Everyone turned to stare at the lawyer, including Madeline.
Jonah winced. “Once a black glove is thrown down, and the challenge issued, the other person has no choice but to accept the demand for a duel.”
Madeline’s eyes narrowed. “Or what?”
Jonah cleared his throat. “Or that person immediately forfeits everything that she owns to the challenger—money, jewels, land, homes.”
I made a deliberate show of looking around the ballroom. “I always wanted a mansion. I’d have to do some serious redecorating, though. White’s not my color—red is.”
Madeline stared at me, her mouth gaping open, wearing the same look of horrified shock as I had when the cops shut down the Pork Pit. Like I’d told my friends, Madeline had tried to legalese me to death, so I’d decided to return the favor. That was the reason I’d gotten Silvio to dig up all those old Ashland Municipal Codexes. So I could see exactly what antiquated duel laws might be on the books and how I could tiptoe around them. To my surprise and cunning delight, I’d discovered that almost all of the old laws relating to duels still remained on the books in Ashland, even if they hadn’t been enforced in years. I’d been particularly happy about the forfeiture clause, knowing that one would upset Madeline the most. She hadn’t gone to all this trouble to take over the town just to have everything she owned ripped away from her now.
I beamed at Madeline. “And do you know what the best part about a duel is?”
Jonah opened his mouth, but I held up my hand, cutting him off.
“It’s not technically a crime to kill someone during an elemental duel,” I purred. “Apparently, there were so many duels back in the old days that the po-po got tired of hauling all the survivors off to jail. Or they knew better than to try to arrest powerful elementals who’d just magicked their enemies to death. So the cops just decided to let them go.”
Madeline thought that she’d been so clever with all her little legal maneuvers, but I’d found a way to kill her in front of every underworld boss in the city—and get away with it. Even she couldn’t top that trick.
“So it boils down to this,” I continued. “You can either give me everything you own and slink out of town like the coward you are, or you can accept my challenge and fight me face-to-face like you should have in the first place. You wanted a return to the old ways. What could be more old-fashioned than a duel?”
Madeline stared and stared at me, her green eyes narrowed, thinking, thinking hard. But the black widow had nothing on this Spider, and I’d trapped her in my own tangled web, as neatly as she had caught me before, and she could do nothing but accept my challenge. Otherwise, the other bosses would see her as weak and start plotting against her. They might even put aside their differences long enough to unite to take down their common enemy. Oh, I had no doubt that Madeline could put all of them in the ground, but it would be an annoyance to do so, and there was always the chance, however small, that one of them could get lucky and kill her instead.
Madeline knew all of this as well as I did, and I saw the moment when she realized that she was going to have to play the game by my rules, not hers. Her jaw tightened, her crimson lips flattened out, and her hands balled into fists again, although no more acid drops trickled out from between her clenched fingers. She didn’t like how I’d cornered her. She didn’t like losing control. Well, that made two of us.
But she recovered quickly, forcing herself to seem unconcerned. Her jaw relaxed, her fists unclenched, and her crimson lips curved up into that cruel, satisfied smile I knew all too well.
“Very well,” Madeline purred. “You want a duel? You’ve got one. But I want this to be a true elemental duel. Otherwise, what’s the point?”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that just you and I participate in the actual duel—no one else.”
“Agreed.”
Madeline’s smile widened, as though she’d thought of something that I wasn’t expecting. “And we only use our magic—no weapons of any kind. Which, sadly, means no knives for you, Gin.”
She waited, expecting me to refuse. She didn’t think that I could beat her without my knives. Maybe she was right about that. But I’d made the challenge, and I couldn’t back down now. Besides, I had one thing that Madeline didn’t, and she wasn’t even going to realize it until it was too late.
“Agreed.”
Madeline blinked, as if she hadn’t thought that I would give in so easily, but she kept that same confident smile plastered on her face. She was strong in her magic, and everyone here knew it, especially given what she’d done to Montoya. But I was strong too, and I was determined to end the Snow-Monroe family feud.
Once and for all.
“So we’ve set the terms, and the time is now,” Madeline said. “I say that we get started, don’t you?”
I smiled again. “Nothing would please me more than the pleasure of finally killing you.”
26
While the Ashland underworld looked on, Madeline and I both readied ourselves for our duel.
Sophia stepped out of the crowd, since she’d be watching my back. I picked up my black satin gloves and handed them to her, along with all five of my knives. My fingers lingered on the last knife, the one that I’d killed Mab with, the one that still contained my Ice and Stone magic from that fateful battle. I hated to let it go, but this was the path I’d chosen, and I couldn’t turn back now. So I passed that weapon over to the Goth dwarf as well, then stripped off my suit jacket, revealing the tight red tank top underneath. Even though we were going to be fighting with our magic, I didn’t want anything to restrict my movements.
“Watch Emery,” I said in a low voice. “I wouldn’t put it past her to try to take me out during the duel, especially if it looks like I might actually kill Madeline.”
Sophia nodded. She stuffed the gloves in her pocket, then secreted my knives on her body much the same way I always hid them on mine. Jo-Jo took my jacket from her.
Meanwhile, my other friends kept their backs to the walls and their guns trained on the crowd. The underworld bosses kept looking from me to Madeline and back again. No doubt some of them were thinking about how they could kill both of us while we were fighting, but my friends and their weapons should discourage the bosses from interfering.
I slipped off my black stilettos and handed them to Jo-Jo. Under my bare feet, the cool white marble muttered at the unease and worry that was slowly sinking into it, along with those drops of acid that were still eating through Montoya’s body and the stone beneath one layer at a time.