Black Widow

by Jennifer Estep

  My first customer of the day was Moira Monroe.

  The bright, shiny silver bell over the front door chimed, and the little girl skipped inside, followed by Jo-Jo. Moira was the only thing that we hadn’t told the cops about, and she’d been staying with the Deveraux sisters ever since we found her. But today, she was leaving Ashland—I hoped for good.

  It had taken them more than two weeks, but together Finn and Silvio had managed to find her father, Connor Dupree. Apparently, in the middle of the night, Emery had stormed into the hotel room where he’d been hiding with Moira and had taken his daughter away from him, almost beating him to death. I’d had Finn and Silvio thoroughly vet the dad, digging into every part of his life and background, but he seemed to be a genuinely good guy who loved his daughter.

  Jo-Jo led Moira over to the counter and helped her sit up on the stool closest to the cash register.

  “Hi, Gin,” the little girl said in a bright voice.

  “Hi, sweetheart,” I murmured. “Are you having fun with Jo-Jo?”

  A grin spread across Moira’s face. “She painted my nails this morning. See? I can’t wait to show them to my daddy when he gets here.”

  She held out her hand so I could see the pale pink polish and silver sparkles that glittered on her tiny nails.

  “They’re so pretty,” I said. “Just like you.”

  Moira giggled and started spinning around and around on her stool. I fixed her a cheeseburger and some sweet-potato fries, and a barbecue-chicken sandwich and some coleslaw for Jo-Jo.

  People came and went, and we had a much larger crowd than I’d thought we would, everyone from my friends and family to folks who had heard about the fire and had come to gawk at how the Pork Pit was open for business again—and that I was still standing when I should have been cold, dead, and buried in the ground.

  Eventually, Jo-Jo moved Moira over to one of the booths so the little girl could color on a paper place mat printed with the Pork Pit’s pig logo.

  Bria came into the restaurant a few minutes later. She stopped to say hello to Jo-Jo and Moira, her eyes lingering on the little girl, her face creasing with sadness and just a touch of anger.

  Bria had had a much harder time coming to terms with Moira than I had. Then again, Bria had been younger when our family was torn apart, and Mab had stolen more of her childhood than she had mine. Still, Bria managed to smile at Moira before walking over and sliding onto a nearby stool.

  “Her dad’s still coming to get her, right?” Bria asked.

  “Yep. He should be here any second. He’s driving down from Cypress Mountain.”

  My sister kept staring at Moira. “Do you think that she’ll be all right? Is she still asking where Madeline is?”

  I grimaced. That had been the hardest part about this whole thing. Even though Madeline had taken her away from her father by force, Moira still knew that the acid elemental was her mother, and she kept asking where she’d gone. Jo-Jo had tried to explain to her that Madeline had passed away, but I didn’t know if Moira understood it. The little girl had asked me one time if Madeline was up in heaven, and I’d told her yes, even if I didn’t think that was where Madeline had ended up. But who was I to judge? I wasn’t going to end up there either. Not by a long shot.

  But maybe Moira could. Maybe she’d finally break free of the vicious cycle of the Snow-Monroe family blood feud. Maybe she’d leave it all behind. Maybe she’d have a long, happy, worry-free life.

  That was my hope for her.

  Moira kept coloring, but Jo-Jo kept glancing at her watch, then at the door. The dwarf had just looked over a third time when someone yanked it back, and a man hurried inside, his blue eyes frantically darting around the restaurant. I recognized him from the photos Finn and Silvio had shown me.

  Connor Dupree was right at six feet tall, and I could feel the worry pulsing off him, along with his magic—Stone magic, just like Jonah McAllister had said. I suddenly wondered just how many areas Moira might be gifted in herself. If she could be a duel elemental like me—or something even more powerful.

  Dupree’s face was thin, and his steps were slow, almost as if it hurt him to walk, even though he didn’t have any visible injuries. From what Bria had found in the police reports, Emery had beaten him to within an inch of his life. Even then, he’d tried to stop her from taking his daughter away from him. Maybe he was still feeling the psychological effects of that beating, of having someone he loved so cruelly ripped away from him.

  “Daddy!” Moira shouted, throwing her colored pencil down, getting up out of the booth, and running over to her father.

  Dupree bent down and gathered her in his arms, tears streaming down his face as he whispered something in his daughter’s ear. Jo-Jo went over to talk to them, but Dupree kept hugging and hugging Moira to his chest, as if she might disappear if he let her go for so much as a second. But Moira giggled and wiggled away from him, running around the restaurant. She grabbed her place-mat coloring, marched back over, and proudly showed it to him. Dupree smiled, more tears streaming down his face, and pulled her close to him again.

  It took him a few more minutes before he was able to wipe his tears away, straighten up, and speak to Jo-Jo. He didn’t look at me, and I didn’t go over and talk to him. Thanks to Finn and his penchant for creating fake IDs, as far as Dupree knew, Jo-Jo was from social services and had been watching after Moira until he could come get her.

  Jo-Jo gave Dupree a phony business card that Finn had had printed up with one of my burner phone numbers and anonymous e-mails on it, just in case he ever needed anything. Dupree took it, then held out his hand. Moira skipped over to her father and threaded her fingers through his. He opened the door for the two of them.

  “Are you sure this is the right thing to do, Gin?” Bria asked.

  Moira looked at me, then raised her arm in a cheery good-bye wave, her colored place mat and the bag of cookies that I’d given her earlier dangling from her other hand. Her father opened the door, and Moira kept waving until it swung shut behind them.

  “I guess we’ll see in about twenty years or so,” I said, finally answering Bria’s question. “When Moira grows up, comes into her magic, and decides how she wants to use it—and if she wants revenge for her mother’s death.”

  “And if she does?”

  I shrugged. “Then we’ll see if she can get it. I tried to set her free the best way that I know how. The rest is up to her.”

  Just like every person’s life was their own to lead. I’d tried to make the most of mine. Only time would tell what Moira Madeline Monroe would do with hers.

  * * *

  Bria left, and the rest of the day passed by in the usual fashion of cooking, cleaning, and cashing out customers. But more than once, I found myself staring out the storefront windows, wondering about Moira. I hoped that she recovered from the trauma of being taken away from her father. I hoped that he found some way to explain to her what had happened to Madeline. I hoped that she had a better childhood and a happier and more carefree life than I ever had. I hoped so many good things for her. But like I’d told Bria, only time would tell if they came true.

  So I went about my business and the rest of the day. A few folks wandered in who clearly had more on their minds than just barbecue. Gangbangers, underworld bosses, and the like. But they sat in their seats and ate their food, and no one was waiting in the back alley to try to kill me when I took out the trash after the lunch rush ended. It seemed that at least some of them were heeding my warning to leave me alone. I wondered how long their good sense would overpower their ambition and greed.

  But that didn’t mean that I hadn’t just created a whole new passel of problems for myself.

  Around four o’clock, during one of the few lulls in the restaurant today, the door opened, and a blond woman came inside wearing oversize sunglasses and a red suit jacket and matching skirt that were both so tight that they looked like they’d been painted onto her porcelain skin. She looked around the
storefront, obviously searching for someone. After a few seconds, she spotted Silvio sitting at his usual spot at the counter and headed in his direction.

  I looked at the vampire. Someone had been blowing up his phone ever since he’d come into the restaurant an hour ago. Perhaps even several someones, judging from how Silvio had been texting like his life depended on it ever since he sat down.

  The woman slid onto the stool next to Silvio, four down from where I was sitting behind the cash register, reading a copy of The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum for my spy-literature class.

  “Sorry I’m late,” she murmured to him. “You wouldn’t believe the parking outside. You can’t even get within three blocks of this place right now.”

  “That’s quite all right, Ms. Jamison,” Silvio said. “Ms. Blanco was taking a brief break.”

  “Call me Jade.” She stared at me. “But she’s going to help me with my problem, right? I mean, that’s what she does now.”

  My eyebrows shot up in my face as I looked at Silvio, but he ignored me and sent out one more text before he set his phone aside. “You can explain your situation to Ms. Blanco. It’s up to her to decide if she wants to help you or not.”

  Jade Jamison sighed, then slid the sunglasses up so that they swept her blond hair away from her face . . . and revealed the truly spectacular black eye that she was sporting. Somebody had ground his fist into her face—repeatedly.

  “So look, I run some girls out in the suburbs,” she started. “A couple of guys too. For the last year, I’ve had a mutually profitable arrangement where all the pimps up there leave me and my folks alone as long as we don’t poach clients from their territory. Only now, one of them, Leroy, says that I have to start paying him protection money. You can see the what else on my face that he gave me when I told him no way.”

  “And what do you expect me to do about it?”

  Jade rolled her eyes. “You’re Gin Blanco,” she said as if the answer should be obvious. “You kill people.”

  I looked at Silvio, but he shrugged. “I’ve been getting calls and texts like this for days now. I thought that I would at least wait until you had reopened the restaurant before we started addressing them.”

  “How considerate of you.”

  “Listen,” Jade said, leaning forward against the counter, her suit jacket straining to keep from popping open. “People say that you’re the big boss in town, now that Madeline Monroe is dead. I was dealing with her before, trying to get Leroy off my back, but she wasn’t exactly doing anything, you know? So Silvio told me to come on down here, and you’d help me out. I don’t want to make any trouble. I just want Leroy to hold up his end of our agreement. He’d have to do that if you told him to. . . .”

  She kept talking about the specifics of their deal, but I was focused on the two most important words she’d said.

  Big boss.

  Big boss? I wasn’t anybody’s boss, except for the folks who worked at the restaurant. But it sounded like some people had made it seem otherwise. My eyes cut to Silvio, who gave me another what-can-you-do? shrug of his thin shoulders.

  I had told everyone in the underworld not to mess with me, and it looked like they’d finally decided to listen. But an entirely different consequence had arisen, one that I hadn’t even seen coming, much less dreamed would ever happen.

  My hand crept up to the spider rune necklace around my throat. I’d been wearing it openly, over my T-shirts and other clothes, ever since my duel with Madeline. More than a few folks had stared at the pendant, but no one had dared to comment on it, and I hadn’t thought much about it—or the message others might think that I was sending.

  As my fingers curled around the familiar symbol, my gaze locked on the blood-spattered copy of Where the Red Fern Grows up on the wall, and I thought of Fletcher. I wondered if the old man had ever imagined that this would happen. If he’d ever dreamed that it would come to pass. If he’d known all along that this was where the road would take me. That, in a way, I’d set myself up to become the very thing that I’d hated for so long.

  Mab fucking Monroe.

  The thought punched me in the gut, but that didn’t make it any less true. Mab had been the queen of the underworld, and now it looked like I was too. It wasn’t something that I’d wanted or had strived for or had ever even hoped for. I had enough worries of my own. I didn’t need to mediate others’ problems too. Or whatever Mab had done to solve disputes.

  But this wasn’t the time for such philosophical musings, so I forced myself to relax my fingers, let go of my spider rune, and drop my hand back down to the counter.

  “So are you going to help me or not?” Jade snapped, realizing that I wasn’t paying attention to her.

  I didn’t respond. I didn’t know what to say right now.

  She looked back and forth between me and Silvio, let out a disgusted snort, and hopped to her feet. “Terrific,” she snarled. “So I drove all the way down here for nothing and left my folks alone and defenseless. You’re just as useless as Madeline was.”

  Jade whirled around to stomp away.

  Silvio arched his eyebrows at me. “Somebody has to step up,” he said in a soft voice. “Or things will get worse. People will die.”

  And you’ve been elected. He didn’t say the words, but we both knew that they were true. Just like I knew that if Jade Jamison confronted Leroy again, he would most likely beat her to death, when all she was trying to do was protect the people she cared about. And that made my decision for me, the way it always did.

  “Wait,” I called out. “Come back, sit down, and tell me what happened.”

  Jade stopped and gave me a suspicious look.

  I pointed at the stool she’d just left. “Please.”

  That made her eyes narrow a little more, but she slowly walked back over and resumed her seat. I touched my spider rune pendant one more time, then leaned my elbows down on the counter, giving her my full attention.

  As she started telling me about her problem, I realized that the Pork Pit wasn’t the only thing open for business again.

  The Spider was too.

  Turn the page for a sneak peek at the next book in the Elemental Assassin series

  by Jennifer Estep

  Coming soon from Pocket Books

  1

  “I really want to stab someone right now.”

  Silvio Sanchez, my personal assistant, glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. “I would advise against that,” he murmured. “It might send the wrong message.”

  “Yeah,” Phillip Kincaid chimed in. “Namely that you’ve reverted back to your deadly assassin ways and are going to start killing people again instead of hearing them out like you’re supposed to.”

  “I don’t think I ever really left those ways behind,” I replied. “Considering that I could kill everyone here and sleep like a baby tonight.”

  Phillip snickered, while Silvio rolled his eyes.

  The three of us were sitting at a long conference table that had been dragged out onto the deck of the Delta Queen, the luxe riverboat casino that Phillip owned. Normally, slot machines, poker tables, and roulette wheels would have been set up on the deck in preparation for the night’s gambling, but today the riverboat was serving as the site of a meeting between some of Ashland’s many underworld bosses.

  Supposedly, this meeting was to be a peaceful mediation of an ongoing dispute between Dimitri Barkov and Luiz Ramos, two of the city’s crime lords, who were currently disagreeing about who had the right to buy a series of coin laundries to, well, launder the money that they made from their gambling operations. Not that there was anything peaceful about the way that Dimitri and Luiz had been standing nose-to-nose and screaming at each other for the last five minutes. Their respective guards stood behind them, fists clenched tight and shooting dirty looks at each other, as though they would all love nothing more than to start brawling right in the middle of the deck.

  Now, that would be entertaining. I grinned. Mayb
e I should just let them have at each other. Winner take all. That would be one way to settle things.

  Silvio nudged me with his elbow and narrowed his gray eyes at me, as if he knew exactly what I was thinking.

  “Pay attention,” he murmured. “You’re supposed to be listening to the facts so you can be fair and impartial, remember?”

  “I could be fair and impartial in stabbing them both.”

  Silvio gave me a chiding look.

  I sighed. “You always ruin my fun.”

  “That’s my job,” the vampire replied.

  I palmed one of the silverstone knives hidden up my sleeves and flashed it at my friends under the table, out of sight of the other bosses and their men.

  “C’mon,” I whispered. “Just let me stab one of them. Surely, that will shut the other one up too.”

  Phillip snickered again, while Silvio let out a small, sad sigh. He wasn’t crazy about my managerial style. Couldn’t imagine why.

  My friends turned their attention back to Dimitri and Luiz, who were still yelling and pointing fingers at each other, each trying to shout the other man down. But instead of listening to them, I looked at the third boss who had shown up for the meeting—Lorelei Parker.

  Unlike Dimitri and Luiz, who were both dressed in slick business suits, Lorelei was sporting black stiletto boots, dark jeans, and a black leather jacket, just like I was. Her black hair was in a French braid, and her blue eyes were focused on her phone, since she was busy texting. Only a single guard stood off to her side: Jack Corbin, her right-hand man. He too was dressed in boots, jeans, and a leather jacket, but his cold blue eyes continually scanned the deck and everyone and everything on it.

  Corbin realized I was watching him and tipped his head at me before sidling a little closer to his boss, ready to protect her from everyone on the deck, including me. I nodded back at him. My deceased mentor, Fletcher Lane, had a thick file on Corbin in his office, so I knew that he was far more dangerous than he appeared to be.