezer flanked half of the back wall, while a scarred coffee table. As always, my eyes flicked to a series series of picture windows took up the other side. Several of framed drawings propped up on the mantel over the butcher blocks full of silverstone knives also populated fireplace. Three pencil drawings I’d done for one of my the kitchen. on the island. on the counter. In the spice community college classes and another, more recent, one. rack. Behind the microwave. You could never have too The first three drawings depicted a series of runes—the many knives lying around if you loved to cook like I symbols of my dead family. A snowflake, the rune for the did—or were a former assassin.
    Snow family, and my mother, Eira’s, symbol, representing I poured myself a glass of lemonade, then wrapped icy calm. A curling ivy vine for my older sister, Annabella, my hand around the container and concentrated, reachrepresenting elegance. A delicate, intricate primrose for ing for the cool power deep inside myself. In addition to my younger sister, Bria, symbolizing beauty. being a Stone elemental, I also had the rare talent of being The fourth rune was shaped like a pig holding a platter able to manipulate another element—Ice. My Ice magic of food. An exact rendering of the multicolored neon sign Estep_Web of Lies_1P EP.indd 42-43
    12/17/09 9:32 PM
    44 JENNIFER ESTEP
    Web of Lies 45
    that hung over the entrance to the Pork Pit. Not a rune, Bria. My baby sister.
    not really, but I’d drawn it in honor of Fletcher Lane. The For seventeen years, I’d thought Bria had died that Pork Pit had been my home for the past seventeen years, night, along with our mother and older sister. Thought since the murder of my mother and older sister. It and that she’d been crushed to death by the falling stones of Fletcher were one and the same to me.
    our burning house. That I’d caused her death by using my I held my lemonade up in a silent toast to the runes, to Stone magic to collapse the house in order to try to escape the family I’d lost long ago, and to Fletcher, whose death my torturers and save her.
    was still a raw, aching wound in my chest. But Fletcher Lane had sent me a final gift from beBut the drawings on the mantel weren’t the only runes yond the grave—Bria’s photo. Proof that she was still alive to be found in the house. I had a rune as well. Two of somewhere out there in the world. The picture was the them, actually—embedded in my flesh.
    only nice thing in the folder. The rest of it dealt with my I put down my lemonade, uncurled my palms, and family’s murder. Police reports, autopsy photos, and all looked at the silverstone scars that decorated my skin. A the speculation that had followed the brutal, unexpected small circle surrounded by eight thin rays, one on either murder of the Snow family.
    hand. My rune, representing a spider, the symbol for pa“Why did you do it, Fletcher?” I murmured. “Why tience. The rune had once been a medallion, an innocent leave me the information about my family? About their charm strung on a silverstone chain—until the Fire elmurder? Why the picture of Bria? Where is she? How emental who’d murdered my family had tortured me by did you find her? When were you going to tell me about duct-taping the rune in between my hands and making her?”
    me hold on to the metal while she superheated it. The Silence.
    silverstone had eventually melted into my hands, forever Fletcher had gone where I couldn’t question him, and marking me with the rune. Forever branding me as the he was never coming back. All I had left was this folder of Spider in more ways than one.
    gruesome information and a single picture of Bria—neiAnd I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t forget the past. ther of which had helped me locate my baby sister. I leaned forward, picked up a thick folder from the cofBut Bria’s photo hadn’t been the only surprise in the fee table, and plucked a picture out of the file. A woman folder. There had also been a slip of paper with a name on stared