Spider's Trap

by Jennifer Estep

  On the bed, Finn perked up. “Now it’s getting interesting.”

  Owen and I both shushed him.

  Smith pointed the gun at Pike. “Now what are you going to do, tough guy?” Smith crowed. “Because I have a gun, and you don’t.”

  Pike gave him a bored look, then reached over and picked up the spoon from the saucer. “A gun? I don’t need a gun. All I need is this one simple spoon.”

  Smith’s finger curled back on the trigger, and his sneer widened. “I always thought that you were an arrogant, hoity-toity son of a bitch—”

  A pale blue light flashed around Pike’s fingers, and another, stronger surge of his metal magic pulsed through the wall. Given the intense glow, I couldn’t see exactly what he was doing, but he almost seemed to be . . . twisting the spoon in his hands, as though it were a dishrag he was wringing out, instead of solid metal. For some reason, he also pressed his signet ring up against the spoon.

  A second later, the light winked out, and he raised his hand, still holding the dirty piece of silverware.

  But it wasn’t a simple spoon anymore.

  Instead, Pike was now holding a long, thin piece of metal with a sharp point that looked remarkably similar to one of my silverstone knives.

  “Did he just . . .” My voice trailed off.

  “Use his metal magic to reshape that spoon into a dagger?” Owen finished my thought. “Yeah. That’s exactly what he did.”

  “Cool,” Finn chimed in.

  Owen and I both turned around in our chairs and gave him a look.

  “What?” Finn protested. “It is cool in a completely sneaky, underhanded, deadly sort of way. I admire such things.”

  Owen and I both turned back around and stared at the TV screen again.

  Smith looked at the thin bit of metal and barked out a laugh. “And what do you think you’re going to do with that? I still have a gun, in case you haven’t noticed—”

  Pike flicked his hand in a short, quick throwing motion. The spoon-turned-dagger zipped through the air—and sank right into the middle of Smith’s throat.

  Smith dropped his gun and clutched his hands to his neck. He stupidly yanked the dagger out, causing even more damage and hastening his own death. Dark arterial blood spattered down the front of his white robe, but Smith still tried to fight the inevitable—or at least take Pike with him.

  Wheezing all the while, Smith staggered forward and raised the dagger, as though he were going to stab the other man with it. But his feet got tangled in the clothes he’d stripped off earlier, and he tripped and toppled to the floor, landing at Pike’s feet. Still sitting in the desk chair, Pike swiveled around so that he wouldn’t get any blood on his glossy black wing tips. Then he pulled out his phone and started checking his messages while he waited for Smith to bleed out.

  It didn’t take long.

  After sending a few texts, Pike tucked his phone away and stared at Smith for several seconds, making sure that he was dead.

  Then he got to his feet, buttoned his blue suit jacket, stepped over Smith’s body, and left the hotel room.

  * * *

  Smith’s blood continued to ooze across the floor, the growing puddle soaking into the white sheets lying at the foot of the bed.

  Owen and Finn sat there staring at the monitor, but I surged to my feet and hurried over to the door of our room, not wanting to lose this opportunity to take care of Pike. The door to Smith’s room slammed shut, and I cracked open the one to our room.

  Pike was striding down the hall, and there was already about thirty feet of space between us. He would hear me coming up behind him, but it was a risk I was going to have to take—

  A small beep-beep sounded, and Pike stopped and pulled his phone out of his jacket. I wasn’t about to ignore this lucky break, so I stepped through the door, making sure that it didn’t bang shut behind me, palmed one of my knives, and headed in his direction.

  Pike started walking again, but he was still looking at his phone, so I managed to close the gap between us to twenty-five feet . . . twenty feet . . . fifteen . . . ten . . .

  I tightened my grip on my knife, ready to jam the blade into his back and keep right on stabbing until he was down and bleeding out.

  Pike stopped.

  I hesitated, and he turned his head, as though he were going to look over his shoulder. Too late, I realized that he could probably sense my knife, since it was made out of metal, but I started forward again, hoping that I could get to him before he realized what was happening—

  Click.

  A handle turned, a door opened, and an elderly couple stepped out of a room and into the hallway, right in front of me.

  I had to pull up short to keep from mowing them down. I tried to skirt around them, but of course, they moved right in front of me again, completely oblivious to the fact that I was standing behind them and, worst of all, cutting me off from Pike. A frustrated snarl rose in my throat, but I clamped my lips together. Maybe there was still a chance I could get to him.

  “Are you sure you have the key card, Peggy?” the old man asked.

  Maybe not.

  “I’ve got it right here, Fred,” the woman replied, holding the plastic up where he could see it.

  Once again, I tried to maneuver past the couple, but they blocked me without even realizing it. All I could do was glare over their shoulders and watch while Pike pocketed his phone and continued down the hallway. He didn’t look back, but he was moving fast, almost as if he’d sensed the danger he was in. A second later, he pushed through the door to the same fire stairs that Finn, Owen, and I had used earlier and vanished. From there, he could go down to the lobby or disappear into a room on an upper floor, and I had no way of guessing which one it might be.

  Gone—the bastard was gone.

  “Oh, excuse us, young lady,” the woman said, finally noticing me. She grabbed the man’s jacket and yanked him back out of my way. “Let her through, Fred. She looks like she has places to be.”

  “Not anymore,” I muttered.

  My target had escaped, so all I could do now was slide my knife back up my sleeve, give the old couple a bland smile, turn around, and head back to our room.

  11

  “Well, that was anticlimactic,” Finn drawled as he and Owen walked down the hallway to meet me.

  “Tell me about it,” I muttered.

  “Don’t worry,” Owen said. “We’ll track him down. He won’t be so lucky next time.”

  I nodded, then glanced over my shoulder. The elderly couple had finally made it to the elevators, and they stepped inside one of the cars, the doors sliding shut behind them.

  “C’mon,” I said, jerking my head at Smith’s room. “We need to get in there, nose around, and get out before anyone else realizes what’s happened to him.”

  Finn ducked back into our room to grab some latex gloves from his briefcase, while Owen and I looked up and down the hallway, making sure the coast was clear. Finn came back out, gloves already on, and waited while Owen and I pulled on our own gloves. Then Finn whipped out his master key card, and the three of us slipped into the dead man’s room.

  Smith lay where he had fallen, his dark, sightless eyes fixed on the chair where Pike had sat and watched him bleed to death. I didn’t waste time examining his body, since I’d already witnessed his murder. But Pike hadn’t bothered to search the room before he’d left, and I was going to cash in on his sloppiness. Because there was one thing in here that might actually tell me more about the metal elemental.

  So I went over, stuck my hand into the space between the nightstand and the wall, and fished out Smith’s phone, which he’d dropped before Pike had paid him a visit. It was a burner cell, but I still passed it over to Finn.

  “See what info you can get off that. Like Pike’s number and any texts he might have sent to Smith.”

>   Finn nodded and tucked the phone away in his jacket pocket. “Anything else?”

  “Well, there’s this.” Owen pointed to the spoon-turned-dagger that Smith was still clutching in his dead hand.

  He crouched down and plucked the makeshift weapon out of Smith’s fingers, careful not to disturb the rest of the body. Owen got to his feet and held the dagger out where we could all examine it.

  I’d assumed that the weapon was crude when I saw it on the TV monitor, but it was anything but. Long, light, thin, with razor-sharp edges that tapered to a deadly point. Oh, the craftsmanship wasn’t nearly as good as the five knives that Owen had forged for me, but it wasn’t some plastic toy you’d get out of a cereal box either. Pike was even more dangerous than I’d thought.

  “He did that with just one little burst of his metal magic?” Finn let out a low whistle. “Impressive.”

  “Look closer at it,” Owen said, pointing at the bottom of the knife. “Right there. See it?”

  Finn and I leaned down, and I noticed a symbol stamped into the metal—a long line topped by a spiked ball. I thought of how Pike had pressed his signet ring into the spoon when he’d been shaping it. He’d been marking his impromptu weapon. Well, now I knew exactly what was engraved on his jewelry.

  “A fucking mace,” I snarled.

  The rune was more confirmation that Pike was the bomber and another reminder of my failure to kill him. Frustration surged through me, and my fingers itched to grab every single thing in the room that wasn’t nailed down and throw it as hard as I could. The dirty dishes, the room-service platters, all those ridiculous leopard-print boxers.

  But I drew in a couple of deep breaths and let them out, pushing down my anger. Trashing Smith’s room even more than it already was would make far too much noise. It wouldn’t solve anything, and it certainly wouldn’t help me track down Pike before he struck again.

  So I searched through all the cabinets and drawers, then patted down the pockets of Smith’s clothes in case we’d missed something, but there were no other clues to be found.

  “All right,” I said. “Time to go.”

  Finn nodded, went over to the TV, and started messing with the wires, unhooking his spy gear and putting everything back the way it was supposed to be. Owen nestled the spoon-turned-dagger back in Smith’s hand in the same position as before.

  A couple of minutes later, Finn finished with the TV. He made sure the hallway was clear, then slipped next door to our room. Owen followed him, but I lingered next to Smith’s body, staring at the pool of blood that had spread out around the dead man. It almost looked like he was sleeping on red satin sheets.

  I just wondered whose blood would be spilled next—Pike’s or mine.

  * * *

  An hour later, Finn, Owen, and I were among the gawkers standing outside the Blue Moon Hotel, watching as a stretcher bearing a black body bag was carted out of the main entrance.

  A man wearing dark blue coveralls steered the stretcher across the sidewalk and over to a van waiting at the curb. The flashing blue and white lights of the hotel marquee and its crescent-moon rune made his black hair and skin gleam like polished jet. Silver glasses perched on his nose, and a small black goatee clung to his chin, giving him a serious, distinguished air.

  Dr. Ryan Colson handed the stretcher off to one of his workers, then turned and looked out over the crowd. His hazel gaze locked with mine. I’d ditched my wig-and-glasses disguise, so he could see exactly who I was. He blinked a few times, as if to make sure that his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him. When he realized that it was indeed me, Colson crossed his arms over his chest and quirked his eyebrows, silently asking if I was the one who’d left behind such a bloody mess. A valid question, given the jagged wound in Smith’s neck, which was similar to many that I’d dished out over the years.

  I shook my head. I hadn’t killed anyone tonight—for a change.

  The corners of Colson’s lips curled up into a small, wry smile. He nodded at me, then went over to help his worker load the stretcher into the coroner’s van.

  Bria pushed through the revolving doors, having finished her questioning of the hotel staff. She headed in my direction, trailed by a giant who was around seven feet tall with a shaved head and ebony skin. Despite the late hour, a pair of aviator sunglasses was hooked into the neck of his white polo shirt. Xavier, Bria’s partner on the force.

  “Anything?” I asked Bria.

  After Finn, Owen, and I had left the hotel, I’d called Bria and given her a heads-up about Smith’s murder. We’d hung around until she, Xavier, and the rest of the cops had arrived.

  Bria checked the notes on the small pad in her hand. “Nothing out of the ordinary. Guy’s name was Harold Smith, according to his credit card and driver’s license. It looks to be his real name. Been staying here for the past few days. Didn’t hassle the staff, although one of the housekeepers told me what a slob he was. No bomb-making materials and no trace of any explosives ever being in his room.”

  I rubbed my head, which was suddenly aching. “That’s because Pike was the one who actually built the bombs, probably somewhere else. Smith was just his delivery boy. When I messed up his plan and Smith didn’t die in the explosion, Pike came here and finished the job.”

  Not for the first time, I wish that I’d moved quicker and had managed to catch Pike in the hallway outside Smith’s room. A couple of swipes with my knife, and I could have ended this whole thing before anyone else got hurt. But I’d wanted to watch Pike, to see if I could figure out why he seemed so familiar, and I’d blown my chance. Well, that and I didn’t want to plow through that elderly couple and traumatize them by stabbing Pike right in front of them. Or worse, put them in the crossfire. Unlike Pike, I tried to keep collateral damage—and witnesses—to a minimum. Either way, he was in the wind, and I was back to square one.

  “Anything on a guest named Pike staying at the hotel?” I asked, even though I knew that he wouldn’t be dumb enough to stay at the same hotel as his minion.

  Xavier shook his head. “No one by that name is registered here, but I’ll start checking the other hotels. You think that’s his real name or an alias?”

  “Real name,” I said automatically.

  Xavier frowned. “Are you sure? How do you know that?”

  How did I know that? I couldn’t come up with a reasonable answer. But the more I thought about it, the more certain I felt that Pike was his real name.

  But I couldn’t explain to Xavier what I didn’t know myself, so I shrugged. “I just do. Call it a hunch.”

  But it was more than a hunch, which didn’t make any sense either. And the name Pike nagged at me, the same way the mace rune had been nagging at me since yesterday. Most of the time, I was good at remembering names and faces, especially of dangerous elementals. It was practically a job requirement, both as an assassin and as the head of the underworld. I knew this guy—I knew I did—but I’d be damned if I could recall when or where we’d met or why he wanted to blast me into oblivion.

  “I’ll let you know if we find out anything else or if Pike shows up at any of the local hotels,” Bria said.

  “Just be careful. Okay, guys?”

  She and Xavier both nodded at me, then headed back to the hotel, pushed through the revolving doors, and disappeared inside to see what other leads they might come up with.

  There was nothing else to see or do here, so Finn, Owen, and I got into Finn’s car, and he drove us over to Fletcher’s house before heading back to his apartment.

  Owen had promised Eva, his baby sister, that they would hang out after her last evening class, so he kissed me good night and went home. After he left, I checked in with Silvio, who promised to reach out to his sources and meet me at the Pork Pit bright and early the next morning with a complete update. Sometimes I wondered if the vampire ever actually slept. If he did, he probably had h
is tablet and phone nestled on the pillow next to him.

  But Silvio wasn’t the only one with resources, so I tossed my phone onto the coffee table in the den, got up off the couch, and went to Fletcher’s office.

  I flipped on the lights and looked out over the old man’s personal space. A battered desk, bookcases, filing cabinets. Given our life of crime, Fletcher had spent a fair amount of time keeping tabs on our enemies, in addition to spying on and collecting information about all the folks in the Ashland underworld. So his office was a veritable treasure trove of dirty little secrets, despite the benign furnishings.

  For the longest time, I didn’t have the heart to tidy up Fletcher’s cluttered office, but I’d finally had to start going through all the papers and folders that he’d accumulated over the years. Assassin smothered by piles of papers was not a headline I wanted to read.

  Plus, Fletcher had had his own unique filing system, organizing most—but not all—of the files by the runes people used to represent their magic, family, business, or crew. I’d never understood why he’d done things that way, rather than just using people’s names, but I supposed it had been the system that worked for him.

  Over the past several weeks, I’d slowly started sorting through all the files and reorganizing them in a way that would let me understand and access the information more easily when needed. But I’d left the majority of the furniture, pens, pads, paperweights, and other knickknacks in their usual spots, as an homage to him, and every once in a while, I would brew a cup of chicory coffee, bring it back here, set it on his desk, and let the fumes permeate the office, just as they had when Fletcher had been alive.

  As a final touch, I’d framed a photo of the old man that I’d taken on Bone Mountain and placed it on the corner of his desk, so I could see it and be reminded of him. In the picture, Fletcher stood on a snowy mountain ridge, his hands in the pockets of his blue work pants, his green eyes bright, and a soft smile creasing his face, as he looked out over the scenic landscape. It was my favorite picture of him.