Elemental Assassin 04 - Tangled Threads

this room. But the worst part was the glass from my mother’s collection of snow globes. The shards littered the ground like a crystal carpet, catching the light from the fires and reflecting it back to me, every sly, bright twinkle reminding me just how much I’d lost tonight.
    For a moment, I just stood there, shocked by the extreme damage. Oh, I wasn’t proud or vain enough to think that I’d done it all on my own. The flames that the Fire elemental had spread in her wake as she’d gone from room to room, first killing my mother and then Annabella, had definitely weakened the thick wooden beams that supported the ceiling. But still.
    I’d never known that I’d had this much magic before.
    Somehow, I shook off my horrified daze and started picking my way through the piles of rubble. It wasn’t until I was halfway across the room that I realized my hands were still bound together by the duct tape that the Fire elemental had used to make me hold on to my own spider rune medallion while she superheated it.
    So I stopped, found another jagged piece of rock, and sliced through the tape. As for my hands, they didn’t want to come apart, not with the silverstone melted in between them, holding them together. The magical metal was still warm from where the Fire elemental had heated it, and I knew that if I didn’t move my hands now, the silverstone would cool and they’d more than likely be stuck together forever. I couldn’t stand having the metal heated again to separate them. I just couldn’t.
    So I sat down in the rubble next to the sharp stone, gritted my teeth, and started working the rock in between my palms. Using the daggerlike tip to help me peel my hands apart, bit by agonizing bit. It was hard, one of the hardest things I’d ever had to do, and I almost passed out again from the pain more than once. Even then, I couldn’t stop the tears that ran down my face or my screams that filled the air.
    I would have given up completely, huddled on the floor, and waited to die, if I hadn’t been so worried about Bria. My baby sister was the only thing that was keeping me going.
    I don’t know how long it took me, but I eventually did it. My hands finally separated and scraped down either side of the pointed stone, drawing more blood, but I didn’t care. I turned them over and stared down at the marks that now adorned my palms.
    A small circle surrounded by eight thin rays. A spider rune. My rune. The symbol for patience. My medallion that I’d worn every single day. Gone now, totally destroyed, except for the horrid red, raw, ugly marks on my palms.
    It made me sick.
    Everything about tonight made me sick. Despite the pain,I closed my eyes and curled my hands into tight fists so I wouldn’t have to look at the marks. They weren’t important right now.
    Bria was. I had to find Bria before the Fire elemental did …
    I woke up in a cold sweat, thrashing around on the bed, the spider rune scars on my palms itching and burning, just the way they had that night so long ago. Just the way they always did whenever I was reminded of that awful time.
    I lie on the bed and forced myself to breathe, to let the horrible memory fade, to bottle it up and stick it in the back of my brain where it belonged. After a little while, my breathing eased, the pain faded away, and I came back to myself once more.
    My eyes were just level with the nightstand, where I’d tossed my cell phone before going to bed. Spurred on by some emotion that I didn’t quite understand, I reached out, flipped it open, and dialed a number I’d memorized. A number Finn had gotten for me. A number Bria didn’t even know that I had.
    “Hello?” Bria Coolidge’s muffled, sleepy voice filled my ear.
    I opened my mouth, but no words came out. They never did when my sister was around. Nothing that mattered anyway. None of the important things that I needed to say to her, like
Hi, it’s Gin Blanco. Guess what? I’m really your long-lost sister, Genevieve Snow, in disguise. I also happen to be the assassin the Spider. You know, the one who recently declared war on Mab Monroe. The one that you’re searching for high and low. The evil villain that youprobably want to kill yourself, since that’s what good, decent, honest cops like you do.
    “Hello?” Bria mumbled again. “Hellooo?”
    I hung up.
    Because Bria wasn’t missing. Not anymore. She was here in Ashland and safe for this night, at least. And if I wanted her to stay that way, I