Elemental Assassin 02 - Web of Lies

you the same thing used their magic, of course. But there were some folks I’ve been saying for two months now. I’m not interested like Dawson who, well, leaked magic, for lack of a better in selling a soda pop to you, much less my store. You word. Even when those elementals weren’t actively using coming down here and asking me every other day isn’t their power, magic still trickled out of them, like water going to change my mind. No matter how much money from a leaky faucet. Drip, drip, drip . The magical runoff you offer me.”
    was easy to sense. Then there were people like me, whose Tobias leaned forward and spit. Tobacco juice stained magic was completely self-contained. No leaks, no drips, the wooden plank an ugly brown at Warren’s feet. “Now no runoff. My magic couldn’t be felt at all unless I used it that’s a damn shame, especially considering the most rein an overt, forceful manner or someone had a particular cent, more-than-generous offer I made you. Why don’t knack for sniffing out elemental power.
    you do the smart thing and sell out, old man?”
    Dawson’s magic felt similar to my own, although I
    “Because this store, this land, has been in my family couldn’t quite tell if the dwarf was a Stone or Ice. If I had for more than three hundred years,” Warren replied in a to guess, I’d say Stone. The sensation rippling off him testy tone. “And I’m not letting someone like you come in would have felt smoother, cooler if he’d been an Ice eland strip-mine it like you have the rest of the mountain.”
    emental. Either way, I felt it. If things went badly, I’d go Tobias sighed. A long, drawn-out see-what-I-have-tofor the dwarf first, then his goons. With his magic and input-up-with sigh that sounded as phony as Jonah McAllisherent dwarven strength and toughness, Tobias Dawson ter had at the Pork Pit. “Now, you know that it’s not exactly was definitely the greater threat.
    strip-mining, Warren. It’s called mountaintop removal, My thumb rubbed over the hilt of the silverstone knife and there’s nothing illegal about it. We’re just getting the I’d already palmed. Even though I hadn’t gotten in much coal out of the ground the quickest way we know how.”
    practice with my knives lately, the weapon felt cold and
    “And leaving everybody else with your mess,” Warren Estep_Web of Lies_1P EP.indd 176-177
    12/17/09 9:32 PM
    178 JENNIFER ESTEP
    Web of Lies 179
    snapped. “Like I said, I’m not interested in letting you do
    “By the way, Miss Violet,” Tobias drawled in his that to my land. My whole backyard’s turned into a damn twangy voice. “You haven’t seen my brother Trace around sinkhole already from you and your mining.”
    anywhere, have you? Short guy, looks a fair bit like me, Tobias’s face hardened, and his mustache bristled with has a stick of dynamite tattooed on his arm. Drives a great barely restrained anger. “I’m tired of waiting you out, old big ole truck.”
    man. You can either sell out now, and get a good price for My gray eyes narrowed. Dawson had a brother named your land. or—”
    Trace? With a dynamite tattoo on his arm? That must be
    “or what?” Warren snapped, cutting off the dwarf’s the dwarf that Finn had pancaked in the parking lot last threat. “You’ll send some of your boys over here to make night. The one whose body Sophia had disposed of. me see the light of day? You’ve tried that before, and it “He was going to take care of some business for me didn’t work. A couple of shotgun blasts in their asses sent in Southtown, over near the community college,” Tobias your boys running for the hills.”
    said. “But he didn’t come home last night. I thought you Tobias glared over his shoulder at his men, who all might have seen him, seeing as how you take all those shuffled on their feet and stared at the ground. classes at the college.”
    I looked at Warren with a little more respect. Violet Violet’s eyes widened behind the frames of her black had told me that Warren had fought off Dawson’s goons glasses. She’d just realized Trace was the dwarf who’d atby himself, but I hadn’t realized the old coot had put tacked her, and she didn’t know how to respond to Tobuckshot in their hides. Brave but stupid of him. Because bias Dawson’s veiled innuendos, hints, and threats. But Warren’s shotgun and sheer stubbornness must have been Finnegan Lane, being the Southern gentleman he was, part of the reason why the