Elemental Assassin 03 - Venom

looked up from my book, ready to greet my potential customer. To my surprise, Roslyn Phillips stepped inside the restaurant. Today the vamp wore a short, plum-colored coat over a pair of winter white pants, which looked both elegant and sexy on her at the same time. A silverstone pin gleamed on the lapel of Roslyn’s jacket—a heart with an arrow through it. The symbol for her nightclub, Northern Aggression. Like most magic types, Roslyn wore her rune with pride.
    The vamp paused in the doorway a moment, her toffee eyes sweeping over the interior. Roslyn had come during the postlunch lull, so the waitresses that had been working were in the alley behind the restaurant taking a long smoke break and eating their own dinner. Several customers still sat at the tables and booths against the windows, finishing up their meals, lost in their own bubbles of conversation. When she realized no one was within earshot of Finn and me, she nodded, yanked the door shut behind her, and stomped over in our direction. The vampire’s high heels clattered against the floor like falling silverware.
    Roslyn slammed her small handbag down on the counter next to Finn, startling him and making him jiggle thespoonful of baked beans he’d been ready to shove into his mouth. The beans slipped off his spoon and splattered on his gray suit jacket, along with a healthy amount of barbecue sauce. Finn cursed and reached for a white paper napkin.
    But Roslyn didn’t care about Finn’s fashion emergency. The vamp only had eyes for me—eyes that flashed with hot anger.
    “What the fuck did you do to Elliot Slater last night?” she snarled.
    “Lovely to see you again too, Roslyn.” I marked my place in my book with a wayward credit card receipt and set it aside. “Care to take a seat?”
    Roslyn plopped down on the stool next to Finn’s, her back as tall and straight as the arrow in her rune pin. The vamp’s hot gaze never left my face.
    “I ask again,” she snapped in a low voice only the three of us could hear. “What did you do to Elliot Slater last night?”
    I shrugged. “Nothing much. Killed a couple of his men. I was going to do him too, but the bastard ducked out a window and ran away before I could get down to business with him.”
    My confession didn’t appease Roslyn. If anything, it made her angrier. I could tell by the way the vamp bared her pearl-white fangs at me. Finn gave Roslyn a sidelong glance and kept trying to rub the barbecue sauce out of his suit, more concerned about the stain setting in his jacket than the danger presented by the pissed-off vampire. He was rather impractical that way.
    “I take it there’s a problem with Slater?” I asked in a quiet tone. “Beyond what you told me yesterday?”
    Roslyn stared at me. I met her gaze with a calm one of my own. If anyone else had busted into my gin joint and bitched about the way I handled my bloody, dangerous business, I would have set her straight, perhaps with the point of my knife. But Roslyn was the victim in all this, had suffered so much because of me, I was going to be as gentle with her as I could. Even if gentle was something I didn’t really know how to do—or that I hadn’t been myself in a long, long time.
    After a few seconds, the vamp made a visible effort to get herself under control. Finn gave his stained jacket up as a lost cause. He sighed and tossed his crumpled napkin in the middle of his plate. Dinnertime was officially over.
    “Would you care for something to eat or drink?” I asked, trying to be the responsible hostess once more.
    “No,” Roslyn muttered.
    I ignored her curt answer and moved over to a glass cake stand resting on the counter against the back wall. I cut Roslyn a piece of the chocolate-chip pound cake and put the dessert in front of her, along with a tall glass of milk and a fork. Since no one liked warm milk, I wrapped my hand around the glass and reached for my Ice magic. A silver light glowed on my palm, centered on the spider rune scar embedded in my flesh. Ice crystals immediately formed on the surface of the mug, and a moment later, it was as cold and frosty as if I’d just taken it out of the freezer. Steam curled up from the lip of the glass.
    Not so long ago, doing something as simple as cooling a drink had been about the extent of my Ice magic.Now it wasn’t any harder than breathing. Jo-Jo Deveraux claimed that the silverstone metal melted into my palms had inhibited my Ice magic, since Ice elementals