"Yeah," Finn muttered. "The fact that I can't feel my feet anymore and you won't let me turn on the heater."
"Drink your coffee, then. It'll make you feel better. It always does."
For the first time tonight, a grin spread across Finn's face. "Why, I think that's an excellent idea."
Finn reached down and grabbed a large metal thermos from the floorboard in the backseat. He cracked open the top, and the caffeine fumes of his chicory coffee filled the car. The rich smell always reminded me of his father, Fletcher Lane, my mentor, the one who'd taught me everything I knew about being an assassin. The old man had drunk the same foul brew as his son before he'd died earlier this year. I smiled at the memory and the warmth it stirred in me.
While Finn drank his coffee, I stared out at the scene before me once more. Everything seemed still, quiet, cold, dark. But I couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong. That something was just slightly off about this whole setup. Fletcher had always told me that nobody ever got dead by waiting just a few more minutes. His advice had kept me alive this long, and I had no intention of disregarding it now.
Once again my eyes scanned the area. Deserted street. A few dilapidated buildings hugging the waterfront. The black ribbon of the Aneirin River in the distance. The pale boards of the dock. A lone light flickering over the dwarf's head.
My eyes narrowed, and I focused on the light. The bright, intact light burning like a beacon in the dark night. Then I looked up and down the street, my gaze flicking from one iron post to the next. Every other light on the block was busted out. Not surprising. This was Southtown, after all, the part of Ashland that was home to gangbangers, vampire prostitutes, and junkie elementals strung out on their own magic and hungry for more. People would just as soon kill you as look at you here. Not a place you wanted to linger, even during the daylight hours.
So I wasn't surprised that the streetlights had been broken, probably long ago, by the rocks, beer bottles, and other trash that littered the street. What did surprise me was the fact that there was one still burning-the one right over the van that the dwarf was packing his boxes into.
How ... convenient.
"You might as well get comfortable," I said, staring at the lone light. "Because we're going to be here a while longer."
Finn just groaned.
We didn't have long to wait. Ten minutes later, the dwarf finished loading the last of his boxes into the van. Once I started watching him-really watching him-I realized that he'd been taking his sweet time about things. Moving slower than a normal person would have, especially considering the bitter cold that frosted Ashland tonight. But then again, this was far from the innocent scene that it appeared to be.
Now the dwarf stood beside the van, smoking a cigarette and staring into the darkness with watchful eyes.
"What's he doing?" Finn asked, taking another sip of coffee. "If the man had any sense, he'd crank up the heater in that van and get out of here."
"Just wait," I murmured. "Just wait."
Finn sighed and drank some more of his chicory brew.
Five more minutes passed before a flash of movement along the dock caught my eye.
"There," I said and leaned forward. "Right f**king there."
A figure stepped out from behind a small shack squatting at the far end of the dock that jutted out into the river.
Finn jerked upright and almost spilled his coffee on the leather seats. "Where the hell did he come from?"
"Not he," I murmured. "She."
The woman strolled down the dock toward the dwarf. Despite the darkness, the single streetlight still burning let me get a good look at her. She was petite and slender, about my age, thirty or so. She had a short bob of glossy black hair, held back with a headband, and her features had an Asian flavor to them-porcelain skin, expressive eyes, delicate cheekbones. She also wore black from head to toe, just like the rest of us.
I frowned. No woman in her right mind would walk through this neighborhood alone at night. Hell, not many would dare to do it during the day. Much less wait more than an hour in a run-down shack on a December night when the temperature hovered in the low twenties.
Unless she had a very, very good reason for being there.
And I was beginning to think I knew exactly what that reason was-me.
The woman reached the dwarf, who crushed out his cigarette. She said something to the man, who just shrugged his shoulders. The woman turned and scanned the street, much the same way that I'd been doing for the last hour. But I knew she couldn't see us, given where we were parked. The Dumpster sitting at the end of the narrow alley in front of Finn's vehicle screened us from her line of sight.
After another thirty seconds of looking, the woman turned back to the dwarf and advanced on him. For a moment he looked confused. Then startled. Then his eyes widened, and he turned and started running away from her.
He got maybe five steps before the woman lifted her right hand-and green lightning shot out of her fingertips.
Finn jerked, almost spilling his coffee again. Even I blinked at the sudden, powerful flash of light.
The dwarf arched his back and screamed, his harsh cry echoing down the deserted street, as the lightning slammed into his body. The woman advanced on him, the magical light in her hand intensifying as she stepped closer.
And she was so f**king strong. She stood at least a hundred feet away from me, but I could still sense the sharp, static crackle of her power even here in the car. The feel of her elemental magic made the spider rune scars on my palms itch and burn the way they always did whenever I was exposed to so much power, to so much raw magic. And she had plenty to spare.
A second later, the dwarf caught fire. He wobbled back and forth before pitching to the cracked pavement, but the woman didn't stop her magical assault. She stood over his body, sending wave after wave of lightning into his figure, even as the green elemental flames of her power consumed his skin, hair, and clothes.
When she was done, the woman curled her hand into a tight fist. The bright lightning flickered, then sparked away into nothingness, like a flare that had been snuffed out. Greenish gray smoke wafted up from her fingertips, and she blew it away into the frosty night air, like an Old West gunfighter cooling down his Colt after a shootout. How dramatic.
"Did you see that?" Finn whispered, his coffee forgotten, his green eyes wide and round in his face. "She electrocuted him."
"Yeah. I saw."
I didn't add that she'd used elemental magic to do it. Finn had seen that for himself.
Elementals were people who could create, control, and manipulate one of the four elements-Air, Fire, Ice, and Stone. Those were the areas that most folks were gifted in, the ones you had to be able to tap into to be considered a true elemental. But magic had many forms, many quirks, and some people could use other areas, offshoots of one of the four elements. Metal was an offshoot of Stone, and electricity was one of Air.