Elemental Assassin 04 - Tangled Threads

Bria’s way of remembering our shattered family, just as the drawings on the mantel at Fletcher Lane’s house were mine.
    “Gin,” Bria said in her high, lilting voice. “Good to see you again.”
    She nodded at me, and I returned the favor. Bria and I hadn’t exactly started off on the right foot. I’d first seen her a few weeks ago, the night that Slater had attacked me at the community college. To say that it had been a shock would be a serious understatement. I’d known that my sister was alive, after thinking her dead for years, but seeing her in the flesh had been something else. Enough to make me cry, especially since I’d been looking for her myself with no success. But there she had been, as large as life and back in Ashland after so many long years gone.
    Bria had also been the detective assigned to find out what had happened to me that night, and she’d dogged my steps after that, trying to get me to tell her who had hurt me and why. She’d also suspected me of somehowbeing involved with Roslyn Phillips, of keeping the vampire’s location from her when Roslyn had been hiding from Slater. But since everything had turned out all right in the end, with Roslyn living and Slater rotting in the ground, Bria’s icy attitude toward me had thawed a bit. As had my wary one toward her.
    “You too, detective,” I said and meant it. “What can I do for you this evening?”
    She moved closer, putting her hands up on the counter beside the cash register. The lights made her silverstone rings wink at me one after another, like all-seeing eyes that knew every one of my deep, dark secrets. “I called earlier. I’m here to pick up my takeout.”
    That must have been the order that Sophia had taken over the phone before McAllister and LaFleur had come into the Pork Pit. But she hadn’t bothered to tell me it was Bria’s, even though Sophia knew all about my sister. I looked at the dwarf, who gave me a small grin and went back to wiping down the counter. I supposed that this was Sophia’s way of getting me to talk to Bria. The Goth dwarf could be sneaky when she put her mind to it.
    “I would have been here to get it sooner,” Bria said, leaning against the counter. “But I got stuck late working a case.”
    “Really?” I asked, moving to get the white bag that Sophia had packed Bria’s food in. “Which case was this?”
    As a whole, Ashland was a violent city, full of lots of powerful people with lots of powerful grudges against each other, as well as your more mundane criminals just trying to make a buck. There was so much crime here that it was hard to tell what kind of case Bria might beworking. It could be everything from a domestic dispute to a gangbanger drive-by to a missing person—
    “The Spider killed three more men last night. Or, at least, someone left her symbol behind at the crime scene,” Bria answered.
    Years of Fletcher’s training kept me from showing any emotion, but once again, I cursed luck. Of all the detectives in Ashland, my sister had to be the one investigating my nighttime activities as the Spider. First, Jonah McAllister had brought Elektra LaFleur by so that the assassin could put her bull’s-eye on my forehead, and now Bria was joining the firing squad. Irony was really kicking me in the teeth tonight.
    “Oh.” Once again, I was the conversational genius.
    I set the bag of takeout on the counter between us, as if that would somehow derail Bria’s train of thought. Not likely. I might not have seen her in the last seventeen years, but since her arrival back in Ashland a few weeks ago, she’d been nothing but tenacious, showing me exactly what kind of strong, confident, dedicated woman she’d grown up to be.
    Then there was the fact that Bria was also one of the few honest cops in the city. With all the crime in Ashland, it was far easier for members of the police department to take bribes to look the other way than to actually investigate crimes and arrest the perpetrators. A couple of C-notes in their fat wallets made for far less paperwork. But Bria was different. She didn’t turn a blind eye to crimes or bury her head in the sand—ever. Even more than that, she actually tried to help people, tried to bring some comfort to victims and put as many bad guys as she could behindbars. And now she was gunning for me, the Spider. Despite the fact that Bria knew that the assassin and her long-lost sister Genevieve Snow were one and the same.
    While I admired