Bitter Bite

by Jennifer Estep

  Annoyance spurted through me. I wasn’t his servant, and I thought about ignoring him, just out of spite, but I was too curious and worried about Deirdre. So I plastered a smile on my face and went over to the booth.

  Bria was already sliding into the side across from Deirdre, with Finn sitting down next to her. Once again, my sister stared at the Ice elemental’s rune necklace, still trying to remember where she had seen it before.

  “Why, hello, Gin,” Deirdre chirped in a cheery voice. “So lovely to see you again.”

  Before I could unclench my jaw and force out some semi-polite response, Jo-Jo walked up to stand beside me.

  “Hello, Deirdre,” the dwarf said.

  “Why, hello, Jolene. I thought that was you sitting at the counter. And I see that Sophia still works here.” Deirdre’s blue eyes flicked over to the Goth dwarf, who had her arms crossed over her chest and a cold expression on her face as she eyed Deirdre right back. “Both of you look exactly the same as I remember.”

  Jo-Jo nodded. “The years have been kind to you too.”

  The two of them engaged in some meaningless chitchat, with Deirdre asking about the salon and Jo-Jo inquiring about the other woman’s charity work, but they quickly exhausted those topics. Jo-Jo looked at Finn, obviously hoping that he would invite her to sit down and join them, but he tapped his fingers against the tabletop, as if he wanted her to just go away already.

  Jo-Jo’s head dropped, her shoulders sagged, and even her curls seemed to deflate a bit. Anger sizzled in my chest. The dwarf was the one who’d helped Fletcher raise Finn, she was the closest thing to a mother he’d ever had, and he was ignoring her in favor of some stranger. Ungrateful brat.

  I opened my mouth to tell Finn exactly what a thoughtless jackass he was being, but Jo-Jo cut me off.

  “Well, y’all enjoy your lunch,” she said, trying to inject some false cheer into her soft, sad voice.

  “You do the same,” Deirdre chirped back.

  Jo-Jo nodded at her again, then turned toward the door as if she were going to leave. But Owen got up, took her arm, and led her over to his booth. I flashed him a grateful smile, and he winked back at me. At least someone around here knew how to treat his friends right.

  I turned back to the booth and pulled a notepad and a pen out of the back pocket of my jeans. “Well, now that you’re here, you might as well eat. What can I get you?”

  “I’ll have a grilled cheese and a sweet iced tea with lemon.”

  Deirdre didn’t bother glancing at the plastic menu on the table, as if she already knew every single item on it. She probably did. The menu hadn’t changed much over the years. Instead, she looked out over the restaurant, her gaze taking in everything from the other booths and tables to the blue and pink pig tracks curling across the floor, walls, and ceiling. I expected her scarlet lips to curl up into a sneer and derision to fill her pretty face, but Deirdre’s features remained calm and serene.

  “I see that you’ve done some remodeling,” she said after she’d completed her inspection. “I was looking in the windows, admiring everything, when Finnegan came up to me on the sidewalk.”

  So they’d run into each other outside the restaurant. No doubt waiting outside for Finn had been a deliberate move on her part, since it was another opportunity for Deirdre to ingratiate herself with him just a little bit more.

  “Good for you,” she said. “Fletcher wouldn’t have let you upgrade so much as a dish towel if he were still alive. He never was much for change, no matter how beneficial it might have been.”

  Her voice was perfectly pleasant, but my jaw clenched a little tighter. She had no right to come in here and comment on anything—not one fucking thing. Not when she’d left Finn, Fletcher, and the restaurant years ago.

  But Finn apparently didn’t see anything wrong with her words, because he nodded his agreement. “You’re absolutely right. You wouldn’t believe how long it took me to persuade Dad to get new menus printed up a couple of years ago. The pictures were faded, and you could practically wipe the grease off the pages, but he still didn’t want to change them.”

  The two of them looked at each other and chuckled, coconspirators in their own little joke at Fletcher’s expense. I mashed my lips together, biting back a sharp retort. Deirdre had already charmed her way into Finn’s good graces, so my snapping at her would only make Finn take up for her that much more. I held my tongue and my temper—for now.

  “A grilled cheese and an iced tea, coming right up,” I muttered.

  I took Finn’s and Bria’s orders of barbecue chicken sandwiches and onion rings, then handed the tickets off to Catalina. Across the restaurant, Sophia gave Deirdre another hard, flat stare, but she fixed the other woman’s food in silence, along with the rest of the order.

  When everyone’s food was ready, I grabbed the hot plates and deposited them on the tabletop. Bria and Finn were sitting on one side of the booth, with Deirdre across from them. Rather than slide in next to the Ice elemental, I drew up a chair to the end of the booth and sat down.

  Since it was just after three, the dinner rush hadn’t started yet, and the restaurant was largely deserted. Good. I didn’t want any of the underworld bosses coming in and seeing what might turn into an ugly confrontation. I had enough problems already without giving them any more ammunition.

  Finn finally noticed that I wasn’t nearly as delighted to have his mother here as he was. He gave me a stern look, telling me to be nice, but I glared back at him, still pissed at how he’d brushed off Jo-Jo. After a moment, his gaze slid away from mine, and he focused on Deirdre again.

  Silence fell over the booth as the three of them picked at their food. Deirdre kept sneaking little glances at Finn, a smile stretching her scarlet lips wider and wider all the while, as if she were just thrilled that she was finally sitting here with her son and just couldn’t contain her enthusiasm any longer. In that moment, she looked exactly the same as she did in all those old photos—soft, sweet, beautiful—and I could see why Fletcher had fallen under her spell all those years ago, just like Finn was doing right now.

  Deirdre turned her attention to Bria, her gaze dropping to the primrose rune that hung around my sister’s neck. For a second, just a second, something flared in her eyes, some thought or memory, but she quickly cranked up the wattage on her smile, hiding the emotion. I got the sense that she did that a lot—just smiled and smiled at folks long and hard and bright enough so that they eventually forgot how dangerous she truly was.

  “You met Bria last night, remember?” Finn said, noticing his mother’s gaze. “And you’ve heard me talk about her the past few weeks.”

  “Yes, of course,” Deirdre said. “I was just admiring what a lovely couple the two of you make. Bria is quite striking. And your rune, honey. That’s a primrose, right? The symbol for beauty? It fits you perfectly.”

  “Mmm,” Bria replied, her face thoughtful as she stared at Deirdre’s icicle-heart necklace again.

  Deirdre looked at me. “Why, Gin, honey, you don’t have to sit all the way down there. I promise I won’t bite.”

  She winked, let out a merry laugh, and patted me on the shoulder the way she might a child she found particularly amusing.

  I wanted to palm one of my knives and shish-kebab her hand to the tabletop, but I settled for giving her a grin that was all sharp, pointed teeth. “Oh, no,” I drawled. “I know that you won’t bite—but I just might.”

  Deirdre laughed again and shook her finger at me. “Finnegan told me all about you, but he failed to mention what a hoot you are.”

  “Oh, I doubt that, honey,” I drawled again. “Finn doesn’t usually go around telling people that I moonlight as an assassin. But I imagine you know all about my sideline business already. After all, you were involved with Fletcher.”

  Deirdre’s chuckles died on her lips, and she opened, then closed her mouth, as if debating whether or not to claim that she hadn’t known anything about Fletcher being an assassin. But she squ
ared her shoulders and owned up to it. “Yes, I was well aware of Fletcher’s . . . proclivities. I had hoped that his . . . distasteful activities had ended with him, but I see now that my hopes were in vain.”

  Her gaze flicked over me, taking in my blue work apron before lingering on the long sleeves of my black T-shirt. She knew that I had a knife tucked up either sleeve, just like Fletcher always had.

  After a moment, she shook her head. “How very sad. That Fletcher dragged an innocent young girl like you into his sordid world.”

  “Fletcher didn’t drag me into anything,” I snapped. “He saved me, he taught me everything he knew, and I will always be grateful to him for that—always.” Below the table, out of sight, my hands curled into tight fists in my lap, my fingers digging into the spider rune scars in my palms. I hadn’t meant to let her rile me so easily, but she’d hit the big red button of my emotions with her first jab.

  Deirdre cleared her throat. “Yes, well, Fletcher always did have a soft spot for strays.”

  Her voice was kind, without a hint of malice, but my fingers dug even deeper into my scars. Shish-kebabing would be too good for her. Now I wanted to slice that indulgent smile right off her pretty face.

  Bria shot me a warning look.

  Finn, however, seemed oblivious to the rising tension and mama drama, and he pushed his plate aside. “So,” he said. “You said that we should . . . talk.”

  Deirdre focused on him again. “Yes. I know that you have a lot of questions, so I brought along a few things that might help give you some answers.”

  She reached into the enormous electric-blue purse that she’d set down in the booth beside her. I tensed, ready to palm one of my knives, but she only came up with a thick manila folder. She put the folder down on top of the table, then slowly opened it.

  Photos lay inside—the exact same photos that had been in the casket box.

  Deirdre, Fletcher, newborn Finn. I recognized the pictures immediately, but the sight shocked me all the same. I’d never even considered that Deirdre might have copies of the photos, much less show them off in my gin joint.

  Unease rippled through me, along with more than a little disappointment. I’d thought that Fletcher had left the photos in the casket box for me—and me alone—to find. That he’d entrusted me with them. That they’d been some sort of message or warning about Deirdre, even if I hadn’t been able to figure out exactly what he’d been trying to tell me.

  But what if they were just, well, photos? Just keepsakes, like Bria had suggested when we first opened the box. What if there was no message or warning or hidden meaning in the pictures? And if I’d been wrong about that, then what else was I wrong about?

  Maybe even Deirdre herself?

  Maybe she was different from the person Fletcher had known. Maybe her intentions were genuine. Maybe she really did want to reconnect with Finn. The only thing I knew for sure right now was that all the maybes were driving me plumb crazy.

  Bria drew in a ragged breath. She recognized the photos too. I shrugged at her. The cat was out of the bag now, and there was no putting it back in.

  “These are all the photos that I have of us,” Deirdre said in a soft, hesitant voice. “Fletcher always got two sets of photos made, one for him and one for me. I thought that you might like to see them too.”

  One by one, she laid out the pictures on the table in front of Finn, who leaned over and studied them with wide eyes. The casket box was still tucked away in the chimney at Fletcher’s house. I’d been planning to take Finn home and show him the photos, mementos, and Fletcher’s letter to him after this meeting, so he could decide for himself whether he wanted to read it. But once again, Deirdre had beaten me to the punch and wrapped another silken thread around Finn’s heart, snaring him that much more tightly in her web.

  He wouldn’t care about me showing him the photos and broken mementos, and he wouldn’t take whatever information or warning that was in Fletcher’s letter seriously. Not now. Maybe that’s why Fletcher had asked me to wait to show Finn the letter. Maybe the old man had known that Finn would be too swept up in Deirdre’s charms to listen as long as she was in Ashland.

  Finn scooped up the pictures one by one, looking at them with eagerness, curiosity, and questions filling his eyes. I’d never seen him seem so excited before, not even when we were kids, it was his birthday, and he was tearing into a pile of presents. But I kept my mouth shut while he examined the photos. Anything I said right now would just sound like sour grapes.

  “I met your father when I was nineteen,” Deirdre said, steepling her hands together. “Another boy brought me here on a date, but once I saw your father, I only had eyes for Fletcher, and he for me. One thing led to another, and before I knew it, we were engaged. It was one of the happiest times of my life.”

  Well, that explained the engagement ring in the casket box. Although I still wondered about its missing diamond.

  Finn looked up from the photos, and Deirdre favored him with another smile, which he returned with an even wider one of his own. I don’t know how long they would have kept smiling at each other if Bria hadn’t cleared her throat.

  “So what happened?” Bria asked. “If you were so happy, then why did you leave Ashland?”

  Everyone could hear the sharper, unasked question in her words. Why did you leave Finn?

  Deirdre winced, her shoulders slumping. “Fletcher and I were planning our wedding when I found out I was pregnant. My parents were very traditional, very old-fashioned, and more concerned with their magic, money, and social status than anything else. They didn’t approve of Fletcher, said that he was beneath my station. But they especially didn’t like the idea of my having his baby. They were both very strong Ice elementals, you see, and I inherited their magic. They wanted me to marry someone who also had Ice magic, to keep our family legacy intact. Not someone like Fletcher, who didn’t have any elemental power at all. Of course, I didn’t care about any of that, but when I told my parents I was pregnant, they threw me out and cut me off financially. They wouldn’t even speak to me.”

  She paused and pinched the bridge of her nose, as if she were fighting back tears. After a few seconds, she dropped her hand, cleared her throat, and continued.

  “But I loved Fletcher, and I was determined to be with him, despite my parents. And we were happy, especially after you were born. See?”

  She tapped her long red nail on the photo of Fletcher holding newborn Finn, with her standing off to the side. I thought that Finn might say something about how unhappy Deirdre looked in the photo, but he didn’t seem to notice her flat expression. Or maybe it was just my bias against her that made me see her that way.

  “So what happened?” Bria asked again, a snide note creeping into her voice. “If y’all were one big happy family?”

  I raised my eyebrows at my sister, who was rarely that snarky. Bria didn’t seem to like Deirdre any more than I did. She shrugged back at me, completely unapologetic. Well, if she wanted to be the bad guy for a change, I wasn’t going to stop her. More power to her.

  Deirdre drew in a breath, as though the next part was particularly painful for her to recall. “Fletcher worked a lot of late nights, but running a restaurant means long hours, and I knew how devoted he was to the Pork Pit. But one night, he came home covered in blood. And that wasn’t the worst part. Some men stormed into the house after him.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “And I finally learned what Fletcher was really doing all those late nights. That he was an assassin.”

  She shuddered, as if the memory still horrified her. “He killed the men right in front of me. Laid their throats open with his knives like it was nothing. But not before one of them attacked me.”

  Deirdre fell silent for several seconds, her gasps of breath coming quicker and quicker, until she was almost panting for air, as though she was still traumatized by what had happened. Even I might have believed that she was genuinely upset, if not for Fletcher’s letter warning that every word out o
f her mouth was a lie.

  But Finn? He swallowed it hook, line, and sinker, leaning over and squeezing her hand. Deirdre threaded her fingers through his, as if drawing comfort from his touch. Once her breathing had returned to normal, she continued her story.

  “After that, it was . . . hard for me to be with Fletcher. Of course, he claimed that he would never hurt me, but I just couldn’t believe him. Not after what I’d seen him do to those men. Even though I had been trained to use my Ice magic to defend myself, I was afraid to even leave the house, for fear that one of his enemies would be waiting to try to hurt me—or you, Finn. That was my greatest worry.”

  Finn nodded, his face as somber as a preacher’s on Sunday, as if her words made perfect sense. I thought her story had more holes than a sack full of doughnuts.

  “Fletcher and I started fighting about him being an assassin,” Deirdre continued. “I begged him to stop, to give up being the Tin Man, but he said the work he was doing and the people he was helping were too important. I asked him if they were more important than his own family. That started the fighting all over again.”

  She shook her head. “Finally, I just couldn’t take it anymore. I told Fletcher that he had to choose—his family or being an assassin. And he chose being an assassin.” She tightened her grip on Finn’s hand. “I’m so sorry, Finnegan. Truly, I am. I wished that things had worked out between us. I really did love your father at one time.”

  “But why did Dad tell everyone you were dead?” Finn finally asked the big, obvious, glaring question.

  Deirdre sighed, let go of his hand, and leaned back, as if what she was about to say was breaking her heart all over again. “I told him I was leaving him and that I was taking you with me. Fletcher . . . he . . . hit me.” Her hand crept up to her cheek as if she could still feel the sting of that phantom blow. “He said that I wasn’t taking his son anywhere. He told me to pack up my things, leave his house, and never come back. He told me that if I ever returned to Ashland or tried to contact you, he would kill me. I believed him. He was an assassin, after all, and he had already shown me exactly what he was capable of.”