Elemental Assassin 03 - Venom

her left index finger, which tapped out a quick pattern on her thigh. I would have tilted my head up so I could get a look at her face, if I hadn’t thought the movement would make me vomit blood all over the detective’s boots. Still, despite my limited view, something about the woman seemed familiar. Strangely so. Then again, the way my eyes were ping-ponging back and forth in their sockets, anything that didn’t spin around felt familiar.
    “You want her to asphyxiate on her own blood? Trust me. She needs to sit up,” Xavier replied. “Besides, her friend will be here in a few minutes. Gin can hold her own until then. Can’t you, Gin?”
    “Oh yeah,” I mumbled. “This is nothing. You should see me on a bad day.”
    The detective snorted. “Snappy comeback for a woman covered in her own blood.”
    “Oh, that’s me,” I said, staring at her jeans. “Snappy to the bitter, bitter end.”
    Against my side, I felt Xavier’s wide chest quiver with contained laughter. At least I was amusing someone tonight.
    The detective hitched up her jeans and crouched down in front of me, so we were eye level with each other. I blinked away another round of white starbursts and got my first good look at her.
    And my heart stopped.
    Longish, wavy, honey blond hair that curled under at the ends. Cornflower blue eyes. Perfect, rosy skin. A full, lush mouth. The detective was a breathtaking woman. But her beauty wasn’t what made my raspy breath catch in my throat and my heart twist in my bruised chest. It was what was on the silver chain she wore around her neck.
    A primrose.
    A small silverstone rune shaped like a delicate primrose rested in the hollow of the detective’s smooth throat. A primrose. The symbol for beauty. The same rune, the same necklace my baby sister, Bria, had worn as a child.
    Bria.
    She looked exactly the same as she did in a photo I had of her and exactly like my memories of our mother, Eira Snow. The only real differences were the hard glint in Bria’s blue eyes and her tight, remote features. Both weremore pronounced in person than they’d been in the picture. Bria’s beauty was a cold, guarded one. An elemental Ice queen come to life in every sense of the word.
    For a moment, I wondered if I was losing my mind. If I was already dead, and this was just some sort of bizarre dream or final wish fulfillment before the powers that be shipped me off to Hades. A brief, tantalizing glimpse of what I wanted to see most, only to be taken away as quickly as it had appeared.
    I drew in a ragged breath and had to spit out another mouthful of warm, slick, coppery blood before it choked me. No, not a dream. A dream wouldn’t hurt this much.
    Bria, my baby sister, the one I’d thought was dead for the past seventeen years, the one I’d thought I’d inadvertently killed with my Ice and Stone magic, was here, crouching right in front of me. And all I could do was just stare at her.
    Bria’s blue eyes met mine. She frowned, as though puzzled by the wonderment in my gaze. “Ma’am, I understand you have a friend on the way. Personally, I’d suggest you wait for the paramedics to get here. You’ve got some serious, nasty injuries. You need to be stabilized before you go anywhere.”
    I kept staring at her. A pressure gathered in my chest, an icy fist squeezing my heart so tight and hard I thought it would explode right then and there. Shatter into a million icicles that would impale what was left of my body. An odd, cold wetness ran down my face. Tears this time, instead of blood. Big, fat, salty tears.
    Crying. I was crying. I hadn’t expected to cry when I saw Bria again. Hadn’t expected to feel this icy tightness,this cavernous ache, this intense longing that made me want to scream and wail and weep all at the same time.
    “Ma’am?” Bria asked again. “Can you hear me?”
    I snapped out of my daze. Now was not the time to be thunderstruck. Now was the time to think, to piece the facts together. Bria was here in Ashland. A detective working for the po-po. I was in no position to talk to her tonight, in no position to do anything but gawk at her. But underneath the blood and bruises, I was still Gin Blanco. Restaurant owner. Stone and Ice elemental. Former assassin. And all-around badass. I could track down my sister easily enough when I was well. When I’d had some time to process her sudden reappearance in my life—and figure out what I was going to do about it.
    I wet my split lips to say