Web of Lies

by Jennifer Estep

  clung to her face.

  The dwarf stared at the knife in his chest. Then he Since the dwarf was focused on me, I slowed my steps smiled, pulled out the weapon, and let it clatter to the to a walk. When I was ten feet away, I stopped, palmed ground. He rolled his shoulders and cracked his knuckles Estep_Web of Lies_1P EP.indd 92-93

  12/17/09 9:32 PM

  94 JENNIFER ESTEP

  Web of Lies 95

  again. The sound ricocheted like a gunshot off the conof his fist. I let go of the weapon. A sharp blow like that crete barriers around us. “I’m going to enjoy making you would shatter my wrist into matchstick pieces. He swung pay for that, bitch.”

  at me again. I ducked back and plucked a third knife out

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said, palming the knife hidden up my of the small of my back.

  right sleeve. “Let’s dance.”

  “Knives? Is that all you got, lady?” he drawled. “You The dwarf charged me. I waited until the last possible can cut me all night long, and I’ll stand right here and moment, then stepped to one side. My left foot lashed take it. All I need is one good punch, and you’re mine, out, and I tripped him. But he was expecting it. The bitch.”

  dwarf tucked into a ball, hit the ground, and rolled right He was right. We’d barely started, and my heart was back up. Bastard was quick. Bendy too.

  already racing. My lungs hadn’t started to burn yet, but it

  “Nice.”

  was only a matter of time. I just didn’t have the stamina He smiled. “I take yoga.”

  he had. Never would. The dwarf wasn’t even sweating, I smiled back. “Me too.”

  and the wounds I’d inflicted on him were nothing more He came at me again. And then we got down to busithan paper cuts. I had to find a way to end this. Now. ness. The dwarf swung his hard fists at me. I ducked his out of the corner of my eye, I saw a large, dark shape blows, not out of cowardice but practicality. No way I creeping up the parking lot. The shape stopped. Waiting. was letting his sledgehammer of a hand connect with my I slashed at the dwarf with my knife, forcing him toface. I’d had my nose and various other body parts broward a sedan a few feet away. He laughed, backed up, and ken plenty of times already. I had no desire to repeat that crooked his index finger at me.

  particular pain tonight.

  “Come on, bitch,” he said. “I’m just getting warmed up.”

  The dwarf swung again, but his foot slipped on a I smiled at him. “Me too.”

  chunk of broken asphalt and he overextended his arm. I I braced my hands on the car hood and pushed off. came up inside his defense and stabbed him in the chest He wasn’t expecting me to change tactics, and he paused, with my silverstone knife. The smell of coppery blood just for a second. All the opening I needed. My feet hit filled the night air, overpowering the rain. But he jerked the dwarf in the chest with enough force to make him back before I could shove the weapon into his heart. The stumble back. His shoe caught on another break in the blade skittered across his ribs and caught on one of them. pavement, and he fell on his ass.

  I grunted, but it was like trying to slice through frozen And that’s when Finn ran him over with the truck. meat. His chest muscles were just too thick and dense for While I’d been fighting the dwarf, Finn had made himme to do enough damage to put him down quick. self useful. He’d broken into and hotwired the monster The dwarf chopped at my knife hand with the edge truck that had been parked next to Violet Fox’s Honda. Estep_Web of Lies_1P EP.indd 94-95

  12/17/09 9:32 PM

  96 JENNIFER ESTEP

  Web of Lies 97

  Then he’d pulled the vehicle up into range, waiting for body. “You still had to cut his throat? Tough little bugger, me to notice.

  wasn’t he?”

  The dwarf thump-thumped under the truck’s massive,

  “He’s a dwarf,” I replied. “They usually are. Now, give oversize wheels. But Finn wasn’t finished. He put the me your cell phone.”

  truck in reverse and backed over the dwarf. He went back Finn dug into his jacket pocket and handed me a slim, and forth over the man three more times before I held my silver phone. I used it to snap a picture of the dwarf’s frohand up, signaling him to stop. Finn pulled the truck forzen face, along with the tattoo on his bicep, the one that ward. He stayed inside the cab, waiting to see if I needed resembled a lit stick of dynamite. It had been flattened by him again. I picked up my dropped knives and walked the truck tires, but there was still enough flesh there to across the pavement to the dwarf.

  get an idea of the original shape of the rune. I handed the The wheels had flattened out the man’s thick, strong, phone back to Finn, then stuck my hand into the dwarf’s compact body until now it resembled a fleshy, bloody front pockets. No wallet, no money, no ID. Probably in pancake that had been pressed into the asphalt. Greasy his back pocket, but I wasn’t going to peel him up off the black tire tracks covered his torso, and his arms and legs pavement to look for them. Messier than I wanted to get lay by his sides, crushed and useless. But Finn hadn’t tonight.

  hit his head, and the dwarf was still alive. His blue eyes

  “Get the car,” I told Finn. “We need to take the girl burned with pain and hate as he watched me come to Jo-Jo’s.”

  closer.

  Finn nodded and trotted off to retrieve his Aston Mar“Want to tell me who you’re working for before I kill tin. I walked over to Violet.

  you?” I said.

  Sometime during my fight with the dwarf, Violet Fox The dwarf spat blood on my jeans.

  had slid off the hood of the pickup. She sat propped up

  “I’ll take that as a no.”

  against the tire. Her fingers were stuck in her purse, as I leaned down and cut his throat. His eyes bulged, and though she was trying to get her cell phone out to call he gurgled once, twice, three times before his head lolled the cops. I crouched down until I was eye level with her. to the side and the light leaked out of his irises. I gave him

  “You’re safe now,” I said in a soft voice. “He’s not going a minute to bleed out, then put my fingers against his to hurt you anymore.”

  lacerated neck to make sure. No pulse. As dead as dead Violet Fox’s face was a mess. Her nose had been pushed could be. I wiped off my bloody hand on my jeans and halfway across her face, while her jaw reached out in the gestured at Finn.

  other direction. Her skin looked like putty that had been Finn killed the engine, got out of the truck, and stretched to the breaking point over her distorted feawalked back to me. His green eyes flicked to the dwarf’s tures. Blood covered the bottom half of her ruined face Estep_Web of Lies_1P EP.indd 96-97

  12/17/09 9:32 PM

  98 JENNIFER ESTEP

  Web of Lies 99

  like a mask, and thick drops of it slid down her neck, I grabbed Finn’s cell phone again and hit 7 on the staining her coat. Her glasses had been snapped in two speed dial. Three rings later, she picked up. in the middle. The glasses were still hooked around her

  “Hmph?” Sophia Deveraux let out her usual grunt of ears, but the two halves dangled like earrings against her a greeting. The dwarf didn’t like to strain her vocal cords bloody cheeks.

  with things like conversation.

  Pain filled her brown eyes, and for a moment, I didn’t

  “It’s Gin. There’s something you might find interesting think she’d heard me. But Violet turned her head and over in one of the parking lots near Ashland Community stared at me. She squinted, and recognition flickered in College.”

  her dull gaze.

  “Hmm.” Her interested grunt.

  “You . . .” she mumbled.

  I waited a moment to see if she’d say anything.

  “Don’t try to talk, sweetheart,” I said. “We’re going

  “Number?” Sophia asked, referring to the number of to get you patched up, and then you can tell us all about bodies I wanted her to come dispose of.

  why somebody wants you dead and how you k
now about The Goth dwarf ’s voice came out in a harsh rasp, like the Tin Man. okay?”

  she’d spent the last fifty years chain smoking and knockViolet Fox didn’t answer me. She’d already passed out. ing back jugs of mountain moonshine. I didn’t know why Sophia’s voice was the way it was, especially since I’d Finn brought the car over, and we stuffed Violet Fox into never seen the dwarf light up or drink anything stronger the backseat. I took her broken glasses off her face and than iced tea. Another mystery I wasn’t sure I wanted to passed them to Finn for safekeeping. Then I used one of solve. Because I had a feeling that there was something my knives to cut a strip off the bottom of my long-sleeved real bad in Sophia’s past. Some sort of horrific accident, T-shirt. I wound the cotton around the girl’s face to catch trauma, or even torture. Those were the only things that the blood oozing out of her broken nose. She didn’t stir. I could think of that would so completely ruin her vocal

  “She’s going to bleed all over the backseat,” Finn mutcords. tered. “Do you know how much I paid for this car?”

  I also wondered why Jo-Jo had never healed her sis“Too much,” I said. “And don’t worry about your preter. Maybe she’d wanted to and Sophia wouldn’t let her. cious leather seats. I’m sure Sophia can get the blood out.”

  Maybe it had just been too late by the time Jo-Jo had

  “You going to call her to get rid of the dwarf’s body?”

  reached her. Whatever it was, whatever had happened to Finn asked.

  the Goth dwarf, I knew that it couldn’t be good.

  “of course. Don’t want to scare the coeds by leaving

  “only one, but you might have a little trouble scrapPancake where he is and having them drive over him in ing him up off the ground,” I replied. “There was a very the morning.”

  large truck involved. Think you can handle it?”

  Estep_Web of Lies_1P EP.indd 98-99

  12/17/09 9:32 PM

  100 JENNIFER ESTEP

  Web of Lies 101

  “Hmph.” Sophia’s grunt was more guttural this time. Finn eventually steered the car onto a street marked I’d offended her.

  Magnolia Lane, and a few seconds later, Jo-Jo’s house came

  “Well, I have faith in you,” I replied in a breezy tone. into view—a three-story, plantation-style home straight

  “Are you at Jo-Jo’s?”

  out of Gone With the Wind. The sprawling, white structure

  “Um-mmm.” That was a yes.

  perched at the top of a grassy knoll and featured a series of

  “Tell her to get ready. Finn and I are bringing over tall, round columns that supported the rest of the building someone who needs her help. Badly. We’ll be there in a the way a high-backed chair might prop up an old lady. few minutes.”

  Finn parked the car and helped me drag the still-unSophia hung up without another word. I did the same. conscious Violet Fox out of the backseat, up three steps, Finn drove out of the parking lot. He took great care and onto the porch that wrapped around the spacious to steer his car around the dwarf’s smushed body. home. Thick, ropy tendrils of ivy and kudzu covered a

  “You could just run over him,” I said. “He’s already trellis attached to the porch, along with the bare brown dead, and it’s not like you haven’t done it before.”

  thorns of several rose bushes. A lone bulb burned on the

  “Yeah, but I don’t want bloody bits of dwarf stuck in porch. out in the sloping yard, the cold, drizzling rain my wheels for the next two weeks.” Finn sniffed. “This is picked up, making the air smell of metal, dead leaves, and an Aston Martin, Gin. You don’t run over dead bodies in wet earth.

  an Aston Martin.”

  I let Finn take Violet’s weight so I could pull open the

  “Tell that to James Bond.”

  screen door that fronted a heavier wooden one. Then I Finn shot me a dirty look as he pulled out onto the picked up the knocker and banged it on the interior door. street.

  The knocker was shaped like a thick, puffy cloud—Jo-Jo’s personal Air elemental rune.

  It took Finn about twenty minutes to drive over to Jo-Jo’s I’d barely set the cloud rune back against the wood house. Jolene “Jo-Jo” Deveraux was Sophia’s big sister—a when the door wrenched open, and a woman stuck her two-hundred-fifty-seven-year-old dwarf and Air elemenhead outside. Jo-Jo Deveraux looked like she’d planned on tal of significant power, wealth, status, and social constaying in for the evening. A short-sleeved, striped pink nections. Given all that, Jo-Jo made her home in a ritzy housecoat covered her stocky, muscular figure, while her subdivision by the name of Tara Heights. Within a few bleached blond-white hair was done up in pink sponge miles, we left the downtown grit and grime behind and curlers. Some sort of blue mud mask covered her face, entered an elegant area of carefully landscaped trees and and a pedicure pad held her toes out wide. She must have spacious homes fronted by cobblestone sidewalks and just painted her toenails, because the bright pink polish yards big enough for the pros to play football in. gleamed like it was still wet.

  Estep_Web of Lies_1P EP.indd 100-101

  12/17/09 9:32 PM

  102 JENNIFER ESTEP

  “About time you got here,” the middle-aged dwarf said. “I’ve been pacing back and forth in front of the door for five minutes now.”

  “Why? Weren’t there any parties or dinners on the society circuit tonight?” I asked, taking in the housecoat 9

  and curlers.

  “oh, there was a party or two,” Jo-Jo drawled in a voice sweeter than clover honey. “But these old bones ain’t as young as they used to be. Rain makes ’em ache. Besides, even I need a night off from the bullshit circuit every once in a while.”

  “Ahem.”

  Finn cleared his throat, his way of telling me to get down to business and that he was tired of propping up Violet Fox. Jo-Jo’s pale gaze cut to the girl. Except for the Jo-Jo stepped aside so Finn and I could drag the unconpinprick of black at their center, the dwarf’s eyes were scious Violet Fox into the house. The sweet smell of Jo-Jo’s almost colorless, like two cloudy pieces of quartz. Chantilly perfume ticked my nose as we walked through

  “Hell’s bells and panther trails,” Jo-Jo said in a soft a narrow hallway. A hundred feet later, the skinny corritone. “What happened to her?”

  dor opened up into an enormous room that took up the

  “She got on the wrong end of a dwarf’s fist—twice,”

  back half of the house.

  I said, shouldering part of Violet’s weight again. “Think Padded chairs. Hair dryers. Counters crammed full of you can fix her?”

  hairspray, nail polish, makeup, scissors, rollers, curling Jo-Jo studied the girl a moment more, then nodded. irons. A long mirror that ran down one wall. Towering

  “Darling, I can fix anything short of death. But this one stacks of beauty magazines. Photos of various hairstyles ain’t going to be pretty.”

  taped up everywhere. All that and more could be found in Jo-Jo’s beauty salon, the place where the Air elemental used her magic as a self-proclaimed drama mama—

  someone who catered to the endless vanity of Southern women.

  Debutantes, pageant contestants, bored trophy wives. Jo-Jo served them all in a variety of ways. Perms, cuts, dye Estep_Web of Lies_1P EP.indd 102-103

  12/17/09 9:32 PM

  104 JENNIFER ESTEP

  Web of Lies 105

  jobs, waxes, manicures, pedicures. If it had anything at

  “Sorry, dog,” I said. “Nothing in here for you.”

  all to do with beauty or making a woman’s hair twice as Rosco huffed in indignation, then dropped his brownbig, tall, and hard as her head, Jo-Jo did it in her salon. and-black head down on top of his tubby stomach and And then some. Air elemental magic was also terrific for went back to sleep. His favorite pasttime, other than eatfixing unwanted frown lines or putting someone’s boobs ing.

  back up to where they’d been ten years ago—tempor
arily, Jo-Jo pulled a chair over to Violet, clicked on a light, at least.

  and gently unwound my T-shirt strips from her face. The of course, turning back the clock wasn’t the only thing damage looked more garish underneath the white fluoJo-Jo did with her Air magic. The dwarf was also one of rescent glow. The swelling had already set in, and Violet’s the best healers in Ashland. Hell, the whole South. Few face had puffed up to twice its normal size. Black and people knew about her talents in that particular area, but green and purple streaked out from her disjointed nose Fletcher Lane had been one of Jo-Jo’s oldest friends, and and sliced across her cheeks—what I could see of them I’d inherited her, along with Sophia, when I’d taken over underneath the dried blood.

  his assassin business. one sister to heal me, the other to

  “Hell’s bells,” the dwarf muttered again. “You said he get rid of the bodies I left behind. A nice arrangement. only hit her twice?”

  Despite the sisters’ hefty fees.

  “Yeah,” Finn said, holding the broken glasses together

  “Put her in one of the chairs,” Jo-Jo directed before until the glue dried. “But he made them both count.”

  going over to the sink to wash her hands.

  Jo-Jo shook her head. “Well, let’s hope the poor girl Finn and I hauled Violet Fox over to one of the swivel, remains unconscious for the next little bit. Because putcherry-red salon chairs. Then Finn grabbed a bottle of ting her face back the way it’s supposed to be is going to nail glue off the counter, pulled Violet’s broken glasses be just as painful as what he did to her in the first place. out of his jacket pocket, and used the bonding solution No need to traumatize her more than she’s already been to put the two pieces back together. I lifted Violet’s purse tonight.”

  from around her neck, perched on a stool a few feet away, Jo-Jo examined Violet’s face another minute before she and started going through it. Wallet, keys, breath mints, went to work. She drew in a deep breath and held her loose change, eyedrops, a compact. Nothing unusual or hand in front of the girl’s ruined features. Her palm hovexciting. ered just above Violet’s skin. A second later, the dwarf’s A soft whine sounded in the corner. I looked over to eyes began to glow an opaque white, as though thick see Rosco, Jo-Jo’s fat, lazy basset hound, curled up in his clouds wisped through her bright gaze. A similar butterwicker basket by the door. The old dog eyed the purse in milk-colored glow coated her open palm. Jo-Jo brought my hands. His tail thumped once with hope. even more of her power to bear, until I could feel it crackEstep_Web of Lies_1P EP.indd 104-105