Elemental Assassin 05 - Spider's Revenge

of cream cheese filled another bowl. As always, the stirring, the mixing, the careful measuring of ingredients, soothed me. I couldn’t control what Mab did, how she came after me, or whom she hired to do her dirty work, but I could make my family a treat to sweeten the bitter times.
    Twenty minutes later, just as Finn and Bria were winding down with their story, I took the brownies out of the oven. While I was waiting for them to cool enough to frost them, I grabbed the milk from the fridge, along with several mugs out of the cabinets. One by one, I wrapped my hand around the glasses and reached for my Ice magic. Crystals spread out from my palm and ran up the side of first one mug then another until all the glasses were cold and frosty.
    When everything was ready, I cut the frosted brownies, stacked them on a plate, brought the milk and mugs over to the table, and started munching on my late-night snack with the others.
    “So what do you want to do, Gin?” Finn asked. “Now that we know exactly who all these crazy people are in Ashland.”
    I chewed a bite of brownie. Rich and chocolatey, with an extra sugary sweet kick from the cream cheese frosting. Perfect. “See if you can find out more about them—backgrounds, skills, habits. I especially want to know about Ruth Gentry and Sydney, the girl that she has with her. Gentry seems to be the smartest of the bunch so far, which makes her the most dangerous.”
    Finn nodded. He’d started digging into Gentry earlier today, but Bria’s meeting with Jenkins had taken precedence and sidetracked his search.
    “What about me?” Bria asked. “What do you want me to do?”
    I looked at her. “You’re going to call your boss in the morning and tell him that you’ve had a family emergency and are going out of town.”
    Bria’s eyes narrowed. “You want me to leave Ashland? Because of a few bounty hunters?”
    I shook my head. “It’s more than a few bounty hunters, Bria. Six guys jumped you tonight, and Mab had a whole dining room full of them at her house. There’s got to be at least three or four dozen of them in Ashland by now, all eager to get their hands on you. Leaving town is exactly what they’ll expect you to do, which is why you’re not going anywhere.”
    Bria looked at me. “You want me to go into hiding then, don’t you?”
    I nodded. “I do. I want you in Ashland, close by, somewhere I know that you’ll be safe. Someplace that’s easy to defend and hard to get into. Someplace where I know every single nook and cranny, so there are no surprises.”
    “There’s only one place that I know of that fits that bill,” Finn said.
    “Do you mind?” I asked in a quiet voice, staring at my foster brother. “Because, really, it’s your house too.”
    Finn just shrugged. “He left the house to you, Gin. He knew that you’d need it for something like this someday. We both know that.”
    Bria looked back and forth between us. “What are you talking about? Where is this place?”
    I stared at her. “We’re talking about Fletcher’s house. Baby sister, you’re coming home with me tonight.”

Bria argued with me, insisting that she could take care of herself. But I didn’t budge, telling her that she was going to hole up in Fletcher’s house even if I had to duct-tape her into submission and keep her that way. Still, Bria acquiesced only after I pulled a roll of the gray tape out of one of the kitchen drawers and starting slicing off strips of it with a silverstone knife.
    Deep down, Bria knew that staying out of sight was the smartest thing to do—for everyone. But that didn’t mean she liked it. Grumbling under her breath about overprotective big sisters, Bria stalked off into the bathroom to try to wash some of the blood out of her clothes.
    That left Jo-Jo, Finn, and me alone in the kitchen. When I was sure that Bria was out of earshot, I turned to Finn.
    “You know what I have to do now,” I said. “I have to kill Mab. The very first chance I get. That’s the only way to lift the bounty on Bria’s head.”
    Finn slurped down another mouthful of his chicory coffee. “Yeah, you tried that last night, remember? It didn’t work out so good for you.”
    My lips curled back into a snarl at the memory of my epic failure, but I forced my anger at myself down into the pit of my stomach. “I don’t care. Mab
knows
, Finn. She knows that Bria’s my sister. That’s why she put the bounty on her head. If Mab can’t find me herself,