Spider's Trap

by Jennifer Estep

  Like all other forms of magic, metal could be used in various ways, to build or destroy, to help or injure, to heal or hurt. I thought of how easily Renaldo Pike had ripped all those nails out of the cabin walls. Even I shuddered a little at that.

  “But the worst part was that Lily Rose wasn’t alone,” Jo-Jo said, her voice so soft that I had to lean forward to hear her. “She had her daughter with her—and she’d been tortured too.”

  “Lorelei.”

  Jo-Jo and Sophia both nodded, their faces dark with memories of the awful sight.

  “Lily Rose started crying, telling me that her husband had been abusing her. That he’d slowly changed from the man she’d loved and married into someone else, someone cruel, someone she didn’t even recognize anymore. That she’d tried to leave him several times, but he always found her and dragged her back. She’d told him that she was coming to the salon to get her hair fixed for a business dinner they were supposed to go to that night. That was the only reason he’d let her and Lorelei out of the mansion they were staying in while they were in Ashland. But even then, he’d sent a giant driver with her, to stay outside the salon and make sure she didn’t try to run away again.”

  I frowned. “But why come to the salon? Why did she think that you would be able to help her?”

  Jo-Jo and Sophia glanced at each other.

  “Lily Rose remembered Fletcher from the salon, from when she was a little girl,” Jo-Jo said. “She’d heard the rumors that there was an assassin in Ashland who could help her, and she begged me to put her in touch with him.”

  “But why didn’t she ask her great-grandmother for help? From what I know of Mallory Parker, she has lots of money and connections.”

  Jo-Jo shook her head, making her pink sponge curlers sway back and forth. “As the years passed and the abuse got worse, Renaldo slowly made Lily Rose cut off all contact with her friends and family. It was only her and

  her mama, Laura, anyway, and Laura had died the year before.”

  “How did her mother die?”

  Jo-Jo’s lips pinched together. “Hit-and-run. Someone plowed into Laura while she was crossing the street. The cops never found the driver, but . . .”

  “But Lily Rose thought that Renaldo did it, that he killed her mother.”

  The dwarf nodded. “She told me that he was insanely jealous of anyone she cared about, even if they were just casual friends. Even on the rare occasions when she would talk to someone, Renaldo watched her constantly, monitoring her phone calls, mail, everything. She was basically his prisoner, and she was always afraid of being too friendly with other people, lest Renaldo get jealous and go after them. So Lily Rose couldn’t get in touch with Mallory too often without fear of Renaldo tracking down Mallory and killing her the way he had killed Laura.”

  Rosco whined, and Sophia reached out and started petting him with her foot.

  “So I called Fletcher and asked him to come over.” A ghost of a smile flitted across Jo-Jo’s face. “You can imagine what happened next.”

  “Fletcher would have taken one look at Lily Rose and Lorelei and wanted to help them.”

  Jo-Jo and Sophia both nodded.

  “I also called Mallory and told her what was going on,” Jo-Jo said. “Turns out, she already knew. She’d gotten worried when she hadn’t seen or heard from Lily Rose in months, so she’d hired a private investigator. He told her that he suspected Renaldo was abusing his wife and daughter, and Mallory had been making her own plans to help them.”

  “So what went wrong?” I asked. “How did Lorelei end up at the cabin without her mother?”

  Jo-Jo and Sophia exchanged another look, sadness filling both their faces.

  “Renaldo somehow found out that Lily Rose was planning to leave him, and he started beating her,” Jo-Jo said. “Fletcher was watching the house, and he went in as soon as he realized what was happening. But there were too many guards, and by the time he got through them, Lily Rose was already dead.”

  Silence fell over the kitchen. I hadn’t known Lily Rose, but I could imagine the pain, fear, and terror that she’d experienced, being hurt, beaten, and tortured by someone who was supposed to love her. She hadn’t deserved that, and neither had Lorelei. No one did.

  Jo-Jo wiped away the tears that had trickled down her cheeks. “Fletcher managed to stop Renaldo before he killed Lorelei too. He would have finished off the bastard then and there, if it hadn’t been for Raymond, Renaldo’s son from his first marriage. He stopped Fletcher from killing his father, so Fletcher decided to get Lorelei out while he still could.”

  “Raymond Pike,” I murmured. “I’ve never heard of him.”

  “You wouldn’t have,” Jo-Jo said. “The Pikes lived up in West Virginia, well away from Ashland.”

  “Is that why Fletcher didn’t give Lorelei a new first name? I thought it was curious that he only changed her last name.”

  “Fletcher thought it would be better for Lorelei to keep her first name. That it would be easier for her to remember and one fewer thing that she had to lose, since everything else had been ripped away from her,” Jo-Jo said. “But Fletcher didn’t just give Lorelei a new last name and forget about her. He kept tabs on Raymond. From what he told me, Raymond is just as ruthless as his father ever was. And worse, just as strong in his metal magic.”

  “And now he’s here in Ashland,” I said. “To finally get revenge for his father’s death.”

  “Revenge on Lorelei,” Jo-Jo corrected. “Since he holds her responsible.”

  I couldn’t help but bark out a humorless laugh at the irony of that.

  Just when I thought that I’d finally taken care of all the bad things in my past, just when I thought that I was finally fucking free of them, something totally unexpected like this popped up. Something I’d all but forgotten about. But my past was never truly over. It was nothing but a giant pool of quicksand, one that perpetually tried to pull me under and drown me. Right now, I was up to my neck in it and sinking fast.

  And the truth was that I wasn’t all that different from Raymond Pike. I’d killed Mab because she’d murdered my mom and my older sister, and I’d killed Madeline because she had threatened me and my friends. So I could understand Pike’s desire for revenge. Appreciate it, even. But I’d never tried to blow up a riverboat full of innocent people just to get back at one person. I didn’t have many limits, but Pike had stepped way over the line.

  Jo-Jo and Sophia watched the play of emotions on my face. Shock. Disbelief. Anger. Weariness. Guilt.

  So much guilt.

  They could guess what I was thinking. Part of it, anyway.

  “What are you going to do, Gin?” Jo-Jo asked.

  I rubbed my head, which was suddenly aching. “I have no idea. There’s never been any love lost between Lorelei and me. She’s sent plenty of her men to kill me the past few months.”

  I’d never done anything to Lorelei, but she’d tried to murder me the same as all the other bosses had. Just for that, part of me wanted to let her and her half brother have at each other. Either Pike would kill her and eliminate one of my enemies, or Lorelei would be too busy taking him out to plot against me for a while. Win-win for me either way.

  Then there was the fact that Lorelei had never shown me anything but sneering disdain whenever our paths had crossed. I’d always wondered why she hated me so much, and I was beginning to think that it had everything to do with her father’s death.

  But even more important, Lorelei had surely realized that her brother was behind the attack on the riverboat. That he was in Ashland and gunning for her. I was ostensibly the big boss now. If someone in the underworld had a problem, she was supposed to come to me about it. Lorelei should have immediately told me about Pike, but she hadn’t.

  And I wanted to know why.

  “Talk to her?” Sophia suggested.

  I let ou
t a tense breath. “Yeah. I need to talk to Lorelei. About a lot of things.”

  Jo-Jo perked up. “Excellent. I know exactly where she’s going to be today. I was invited myself.”

  I frowned. “You and Lorelei Parker were invited to the same shindig? What could that possibly be?”

  Instead of answering me, the dwarf gave me a once-over, taking in my boots, jeans, long-sleeved T-shirt, and black leather jacket. “It’s a good thing you’re already here, darling.”

  “Why?”

  She grinned. “Because you can’t go looking like that.”

  14

  At two o’clock that afternoon, I found myself someplace I had never been before in all my thirty-one years.

  An old-fashioned Southern garden party.

  Lilies, pansies, hydrangeas, forsythias, mums, and other flowers in all shapes, sizes, and colors spread out as far as the eye could see, interspersed with all sorts of curling vines, green leaves, and perfectly pruned bushes. Maple, oak, and poplar trees towered over the area, providing a bit of shade from the autumn sun. The warm rays lent the remaining red, orange, and yellow leaves a rich, vibrant shimmer, making them seem as though they had been sculpted out of polished metal. A faint breeze gusted through the lush garden, teasing the green tendrils of the weeping willows and mixing the blossoms’ scents into one strong, heady perfume. Black wrought-iron benches crouched here and there in shady spots under the trees, while white flagstones had been set into the manicured lawn, in paths winding through the garden and out into the landscapes beyond.

  But roses were by far the most prominent flowers here. A series of arched whitewashed trellises circled the area like soldiers standing at attention, each featuring a different color of rose, starting with white and slowly deepening to pale pink, sunny yellow, and blood-red before giving way to midnight-black blooms on the final trellis. Naturally, this spot was known as the Rose Garden, one of more than three dozen different themed areas that made up the Ashland Botanical Gardens.

  And what was a gorgeous garden without a fancy party?

  Round tables clustered together in the center of the trellises, each one covered with a white silk cloth embroidered with shimmering silver roses—the rune for this particular garden. Dainty white china tea sets hand-painted with different colors of roses perched on each table, along with silver platters of pimiento-cheese sandwiches and buttery scones and crystal bowls filled with fresh strawberries and cream. White rose-shaped candles flickered in glass hurricane lamps in the middle of each table, the melting wax adding more rosy perfume to the air.

  I shifted on my feet, my black stilettos sinking like spikes into the grass. “I’ve never seen so many rose-covered whatnots in one place before. Including me. I feel ridiculous,” I grumbled.

  Jo-Jo threaded her arm through mine. “Well, I think you look fabulous, darling.”

  Fabulous was not the word I would use to describe myself right now. For one thing, I was wearing a dress. And not just any dress. The pinkest, laciest, frilliest thing you could possibly imagine, patterned with, you guessed it, roses. Not only that, but there was a fair amount of crinoline under the full, flowing skirt, making it poof out that much more, as though I were a human bell. I half-expected the fabric to go ding-ding-ding every time it swished against my legs. A large black hat with a floppy brim topped my head, and Jo-Jo had insisted that I also don black satin elbow-length gloves and one of her pearl chokers. All put together, I felt like an extra from Gone with the Wind. Fiddle-dee-dee.

  “I do not look fabulous,” I grumbled again. “I look like a doll on top of someone’s wedding cake but without the creepy fake smile.”

  Jo-Jo patted my gloved hand. “We’ll have to work on that, then. Fake smiles are practically a requirement at these parties.”

  I shot her a dirty look, but she chuckled.

  “Well, I think you look great too,” another voice chimed in.

  I glanced to my right at the woman standing next to me: Roslyn Phillips, the owner of the Northern Aggression nightclub and significant other to Xavier. She’d been invited to the party too, and she looked every inch the sweet Southern belle in a mint-green dress with a long, flowing skirt that featured a rose pattern. A matching hat perched on top of her head, while a diamond solitaire nestled in the hollow of her throat. All the green brought out the beautiful color of her toffee eyes and skin and her black hair, which was curled into loose waves. I’d always thought that Roslyn was beautiful, but she looked truly stunning today, the perfect picture of feminine elegance, grace, and beauty.

  “You’re just saying that because you came through with the dress and heels for me at the last minute.” I paused. “People really pay your workers to dress up like this at Northern Aggression?”

  Roslyn’s nightclub was a place where you could pay for anything your heart desired, which apparently included pink frou-frou garden dresses.

  Roslyn grinned, showing off the small pearl-white fangs in her mouth. “Everyone has their fantasies, Gin. Prim and proper Southern lady is a lot more popular than you’d expect, especially in Ashland.”

  I blanched at the thought.

  “Just think of it as another disguise, darling,” Jo-Jo said. “All the better to blend in with the crowd. Fletcher taught you that, remember?”

  “Oh, great,” I muttered. “Bring the old man into it. I’m sure wherever he is, he’s laughing his ass off at me right now.”

  Still, the thought of Fletcher brought a smile to my face, and I let Jo-Jo and Roslyn lead me deeper into the garden.

  The Ashland Botanical Gardens were located on some lush acreage up in Northtown, close to Jo-Jo’s salon. Ostensibly, today’s event was a fund-raiser to benefit the gardens and help with other local charity and conservation efforts, but really, it was just an excuse for the rich society types to mix, mingle, and talk trash about each other behind their white gloved hands.

  The event was also ladies-only, much to Finn’s disappointment. He’d called to let me know that Harold Smith’s burner phone was another dead end, with only a few cryptic texts from Pike on it, and I’d told him what I was up to.

  “What is it with all these girls-only parties?” Finn had grumbled. “First, y’all have your spa day at Jo-Jo’s salon a few months ago, and now this. I can look fabulous, eat cucumber sandwiches, and drink mint juleps with the best of them.”

  “If you want to dress in drag and do the job for me, you are more than welcome to,” I’d replied in a sweet, syrupy tone.

  “You’re just jealous that I would rock a garden dress way better than you ever could,” he’d countered.

  “I’m frightened that you even know what a garden dress is.”

  “Oh, baby,” Finn had crooned. “I know all about the finer things in life—and the ladies who enjoy them. I happen to be one of those finer things, you know.”

  “I think I just threw up a little in my mouth.”

  Finn had laughed, but he’d agreed to be on call in case I needed him. So had Owen. But I didn’t anticipate any problems. All I wanted to do was talk to Lorelei. After that, I didn’t know what might happen, but I figured that I deserved to hear her side of things. Yep, that was me these days. Mediation queen.

  Jo-Jo, Roslyn, and I had arrived late, so all the boring speeches were already over with, and folks were now mixing and mingling, sipping drinks, and munching on their cute little sandwiches. The crustless pimiento-cheese creations had even been cut and pressed into the shape of roses. Somebody here had way too much time on her hands.

  I scanned the crowd. Every woman in the garden was wearing the same sort of stupid floppy hat that I was. We all looked like Stepford wives. And Jo-Jo was right too. There were plenty of fake smiles to go around, and I heard more than a few folks murmur, Why, bless your heart. Which is the classic Southern way of pretending to sympathize with someone when you’re really just putting the other woman
down and driving your stiletto straight through her heart at the same time.

  Finally, I spotted Lorelei sitting with an elderly dwarf at a table that was front and center in the garden.

  “Ladies, go enjoy yourselves,” I told Jo-Jo and Roslyn. “I have some business to attend to.”

  They both grinned, then moved off to talk to their own friends and business associates.

  I threaded my way through the crowd, a bland smile plastered on my face. The society ladies all smiled back at me, but their eyes sharpened, and their minds churned as they tried to figure out who I was, what I was doing there, and how they might benefit from it. The sharks smelled fresh blood in the water.

  But I made it over to the table without getting waylaid by anyone, and I dropped into a seat across from Lorelei, who kept right on talking to the dwarf.

  Mallory Parker, her great-grandmother.

  A sign posted next to the podium a few feet away bore a picture of Mallory’s smiling face, proclaiming her as the proud sponsor of today’s event, the annual Lily Rose Memorial Fund-Raiser. Several charities were listed on the sign, the most prominent being the botanical gardens and a battered women’s shelter. I wondered how many folks here knew that Lily Rose had been an actual person and not just a name. Or maybe everyone thought Lily Rose was some sort of fancy hybrid flower that Mallory had picked to match the garden setting.

  I focused on Mallory, who had removed her white hat and set it aside. I couldn’t tell how old she was, but I was betting well more than three hundred, given the deep wrinkles that grooved into her face. She was small, even for a dwarf, and her skin had the brown, weathered look of someone who’d done her fair share of work outdoors over the years. And she must have been richly rewarded for that work, since she had enough diamonds flashing on her neck, wrists, and fingers to fund a small army. Her satin dress was pale blue, with scads of matching lace, and her hair was a white, fluffy, teased cloud around her head, although I could see the pink of her skull here and there.