Spider's Trap

by Jennifer Estep

  But even worse was the magic that coated the box.

  Now that I was actually holding the bomb in my hands, I could identify the type of magic that had been used to make it: metal.

  The cold, hard sensation pulsing off the box was eerily similar to my own Stone power. The only real difference was that this magic felt a bit more malleable than mine, just as metal could be shaped more easily than stone. A metal elemental had infused his magic into the box—a very strong one, judging from how much power rippled through the surface.

  I looked over my shoulder, hoping that Phillip and Silvio had gotten everyone off the boat. But they were still struggling with Dimitri, Luiz, and their guards, with the Delta Queen waiters and other staff members also yelling, pushing, shoving, and trying to get to the gangplank.

  I didn’t know how powerful the bomb was or what the blast radius might be, but the watcher could blow it at any second, and I didn’t want innocent people getting hurt in the explosion. I needed to get it away from the riverboat too, just to be sure that the blast didn’t punch a hole in the side that would sink the vessel, taking anyone else who might still be inside or below deck down with it. My mind whirred and whirred, trying to think of the best way to contain the blast as much as possible, since I had no time to disarm the bomb—

  Beep.

  As if hearing my frantic thoughts, the cell phone lit up, confirming my fear that the watcher could detonate the bomb anytime he wanted. I wrapped my arms around the box, reached for even more of my Stone magic, and braced myself for detonation—

  Nothing happened.

  I glanced down and realized that a clock had appeared on the phone screen. Thirty seconds and counting down.

  There was no more time, so I did the only thing I could think of.

  Bomb still clutched in my arms, I hoisted myself up onto the railing, then leaped off the side of the riverboat into the cold depths of the Aneirin River below.

  * * *

  My legs churned and churned through the air for what felt like an eternity, although it couldn’t have been more than a couple of seconds, and I hit the water with a loud splash!

  The rough, jarring force of the impact almost tore the bomb out of my hands, but I managed to hang on to it. Instead of kicking toward the surface, I let the swift current drag me under, even as I counted off the seconds in my head.

  Twenty-five . . . twenty-four . . . twenty-three . . .

  The water was dark and murky, and I could barely make out the bomb. I didn’t know if just being dunked in the river was enough to short out the phone and stop the explosion, but I was going to make sure that the bomb would do as little harm as possible.

  There was no time to be subtle, so I reached for my Stone magic again. Normally, I used my power to harden my skin or make my hands as tough and heavy as cement blocks. This time, I coated the box with my power, hoping that my Stone magic would weigh it down and send it straight to the bottom of the river. The bright silvery glow of my magic cut through the darkness, clearly illuminating the countdown clock on the phone.

  Fifteen . . . fourteen . . . thirteen . . .

  My power easily covered the box, and once I had that first layer of Stone magic on top of it, I quickly coated it with several more, sending out surge after surge of magic. All the while, I kept ticking off the precious seconds in my mind.

  Ten . . . nine . . . eight . . .

  I’d done as much as I could to dampen the explosion. I was out of air and almost out of time, so I dropped the bomb, letting it sink even deeper into the river. Then I kicked my legs and started clawing my way toward the surface as hard and fast as I could.

  Five . . . four . . . three . . .

  My head broke free of the water. I sucked down a desperate, ragged breath—

  Boom!

  The bomb must not have sunk as fast or as far down as I’d hoped, because it seemed to explode right below my feet. I didn’t feel any nails or other shrapnel pounding against my skin, but the resulting shock wave ripped through the river, scooping up the surface of the water and me along with it, like a wave rising and breaking toward shore.

  Only in this case, I wasn’t going to land on a soft, sandy beach.

  Instead, the gleaming white hull of the Delta Queen loomed up before me. There was no way that I could stop what was about to happen, so I threw my hands up and reached for more of my Stone magic, trying to harden my entire body as much as I possibly could, even though I knew exactly what little good it would do me against all those thick, heavy tons of wood—

  My head slammed into the side of the riverboat, water cascaded down all around me, and the world blinked to black.

  4

  The pounding on my chest woke me.

  Thump-thump-thump-thump.

  Over and over again, a fist slammed into my heart, as though someone were beating me with a sledgehammer. I’d been through this same thing once before, so I knew exactly what was happening. Phillip really didn’t know his own strength sometimes. If he hit me any harder, he was going to crack my ribs.

  A final hard blow made me start choking and coughing up the good portion of the river that I’d swallowed. Hands rolled me over onto my side so I could spew all the disgusting, fish-flavored water out of my lungs. Once I was finished, those same hands gently rolled me the other way so that I was flat on my back again.

  I wheezed, blinked, and stared up at a very wet Phillip. His blond hair was plastered to his head, while his white shirt was now see-through and clinging to his muscles. More water dripped from the end of his ponytail and plopped onto the deck.

  “You know,” he said, his tense features slowly relaxing, “this is the second time now that I’ve fished you out of the water. You really need to learn how to swim, Gin.”

  “Oh, I can swim just fine. It’s all the blows to the head that I need to avoid.”

  Phillip grinned, then helped me up into a seated position so that I was leaning against the brass railing. The sudden change in elevation made my head pound, and it took a few seconds for the world to stop spinning like a crazy carousel. Something warm trickled down the side of my face. I reached up, wincing and hissing with pain as my fingers probed the large, throbbing knot on my forehead, along with blood from what I assumed was a deep, nasty cut. Boat 1, Gin 0.

  A white, fluffy towel appeared in front of me, and Silvio crouched down beside me, his gray suit neat and perfect, as though he hadn’t just spent the last several minutes running around and trying to shove giants out of the way.

  “For your head,” he said.

  I took the towel and gingerly wiped some of the blood and water off my face. Silvio’s sharp gray gaze focused on my head wounds.

  “I believe those will require some assistance from Ms. Deveraux,” he said. “I’ll call and ask her to come over.”

  I nodded, wincing at the pounding pain the small motion caused in my face and head.

  Silvio got to his feet, pulled out his phone, and dialed Jolene “Jo-Jo” Deveraux, the dwarven Air elemental who healed me whenever I got into a serious scrape like this one. The vampire filled in Jo-Jo, then ended the call. But he didn’t put his phone away. Instead, he started typing on it, his thumbs flying over the keys faster than I could talk.

  “Who are you texting?” I asked, my voice slurring a bit.

  “All the usual suspects. Owen, Finn, Bria.”

  I groaned. “Do you have to? It was just a bomb. And I only have a concussion . . . more or less.”

  Silvio gave me a sideways look. “Of course I have to. A good assistant always sees to his employer’s needs.”

  “And I need my friends swarming all over me and making a fuss? This isn’t the first time someone’s tried to kill me, you know. It’s not even the first time this week.”

  That honor had gone to the idiot who thought he could waylay me in the garage whe
re I’d parked my car. He’d tried to crack open my skull with a tire iron, but I’d whacked him to death with it instead. He was still in the refrigerated cooler in an alley close to the Pork Pit, waiting to be disposed of by Sophia Deveraux.

  “Of course you do,” Silvio replied. “You just don’t want to admit it.”

  I groaned again, but there was no stopping him. The vamp was infuriatingly efficient that way. While he texted everyone, I looked out over the deck, empty now except for the three of us and the mess around the conference table, which was still turned over onto its side, its wooden legs sticking out like a turtle that couldn’t right itself.

  “Where’s everyone else?” I asked.

  “Gone.” Phillip snorted, crossing his arms over his chest. “Like the cowards they are.”

  “Dimitri, Luiz, and their guards finally managed to shove their way down the gangplank,” Silvio said. “They got into their cars and peeled out of the parking lot as fast as they could. The last time I looked, the Delta Queen staff members were milling around down there. And I believe Lorelei Parker was still in the parking lot too.”

  I scoffed. “She probably stuck around hoping to see you two fish my body out of the river.”

  “Probably,” Phillip said. “But let’s focus on the most important thing right now.”

  “And what would that be?”

  He stared at me. “Exactly who you’ve pissed off enough to warrant them coming after you like this. Bombs are nothing to mess around with, Gin.”

  “No, they are not.”

  I thought about his question for several seconds, then shrugged. “Beats me. I’m not without a significant number of enemies. It might be easier to eliminate the folks in Ashland who don’t want me dead.”

  Phillip laughed, but his hearty chuckles quickly died down to somber silence. My words were all too true, and he knew it.

  “What about Emery Slater?” Silvio chimed in, still tapping away on his phone. “I haven’t been able to track her down, but she could have come back to town on the sly.”

  Emery Slater had been Madeline Monroe’s right-hand woman, but the giant had fled Ashland after I’d killed Madeline a few weeks ago. Emery hated me for killing her boss, and for taking credit for offing her uncle, Elliot Slater, last fall.

  I shook my head and flinched, as the motion made my knocked-around noggin start throbbing again. I really had to stop doing that. More blood oozed out of the wound, so I held the towel up to my head and put some pressure on the gash to try to stop the bleeding. It was several seconds before I could speak again.

  “As much as I would like to lay the blame for this at Emery’s feet, a bomb isn’t really her style. She would much rather beat me to death with her fists than blow me up.”

  “True,” Phillip agreed. “But she would be happy either way as long as you were dead.”

  “Absolutely.” I lowered the towel from my forehead. “But I don’t think it’s her.”

  “What about Jonah McAllister?” Phillip suggested. “He’s always been a fan of elaborate schemes. A bomb would be right up his alley.”

  Jonah had been Mab and Madeline’s lawyer. He’d also tried to have me killed multiple times, including during a hostage situation at the Briartop art museum, but I’d exposed his schemes.

  “I don’t think it’s him either,” I replied. “Jonah mostly stays holed up in his mansion these days, working on his own defense. Besides, he’s probably saving his money to bribe the judge and jury at his upcoming trial, not spending it on bombs and assassination attempts.”

  Silvio finished texting and slid his phone back into his pants pockets. “Well, what I don’t understand is why you couldn’t have just tossed the bomb overboard. That’s what a normal person, a sane person, would have done. Why did you feel the need to throw it and yourself into the river at the same time?”

  I started to shake my head again but stopped myself. “I didn’t want you guys to get caught in the blast. Besides, it would have been just plain rude to mess up Philly’s shiny boat any more than I already had.”

  I made my voice light and teasing, but Phillip picked up on what I wasn’t saying.

  “You think the bomb had enough explosives to sink the Delta Queen?” he asked.

  “It had a lot of juice. At least, it seemed to. The entire device was coated with elemental magic.”

  Silvio frowned. “What sort of magic? Fire?”

  “Metal,” I replied. “Whoever built that bomb is a metal elemental. A strong one.”

  They kept staring at me, their faces lined with increasing concern.

  “I was worried that he was going to blow the bomb at any second and that it would take out everyone on deck—maybe even capsize the entire boat. I’d just let go of the box and was swimming away from it when . . . boom.”

  “But it seemed to be a relatively small, concentrated blast, as far as these things go,” Phillip said. “Yeah, it blew the hell out of the water, but there’s no damage to the boat as far as I can tell. You’re sure the bomb was covered in metal magic?”

  “I’m sure. It felt exactly like Owen’s power to me.”

  Phillip’s frown deepened, the wheels churning in his mind to determine who in the Ashland underworld would have enough elemental juice to make a bomb that powerful. But his face remained blank, and he was coming up empty, just like I was. Metal was a fairly rare ability, just like my own Stone magic was, since metal was an offshoot of that major elemental power. Silvio also wore a thoughtful expression on his face, but he didn’t come up with any ready suspects either.

  “Besides,” I continued, “I’m not so sure that this is about me.”

  “What do you mean?” Phillip asked.

  “Someone was watching us from over there.” I pointed to the woods on the far side of the river. “He had a sniper rifle, which he used to keep me from jumping into the river after the fake waiter who planted the bomb. The sniper, the watcher, could have put a bullet through my skull at any point during the meeting, when I was out here on deck. So why bother with the bomb? Why not just take me out with a head shot and be done with things? Bing, bang, boom. I’m dead.”

  Phillip stared out across the water. “You think that maybe you weren’t the main target? That someone was trying to kill one of the other bosses or even me?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe the watcher wanted to kill me and didn’t care about the collateral damage. Maybe he likes collateral damage. But something else is going on here, and I’m going to find out what it is.”

  I started to get to my feet, but Silvio put a firm hand on my shoulder and gave me a polite, if no-nonsense, scowl.

  “You can find out what’s going on after Ms. Deveraux gets here and heals you,” he said. “And not a second before.”

  “You’re not my mother, Silvio,” I muttered. “I’m fine. I’ve been through worse than this.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest. “Well, I certainly feel like it sometimes. If my hair wasn’t already gray, it would have turned that color working for you these past few weeks.”

  “Well, look on the bright side.”

  “What’s that?”

  I grinned. “There’s never a dull moment in the employ of Gin Blanco.”

  Phillip snickered, but Silvio just sighed.

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later, a pair of heels clacked in a familiar chorus, and a woman appeared at the top of the gangplank. Given the fall chill, she was wearing a white cashmere cardigan over a pale pink dress patterned with white roses. A string of pearls hung around her throat, while sensible, white patent-leather pumps encased her feet. A breeze whipped across the deck, but it didn’t so much as ruffle the white-blond curls piled on top of her head in an artful chignon.

  Jolene “Jo-Jo” Deveraux glanced around the deck, taking in the mess, then hurried over to me. Silvio had dragged out
a chaise lounge from somewhere inside the riverboat and forced me to lie down on it. He’d also played the part of a good assistant and fetched some warm, dry clothes from a stash I kept in my car, along with my weapons.

  My five silverstone knives were tucked into their usual slots—one up either sleeve, one in the small of my back, and one in either boot—so I was ready to rock ’n’ roll as soon as Jo-Jo healed me.

  The dwarf stopped, slapped her hands on her hips, and gave me a critical once-over, her clear, almost colorless gaze lingering on the ugly gash on my forehead, along with the large knot that had puffed up all around it.

  She shook her head. “And I thought you were just coming over here for a simple meeting. Trouble has a nasty habit of following you around, darling.”

  “What can I say? I’m popular that way.”

  Silvio pulled up a chair next to mine, and Jo-Jo took a seat and began assessing my injuries. She raised her hand, a milky-white glow coating her palm and swirling through her eyes as she reached for her Air magic.

  I lay back on the chair while Jo-Jo worked on me, even though the uncomfortable, pins-and-needles sensation of her Air power stitching together the gash on my forehead made me wince and hiss almost as much as the original wound had. She also used her power to heal the knot on my face and fade out all the ugly bruising around it.

  Even though I knew Jo-Jo was helping me, I was still sweating and swallowing down snarls by the time she finished. Air was the opposite element of Stone, so the dwarf’s power would just never feel right to me, the way loud, chirping ring tones drove some folks plumb crazy.

  Jo-Jo dropped her hand, and the stabbing pins-and-needles of her Air magic vanished, along with the milky-white glow in her eyes and on her palm. “There you go, darling. Good as new.”