Elemental Assassin 03 - Venom

sheer luck. I had no idea Slater was coming here to kill her. If Finn and I hadn’t been following him…” My voice trailed off.
    I didn’t want to think about how close I’d come to losing Bria again tonight. That I’d almost missed my chance to get to know her again before I’d even been ready to take it in the first place, to risk telling her who and what I really was. My sister might be a stranger to me now, but Icouldn’t let go of the memory of the sweet little girl she’d once been—a girl that I would have done anything to protect. Back then and especially now.
    Besides, Fletcher Lane had left me a photo of her for a reason. The old man had wanted me to find Bria, to get to know her again. Even if I hadn’t wanted to do those things on my own, I would have gone through with them just to honor Fletcher’s wishes. He’d done so much for me over the years. I was going to do everything I could for him now—even if he was cold, dead, and buried.
    I shook my head and chased away my melancholy thoughts. Fletcher Lane was gone. Mooning about his murder once more wasn’t going to bring him back. Right now, I needed to focus on the problem in front of me—Elliot Slater and his amazing quickness. So I told Jo-Jo how fast the giant was and asked if perhaps Slater was using some sort of elemental magic that I couldn’t sense to help his fists connect with my ribs. The dwarf frowned for a few seconds, thinking.
    “It’s possible,” Jo-Jo said. “But to do what you’re describing, Slater would have to be doing one of two things. One, he’d have to be an Air elemental and using his magic to affect the gases in the air. Air has weight, you know, even though we don’t usually realize that it does. Slater could be using his power to move the air, the molecules, out of his way so he has less resistance to go through when he swings his fists. Simple physics, really.”
    “And two?” I asked.
    “He’d have to be an Ice elemental and using his power to momentarily freeze his opponents. Using just enough magic to give himself that second’s advantage, that seemingbit of speed,” Jo-Jo said. “But I don’t think he’s an elemental.”
    “Why not?”
    Jo-Jo shrugged. “Because those are both very, very subtle skills that would take years to master. Elliot Slater doesn’t strike me as having that much patience. Besides, given your high sensitivity to elemental magic, Gin, you’d still be able to feel him using his power, even if there was only a teaspoon of it in his whole body. More than likely, Slater’s quickness is just a genetic quirk that he’s honed over the years. There are very few people who can use elemental magic without others sensing it.”
    For a moment, a distant light flashed in the dwarf’s pale eyes, as though she was thinking about something that had happened a long time ago. Maybe it was the droop of her shoulders or the way Jo-Jo fingered her string of pearls, but something about the dwarf’s last words bothered me—and her too.
    “Do you know anybody who can completely hide their elemental magic from others, even while they’re embracing or using it?” I asked in a soft voice.
    Jo-Jo’s eyes cleared, and she gave me a small, sad smile. “Just one person. Although, I think you could do it too, Gin, if you really needed to.”
    I blinked. “Me?”
    Jo-Jo nodded. “You.”
    The dwarf looked at me, a knowing light in her eyes, and I shifted on my feet. Jo-Jo Deveraux claimed that I was one of the strongest elementals she’d ever met, a notion that always made me uncomfortable. My mother had been an extremely strong Ice elemental, and yet allher magic hadn’t saved her from a horrible, fiery death at the hands of Mab Monroe. My sister Annabella’s magic hadn’t done her any good against Mab either. And Bria would have been dead, beaten to death by Elliot Slater, if Finn and I hadn’t intervened tonight.
    So while Jo-Jo might claim that I was strong enough that my Stone and Ice magic would never fail me, I didn’t really believe the dwarf. Which is why I carried so many silverstone knives. Sure, blades might break, but they always left some sort of jagged edge behind that I could shove and twist into someone’s flesh.
    Once you were out of magic, you were done for. Especially if the person you were fighting still had some juice left. Hence the fact that so many elementals died in duels. Elementals fought by flinging raw magic at each other—Air, Fire, Ice, and