Elemental Assassin 04 - Tangled Threads

tonight.”
    “Well, I hope that you had the good sense to kill her for interrupting your evening,” Finn sniffed. “And for making us worry.”
    “I did. But I wasn’t the only one that she nabbed. Bria’s here with me.”
    Silence. I could hear Finn thinking through the phone. He knew that in order to kill LaFleur I’d had to show Bria who I really was—and exactly what I was capable of.
    “And how is she taking the news?” Finn finally asked.
    I looked over at my sister, who was crouched down and examining LaFleur’s body, along with my silverstone knife, which was still stuck in the assassin’s chest. “Well, she hasn’t screamed and run away yet. I suppose that’s something.”
    “Sit tight,” Finn said. “We’ll be there in ten minutes.”
    “Don’t worry,” I said in a wry tone. “I’m not going anywhere.”
    I hung up the phone and held it back out to Bria. “He’ll be here in ten minutes. It’ll take the po-po at least twenty to get here. So go ahead and make your call, if you want.”
    She nodded. Bria started to take the phone from me, but before she could touch it, the cell started ringing. My eyes narrowed. I hadn’t given Finn the number, and there was only one person I knew of who would have a reason to call LaFleur right now.
    So I snapped the phone open and answered it. “Hello, Mab.”
    Silence.
    I waited a few seconds. After it became apparent that she wasn’t going to answer me, I decided to initiate the conversation.
    “Your girl LaFleur’s dead,” I said in the cheeriest tone that I could manage, considering the fact that I’d almost been electrocuted tonight. I stared at the other assassin’s body. “And growing colder by the second.”
    “You.”
Mab’s voice was dark, cold, and ugly in my ear.
    “Me,” I replied, a bucket of sunshine in comparison. “You’ve been busy since the last time we talked. When was that? Oh, yeah. The night that I killed Elliot Slater at his quaint little mountain retreat.”
    More silence.
    Bria just stared at me, listening to my side of the conversation with the Fire elemental. My sister’s mouth tightened into a thin line.
    “I have to admit that you gave me a good fight this time,” I said. “Hiring LaFleur to come to Ashland to try to kill me was an inspired move, since it was so obvious that none of your own men were going to get the job done. Too bad you backed the wrong horse. Again. But that seems to be a bad habit of yours. One that I’m going to end very, very soon.”
    “So you killed LaFleur tonight,” Mab snarled. “So what? It’s not going to save you in the end, Spider.”
    “Probably not,” I murmured, staring up at Bria. “But it sure as hell was fun.”
    I hung up the phone and passed it back to Bria. It started ringing again the second that she touched it, but she waited until it had stopped before turning away from me, flipping it open, and calling in her kidnapping.
    While she did that, I picked up one of my wayward knives and used the hilt to draw my spider rune into the gravel right next to LaFleur’s body. Mab already knew I’d been here, of course, but I wanted to drive the point home to her, so to speak.
    A few minutes later, just as Bria was finishing up her call, a pair of headlights popped into view at the far endof the train yard. By this point, I’d managed to get to my feet and retrieve all of my silverstone knives, so I palmed one of the weapons, just in case the vehicle held more of Mab’s men. Bria didn’t have a weapon; she picked a long piece of pipe up out of the junk in the train yard and held it down by her side. She came up to stand beside me, even though she didn’t look at me.
    Tires crunched on the gravel, and a large silver SUV rolled over to us. The doors opened, and Finn got out of the passenger’s side. I expected Sophia Deveraux to hop out of the driver’s seat, but to my surprise, Owen slid out of the vehicle instead.
    The two men jogged over to us. Owen stopped in front of me, his violet gaze sweeping over my body, but when he realized that I was in more or less one piece, some of the tight concern in his face faded away.
    I held up one of the bloody knives he’d given me for Christmas. “You should give me presents more often. Because this one worked like a charm.”
    Owen shook his head and just smiled at me.
    Finn was a little more practical about things. Once he looked me over and made sure that I was okay for the time being, my foster brother