Elemental Assassin 03 - Venom

the trash and stopped. Then she spotted Eva huddled across the alley in this little crack in the wall that I’d set her down in. The girl stared at Eva, then at me for the longest time.”
    The image sharpened in my mind. A boy wearing tattered clothes, his hands raw, red, and chapped from the cold. And a little girl, bundled up tight in layers of rags, staring at me with her big, blue eyes that reminded me so much of Bria’s curious gaze. The surprise of seeing her in my old hiding spot, in the little crack between buildings where I’d slept so many nights in the frosty air.
    My stomach twisted now, here in Owen’s office, just as it had done that night.
    “The girl went back inside. I thought she was going to get the owner of the restaurant. That he’d tell us to move on—or worse call the cops and report us. Instead, she came back with this cardboard box. The top of it had been cut off, and the girl had stuffed the whole thing with food. More food than I’d seen in weeks.” Owen’s eyes never left mine as he spoke. “More food than Eva and I had eaten in weeks.”
    I remembered the warmth of the Pork Pit that night. How I’d grabbed the box from one of the rooms in the back and raced into the storefront, packing up all the sandwiches and beans and fries and cookies that hadn’t been eaten that day. How I’d been filled with some terribleemotion I couldn’t explain, that the only thing I could do to get rid of it was to try and help that little lost girl in the alley. Fletcher Lane had been sitting behind the cash register, reading one of his many books. He’d watched me box up the food in silence, his bright green eyes filled with thoughts I couldn’t begin to comprehend.
    “And how did you come to the conclusion that it was me? That I was the one who gave you some food that night? That was years ago.” My low tone didn’t completely disguise the emotion that thickened my voice.
    “Because after I took the box from the girl, she handed me a jacket,” Owen continued. “A black leather jacket nicer than anything I’d ever owned, even when my parents had been alive.”
    Finn’s jacket. I’d grabbed it from the coat rack on my way back out to the alley. He’d just bought the coat a few days ago, and he’d been pissed when he’d realized that I’d given it away. To the point where he’d started around the counter after me. One of the many times Fletcher had to separate us, in the beginning.
    “After she gave me the jacket, the girl turned to go back inside, but I reached out and grabbed her hand,” Owen said, his own voice raspy now. “She let me hold her hand maybe three seconds before she jerked away from me and went back inside. But that was long enough for me to feel the metal in her hand—the silverstone embedded in her flesh.”
    I remembered that cold, faint, desperate touch. It had burned me in a way nothing else ever had, not even when Mab Monroe had melted the spider rune into my palms in the first place. I’d gone back inside the restaurant, notquite crying. Fletcher hadn’t said a word. The old man had just sat there reading his book, waiting for me to compose myself once more. After I’d told him what I’d done, Fletcher had just nodded his head and gone back to his book. We never spoke of it again.
    Owen reached over, picked up my cold hand, and turned it over, so my palm was face up, the spider rune scar visible for all to see.
    “Just like the silverstone you have in your palms, Gin,” he said. “I’ve known it was you from the moment I shook your hand that first night at the Pork Pit. And I’ve been watching you and trying to think of some way to repay you ever since.”
    “Why?” I asked. “So I felt sorry for you one night and gave you some food. So what?”
    Owen shook his head. “It wasn’t just that. I came back the next day, hoping to thank you. But instead of you, an older guy was there, drinking coffee and waiting in the alley. He said he knew about my situation and that he also knew someone who needed a good, strong apprentice. A dwarven blacksmith who lived up in the mountains. He drove Eva and me up there that day. The dwarf took a liking to me, and I worked hard for him. And now, well, we have all this.” Owen gestured at the office with its fine furnishings.
    Fletcher. He was talking about Fletcher Lane. The old man had helped Owen just the way he’d aided me so long ago. I wondered why. It was one thing to take a single stray in off the