Spider's Trap

by Jennifer Estep

  I opened up the bottom half of the casket and ran my fingers all around the silk, just in case something else had been left behind. But there was nothing else. So I hooked my hands under the box and lifted it out of its silken cocoon. It was surprisingly heavy, as though Fletcher had packed it full of information. The weight made me even more curious about what might be inside—

  “Did you hear something, Don?”

  I froze, hoping that I’d only imagined the high, feminine voice.

  “Yep, I sure did, Ethel,” a deeper, masculine voice answered back.

  No such luck.

  Still holding the box, I stood on my tiptoes and peered over the lip of the grave. A man and a woman stood about forty feet away, both of them dwarves, given their five-foot heights and stocky, muscular frames. I hadn’t heard a car roll into the cemetery, so the two of them must have parked somewhere nearby and walked in like I had. They were both bundled up in black clothes and weren’t carry­ing flashlights, which meant that they didn’t want to be seen. Shovels were propped up on their shoulders, the metal scoops shimmering like liquid silver underneath the glow of the streetlamps. There was only one reason for the two of them to be skulking around the cemetery this late at night.

  My mouth twisted with disgust. Grave robbers. One of the lowest forms of scum, even among the plethora of criminals that called Ashland home.

  They must have sensed my stare, or perhaps noticed the massive pile of dirt that I’d dug up, because they both turned and looked right at me.

  “Hey!” the woman, Ethel, called out. “Someone else is here!”

  The two dwarves raced in my direction. I cursed, put the box on the ground next to the tombstone, dug my fingers into the grass, and scrambled up and out of the grave. I’d just staggered to my feet when the two dwarves stopped in front of me, their shovels now held out in front of them like lances.

  Ethel glared at me, her blue eyes narrowing to slits. “What do you think you’re doing here? This here is our cemetery. Nobody else’s.”

  “Aw, now, don’t be like that Ethel,” her companion said. “Look on the bright side. At least she did the hard work of digging up this grave for us already. Looks like she found something good too.”

  He stabbed his shovel at the silverstone box. My hands tightened into fists. No way were they getting their grubby hands on that. Not when it might hold more clues about Deirdre Shaw—where she might be, and why everyone thought that she was dead, including Finn, her own son.

  Don grinned, his bright red nose and bushy white beard making him look like Santa Claus. With her rosy cheeks and short, curly white hair, Ethel was the perfect counterpart. If Santa and Mrs. Claus were low-down, no-good grave robbers.

  “Why, we should thank her, Ethel,” Don drawled. “Before we kill her, of course.”

  Ethel nodded. “You’re right, hon. You always are.”

  The two dwarves tightened their grips on their shovels and stepped toward me, but I held my ground, my gray eyes as cold and hard as the snow-dusted tombstones.

  “Before the two of you do something you won’t live to regret, you should know that that box is mine,” I said. “Walk away now, don’t come back, and I’ll forget that I ever saw you here tonight.”

  “And who do you think you are, giving us orders?” Ethel snapped.

  “Gin Blanco. That’s who.”

  I didn’t say my name to brag. Not really. But I was the head of the Ashland underworld now, which meant that they should know exactly who I was—and especially what I was capable of doing to them.

  Ethel rolled her eyes. “You must really be desperate to claim to be her. Then again, dead women will say anything to keep on breathing, won’t they, Don?”

  The other dwarf nodded. “Yep.”

  I ground my teeth together. For some reason, low-life criminals had no trouble tracking me down at the Pork Pit, my barbecue restaurant, and no qualms whatsoever about trying to kill me there. But whenever I was away from the restaurant, got into a bad situation, and tried to warn people about who I really was, nobody ever seemed to believe me. Irony’s way of screwing me over time and time again, and laughing at me all the while.

  “Besides,” Don continued, “even if you really were Gin Blanco, it wouldn’t matter. Everyone knows that she’s the big boss in name only. It won’t be long until someone kills her and takes her place.”

  I had to give it to him: he was right. The other bosses were still plotting against me, and many of the city’s criminals were waiting to see how my underworld reign played out—or how short-lived it might be—before they officially took sides. Still, it was kind of sad when even the local grave robbers didn’t respect you.

  I opened my mouth to tell them what idiots they were being, but Don kept on talking.

  “Enough chit-chat. It’s freezing out here, and we need to get work, which means that your time is up. But since you found that box for us, I’ll offer you a deal. Turn around, and I’ll whack you upside the back of the head.” Don swung his shovel in a vicious arc. “You won’t even know what hit you. I’ll even plant you in that grave, so you get some kind of proper burial.”

  I palmed the silverstone knife hidden up my right sleeve and flashed it at them. “As charming as your offer is, I’m going to have to decline.”

  Ethel glared at me. “So that’s how it is, then?”

  “That’s how it always is with me.”

  The two dwarves looked at each other, then raised their shovels and charged at me. I reached for my Stone magic, hardening my body again, then surged forward to meet them.

  I sidestepped Ethel and got close enough to Don to slice my blade across his chest, but he was wearing so many puffy layers that it was like cutting into a marshmallow. I slashed through his down vest, and tiny white feathers exploded in my face, momentarily blinding me and making me sneeze. Don yelped in surprise and staggered back. I sneezed again and went after him—

  Whack!

  A shovel slammed into my shoulder, spinning me around. But since I was still holding on to my Stone magic, the shovel bounced off my body instead of cracking all the bones in my arm.

  I blinked away the last of the feathers to find Ethel glaring at me again.

  “Look at that gray glow to her eyes,” she huffed. “She’s a Stone elemental. We’ll have to beat her to death to put her down for good.”

  Don brightened, his blue eyes twinkling in his face and adding to the Santa Claus illusion. “Why, it’ll be just like our honeymoon all over again,” he crooned. “Remember robbing that cemetery up in Cloudburst Falls, honey?”

  The couple smiled and stared dreamily into each other’s eyes for a moment before coming at me again. Well, at least they still did things together.

  Instead of trying to saw through all their winter clothes and their tough muscles underneath, I reached for my magic, raised my hand, and sent a spray of Ice daggers shooting out at the two of them. Ethel threw herself down onto the ground, ducking out of the way of my chilly blast, but Don wasn’t so smart, and several long, sharp bits of Ice punch-punch-punched into his chest. Given how strong dwarves were, he grunted, more surprised than seriously injured, but he did lose his grip on his shovel, which tumbled to the ground.

  I dropped my knife, darted forward, and snatched up his shovel, since it was the better weapon in this instance. Then I drew back my arms and slammed the shovel into his head as hard as I could, as though his skull was a baseball that I was trying to hit way out past center field.

  Thwack.

  Don stared at me, wobbling on his feet, his eyes spinning around and around in their sockets. His dwarven musculature might be exceptionally tough and thick, but a cold, metal shovel upside the head was more than enough to put a dent in that bowling ball of a skull. Still, it was just a dent, and he didn’t go down, so I hit him again.

  Thwack.

 
And then again and again, until the bones in his skull and face cracked, and blood started gushing down his head, face, and neck. A glassy sheen coated Don’s eyes, and he toppled over, more and more of his blood soaking into the frozen ground.

  “Don!” Ethel wailed, realizing that he wasn’t ever going to get back up. “Don!”

  She tightened her grip on her shovel, scrambled back up onto her feet, and charged at me again. “You bitch!” she screamed. “I’ll kill you for this!”

  Ethel stopped right in front of me and raised her shovel over her head, trying to building up enough momentum to smash through my Stone magic with one deathblow. But in doing so, she left herself completely open; it was easy enough for me to palm another knife, surge forward, and bury the blade in her throat.

  Ethel’s eyes bulged wide, and blood bubbled up out of her lips. She coughed, the warm drops of her blood stinging my cheeks like the snowflakes had earlier. I yanked my knife out of her throat, doing even more damage, but Ethel wasn’t ready to give up just yet. She staggered forward and raised her shovel even higher, still trying to gather herself for that one deadly strike.

  Too late.

  The shovel slipped from her hands, and her body sagged and pitched forward. She landed facedown in the mound of loose earth that I’d dug up, as though it were a giant pillow she was merely plopping down on. Well, I supposed that was one way to take a dirt nap.

  While I caught my breath, I watched and waited. More and more blood poured out from the couple’s wounds, but Don and Ethel didn’t move or stir. They were as dead as the rest of the folks here were.

  When I was sure that they were gone, I retrieved my first knife from the ground, wiped Ethel’s blood off the second one, and tucked both of my weapons back up my sleeves. I looked and listened, but the night was still and quiet again. No one was coming to investigate. The cemetery was located off by itself on one of the many mountain ridges that cut through Ashland, and I doubted that the sounds of our fight had been loud enough to attract any attention. Still, I needed to do something with the bodies. I didn’t want anyone to know that I had been here tonight, much less whose grave I had been digging up.

  I looked at the dwarves’ bodies, then down at the open casket.

  Don was right. I’d gone to all the trouble to unearth Deirdre Shaw’s grave. She wasn’t in her casket, so somebody might as well get some use out of it.

  I grinned.

  And it might as well be me.