Unraveled

by Jennifer Estep

  I held my breath, wondering what the man could possibly steal, since we hadn’t put any of our presents out yet. Or maybe he was here for my mom’s jewelry, some of the antique knickknacks in the house, or even the stacks of money piled in her office safe. He stepped forward and dropped his hand down to his side.

  That’s when I saw the gun.

  My eyes widened, and my breath caught in my throat. Not here to steal—here to kill.

  All around me, the stones of our mansion whispered, but the vain, happy trills of the partygoers’ gemstones had been replaced by dark, harsh mutters. Whoever the gunman was, he was dangerous, and his evil intentions were brutal enough to have already left emotional vibrations in the stone.

  The man walked over to the tree and stopped, as though he was admiring the decorations. I clapped my hands over my mouth to hold back the scream rising in my throat and shrank back against the wall, desperately wishing that I could melt into it and escape out the other side.

  But all I could do was stay as still and quiet as a mouse, hoping that he wouldn’t look down at the floor and spot me through the thick branches, silver tinsel, and twinkling lights. The scent of pine sap, which had been so pleasant before, now seemed like poison sliding down my throat, choking me from the inside out.

  Finally, the man stepped away from the tree and left the family area behind. He stopped in the middle of the hallway, as if he was unsure where to go. Then he started forward again, and I realized that he was walking toward Annabella’s and Bria’s bedrooms.

  The thought of the gunman hurting my sisters cut through some of my panic, and anger sparked in place of my fear. He wasn’t going to hurt them. Not if I could help it. I chewed my lip. But what could I do against a guy with a gun? I didn’t know, but I had to do something, even if it was only run away, find my mom, and warn her what was happening. Then again, she could be asleep too, and I could be the only one who realized that the intruder was in the house.

  So it was up to me to stop him.

  I waited until the gunman had moved deeper into the hallway, then slowly wiggled out from behind the branches. I crouched by the side of the tree and eased forward, looking into the hallway beyond. The man slowed, as if counting the doors that lined the walls and trying to decide which one he wanted to enter.

  I glanced over at the stairs, hoping that my mom would suddenly appear, come running up here, and blast him with her Ice magic, but she didn’t. In fact, I didn’t hear any movement anywhere in the house.

  My mind churned and churned, trying to come up with a plan that would let me save everyone. I could use my Stone magic to harden my skin the way that my mom had been teaching me to. That would keep me safe from the gunman’s bullets, but Annabella and Bria hadn’t inherited our father’s Stone magic so they couldn’t protect themselves like I could.

  But my Stone magic wouldn’t let me actually hurt the man in return, so I looked around again, searching for some sort of weapon that I could use against him. Maybe if I could sneak up and hit him from behind, I could stop him long enough to scream, run off, and sound the alarm. After that, all I had to do was get my mom, and everything would be fine.

  I was sure of it.

  But the only things around me were the glass ornaments, silver tinsel, and snow globes we hadn’t gotten around to putting on the tree. Not exactly great weapons. Still, I picked up the biggest, heaviest globe and crept forward a few more feet, ready to leap up, reach for my magic, start screaming, and storm down the hallway after the intruder.

  But he didn’t open any of the doors, and he moved past the bedrooms where Annabella and Bria were sleeping. Instead, he turned the corner at the far end of the hallway and vanished. More stairs creaked, and I realized that he was heading down to the ground floor.

  I frowned. Why would he go back there? The only thing on that side of the house was my mom’s office—

  I sucked in a breath. He was here to kill my mom. I knew it, deep down in my bones, just like I knew that I had to stop him.

  I got to my feet and hurried to the end of the hallway. I looked around the corner there, searching for the gunman. Sure enough, he was already downstairs, moving faster now, and stepping into the hallway that would take him to my mom’s office. I ran down the stairs after him, my stockinged feet barely making a whisper on the floor.

  The intruder was now right outside my mom’s office, standing in the same spot where I’d been just a few hours ago, watching Mom talk to that vampire, Hugh, along with that Deirdre woman. I shivered, remembering the vampire’s dead, black eyes. I wondered if Tucker was the masked gunman. He certainly seemed like the type who would sneak into a house and murder someone in the middle of the night.

  The man reached into his pants pocket, drew out a silencer, and screwed it onto the end of his gun. While he was distracted, I tiptoed forward a few more steps and hunkered down behind a table set up against the wall.

  When he finished with his silencer, the man stretched out his free hand and gently tried the office door. The knob turned easily, and he opened the door a crack and stopped, waiting to see if my mom had noticed anything. But she hadn’t, and I could hear the steady, continued clickety-clack-clack of her typing as she worked on her computer.

  The man drew in a breath as if to steady himself, then threw open the door and burst into the office. Fear and panic rose up in my throat, choking me, but I pushed the feelings aside, got to my feet, and took off in a dead sprint, knowing that I had to get to him before he pulled the trigger.

  “What—what are you doing—” Mom sputtered in a shocked voice.

  “Greetings from the Circle,” the man spat out, although I barely registered his words, much less had time to think about what they meant.

  I careened to a stop in the doorway. In front of me, the man snapped up his weapon to fire. Mom pushed back from her desk and shot to her feet, sending her chair rolling across the floor, but she was going to be too slow to get out of the way of the bullets, much less call up her Ice magic to create a shield to protect herself.

  That anger filled me again, stronger than before, and I let out a loud yell and charged forward.

  The man was so surprised that he turned to one side, his weapon wavering, but I didn’t slow down. I drew back my hand and smashed the snow globe into the side of his head as hard as I could.

  The globe shattered on impact, spraying fake snow, glitter, and water everywhere, and a sharp, jagged, curved piece of glass cut into my right hand, leaving a deep, ugly mark in the center of my palm. I yelped in pain, and the man stepped forward and slapped his pistol across my face. Pain exploded in my cheek, and I flew across the room, bounced off the wall, and slid to the floor.

  “Stupid kid,” he growled, aiming his weapon at me. “You should have stayed in your room.”

  Dazed, I looked up into the black eye of his gun, knowing what was coming next and that there was no way that I could stop it. . . .

  “I told you, mister,” a low voice growled. “You need to quit calling this phone. She’s not any more awake than she was the last time you called exactly one minute ago.”

  My eyes snapped open. I knew that twangy, Western voice. That was Ira Morris, and unless I was still dreaming, the dwarf hadn’t killed me after all.

  So what did he want with me?

  * * *

  It took me a few seconds to clear the rest of the dreamy cobwebs out of my mind. I slowly sat up and realized that I was lying on a soft, comfortable bed in what looked like a rustic cabin. Dark wooden walls, colorful, braided throw rugs on the floor, gray stone fireplace flanked by a set of padded rocking chairs. The cheery space was made even more so by all the photos. They covered every available inch of the walls and showed the Bullet Pointe hotel, the theme park, and the surrounding lake. This was definitely Ira’s house.

  I vaguely remembered Finn’s telling me that the resort manager liv
ed in a cabin on the property. Looked like Ira had at least held on to his home when Deirdre had demoted him, if not his office in the hotel, which Roxy had taken over. Good for him.

  I swung my legs over the side of the bed, wincing at the pounding in my head, as well as the dull aches that rippled through my chest, back, and legs. In horse terms, I felt like I’d been rode hard and put up wet. Weird. I hadn’t thought that Roxy had hurt me that badly, but just about every part of me felt bruised, beaten, and battered.

  But I shoved the pain away and took stock of my situation. My boots were sitting on a rug next to the bed, but I was still wearing my black jeans. My black fleece jacket had been removed and draped over one of the rocking chairs, and the left sleeve of my red sweater had also been sliced open.

  I pushed the flaps of fabric aside. A white bandage was wrapped around my upper left arm, tied off with a neat little knot. I flexed my fist and moved my arm and shoulder. A little stiffness and pain, but nothing that I couldn’t handle. I looked around and spotted two empty tins of Jo-Jo’s healing ointment sitting on top of the dresser along the wall. Ira must have found them in my jacket pockets, realized what they were, and used them on the Fire burns and bullet holes that Roxy had put in my arm.

  Even more important, all five of my silverstone knives were laid out in a row on the dresser. Ira must have removed them, along with my boots and jacket, to make me more comfortable. But I felt naked without my knives, so I got up and slid them back into their usual slots—one against the small of my back, two up my sleeves, and two tucked into my boots.

  I opened the bedroom door and stepped out into the main part of the cabin, which was a living room, dining room, and kitchen all rolled into one. A larger fireplace took up most of one wall, flanked by a green couch with colorful blankets folded across the back. Two small tables at either end of the couch featured lamps shaped like cowboy boots, and other Western-themed knickknacks adorned the rest of the space. But the effect was charming, rather than garish, as it had been in Roxy’s office, and best of all, no dead animals were anywhere in sight.

  Still more pictures adorned the walls in this part of the cabin, while cameras, lenses, memory cards, and other photography equipment covered the dining-room table, along with several stacks of papers. But the mess was limited to that one table instead of filling up the entire cabin. Ira Morris was a bit neater in his personal space than in his cramped hotel office.

  The dwarf was pacing back and forth from the front door of the cabin, through the living room, and all the way to the kitchen in the back. My cell phone was clamped to his ear, and his face was twisted into an annoyed expression.

  “Listen, mister,” Ira growled again, “I’ve told you and told you that your friend is fine. It’s not my fault that she got shot and drugged and can’t talk to you right now.”

  From the phone, I could hear Silvio’s sharp, demanding tone, if not his exact words.

  Ira stopped. “You’re going to come down here and pull my guts out through my nose? Really?” He snickered. “You and what army, hotshot?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t make it a challenge,” I said. “Silvio is quite dangerous when you get him riled up.”

  Ira pivoted on his bootheel to face me. Surprise flashed in his dark hazel eyes, as though he hadn’t expected me to be up and about just yet. Then he scowled, stalked forward, and slapped my phone into my hand.

  “Here,” he said. “You deal with that nut. He’s called fifty times in the last hour, despite me telling him that you were unconscious.”

  I grinned. “He’s rather persistent that way.”

  Ira huffed, ambled away, and plopped down in one of the rocking chairs by the fireplace.

  I raised the phone to my ear. “Hello, Silvio.”

  “Gin!” my assistant shouted. “Where are you? I’ve been worried sick! That imbecile wouldn’t let me talk to you, and Finn, Bria, and Owen aren’t picking up their phones.”

  “Shh,” I said, rubbing my forehead. “Quiet voice, please. I have a pounding headache.”

  Whatever sedative Roxy and Brody had slipped into my sweet tea had been a doozy. Finn, Bria, and Owen would no doubt wake up with splitting migraines, since they’d drunk so much more of it than I had.

  If they woke up at all.

  Worry twisted my stomach, but I forced myself to push the emotion away. Tucker thought that Finn might know where Deirdre had hidden the jewels. He wouldn’t kill my friends until he was absolutely certain that they didn’t know anything. Torture them, yes. Kill them, no.

  Not yet, anyway.

  “Why do you have a headache?” Silvio asked in a much lower, calmer voice. “What’s going on?”

  “Let’s just say that our Wild West vacation has gotten a little wilder than any of us expected.”

  I filled Silvio in on everything that had happened. When I finished, the vampire was silent, and I didn’t hear him typing away on his keyboard as usual.

  “Do you have any idea where the jewels are hidden?” Silvio said. “I hate to point this out, but those gems are the only bit of leverage you have right now.”

  “Oh, I know exactly where they are.”

  Ira’s head snapped around, and surprise filled his eyes again. I shrugged back at him. I did know where they were hidden. I should have known all along, the first second that I’d set eyes on them, but I’d been too caught up in my memories, melancholy, and heartache about my mother to notice them.

  “So what’s the plan?” Silvio asked. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Load up some supplies. My kind of supplies—guns, knives, ammo, healing ointment, the works, and drive down here. I know that Jo-Jo and Sophia are busy showing off the salon on that holiday tour of homes today, but see if you can find someone else to come with you and watch your back.”

  “Got it. Anything else?”

  I looked over at Ira. “Except for Mr. Morris, we have to assume that every single person who works at the hotel and theme park is in on this in some way, and that they know all about us, including who you are and what you look like. They might not work for Tucker, Roxy, and Brody directly, but they’re probably too scared of them not to rat you out the second they see you. So you need some sort of disguise. See if Roslyn Phillips can lend you something.”

  “Roger that,” Silvio said. “I’ll see if I can borrow someone else’s car too. Just in case Tucker and the rest of the Circle have marked our usual vehicles as well.”

  “Good idea.”

  “What do you want me to do once I’m down there?”

  I thought about it for a few seconds. “Meet me at the Feeding Trough. It’s the barbecue restaurant that’s part of the theme park.”

  “But isn’t that the place where you were just drugged?” I could hear the frown in Silvio’s voice.

  “Yep. And it’s also the last place they’ll expect me to go back to.”

  “I’ll be down there as soon as I can,” Silvio promised. “What will you be doing in the meantime?”

  I looked over at Ira again. “Grabbing those missing jewels and finally getting some straight answers about what’s really going on around here.”

  18

  I hung up with Silvio, then glanced at a clock shaped like a buffalo on the wall. It was just after one o’clock, which meant that I’d been unconscious for about an hour. Once again, worry filled my heart for Finn, Bria, and Owen, but I forced it aside. They were probably still out cold, and Tucker couldn’t question—torture—them before they woke up, which meant that I still had time to save my friends.

  But first, I wanted to know about the man who’d saved me, so I walked over and sat down in the rocking chair beside Ira. “So, you got me off the stagecoach and brought me over here to your place.”

  He nodded. “I had a time of it too. You’d wedged yourself down between those trunks something good. Then, of course, I had to
actually stuff you into one of the trunks and roll you all the way over here from the theme park. But I move things around like that all the time, so nobody paid any attention to me.”

  “So that’s why my body feels like it’s been twisted around like a pretzel,” I joked.

  He nodded again and kept on rocking.

  “And why would you do that? Why would you save me? You could have turned me over to Roxy and Brody. They probably would have given you a reward for it.”

  He snorted. “Those two? They wouldn’t give me a reward for saving them from a burning building, much less pointing you out.”

  “Still, it was a big risk to take.”

  The dwarf shrugged and stared into the flames that were crackling in the fireplace. After a few seconds, he cleared his throat. “I saw that vampire, Hugh Tucker, lurking around the hotel lobby this morning, and I knew that something was going on. Something bad. It’s always bad when he’s around.”

  I frowned. “Tucker’s been here before?”

  “Several times. At least once a year, he and some of his buddies would come here for a retreat, and Deirdre would roll out the red carpet for them.”

  My breath caught in my throat, and my heart lifted with a bit of hope. He had to be talking about the other members of the Circle. So they had been here after all. I wanted to pepper him with questions, but I held my tongue, letting him finish his story.

  “Although Tucker and Deirdre weren’t getting along lately,” Ira continued. “This past year, all they did was fight whenever he came here. A couple of months ago, Tucker made her hire Roxy and Brody. Said something about how the resort wasn’t making any money because Deirdre kept spending it all on clothes and jewelry.” Ira huffed. “I could have told him that.”

  “And that’s when Deirdre came up with that fake treasure hunt.”

  Ira scowled. “I was the one who put Sweet Sally Sue’s jewels on display years ago as a tribute to her. I liked walking through the lobby every day and seeing her things, along with her photos. It reminded me of all the good years we’d had here together.”