I was ten feet away from him, close enough that I could smell the harsh fumes of whatever whiskey he was drinking . . .
Seven feet . . . the overhead lights made the silver threads in his hair glint like the sharp points of the skyscrapers on the bookshelves . . .
Five . . . the facets of the crystal tumbler in his hand winked at me, one after another . . .
Three . . . now catching a hint of the day’s sweat and sawdust that clung to his skin . . .
One . . . go!
I raised my knife to strike, but Vaughn must have finally heard the stones’ sharp warnings about me, or perhaps he saw my reflection in the windows, or maybe I was just too damn slow again. Either way, he turned at the last possible second.
Vaughn took in my black clothes and the knife in my hand in an instant. His brain kicked into gear, and he dropped his drink and threw himself to one side, out of the way of my deadly strike. My knife skidded off the window with a loud, ear-splitting screech, as though it were diamond that I was trying to cut the glass with. I winced and lost my grip on the blade, which thumped to the floor. I didn’t want to waste time reaching for it, so I palmed another knife and whirled toward him.
He had scurried over to the far right side of his office and put his back against the bookcase. But he didn’t make a break for the door. Instead, a grim, determined look filled his face, and he reached out and grabbed a stone model of a strip mall off the shelf. I tightened my grip on my knife and started forward. Vaughn reared back and threw the model at me, his aim surprisingly good. But that wasn’t all he did. As the stone sailed through the air toward my head, I felt a hard wave of magic roll off Vaughn.
The model broke into a hundred pieces.
It was like a bomb had exploded in my face. Sharp shards of shrapnel zipped through the air, all of it purposefully propelled in my direction by Vaughn’s magic. A neat trick, one that I’d have to remember for my own use later on. On instinct, I threw my hand up and reached for my own Stone magic, using it to harden my head, hair, skin, and eyes. The shrapnel pelted my body like nails, but the jagged pieces couldn’t penetrate my skin, thanks to the protective shell of my magic.
Silence.
Then I dropped my hand, brushed the bits of shattered stone off my clothes, and looked at my target.
Vaughn’s eyes widened to the point of almost bulging out of his face, as if I’d done something so surprising that he simply couldn’t believe it. “Your magic . . . it’s so strong . . .”
And that was all he got out before I went on the offensive again.
I took a step forward, but Vaughn was quicker than I was. He grabbed another model, this one a skyscraper, hurled it at me, and used his magic to make the stone explode in my face again. But I was still holding on to my own power, and the shrapnel hit my body and clattered off the same way it had before.
Back and forth we fought, with Vaughn moving from one side of the bookcase to the other, picking up every single model that he could get his hands on and tossing them all at me like grenades. I kept a grip on my own Stone magic and chased after him, but his miniature model bombs held me at bay.
Slowly, though, I started wearing him down. Vaughn was strong in his magic, but he was putting all of his power into his bomb blasts. It was much harder and far more draining to actively shatter thick chunks of solid stone over and over again, whereas I had the easier and far less magic-intensive task of keeping my skin just hard enough to withstand the assaults.
Vaughn threw another model at me, but this one only cracked into two pieces, instead of splintering into shrapnel like all the others. His breath came in ragged gasps, and sweat streamed down his face from the intense effort and the sheer amount of power he’d expended. I could feel the rest of his magic falling away, like the chips of stone dropping from my silverstone vest. Still, he made one final effort to take me down, this time with a particularly large model of a multistory mansion. But once again, he only managed to split the stone into two pieces, which plummeted to the floor before they even got close to me. Vaughn kept fighting, though, his hand reaching back toward the shelves for another model . . .
And coming up empty.
His eyes bulged again when he realized that he’d used up all his makeshift weapons, and his panicked gaze flicked to the door, as if he were finally thinking about running away. I needed to end the fight—now.
So I did.
While he hesitated, I leaped forward, raised my knife high, and drove it down into his chest.
Vaughn opened his mouth to scream, but I clamped my gloved hand over his lips, muffling the sound. He’d already made far too much noise setting off his model grenades, and it was a wonder that the guard hadn’t come to check on him already—if he wasn’t hurrying back here at this very second.
Vaughn’s body went slack against mine, and I knew that the job was finally done.
I pulled the knife out and started to step away, but he reached up and grabbed my arm, his grip still surprisingly firm, given the blood gushing out of his chest.
“I don’t know who sent you, but if this is about what happened at the restaurant . . .” he rasped. “Leave . . . my family . . . out of it. . . . Spare . . . them . . . please. . . .”
I leaned closer so he could see the coldness in my wintry gray eyes. “I am sparing them—from you. Did you think that you could slap around your kid and get away with it?”
Vaughn frowned, as though he didn’t understand what I was talking about. Hard to think when your brain was shutting down along with the rest of your body. But after a moment, understanding flickered in his dark eyes, along with sadness.
“Charlotte,” he rasped again, his voice even weaker than before, blood bubbling out of his lips. “Charlotte—”
Then the light faded from his eyes, his hand fell from my arm, and he dropped to the floor.
Dead.
11
I stood there and stared down at Cesar Vaughn’s dead, crumpled figure.
Why had he thought of Charlotte at the end? He was the one who’d been hurting her. Or perhaps he thought that whoever had hired me had told me to kill his entire family. A common enough occurrence and a reasonable assumption in Ashland. Vaughn had seemed to think this was about payback for the terrace collapse. Maybe he reasoned that I’d been ordered to take out his loved ones, as eye-for-an-eye retribution for the dead and injured. But that hadn’t been my assignment.
And for the first time, I wondered why it wasn’t.
If someone really wanted to hurt Vaughn, to wound him, to make him suffer like they had suffered, then I should have been hired to kill Charlotte and Sebastian too. Not that I would ever hurt a kid, but if this was truly about payback, you’d think that my mysterious employer would have wanted to hit Vaughn where he would feel it the most. One would assume that would be by murdering his family. Plus, revenge would have been an obvious, logical move and motivation for someone who had been injured in the terrace collapse or who had lost a loved one because of it. But someone had simply wanted Vaughn dead instead.