Elemental Assassin 04 - Tangled Threads

Elektra LaFleur finished their meal and headed over to the cash register. McAllister reached into his wallet and handed me some bills. I was vaguely surprised that he was even bothering to pay at all, but I supposed that he wanted me to think he’d come here tonight only for the food. As if I could be that stupid.
    “Keep the change, Gin,” McAllister said in a smarmy, mocking voice. “Consider it an early Christmas present.”
    “Aw,” I drawled. “A whopping thirteen cents. You’re too kind, Jonah. Why, you’d put Ebenezer Scrooge to shame with your bighearted generosity.”
    McAllister’s smooth face darkened at my insult, but LaFleur looped her arm through his, and the anger glittering in Jonah’s brown eyes melted into sly certainty.
    “Well, you should spend it while you can, Ms. Blanco,” McAllister said. “You just never know what might happen in these uncertain times.”
    He and the assassin headed toward the door. Just before they stepped outside into the cold, Elektra LaFleur turned back to me, her green eyes as bright and hard as jade in her face.
    “The food was excellent. I imagine that I’ll be coming back here soon, Gin. Real soon.”
    With a smirk, Elektra walked out the door after Jonah. I watched them leave.
    “Not if I kill you first, bitch,” I muttered. “Not if I kill you first.”

14
     
    Sophia came over to stand beside me, her black eyes still fixed on the front door that Jonah McAllister and Elektra LaFleur had just walked out of.
    “Assassin?” she rasped.
    “Yeah, that was LaFleur,” I said. “Did you see the way that she was checking out the place?”
    Sophia nodded instead of actually answering me. The Goth dwarf spoke as little as possible, since her broken, raspy voice sounded like she’d spent her entire life downing rotgut whiskey, puffing on cigarettes, and gargling gasoline. Sophia didn’t have any of those vices, at least not that I knew of, and I always wondered what had happened to the dwarf to so completely ruin her voice. But I never asked her. Whatever it was, I knew that it couldn’t possibly be good. Sophia’s secret pain was her own to share or not. Just like mine was.
    “Problem?” Sophia asked, cutting into my reverie.
    “Yeah, LaFleur’s going to make a run at me here at the Pit,” I said. “That’s the only reason I can think of that McAllister brought her here. She was planning the best way to kill me, probably sometime in the next few days. McAllister wants me dead, and he’s asked her to do it while she’s in town.”
    “Ready,” Sophia said, reached over, and squeezed.
    I squeezed back and smiled at the dwarf. “I know you’ll be ready. And I will be too. Elektra LaFleur’s going to get the surprise of her life when she comes here to kill Gin Blanco—and finds the Spider waiting for her instead.”
    Sophia and I went back to work, cleaning up the restaurant for the night. The other couple paid up and left, and I was thinking about flipping the sign on the door over to
Closed
when the front bell chimed and a woman stepped inside the Pork Pit. As always, her appearance startled me and took my breath away at the same time—as well as filling me with a touch of cold dread.
    Detective Bria Coolidge. My baby sister.
    Like so many others moving about on the frosty streets this evening, Bria wore a long coat over a pair of jeans and thick but stylish black Bella Bulluci boots. Her V-neck sweater was a Christmas green in keeping with the season, while a gold badge winked on the leather belt around her slender waist. In contrast, her gun looked like a blob of black ink next to it.
    The badge marked Bria as a detective with the Ashland Police Department, but she didn’t really look like a cop. She was far too pretty for that, with her longish shag of blond hair, cornflower blue eyes, rosy cheeks, and rocking figure.
    Besides the badge and the gun, Bria also wore a silverstone medallion on a short chain around her neck. A delicate primrose, the symbol for beauty. The same rune, the same necklace, that our mother had given her as a child, one that I’d never seen her without, even now as an adult. Three rings also gleamed on her left index finger, thin silverstone bands each sporting tiny runes. Snowflakes ringed the bottom band, while ivy vines curled around the middle one. The final ring, the top one, was stamped with a single symbol in the middle—a spider rune. My rune, the symbol for patience. I supposed that the rings were