Elemental Assassin 04 - Tangled Threads

sign. Xavier held a large clipboard in his hands, checking off names on his list and taking the occasional C-note bribe to lift the red velvet rope and allow people to go inside the club.
    I strolled to the front of the line, past all the men sporting sharp suits and the women wearing as little as they could bear given the chill in the December air. A few of the women gave me pointed, dirty looks, especially since I wasn’t dressed for a night of clubbing.
    Instead of a thigh-high miniskirt or a leather bustier, I wore my usual ensemble—dark jeans, heavy boots, a long-sleeved T-shirt, and a black fleece jacket. Since it was almost Christmas, I’d donned one of my more festiveT-shirts to celebrate—thick crimson cotton with a giant candy cane in the middle of my chest. The fabric was dark enough that Vinnie Volga’s blood wouldn’t stand out on it—much. Happy holidays.
    And, as always, I carried my usual five-point arsenal on me as well. Two silverstone knives up my sleeves, two more in my boots, and one tucked away in the small of my back. Never left home without ’em. Not even if I was supposedly retired these days. So far, this so-called taking it easy had been far more dangerous than being the Spider full-time ever was.
    I stepped in front of Xavier. “Hey, there, handsome,” I drawled. “Know where I can find a party tonight?”
    Xavier grinned, his white teeth gleaming in his face underneath the burning glow of the neon light. “I thought the party was always wherever you were at, Gin.”
    I grinned back at him. “True. But I thought that I’d branch out a little tonight. Can we talk a second?”
    I jerked my head at Xavier and walked a few feet away from the front door. The giant followed me. Several people waiting in line let out soft curses, but one look at my cold, hard face and even colder eyes was enough to get them to shut their mouths.
    Xavier also glowered and cracked his massive knuckles at the impatient crowd for good measure. Suddenly, nobody was even looking in our direction, much less muttering under their breath about the delay. None of the rich yuppies standing in line wanted to mess with a seven-foot-tall giant. Especially not with Xavier, who also moonlighted as a member of the Ashland Police Department. As fate would have it, he also happened tobe my sister, Bria’s, partner. Ah, the irony. Always out to get me.
    “Did Finn call you earlier?” I asked the giant in a low voice. “He was supposed to mention that I was coming by tonight to talk to Vinnie.”
    Xavier nodded, his face dark and serious. The giant was one of the people who knew that I was the assassin the Spider. A few weeks ago, I’d helped Roslyn Phillips deal with Elliot Slater, the sick, twisted, giant bastard who’d been stalking her. Slater had been working up to raping and killing Roslyn, before she and I had made him dead first. Something that had ensured that Xavier was my friend for life, since he cared about Roslyn more than anything. He realized that talking was probably the last thing that I was going to do with Vinnie, but he didn’t even blink at the subtle threat in my words.
    “Yeah,” Xavier said. “Finn called Roslyn earlier and told her about the situation. Finn’s already here, and Roslyn’s inside waiting for you too.”
    I hesitated. “How’s she doing?”
    Shadows further blackened Xavier’s eyes, and worry tightened his face. “She has good days and bad days, you know? It’s still too soon to tell, I think.”
    I still remembered how Roslyn had looked the night that I’d found her tied to a bed at Slater’s mountain mansion. Slater especially liked beating women, and he’d already reduced Roslyn’s beautiful face and body to pulpy mush by the time that I got there. Not to mention the damage that he’d already done to the vampire’s psyche by stalking and terrorizing her beforehand. Roslyn had been bruised, bloody, and utterly broken—and about tobe raped by one of Slater’s men. It was a horrible, sickening image that I’d never, ever forget.
    I’d killed the man assaulting Roslyn, cut her free, and then used some of Jo-Jo Deveraux’s healing supplies to patch her up enough so she could walk out of Slater’s bedroom. Killing the bastard who’d been about to rape the vampire had been easy. But putting my hands on Roslyn that night, even if it had been only to rub healing ointment on her, had been one of the hardest things I’d ever done. Because I knew that being