Elemental Assassin 04 - Tangled Threads

spider rune–shaped paperweight told me as much. Fletcher had left it here for me to find. It was just my own fault that I hadn’t bothered to look for it—until now.
    My hands shaking just a bit, I slipped the folder off the bookshelf.
For Gin,
the old man’s handwriting scrawled across the front in silver ink. I stared at the words a moment, then went over, sat down behind the desk, opened the folder, and started to read.
    It was all there, written down in black-and-white.
    Everything Fletcher Lane had observed about my family, every open door and unlocked window at our mansion, every single plan he’d made to get the job done when Mab had hired him, had hired the Tin Man, to assassinate my family.
    I read the words, and it was almost like I could hear Fletcher’s voice in my mind, patiently explaining things to me.
    It started out like any other hit
, the old man wrote.
I was to kill your mother, Eira Snow, and leave you and your sisters unharmed. I would have done it too. But Mab changed her mind and wanted the three of you dead as well. You know that I don’t do that sort of thing.
    “No kids,” I whispered in the utter silence of the office. “Ever.”
    Part of the assassin code that the old man had taught me—the same one he’d lived by for so many years. And apparently, the reason Bria and I were still alive today.
    I kept reading. There was more—so much more. Fletcher chronicled it all. How he’d used his various contacts to tell Mab that he didn’t murder children. How he told her to hire someone else to do the job. How she’d threatened to find and kill him for turning her down. And finally, how Mab had sent some of her goons after him, while she went to our house to murder my family.
    Even as an assassin, I couldn’t stand by and do nothing, not while innocent children were being targeted. So I tried to stop it;
the old man’s handwriting spelled out the words.
    But I was detained by some of Mab’s men. By the time I got there, it was too late. The mansion was fully engulfed in flames, and Mab was gone. But I found some tracks leading away from the house, and I knew that someone had survived. I found Bria early the next morning, wandering around in the forest, babbling about how she’d run away and how her mother and sisters were dead. So I took her and hid her until I could find a good home for her.
    I thought that you were dead, Gin, until you showed up in the alley behind the Pork Pit all those weeks later. You know what happened after that.
    I did the best I could for Bria—and for you, Gin. Keeping the two of you apart was the best way I knew to keep you hidden, to keep you safe from Mab, to give you time to grow up, to give me time to train you to be the Spider, the assassin you needed to be to finally defeat her. I hope you know that.I hope you can understand everything I did. I hope you can forgive me someday.
    “I know you did your best, Fletcher,” I whispered. “I know you did.”
    There was more—so much more. But the tears in my eyes blurred the words too much for me to read them. At least for tonight. So I closed the folder, laid my head down on the desk, and stared at the spider rune–shaped crystal paperweight until the sun rose over the eastern mountains.
    The next day—Christmas—we all gathered at Owen’s mansion.
    Me, Finn, and the Deveraux sisters, who brought Vinnie and Natasha Volga along with them. All crowding into Owen’s downstairs living room, along with Eva and the two people that she’d invited over for the holiday celebration—her best friend, Violet Fox, and her grandfather, Warren T. Fox. Xavier was there too, with Roslyn Phillips, who’d also brought her sister, Lisa, and young niece, Catherine.
    They were all in the living room, drinking my special Christmas punch, shaking the presents that they’d bought for each other, laughing, talking, smiling.
    The only person I cared about who wasn’t here was Bria.
    I hadn’t heard from my baby sister since our talk at the Pork Pit yesterday. Xavier had pulled me aside earlier and told me that she was working today so that some of the other cops could spend the holiday with their families. I could have told the giant that Bria had a family too, ifonly she’d realize it, but I held my tongue. No need to ruin Xavier’s day.
    I spent the morning in the kitchen, whipping up a Christmas lunch that would have done any Southern hostess proud. A tart but sweet cranberry sauce, roasted vegetables,