I’d decided to make my run at Vaughn here, since there was even less security at the construction compound than there was at his estate. I didn’t feel like ducking wandering giant guards just to get close enough to try to kill him. Besides, I didn’t want Sebastian and especially Charlotte to find their father’s body after the fact. I would spare them that trauma.
I hoped the cops would remove Vaughn’s corpse from the compound before they notified Sebastian of his father’s death, although I wasn’t overly optimistic about it. The po-po were so crooked and lazy it wouldn’t surprise me if they made Sebastian pay to have his father’s body taken away in a timely manner. But that was a problem for tomorrow. I needed to focus on what I was doing here tonight.
When I finished snipping through the metal, I slid the wire cutters back into my vest and zipped that pocket up again. In addition to the rest of my black clothes, I was also wearing thin black leather gloves, so I wasn’t worried about leaving behind any fingerprints or cutting myself on the fence as I carefully pulled the sliced edges away from one another.
I slipped through the opening to the other side and put the links back into place, making sure that I could remember the exact spot that I’d cut, in case I had to leave in a hurry. Then, still crouching low, I started making my way toward the office building in the heart of the compound.
Most of the space behind the fence was taken up with rows and rows of construction equipment. Bulldozers, backhoes, and other machines designed for tearing into the earth and then dump trucks to haul it away. Cement mixers for laying foundations, cranes to hoist beams into place high in the sky, and all the other equipment you would need to fill in all the spaces in between. A few metal outbuildings also squatted here and there, full of smaller tools, wiring, paint, drywall, and other supplies.
As I slid from one piece of equipment and one pool of darkness to the next, I listened to the stone around me.
Bricks, concrete, granite . . . all sorts of stone could be found throughout the compound, some of it out in the open, like the sturdy cinder blocks stacked on top of one another, while other, more expensive and delicate ones were safely behind lock and key, like the marble that I could hear murmuring inside one of the outbuildings.
Most of the whispers told of the shake, rattle, and roll of heavy machinery as the stones were continuously picked up and moved from one place to another before being shipped out to their ultimate destinations. But some of the more polished pieces, like the marble countertops, vainly sang of their own smooth, glossy beauty and how lovely they were going to look in whatever new house they would eventually be installed in. The more sensible, utilitarian stones grumbled in response, having no use for the marble’s frippery. They were bricks, solid, stout, and sturdy, meant to protect, shield, and hold up against all of the rain, wind, sun, and snow they would be exposed to. That was more than enough for them.
Vanity, envy, exasperation . . . in many ways, stones were just like people, with all the pride, insecurities, and emotions to match.
But the longer I listened, the more I realized that there was a . . . darkness in the stones. No, not just darkness—evil, evil intent.
It rippled throughout the entire site, from the bricks and cinder blocks outside to the fine marble and granite slabs housed indoors. A black, ominous, foreboding sense that someone here was capable of doing some very bad things at any moment—and had already committed some gruesome sins at this very spot. One particular stack of bricks practically hummed with harsh, murderous whispers, indicating that one or more of them had been used to bash someone’s head in and that the person hadn’t gotten back up from the brutal attack.
My own mood darkened in response to the stones’ cruel cries. I knew the cause of all the commotion: Cesar Vaughn. It was one more nail in the coffin of his guilt, as far as I was concerned. This was his compound, his business, his gin joint, so it only made sense that the stones would soak up his emotions and intentions, especially since he had the same power over them that I did. Stones tended to react even more to the elementals who could control them, sensing their primal connection to the elementals and reflecting back their actions more intensely.
But I shut the malicious murmurs out of my mind and kept heading toward the main office building, which was made out of lovely gray bricks. A few giants roamed through the site near the structure, shining their flashlights over the rows of equipment and the locks on the outbuildings, but their movements were slow, sloppy, and halfhearted. They weren’t expecting any trouble. Good.
I crouched in the shadows behind a pickup truck and waited until the giants had moved on to the next part of their security sweep. Then I sprinted the last thirty feet over to the headquarters. If I’d been doing the hit during business hours, I would have sauntered up to the front door, pulled it open, and marched right on inside, like I belonged here. But since there was a giant guard posted at the desk inside the entrance and this wasn’t exactly a business call, the direct approach was out.
Instead, I sidled all the way around the building until I reached a loading dock on the east side. The large metal door was shut and locked. Even if I’d had the strength to open it, it would have made far too much noise rattling upward. So I set my sights on a regular door in the wall a few feet away. I peered through the glass, but the hallway on the other side was empty, as I expected it to be. According to my calculations, Vaughn should be the only one still inside the building, besides the guard sitting at the front desk.
I took one more look around, this time reaching out and listening to the bricks’ murmurs for any hints of danger, surprise, or unease. But the same whispers as before echoed back to me, perhaps a touch darker as I got closer to my victim and my own murderous goal.
Satisfied that the coast was clear, I reached out and tried the doorknob. Locked, but I could fix that. I pulled off one of my gloves and held my hand out, palm up.
Then I reached for my Ice magic.
The power flowed through my veins, like a spring of cold crystal buried deep inside me. I could feel it the same way that I could hear the rasps of the gravel under my feet and the murmurs of the bricks that made up the building. But I couldn’t access it as easily. Every time I reached for that frosty power, it slid away, like frozen raindrops falling through my hands. Or maybe it only seemed that way because my Ice magic was so much weaker than my Stone power.
So I concentrated, and a dim silver light flashed, flickered, and finally flared to life in the palm of my hand, centered on the spider rune scar there. It took me a minute, but I managed to bring enough magic to bear to form two small, slender shapes: Ice picks. Why carry around a set of lock picks when you could make your own?