Elemental Assassin 04 - Tangled Threads

sort of tattoo. And now that I’d seen it, I knew that it was even more than that. The orchid was also LaFleur’s rune, the symbol for delicate grace. That’s why she always left a single white orchid behind at the scene of her kills. Because it was her mark, just the way my spider rune was to me, or Mab Monroe’s sunburst necklace was to her. LaFleur left an actual flower behind instead of just drawing the complicated rune somewhere. Maybe she didn’t have the artistic skill to re-create the rune, or maybe she just didn’t want to take the time. After all, most assassins didn’t stick around too long after their hits. That was a good way to get caught or get dead.
    Still, something about the orchid tattoo bothered me. Maybe it was the way it was placed on her neck, how it curled up her skin, but I knew that I’d seen one like it somewhere before. On someone that I’d killed before—
    “It’s so nice to meet you, Gin,” the assassin said, interrupting my thoughts. Her voice was lower than I thoughtit would be, with a faintly sibilant, seductive tone. “I’m Elektra LaFleur.”
    I kept my face smooth, as though the name LaFleur meant nothing to me. Elektra, either, even though it was an obvious play on her electrical power. What a cliché. I wondered if that was her real name or one that she’d just chosen for herself, given her elemental magic. Didn’t much matter either way. She was still going to die.
    I nodded my head at her, even as my thumb traced over the hilt of my silverstone knife.
    At this point, Sophia had gotten interested in things. The Goth dwarf knew all about my problems with Jonah McAllister and had actually stopped stirring her pot of baked beans long enough to stare over her shoulder at the three of us. Sophia made a questioning sort of growl low in her throat, telling me that she was up for whatever I wanted to do, however I wanted to handle McAllister and LaFleur.
    I met the dwarf’s black gaze and made a flat, level, slashing motion with my hand, the one still holding the knife down out of sight.
No,
I was telling her.
Stay cool
. There was no real problem here—yet.
    Besides, I wanted to see exactly what McAllister wanted, exactly why he’d brought LaFleur here to the Pit, before we got into anything … messy.
    “So do we seat ourselves or is there somewhere … special that we need to go?” McAllister asked.
    My eyes narrowed. “You came here to eat? In my restaurant?”
    That was one of the very last things I’d ever expected him to say.
    McAllister gave me another cold smile. “That is what one does here, is it not? I was under the impression that you were running a restaurant.” His brown eyes roamed over the clean, but well-worn, interior once more. “Such as it is.”
    The arrogant sneer in McAllister’s bombastic voice might have made a lesser woman cower. Instead, below the counter, my hand tightened around my silverstone knife.
    But instead of bringing up my weapon and ending the arrogant lawyer’s miserable existence, I tucked it into a slot under the cash register. There was nothing I could do but seat them. Not without creating a whole lot of trouble for everyone in the restaurant.
    If it had just been me and Sophia, well, I might have brought up my hidden knife and slit Elektra LaFleur’s throat with it before turning my deadly brand of attention to Jonah McAllister. But there were innocent people in here, people who had nothing to do with my feud with McAllister.
    Even when I’d been the Spider full-time and assassinating people for money, I’d never killed innocents, no matter what. There were certain rules that you just didn’t break, even if you were a cold-hearted bitch of an assassin like me. No kids, no pets, no bystanders. It was a code that Fletcher had taught me, one that I’d lived by for years. One that I still adhered to today—and one of the few things that was keeping McAllister alive right now.
    Besides, I wanted to see exactly what kind of game the lawyer was playing, what he thought he was doing here, other than being a dick. So I leaned over, picked up acouple of stray menus, and stepped around to the other side of the counter.
    “This way.”
    I led them over to a booth next to the storefront windows, which was as far away from the back counter, Sophia, and the other two pairs of diners as I could get them. Still too close for my liking, though.
    Jonah and Elektra settled themselves in the booth, sitting on opposite sides. I