Elemental Assassin 05 - Spider's Revenge

let me forget about how I’d botched my hit on Mab last night.
    Almost.
    Bria and Xavier polished off their food, but instead of saying their good-byes, the two of them lingered in the Pork Pit. It wasn’t like either one of them to do that, not while they were on duty, no matter how good the food was. Something was going on.
    Bria kept sneaking glances at first me, then Xavier. The giant nodded his shaved head at her, telling her to get on with it. Still, she hesitated. So I decided to make things easy for her, seeing as how the relationship between us hadn’t exactly been smooth sailing so far.
    “Something on your mind, Bria?” I asked.
    Bria looked up, startled by my question. Then a rueful grin spread across her pretty face. “Is it that obvious?”
    “Probably not to anyone else but me.”
    She nodded, accepting my explanation. “Actually, there is another reason that Xavier and I came by the Pit today, other than the food.”
    Bria drew in a breath and stared at me. “We need your help, Gin.”
    My sister asking for my help—especially considering the violent, bloody kind of
help
that I specialized in—was a new experience. But I wasn’t about to deny her. Anything that Bria asked of me, I would happily give her—and then some. Still, if my sister, the straight arrow, the upstanding detective, had turned to me, the morally bankrupt assassin, for aid, then something really big must be up.
    I raised an eyebrow. “Really? You need my help? Who exactly needs killing?”
    Bria winced. “It’s not—it’s not like that. Not like that at all, Gin. I don’t want anybody dead.”
    I stared at her another moment before my gaze cut to Xavier. The giant just shrugged his massive shoulders, telling me that Bria had the lead on this thing, whatever it was.
    “So what’s up?” I asked. “Why do two such esteemed members of the Ashland po-po need my help? Got a dirty cop you need to bust or something?”
    Xavier snorted, with good reason. Besides the giant and Bria, honest cops were rarer than blizzards in the summertime in Ashland. Most members of the police force preferred to take wads of C-notes to look the other way, rather than actually try to solve the many crimes that plagued the city. It was easier, less dangerous, and far more profitable for everyone involved that way. For most folks, the only justice in Ashland was what they made for themselves—with whatever sharp, pointed weapon happened to be nearby.
    Bria took a sip of her blackberry lemonade and tapped her left index finger on the counter before reaching down and twisting around the two rings that she wore there. Turn, turn, turn. Twisting the silverstone bands around and around was Bria’s tell, something that she did whenever she was thinking hard about a problem. Light pooled in the snowflake and ivy symbols embedded in the metal and flashed the runes back at me.
    “It’s not that we need your help,” she finally said. “It’s just that we can’t quite figure things out.”
    “What do you mean?”
    Bria looked at me. “I’m sure you’ve noticed that there’s been a bit more crime lately in Ashland than usual.”
    “Especially for the dead of winter,” Xavier chimedin. “Usually, crime around here goes down the more the snow piles up, since most folks don’t want to get out into the cold. Of course, we get a few bums squatting in abandoned buildings over in Southtown, some trash-can fires that get out of control, but that’s about it, except for the usual stuff.”
    By
the usual stuff
, Xavier meant all the domestic disputes, robberies, rapes, gang violence, and assorted murders that took place in the city on a daily basis. From a distance, Ashland might resemble a larger version of Mayberry, but in reality, the city was about as far removed from that quaint Southern ideal as could be. The only whistling folks did in Ashland was after they’d bashed you over the head, ripped your purse off your arm, and were strolling away counting the bills inside.
    “Crime around the city has skyrocketed in the past few days,” Bria continued. “Bar fights, robberies, beatings, murders. It’s like some kind of army has invaded Ashland and is determined to tear up as much stuff as they can.”
    I frowned, and my mind flashed back to last night and the dinner guests that I’d seen at Mab’s mansion. They’d all had a hard edge to them, a sharpness in their faces, and a twitch in their fingers that had marked them as potential