Widow's Web (Elemental Assassin)

by Jennifer Estep

  I’d just started to reach for the knob, when the door abruptly opened. Finn stepped outside, a manila file folder tucked under one arm and a steaming cup of coffee in his right hand, despite the warmth of the night. The chicory fumes drifted over to me, making think of his father, since Fletcher had drunk the same rich, dark concoction before he’d died. I wished the old man was here tonight to help me sort out what was going on—and how I could make everything right again, especially between me and Owen.

  Despite the fact that I was the one standing right in front of him, Finn leaned to one side and favored Eva with a dazzling smile.

  “Why, hello, Eva,” he said in a smooth tone. “You’re looking exceptionally fine this evening. Love the flip-flops.”

  Finnegan Lane was many things—an investment banker, an information trader, a greedy connoisseur of all the fine things his ill-gotten gains could buy him, but sometimes, I thought his chief pursuit in life was that of a shameless womanizer. He might have been involved with Bria, but Finn still liked to charm all the women who crossed his path. And he didn’t limit his attention to just the pretty ones. No, Finn was an equal-opportunity flirt—old, young, fat, thin, vampire, human, dwarf, giant. Finn didn’t care who they were or what they looked like as long as they were female.

  “Hi, Finn,” Eva replied.

  She gave him a wan smile, and the small encouragement caused Finn’s grin to widen that much more. At least, until Owen stepped forward and frowned at him.

  “Ah, evening, Owen,” Finn added in a hasty tone. “I didn’t see you standing there.”

  “You never do,” Owen murmured.

  Finn stuck his head outside a little more, scanning the front porch. “Where’s Kincaid? I thought Gin would hog-tie him and bring him here so we could question him at our leisure.”

  Eva and Owen both shifted on their feet. No one said anything. The faint hum of the crickets and cicadas hidden in the grass rose up, but their high-pitched songs did little to ease the tension between us all.

  “Well,” Finn drawled, “don’t everyone speak up at once.”

  “You have no idea,” I muttered. “No idea at all.”

  I walked inside, down a hallway, and into the den in the back of the house. Owen trailed right along behind me, but Eva dawdled behind us, peering into all the rooms that branched off the hallway and staring at all the furniture that was stuffed inside. Even though she’d been here before, there was always something to look at that she hadn’t noticed before. Fletcher had been a bit of a pack rat, and lots of odd dishes, interesting carvings, unusual sculptures, and other quirky knickknacks crowded into the rooms. The old man had been dead for months now, and I still hadn’t had the heart to go through much of the house. Throwing away his things seemed like I would be ripping part of Fletcher out of my heart as well—and that was something I just couldn’t bear to do yet.

  We reached the den, with its worn furniture, but instead of sitting down, Eva went over to the mantel, where a series of framed drawings were propped up, the runes of my family members—dead and otherwise. A snowflake, an ivy vine, a primrose. Eva walked past the first three runes before stopping to look closer at the fourth one, a neon pig.

  “I like the Pork Pit sign the best,” she said. “It makes me think of how I first met you in the restaurant.”

  I smiled at her. “Me too, sweetheart.”

  The sign also reminded me of Fletcher and everything he’d given me, everything he’d taught me over the years. I stared at the drawing and let myself remember the old man for a moment before putting those memories away and focusing on the here and now.

  “Y’all make yourselves comfortable,” I said. “I’m going to fix us a snack.”

  Once again, nobody said anything. Eva kept looking at the runes, while Owen sat down on the end of the plaid couch and turned on the television, staring at it without really seeing it. I jerked my head at Finn, who followed me into the kitchen.

  Finn put the folder he’d been carrying down on the table, right next to his open laptop, then poured himself what was probably his fifteenth cup of coffee of the day. I started pulling things out of the cabinets, in the mood for something sweet, crispy, and crunchy, all at the same time. Besides, cooking almost always soothed me. The simple motions of mixing, measuring, and stirring comforted me and gave me time to work out whatever was bothering me—and there were plenty of things on my mind tonight.

  Home-canned apples, flour, buttermilk, salt, sugar, and more soon crowded onto the counter, and I filled a pan with oil and let it start warming on the stove. I combined the flour and buttermilk to form a soft, sticky dough, used my biscuit cutter to divide it up, and rolled out the sections into several, large, flat rounds. A heaping scoop of apples went into the center of each piece of dough, which I then folded over, crimping the edges together with a fork, making a half-moon-shaped pie.

  I repeated the process until I’d made a dozen pies. Then, one by one, I dropped them into the sizzling oil and let them cook until they were light, fluffy, and golden brown. When they were done, I slid the fried apple goodness onto a plate.

  “So lay it out for me,” I finally said to Finn as I topped the pies off with powdered sugar, cinnamon, and a few drizzles of sourwood honey.

  He snatched one of the pies off the plate before I could stop him. “Don’t you want to wait until we go back in the den with the others?”

  I shook my head. “No, I want to hear what you have to say first without any interruptions. Eva and Owen aren’t exactly objective here. You should have seen Eva after Salina worked her magic on Antonio and then tried to do the same to Kincaid. She was terrified. Yeah, watching Antonio get wrung dry wasn’t exactly pleasant, but it seemed like there was more to Eva’s reaction than just simple shock, fear, and disgust. So tell me what you found out about Salina.”

  “Nothing good,” Finn said in a quiet voice, making sure his words wouldn’t carry into the den, where Eva and Owen were. “From what I can tell, Salina Dubois has never worked a day in her life—she hasn’t had to, thanks to all her husbands.”

  “‘Husbands’? As in, more than one?”

  Finn nodded and took a bite of his pie. “Since leaving Ashland, Salina has had not one, not two, not three, but four husbands. Each one richer than the last, and each one dead under suspicious circumstances. Hubby number one, Rodgers, slipped and fell in the bathtub, cracking his skull open. Numbers two and three, Smythe and Steele, died in boating accidents. Number four, Henley, drowned while swimming in his own pool. He managed to make it all the way to his third anniversary with Salina. None of the others lasted more than two years with her.”

  “So she’s a black widow, then,” I murmured. “One who likes to use her water magic to kill her husbands for their money, because she’s bored with them, or for whatever other reason she might have.”

  Finn polished off his pie and shot his thumb and forefinger at me. “Bingo. All of the deaths were suspicious, though the police could never pin anything on Salina. Along the way, she’s collected an impressive fortune in insurance money, as well as what her hubbies left her in their wills. If I had to guess, I’d say that money is helping fund her return to Ashland. That might even be why she married all these men in the first place.”

  “So she could return to town one day in lavish style?”

  He nodded. “And there’s one more interesting thing about Salina and her hubbies. Here, see for yourself.”

  Finn grabbed the folder off the table and handed it to me. Curious, I opened it and started flipping through the pages inside. Most of the sheets were copies of newspaper and magazine articles about Salina’s husbands that Finn had printed off the Internet. Business deals. Civic awards. Wedding announcements.

  “Keep going until you see the obituaries,” he said.

  I did as he said. One, two, three, four. I skimmed through the obits, but there was nothing out of the ordinary about them, just a headshot of each man and some facts about his life and those he�
��d left behind. So I went through the pages again, slower and more carefully this time, studying each one of the headshots, and I finally realized what Finn was talking about.

  Black hair. Blue eyes. Nice smiles. Rugged good looks. Every single one of Salina’s husbands had the same coloring and the same features. They were so similar they could have been brothers—and they all looked more or less like Owen.

  I sucked in a breath, but it wasn’t enough to banish the cold, sick feeling that filled my stomach.

  Finn gave me a sympathetic look. “They say you never really get over your first love. Seems like Salina’s taken that to heart more than most. I’m sorry, Gin.”

  I stood there, absorbing the news, then grabbed some forks, napkins, and a large tray out of the kitchen drawers and cabinets, along with an ice pack from the freezer for Owen’s black eye. I added a pitcher of milk from the fridge to my tray, along with some glasses. I reached for my Ice magic and used it to frost each one of the glasses, so the milk would stay nice and cold inside them, but I wasn’t really thinking about what I was doing. All I could focus on was the four men Salina had married, and how they’d all appeared to be substitutes for Owen.

  Still on autopilot, I carried everything into the den, with Finn following along behind me. Owen and Eva were exactly where I’d left them—him on the sofa staring at the television and her standing in front of the mantel.

  “Eat up,” I said, putting the tray on the scarred coffee table between them. “Because we need to talk.”

  Finn didn’t have to be told twice. He sat in a chair, leaned forward, grabbed two of the apple pies and wolfed them down, along with a glass of milk. I ate a pie as well, although the buttery, fried dough and sweet apples failed to satisfy me like they usually did. Owen only picked at his before grabbing the ice pack and holding it against his bruised face. Eva didn’t eat anything at all, although she did finally sit down on the opposite end of the sofa from her brother.

  After a few minutes, we all gave up the pretense of eating, except for Finn, who never let awkwardness get in the way of something as important as his appetite. He was finishing another pie when I wiped my hands on a napkin, turned off the television, and stared at Eva.

  “Why don’t you tell me how you know Kincaid, and why he said that Salina tried to kill him?”

  Instead of answering me, Eva glared at her brother, her blue eyes cold and accusing. “Ask Owen. He’s the one who brought Salina into our lives, and he’s the one who always took her side over everyone else’s—no matter how wrong it was.”

  I knew that Owen and Salina had been involved, but Eva made it sound like there was more to the story than just an old relationship—a whole hell of a lot more. I turned to Owen, letting him see the questions in my face.

  My lover sighed, and his shoulders slumped, as if a heavy weight had just been yoked across them. He slowly lowered the ice pack from his bruised features and put it on the tray. After a moment, he drew in a breath and raised his eyes to mine.

  “Salina was my fiancée,” Owen said.

  13

  Fiancée?

  Salina had been Owen’s fiancée?

  That sick feeling in my stomach spread through the rest of my body, like acid eating away at my insides. I’d known that Owen had had other lovers before me, just like I had before him. But a fiancée was something else entirely, something far more serious—and something I would have expected him to mention before now. Still, I kept my features calm and remote, as if we were talking about a disappointing football game, instead of the fact that Owen had never told me about this part of his past, a part that looked like it was going to be serious trouble—especially for the two of us.

  “Fiancée?” Finn said in an incredulous voice. “You were actually engaged to her? Well, knock me over with a feather.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” Eva muttered.

  Owen opened his mouth to let loose some retort, but I held my hand up, cutting him off.

  “Enough,” I said. “Enough. You and Eva sniping at each other isn’t getting us anywhere. Start at the beginning, Owen. I want to hear all of it. About you, Salina, and Kincaid.”

  Owen got to his feet and started pacing back and forth across the den. He did that for the better part of a minute before he raked his hand through his hair and started his story.

  “It was right after Mab had murdered our parents,” Owen said in a low voice. “Eva and I were living on the Southtown streets, and I had no idea what I was doing. How I was going to take care of us, how I was going to find us enough to eat and a safe place to sleep every night. You know what I’m talking about, Gin.”

  I nodded. I’d faced the same challenges myself, back before Fletcher had taken me in. But I knew it had been even harder on Owen, since he’d had Eva to take care of and she’d been so young at the time. Still, that didn’t excuse the fact that he hadn’t told me about Salina before now, and it didn’t ease the hurt that I felt—or the sudden wariness.

  “Anyway, the days went by, and I got more and more desperate. Eventually, I started stealing food from convenience stores, grocery stores, restaurants, anyplace I thought I could and not get caught. Only one day, I did get caught. I grabbed two apples from a bin at a convenience store. Two measly apples, and the owner was going to beat me to death over them. He would have too—if this thin blond kid hadn’t gotten in his way. The kid bumped into the owner, and I managed to break away and run like hell. I went back to the alley where I’d hidden Eva, and to my surprise, that same kid was there—and he had a whole bag of apples with him. Turned out he’d grabbed them while the owner was using my face for a punching bag.”

  “So that’s how you met Kincaid,” I murmured.

  Owen nodded. “That’s how I met Phillip. He’d seen me and Eva around at some of the shelters where I took her to beg for food. He said we could do a lot better if we started working together. So we did.”

  “So the two of you hooked up and then what?” Finn asked. “It was mayhem on the mean streets of Ashland?”

  Owen smiled, his violet eyes soft with old memories. “Something like that. We started small, stealing food and clothes, mostly. Some blankets and toys for Eva, things like that. Just enough to keep us from starving and freezing to death.”

  I could see them in my mind. Owen already tall and turning into the man he would soon become. Kincaid still a scrawny kid, but one who knew the score better than Owen did. The two of them with seemingly nothing in common but joining forces to survive. Desperation made for strange bedfellows, no matter how old or young you were.

  “Eventually, we got bolder, and we moved on to bigger and better things. We started stealing from pawnshops. My elemental talent for metal let me get through most doors, locks, and windows, no matter how many bars they had on them. Phillip would be the lookout and watch Eva while I went inside and took whatever caught my eye. Guns, jewelry, knives, clothes, shoes, whatever. We’d take the stuff we stole to a different shop and pawn it for cash, using that as an excuse to case the place, then go back and hit that shop a week later.”

  Finn let out a whistle. “Nice scheme for a couple of teenagers.”

  Owen gave him a faint grin. “We thought so too, but it wasn’t just us. There were other kids on the streets or in foster care, boys and girls Phillip knew, and sometimes they helped.”

  A thought occurred to me. “Folks like Katarina Arkadi?”

  Owen nodded. “And Antonio too, although they were both more Phillip’s friends than mine.”

  I wondered if that was why Salina had murdered them—if she’d wanted to hurt the casino boss by taking away the people he cared about before she killed him. That would explain why she’d gone after Antonio first tonight, instead of Kincaid. Cold. Very, very cold.

  “Anyway, despite the stealing, it was still tough,” Owen said. “Half the time, the three of us were on the verge of starving. Eventually, though, I got a job with a dwarven blacksmith, thanks to Fletcher.”

  Owen look
ed at Finn, who nodded. I’d told Finn that his father had taken pity on and helped Owen back in the day. Fletcher always had a soft spot in his heart for folks who were down on their luck. You couldn’t get much lower or more desperate than living on the streets with a toddler to take care of.

  “Things got better after that,” Owen said. “The blacksmith’s name was Cooper Stills. He was tough on me, but he was a decent, fair man. An Air elemental too. He took all three of us in—me, Phillip, and Eva—even though I was the only one who could work in the forge as long and hard as he did. He gave us food to eat and clothes to wear and put a roof over our heads, but it wasn’t enough for me and Phillip. Not after what we’d been through, so we kept right on stealing and stockpiling our loot and money, just in case Cooper changed his mind and decided he didn’t want us around anymore.”

  “I’m sensing a but in there,” Finn said.

  Owen drew in a breath. “But Cooper was and still is a renowned blacksmith. The dwarf can forge anything he puts his mind to, and all his pieces are works of art, whether they’re weapons or fountains or sculptures. Back then, Cooper did a lot of work for a lot of rich people in Northtown, and he would take Phillip and me with him when he went out to meet with clients, take space measurements, or deliver commissioned pieces.”

  “Naturally, you saw that as an opportunity,” Finn drawled. “I certainly would have.”

  Owen shrugged. “You might say that. So Phillip and I moved up to a higher clientele, as far as the stealing went. Jewelry, artwork, silverware. We took anything we could get our hands on—small things mostly, things we didn’t think anyone would miss, at least for a few days. Then, when it was safe, we’d sell the items to someone who wouldn’t ask too many questions about where they’d come from. For two years, everything was great.”

  “And then what happened?” I asked.

  “And then he met Salina,” Eva muttered in a dark tone.

  Owen stared at his sister, but he didn’t contradict her words. “And then I met Salina. By that point, Cooper was letting me make my own pieces, my own weapons and sculptures. Benedict, Salina’s father, saw one of my designs for a knife and commissioned a similar piece. When it was finished, I delivered it to the Dubois house. That’s how I met Salina.”