Like Jillian Delancey's death.
Not for the first time, Jillian's face flashed before my eyes. Dark brown hair, dark eyes, great smile. All gone because of me, because of the dumb luck that seemed to delight in messing with me and mine time and time again.
"What are you thinking about, Gin?" Bria asked, walking over to me and waving her strawberry-pink nails in the air to help dry them.
I looked away from the patch of wall that I'd been aimlessly staring at and down at my plate of food, which I'd set on the table. "I'm thinking that I should have put some more kosher salt on the potato chips."
Bria shook her head, causing her blond hair to glimmer like strands of spun gold in the sunlight streaming in through the windows. "No, you're not. You're thinking about something else, something important. What happened at Briartop? Or is it Owen?"
I grimaced at the mention of Owen Grayson, my, well, I didn't know exactly what Owen and I were these days.
Not together but not as far apart as we'd been. Owen had brought Jillian to the museum for Mab's gala. She'd been his friend and business associate and had wanted to be more, although Owen had told me that he didn't think of her like that. Either way, Jillian had still ended up dead because of me - the second woman associated with Owen to meet that particular fate in a matter of weeks.
Bria laid a hand on my arm. "You know you can talk to me, right? About anything?"
I nodded. I did know that, although it always amazed me. After years of thinking that Bria was dead, she'd reappeared in my life several months ago. It wasn't easy, her being a cop and my being an assassin, but we were making it work, and we were closer now than ever before.
"I know, and I appreciate it. What can I say? I like to
brood over my food."
Bria laughed, but then her face turned serious, as if she wanted to ask me something. She started toying with the silverstone pendant around her throat. A primrose, the symbol for beauty, her rune.
Watching her fiddle with her necklace made my fingers curl into my palms, touching the scars on my skin there, a small circle on either hand, each mark surrounded by eight thin rays. The same symbol was also stamped into the middle of the silverstone ring that I wore on my right index finger. My rune, a spider rune, the symbol for patience - and so many other things to me.
It too had once been a necklace, until Mab had used her Fire magic to superheat the silverstone and melt the pendant into my hands, her brutal, effective way of torturing me and marking me in more ways than either one of us had known at the time.
"Gin?" Bria asked.
I snapped out of my memories. "I'm sorry. I spaced out there for a minute. Was there something that you wanted to ask me?"
Bria drew in a breath, but before she could tell me whatever was on her mind, the sound of a door banging open at the front of the house cut her off. A moment later, footsteps sounded. I recognized the heavy tread as belonging to Sophia, but the odd thing was that it didn't sound like she was walking normally. Instead, a series of scrape-scrape-scrapes screeched across the hardwood floor, as if Sophia was dragging one of her feet yet moving fast at the same time. Before I could puzzle out why she would be walking that way, she appeared in the salon doorway.
Jo-Jo might be a sweet Southern lady with her pink dresses, polish, and pearls, but Sophia had a different style altogether: Goth. Today, as usual, she wore black from head to toe - boots, jeans, and a T-shirt with a big pair of puckered crimson lips on it. A crimson leather collar spiked with silverstone ringed her throat, and her lipstick was a flat black that matched her hair.
Normally, I found Sophia's style to be dark but also cool, quirky, and funky. The problem now was that her black clothes kept me from noticing the blood on her arm and leg for several crucial seconds.
"Sophia?" I asked.
Her black eyes met mine, and I saw something there
I'd never seen before: fear.
"Run," Sophia rasped in her low, broken voice.
Then she collapsed without another word.
Chapter Three
"Sophia?" Jo-Jo said. "Sophia!"
Jo-Jo dropped the bottle of nail polish she'd been holding. The glass shattered on the floor, splattering the bright, glossy, strawberry liquid everywhere, but Jo-Jo didn't notice as she ran past us to where Sophia lay. Bria and I started forward too, but we'd only taken two steps when the front door banged open again, as though someone had kicked it wildly and sent it flying into the wall. A second later, more footsteps, multiple sets, all heavy, loud, and determined, all headed our way.
Whatever trouble Sophia had gotten into had followed her home.
Bria and I glanced at each other, then both lunged for the buffet table. Bria went for the gun in her straw bag underneath the table, while I reached for my silverstone knives atop its far end. But before we could get to our weapons, six men burst into the salon, all carrying guns.
Two of the men grabbed Jo-Jo and hauled her away from Sophia. The dwarf tried to fight back, but the men were strong, and they easily lifted her off her feet and pinned her against the closest wall. Two more men stood over Sophia, pointing their guns down at her, while another stepped forward, dug his hand into Bria's golden hair, and yanked her up against his body. The sixth man grabbed my left arm and leered at me, but he didn't drag me away from the buffet table. His first mistake - and his last.
If it had just been me, I would have instantly gone on the attack, grabbing my knives and using them to cut into the men until there was nothing left of them but bloody chunks. But I couldn't do that, not while they were holding guns on Bria, Jo-Jo, and Sophia. My Stone magic would let me survive being shot in the chest, but Bria's Ice and the Deveraux sisters' Air power wouldn't.
No, I'd have to be smart about things and wait for the right time to strike. Maybe I'd even keep one of the men alive long enough to question him. Because I wanted to know whom these bastards worked for and who'd sent them after me. That was the only reason I could think of for why they'd stormed into Jo-Jo's salon: because they knew that the Spider was here, and their boss wanted my head as a prize.
I coldly eyed the men. They were of varying shapes, sizes, and coloring, but they were all fit, trim, and tanned, as though they spent a lot of time outdoors. My gaze dropped to their hands, which were also rough, tan, and callused. Whoever they were, these guys were used to hard physical labor, which seemed at odds with the formality of their dress. They all wore old-fashioned brown suits, along with starched white shirts, heavy brown boots, and matching brown fedoras. All put together, they reminded me of some sort of Roaring Twenties gang, the kind that ran mountain moonshine back during Prohibition.