It was after three the next afternoon. The lunch crowd had already come and gone, and it wasn't quite time for the dinner rush yet. Which is why Finnegan Lane sat on a stool beside the cash register shooting the breeze with me. In between scarfing down two hot dogs loaded with spicy chili, onions, shredded Cheddar cheese, and sweet honey mustard, along with baked beans and a big slice of my still-warm chocolate-chip pound cake.
I looked up from my copy of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and stared at my partner in crime. "Don't worry. You'll find an opening for me. You're my handler now. It's what you do, remember?"
"I am the best," Finn said in a not-so-modest voice. He chewed another bite of his hot dog. "But even I can't make you invisible, Gin. And that's what it's going to take to get close to Elliot Slater right now."
"I'm good at being invisible, remember?"
"True," Finn agreed. "But people tend to notice pesky little things like screams and bloodstains. Especially when there's a body to go along with them."
I rolled my eyes and went back to my book. Finn had come over for an early dinner and to help me brainstorm how I could get close enough to Elliot Slater to bury my silverstone knives in his broad back. So far, all Finn had done was eat my food and muse about how difficult it was going to be making sure the giant got dead before he killed Roslyn Phillips-or Bria. Finn's defeatist attitude wasn't helping, and since I hadn't come up with any bright ideas of my own, I'd turned to Huck in hopes that something would spring to mind while I was reading about someone else's adventures. But nothing had so far-
The front door opened, causing the bell to chime. I looked up from my book, ready to greet my potential customer. To my surprise, Roslyn Phillips stepped inside the restaurant. Today the vamp wore a short, plum-colored coat over a pair of winter white pants, which looked both elegant and sexy on her at the same time. A silverstone pin gleamed on the lapel of Roslyn's jacket-a heart with an arrow through it. The symbol for her nightclub, Northern Aggression. Like most magic types, Roslyn wore her rune with pride.
The vamp paused in the doorway a moment, her toffee eyes sweeping over the interior. Roslyn had come during the postlunch lull, so the waitresses that had been working were in the alley behind the restaurant taking a long smoke break and eating their own dinner. Several customers still sat at the tables and booths against the windows, finishing up their meals, lost in their own bubbles of conversation. When she realized no one was within earshot of Finn and me, she nodded, yanked the door shut behind her, and stomped over in our direction. The vampire's high heels clattered against the floor like falling silverware.
Roslyn slammed her small handbag down on the counter next to Finn, startling him and making him jiggle the spoonful of baked beans he'd been ready to shove into his mouth. The beans slipped off his spoon and splattered on his gray suit jacket, along with a healthy amount of barbecue sauce. Finn cursed and reached for a white paper napkin.
But Roslyn didn't care about Finn's fashion emergency. The vamp only had eyes for me-eyes that flashed with hot anger.
"What the f**k did you do to Elliot Slater last night?" she snarled.
"Lovely to see you again too, Roslyn." I marked my place in my book with a wayward credit card receipt and set it aside. "Care to take a seat?"
Roslyn plopped down on the stool next to Finn's, her back as tall and straight as the arrow in her rune pin. The vamp's hot gaze never left my face.
"I ask again," she snapped in a low voice only the three of us could hear. "What did you do to Elliot Slater last night?"
I shrugged. "Nothing much. Killed a couple of his men. I was going to do him too, but the bastard ducked out a window and ran away before I could get down to business with him."
My confession didn't appease Roslyn. If anything, it made her angrier. I could tell by the way the vamp bared her pearl-white fangs at me. Finn gave Roslyn a sidelong glance and kept trying to rub the barbecue sauce out of his suit, more concerned about the stain setting in his jacket than the danger presented by the pissed-off vampire. He was rather impractical that way.
"I take it there's a problem with Slater?" I asked in a quiet tone. "Beyond what you told me yesterday?"
Roslyn stared at me. I met her gaze with a calm one of my own. If anyone else had busted into my gin joint and bitched about the way I handled my bloody, dangerous business, I would have set her straight, perhaps with the point of my knife. But Roslyn was the victim in all this, had suffered so much because of me, I was going to be as gentle with her as I could. Even if gentle was something I didn't really know how to do-or that I hadn't been myself in a long, long time.
After a few seconds, the vamp made a visible effort to get herself under control. Finn gave his stained jacket up as a lost cause. He sighed and tossed his crumpled napkin in the middle of his plate. Dinnertime was officially over.
"Would you care for something to eat or drink?" I asked, trying to be the responsible hostess once more.
"No," Roslyn muttered.
I ignored her curt answer and moved over to a glass cake stand resting on the counter against the back wall. I cut Roslyn a piece of the chocolate-chip pound cake and put the dessert in front of her, along with a tall glass of milk and a fork. Since no one liked warm milk, I wrapped my hand around the glass and reached for my Ice magic. A silver light glowed on my palm, centered on the spider rune scar embedded in my flesh. Ice crystals immediately formed on the surface of the mug, and a moment later, it was as cold and frosty as if I'd just taken it out of the freezer. Steam curled up from the lip of the glass.
Not so long ago, doing something as simple as cooling a drink had been about the extent of my Ice magic. Now it wasn't any harder than breathing. Jo-Jo Deveraux claimed that the silverstone metal melted into my palms had inhibited my Ice magic, since Ice elementals tended to release their power through their hands to make cubes, daggers, and other shapes-or just to blast someone with their cold magic.
But I'd finally overcome the blockage during a desperate moment when I was facing off with another elemental, when my life had been on the line. Now, doing things with my Ice power was far easier than it had been before. I was getting stronger in it too. Jo-Jo claimed that my Ice magic would continue to grow until it was just as powerful as my Stone power, making me the rarest of elementals-someone who was equally strong in two elements.
I wasn't exactly comfortable with that idea for a variety of reasons. Mainly because I'd seen my mother, Eira's, Ice magic let her down when she'd gone up against Mab Monroe. I wasn't so sure I wanted to tempt fate by relying on my own Ice magic when Mab and I had our inevitable confrontation. Because it would be damned ironic if Mab killed me the exact same way she had my mother and older sister. Irony. Always out to get you.