Elemental Assassin 03 - Venom

electricity, or even acid. Someone with enough magic could eventually overcome the silverstone and granite door and force her way inside the house, but she’d lose a lot of juice doing it. Which would make her that much easier to dispatch with one of my knives.
    I unlocked the front door and stepped inside. Since so many additions had been tacked on to the house over the years, the interior layout was a bit of a labyrinth. Square rooms, oval ones, even an area shaped like a pentagon, all connected by twisting hallways that curved around, doubled back on each other, and often led to the other side of the house entirely. Another advantage, as far as I was concerned. Even if someone could break through the granite around the front door, she’d have a hard time finding me before I slipped out through one of the many secret passages—or came around behind her. All the elemental magic in Ashland wouldn’t save you from a silverstone knife in the back. Win-win for me, either way.
    I tossed my keys into a bowl by the front door, toedoff the stylish, designer Bella Bulluci boots that Finn insisted I just had to have for my birthday, and headed for the kitchen in the back of the house. After I poured myself another glass of gin, I padded into the downstairs den and plopped down on the sofa. As always, my gaze drifted up the mantel, where a series of rune drawings stood. Four drawings total, three that I’d done for one of my many community college classes and another, more recent one.
    The first three runes were the symbols of my dead family. A snowflake, my mother, Eira’s, rune, representing icy calm. A curling ivy vine, which had belonged to my older sister, Annabella, symbolizing elegance. And a delicate primrose that had been Bria’s rune—the symbol for beauty.
    The fourth rune was a bit different in that it was shaped like a pig holding a platter of food—my own rendering of the colorful neon sign that topped the entrance to the Pork Pit. It wasn’t exactly a rune, not like the other three, but I’d sketched it in honor of Fletcher Lane. In my mind, Fletcher and the Pork Pit were one and the same, and both were symbols of home, comfort, safety.
    My eyes skipped over the runes, then settled on the primrose. Bria’s symbol. When we were kids, our mother had given each of us a rune to match our personalities and had them made into small silverstone medallions for us to wear. I couldn’t quite believe that Bria still had her necklace—and that she was wearing it all these years later. I did the math in my head. Bria had been eight years old the night our mother and older sister had died, so she’d be twenty-five now. At thirty, I was five years older.
    I sighed, took a sip of gin, and grimaced. Still bitter.
    I put the glass aside and leaned forward, staring at a manila folder lying on top of the scarred coffee table, along with a single picture. The photo was of Bria, of course. Blond hair, blue eyes, hard mouth. She looked the same in the color picture as she had in the flesh two nights ago and earlier this evening at Northern Aggression.
    Finn had written a single word on the folder’s tab—
Bria
. The folder contained all the information he’d been able to dig up on my sister so far. Her work history, financial records, habits, hobbies, vices. Finn had already read through the information, but for some reason, I just couldn’t look at it.
    I wanted—I didn’t know what the hell I wanted. Maybe the chance to get to know Bria as a real, live person, instead of flipping through the neatly ordered pages of her life the way I would when I was scouting out a potential target, trying to figure out how to get close enough to kill him. Maybe even for Bria to tell me all her secrets herself, the way that a true sister might.
    I didn’t consider myself a sentimental person. Watching my family get fried to a crisp as a kid and then being forced to fend for myself on the mean streets of Ashland was more than enough to shock the sentiment right out of me forever. But ever since I’d found out that Bria was alive, ever since I’d seen that picture of her that Fletcher had left for me, I’d been daydreaming about what she would be like. About what it would be like when we saw each other again.
    I’d even fantasized about Bria immediately recognizing me, smiling, and running over to give me a bighug—while some sort of uplifting music swelled in the background. Instead, my baby sister had seen me at my