Web of Deceit
The girl was a natural-born assassin.
Cold, calm, centered. Confident in herself and her abilities. As she bloody well should be. I hadn’t spent the last three years training her to be a shrinking violet.
As an assassin myself, as the Tin Man, I’d killed my share of bad sorts—for money or revenge, mostly. Sometimes, because they’d simply needed killing. But the years and the injuries and the blood had started to wear on me, more so since a job of mine a few years back had gone so badly for everyone involved—and a couple of innocent folks had died as a result. Eventually, every assassin needed an apprentice, a fresh face and a clean set of hands to take over and do what needed to be done—and Gin Blanco was mine.
I’d dubbed her the Spider, partly because that’s what she’d reminded me of the first time that I’d seen her cowering in a small crack in the alley that ran behind the Pork Pit, my barbecue restaurant in downtown Ashland. Thin arms, long legs, gaunt face. To me, Gin was a granddaddy long legs spider come to life, full of poison but not strong enough to bite back at those who’d done her wrong—yet.
Mostly, though, I’d named Gin the Spider because of the scars that adorned her palms. A small circle surrounded by eight thin rays. A spider rune. The symbol for patience. Gin had that all right—in spades. She’d had gotten the scars after a particularly nasty Fire elemental had tortured her by melting a silverstone medallion shaped like the rune into the poor girl’s hands. But Gin had lived to tell the tale, one of many ways in which the girl was a survivor, as well as an assassin.
Now, I stood in the coal-black shadows across the street from a row house, one of many that littered Southtown, the part of Ashland that was home to the downtrodden, down-on-their-luck, and just plain dangerous. With its peeling gray paint, plywood-covered door, and barred windows, the house had a forlorn, abandoned air. Everything about it suggested that no one lived there any more, and the steps leading up to the front porch sagged like the skin under an old crone’s neck. The outside was a disguise, though, a misleading façade like so many other things, so many other people, wore in the southern metropolis of Ashland.
Inside, I knew that the house boasted the finest things that money could buy. Expensive furniture. Bone china. Gilded mirrors. Beds made up with silk sheets. Even fucking mints placed on the pillows just so. The expensive fixings made it easier for a soul-sucking giant scumbag like Jimmy Fontaine to lure the rich folks who lived in the elegant confines of Northtown down here to his dressed up drug-and-kiddie whorehouse.
Jimmy Fontaine was something of an Ashland success story—a white trash gangbanger who’d put together enough cash to fix up a place, increase the quality of his drugs, and market his services to a richer clientele. Which, in turn, upped his own profits even more. Fontaine’s game was simple. He hooked runaway, teenage girls and boys on drugs, then made them turn tricks in his row house in order to get their next fix—or just enough fucking food to eat for the day. And when he ran low on volunteers, Fontaine snatched kids off the street to be the grist in his ever-grinding mill.
The giant’s most recent victim had been Violet Wong, a pretty, bright, happy, sixteen-year-old girl who’d left home one night to go to a party with some of her friends—a party that she’d never come home from. A week later, Violet had been found dumped in a Southtown alley, dead from a vicious beating. As if that hadn’t been bad enough, the autopsy had shown that the girl had been brutalized from a series of rapes and had enough drugs in her system to kill a cow.
Two days after Violet’s funeral, Victor Wong, the girl’s distraught father, had asked me to find out who was responsible and do something about him—permanently. Because that’s what I did—tracked down people who did bad things and made them pay with their very lives. Me. Fletcher Lane. The assassin known as the Tin Man.
People talked, the way that they always did in Ashland, and the rumor mill had quickly led me to Jimmy Fontaine and his gussied-up row house. I’d spent a week doing recon, then another prepping Gin for this, her first solo job as an assassin, as the Spider. Now, all that was left to do was wait for my apprentice to arrive and see how well she’d learned all the deadly skills that I’d taught her—
“Are you sure that she’s ready for this, Fletcher?” a light, sweet voice whispered in the darkness beside me.
I turned to look at Jolene “Jo-Jo” Deveraux, one of my oldest and dearest friends. Even though we were haunting this dangerous Southtown neighborhood just after midnight, the five-foot-tall dwarf wore a pink flowered dress trimmed with white lace and a pair of matching pink sandals. Her getup would have fit in perfectly at one of those swanky, Northtown garden parties that she was always going to. A set of pearls topped off Jo-Jo’s dress. The moonlight slanted down onto the stones, making them gleam like teeth strung together.
Maybe I should have brought Jo-Jo’s sister, Sophia, along tonight instead of my middle-aged dwarven friend. With her black clothes, black lipstick, and even blacker soul, the Goth dwarf would have blended perfectly into the shadows with me. But Sophia didn’t have the same sort of healing Air elemental magic that Jo-Jo did—magic that Gin might need before the night was through. This might be the Spider’s first solo job, but the Tin Man was going to look after his apprentice tonight.
Especially since I hadn’t managed to do that before, when Gin had really needed me.
“She’s ready,” I said. “She’s been helping me on my hits for more than a year now. Hell, she practically did the last two herself. That girl can wield a knife like no one I’ve ever seen before. And the blood doesn’t bother her at all. That’s important, you know.”
“Maybe,” Jo-Jo murmured. “But you know as well as I do, Fletcher, that deep down, Gin is still just a little girl who’s missing her family, even though it’s been three years now since they were murdered.”
The dwarf stared back at me, her pupils looking like dots of black ink in her clear, almost colorless eyes. There was no judgment in her gaze, no accusation for what I’d failed to do, and I knew that there never would be. Still, I shifted in the shadows, although the movement didn’t do anything to lighten the guilt on my soul. The truth was that Gin was one of the many heavy weights that swung back and forth there, like the slow arc of a clock hand circling my heart. Turning, turning, turning, and never stopping, not even for a second’s respite.
A long, white Cadillac coasted down the street, stopping in front of the row house, and a boy of about twenty hopped out of the driver’s seat. Blond hair. Blue eyes. Clear skin. Nice smile. A tall, thick, six-foot-six frame that marked him as being a half-giant. The kid looked like a fucking star quarterback, right down to the puffy letterman’s jacket that he wore over his white T-shirt, blue jeans, and expensive sneakers. Jackson Fontaine, Jimmy’s younger brother, who was responsible for trolling local football games, parties, and high schools in search of young, fresh meat for the older giant’s operation.
Jackson hurried around to open the door on the other side of the Cadillac. He held out his hand and helped the girl inside up and out onto her feet—Gin Blanco.
My green eyes fixed on my apprentice. At sixteen, Gin was still lean and thin, with curves that hadn’t quite filled out yet, but you could still see the stunner that she was going to turn out to be in a few more years. She wore a T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers just like Jackson did, although she’d topped her outfit off with a navy fleece jac
ket. All the better to hide the silverstone knives that she had tucked up her sleeves—and the blood that would splatter on her after she used them. Gin had pulled her chocolate brown hair back into a high ponytail tonight, which made her look younger, softer, innocent, even. Although I knew that her innocence had been burned away the night that her mother and older sister had been murdered by a Fire elemental.
Jackson said something and laughed, making a joke of some sort. Gin laughed as well, although her smile did little to thaw the ice that coated her gray eyes. Jackson didn’t notice, though. Targets never did, until it was too late.
Jackson opened the back door of the car and reached inside for something. Gin turned away from him and started scanning the house in front of her. We’d gone over the photos and blueprints a dozen times, and I knew that Gin was comparing the physical house with the mental image that she’d formed in her mind. Marking all the entrances and exits, just in case things didn’t go as planned.
The plan itself was simple. Gin would attract Jackson’s interest when he made his usual round of the weekend parties, tell him that she was a runaway, and get him to take her back to his older brother Jimmy’s row house. Once inside, Gin would kill Jimmy, leave the house, and walk the several blocks over to the Pork Pit, where I’d be waiting for her.
I just hadn’t told my apprentice that I’d be watching from the shadows to make sure that everything went smoothly tonight. No reason to hurt the girl’s pride just because I worried about her like I was her real father. Just because I didn’t want to admit that she was growing up and coming into her own as an assassin, as the Spider. She was already better than I’d been at her age. Colder. Calmer. More focused. One day soon, she’d be better than I’d ever dreamed of being.
I just hoped that my training her would be enough to make up for how I’d failed her so miserably before. For my part in her mother and older sister’s deaths. For how I’d failed to protect Gin and the rest of her family from the fiery wrath of Mab Monroe.
Perhaps it was my dark thoughts or the intense focus of my gaze on her, but Gin sensed that not all was as it should be. She turned away from the house and scanned the rest of the block, her gray eyes peering into the shadows. Maybe the cracked pavement under my feet had given me away. As a Stone elemental, Gin could sense vibrations in whatever form the element took around her, from a brick house to a concrete sidewalk to a weathered granite tombstone. People’s feelings and emotions sank into the stone around them over time, and Gin could listen to and interpret those impressions. Perhaps she could sense my mixed feelings of worry and pride even now, rippling through the pavement toward her.
Jackson fished something out of the back of the car, and I spotted a glint of metal before he stuck the gun in his coat pocket. I frowned. The kid brother packing a pistol had not been part of my calculations tonight, but I wasn’t too worried. Jackson wasn’t the only one here with a gun tonight or the know-how to use it.
Jackson moved to take Gin’s arm and started leading her toward the row house. After a moment, Gin let him take her the direction that she wanted to go anyway. Jackson escorted her up the sagging steps and opened the door. Golden light from inside the house slanted across Gin’s face, emphasizing the hard set of her features. Whatever she might be feeling on the inside, no emotions flickered in her eyes. No doubt about what she was here to do, and certainly no fear. My heart swelled with pride. She was my girl, all right.
“I can’t wait to introduce you to my brother,” Jackson’s voice drifted across the street to where Jo-Jo and I stood. “He’s going to love you, Gin.”
“Of course he will,” she replied. “He’s going to love me to death.”
With those ominous words, my apprentice stepped inside the house.
#
The door had barely closed behind Gin when Jo-Jo poked me in the shoulder.
“Well? What are you waiting for?” the dwarf said. “Go around to the back of the house and keep an eye on her in case she gets into trouble.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
Jo-Jo’s pale eyes narrowed, but her lips curved up into a smile, showing the laugh lines on her face. “Don’t you tease me, Fletcher Lane. I’ve got a hundred-plus years on you. Didn’t your mama ever teach you to respect your elders?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I repeated and ducked out of the way before Jo-Jo could jab me with her finger again.
I left the dwarf behind, crossed the street, and slipped into the alley that ran beside the row house. Garbage carpeted the pavement, and the steady, cool, October breeze sent more than one soda can skittering into the wall. The air reeked of sour beer and stale cigarettes. These sorts of places always smelled the same, as the sweat and desperation so prevalent in Southtown soaked into the landscape. I wondered if Gin could sense those same feelings with her elemental Stone magic. She probably could. Sometimes, I thought it was better to be a simple human and largely ignorant of such foul things.
It took me less than two minutes to work my way around to the back side of the house and crawl up onto the top of a metal Dumpster. From there, I was able to grab hold of the fire escape and scale the rickety iron ladder up to the third story of the house, something that I was able to do with ease, despite my sixty-some years. An old man, Gin often called me, which was her own term of endearment for me. Maybe I was with my wispy, whitening hair and wrinkled face, but I was still as spry as the devil himself.
My position on the fire escape gave me a clear view through a window and into Jimmy Fontaine’s office. If there was one thing that I’d learned from all my years of being an assassin, of being the Tin Man, it was that nobody ever bothered to close their curtains above the first floor. Fontaine was no exception, which is why I was able to spot him sitting at his chrome-and-glass desk.
Jimmy Fontaine was a giant, which meant that he topped out at around seven feet, with the strong, thick body to match his large frame. He had blond hair and blue eyes just like his kid brother Jackson did, but the sheer meanness in his gaze twisted his good looks into something hard and ugly. He sported a sharp black suit, as though he were a real businessman instead of a sick, greedy bastard who made his money off the backs of teenagers coked up on drugs and forced into prostitution.
Fontaine shuffled a few papers around on his desk. A minute later, a knock sounded on the door, and Gin stepped inside, followed by Jackson. The younger giant closed the door behind the two of them—then discreetly locked it.
Gin’s gray eyes cut to the side, and I knew that she’d heard the lock click home. Her hand twitched, like she wanted to palm the silverstone knife that she had hidden up her sleeve, but she restrained herself. Good girl. Move too early, and she ran the risk of missing Jimmy Fontaine. Gin knew as well as I did that the giant would beat her to death with his fists if he thought that she was any kind of threat to him. That’s how he’d gotten to where he was in the first place—by beating down any opposition and competition that came his way.
Fontaine also had another four giants stationed throughout the lower two floors of the house, all making sure that things ran smoothly and that none of the teens tried to bolt. The iron bars on the windows helped with that too. But I wasn’t worried about Fontaine screaming for help, since the giant had had his office soundproofed long ago. He just hadn’t realized that one day it might be the death of him.
“Jimmy, this is Gin,” Jackson said, leading Gin forward and making the introductions. “Gin, this is Jimmy.”
Jimmy Fontaine got to his feet, buttoned his suit jacket, and extended a hand to my apprentice. “Gin, it’s so nice to meet you. Jimmy’s told me so much about you.”
Gin shook the giant’s
hand, although she let out a little snort of disbelief as she did so. “Really? I find that kind of hard to believe, since I only met him like an hour ago.”
Jimmy’s blue eyes narrowed at her disbelieving tone, and he gave Jackson a dark look. Fontaine wasn’t stupid. Like most predators, he could sense when others were near, and I could tell that his radar was already pinging when it came to Gin. He dropped her hand and stared at her with suspicion, but my girl just gave him a winsome smile and started exploring the room the way that any curious kid might.
“Gin’s a runaway,” Jackson explained, trying to smooth things over.
“Is that true?” Jimmy asked, his blue eyes locked on Gin.
Gin shrugged and picked up what looked like a real Ming vase. “Not really. But my family’s all dead and burned to ash, so what the hell does it matter?”
Jimmy frowned at her words, but Gin put the vase down and moved over to a painting hanging on the far wall. To a casual observer, she was doing nothing more than wandering aimlessly through the room, but I knew that she was doing exactly what I’d trained her to do—scanning the area for hidden weapons, hidden guards, or anything else that might be a threat to her.
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