By a Thread

by Jennifer Estep

  I approached him warily. “Waiting for me? Why? You left me up on the mountain, remember?”

  He nodded. “I did, and I’m sorry about that, but it was a necessary evil.”

  My eyes narrowed. “What kind of necessary evil?”

  Instead of answering me, Fletcher put his knife and block of wood aside. He swung his legs over the side of the car, hopped off the hood, and walked over to stand in front of me. His green eyes swept over my face and body. When he realized that I was just fine, his smile got a little wider.

  “I left you on the mountain and pretended to abandon you because it was part of your assassin training,” he said in a quiet voice. “To help you get over your fear. It’s the one thing that can kill an assassin quicker than anything else. If you’re afraid, you can’t act. And if you can’t act, you can’t strike back at your enemy—much less hope to survive.”

  I frowned, puzzled. “Fear? What fear? I’m not afraid. I’m not afraid of anything.”

  “Yes you are,” he said in a kind voice. “You never let me out of your sight at the Pork Pit or when we’re at home either. You’re always watching me, always following me. And if I’m not around, then you do the same thing to Jo-Jo and Sophia or even Finn.”

  It was true. Even though I tried not to, I trailed after Fletcher like a lost puppy, and I had to make myself not panic whenever he was out late on one of his jobs. Even when I was at school, I was counting down the minutes until I could see him and even Finn again and make sure they were okay. That they hadn’t left or been taken from me like my family had. I hadn’t thought Fletcher had noticed, but I should have realized that he had. The old man noticed everything.

  “I wanted you to realize that you didn’t need me or Jo-Jo or any of the others. That you were strong enough to rely on yourself, Gin. That you were strong enough to survive on your own, no matter what happened.”

  I frowned, more confusion filling my body. “I don’t understand. So this was all just a test? Of what? How much you could hurt me?”

  Fletcher shook his head. “I know I hurt you when you thought that I abandoned you up there on the mountain. I’m sorry for that, but it was something you had to learn, something you had to face down. You never talk about your family or where you came from, but I know things didn’t end well for you—or them. But you kept on going despite all that, and I wanted to remind you that you could do it again. Today, tomorrow, and any time that you needed to—no matter what. Do you understand?”

  Maybe it was crazy, but I did understand. I’d lost my old family, and I’d tried to use Fletcher and the others as a substitute. But I’d held on to them too tightly and had been too afraid they’d be taken away from me like my mother and sisters. Fletcher had wanted me to see that it didn’t matter where I was or whom I was with, as long as I kept fighting—and that’s exactly what I’d done today.

  “So does this mean that I can come back home to the Pork Pit with you?” I asked in a soft voice, trying to keep the hope out of my face.

  “There was never any question of that,” Fletcher said in a gruff tone. “I was going to give you until sunset, and then I was going to come and get you if you couldn’t or wouldn’t find your way down the mountain. I already love you like you’re my own daughter, Gin. Nothing will ever change that. But assassinating people is a dangerous business, no matter if you’re doing it for money or love or something else. I’m not always going to be around to protect or help you. Even if I were, we’re not always going to agree on how to do things. In the end, you have only yourself to depend on. It’s up to you to make sure that you’re strong enough to handle the hurts and disappointments that come your way—no matter what they are.”

  I stood there and thought about the old man’s words. After a few moments, I nodded, telling him that I agreed with him and that all was forgiven, if not forgotten.

  Fletcher smiled again. “Now that you’ve conquered your fear, you’re ready for the next step. But that’s a talk that can wait for another day. Right now, I’m ready to go home. Are you?”

  I nodded again.

  The old man held out his arms. I hesitated, then stepped into his warm embrace . . .

  My eyes fluttered open. For a moment, I was back there in the woods, safe in the old man’s strong arms, but the ghostly warmth of his embrace faded all too quickly, the way the best dreams, the best memories, always do. I focused on the beige ceiling above my head, wondering where I was, since the ones in Fletcher’s house were all white. It took me several seconds to realize I was back in the beach house in Blue Marsh. I vaguely remembered knocking on the back door, but what happened after that was just a blur of color, light, and noise.

  A faint fluttering sound caught my attention, and I turned my head to the right without thinking. I winced and tensed up, waiting for the pain of Dekes’s bites to shoot through my neck and shoulders, along with the agony of my broken collarbone, but the sharp, stabbing sensations didn’t come. A second later, I realized why.

  A dwarf sat beside my bed, flipping through a thick beauty magazine, looking just as polished and put together as the cover model. Her white-blond hair was arranged in a series of perfect curls on top of her head, and her makeup looked just as soft, fresh, and pretty as if she’d applied it a moment ago. She wore a pale pink sundress that looked like it was her Sunday best, and a string of pearls dangled from her neck. Her feet were bare like always, although hot-pink polish gleamed on her toenails.

  She must have sensed me watching her because she looked up from her magazine. Her eyes were clear—colorless, really—except for the pinpricks of black in the centers of her irises. A smile spread across her middle-aged face, causing laugh lines to crease in the corners of her eyes and mouth.

  “Welcome back to the land of the living, darling,” Jo-Jo said.

  19

  I frowned and sat up in bed. “Jo-Jo? What are you doing here?”

  Jolene “Jo-Jo” Deveraux put her beauty magazine down on the nightstand beside her elbow. “Why, patching you up, of course.”

  I shook my head. “But I don’t understand. Why aren’t you home in Ashland at your salon?”

  Jo-Jo owned one of the busiest beauty salons in the city. She jokingly referred to herself as a drama mama because she made a very, very good living gussying up women of all shapes, sizes, and ages for everything from beauty pageants to weddings to fancy dinners with their rich husbands.

  One of the reasons Jo-Jo’s salon was so popular was that she used her Air elemental magic to augment the more standard waxing, plucking, teasing, curling, perming, dyeing, tanning, and other beauty treatments she offered. Letting an Air elemental blast your skin with a pure oxygen facial was a great way to keep Father Time at bay, although some people took it too far, getting so many facials that their skin took on a tight, slick, sandblasted look. Jonah McAllister was infamous for having a face that was smoother than a twenty-year-old’s, despite being in his sixties with a thick coif of silver hair.

  My thoughts darkened at the thought of the smug, smarmy lawyer and how he’d managed to fuck me over from hundreds of miles away. I was going to have to do something about McAllister when I got back to Ashland—something bloody, violent, and permanent. Despite the fact that I’d killed Mab, McAllister was still determined to be the death of me. Last night the lawyer had almost succeeded in taking me down by proxy by siccing Dekes on me. Oh, yes. McAllister was definitely on my to-do list now.

  “Correction, I was in Ashland,” Jo-Jo said, answering my question. “But Finn called me and Sophia early yesterday morning talking about some sort of trouble you’d run into down here and how you were probably going to need my services before it all was said and done.”

  So Finn had phoned Jo-Jo even before he and Owen had left Ashland. Well, that explained why the dwarf was here. I didn’t mind Finn calling in reinforcements, though. I’d needed them.

  “So Sophia and I loaded up the convertible, dropped Rosco off with Eva and Violet, and came on down,�
� Jo-Jo added. “Eva’s staying with Violet at Warren’s house, and the girls were more than happy to watch Rosco for a few days.”

  Rosco was Jo-Jo’s tubby basset hound and quite possibly the laziest dog on the planet. He wouldn’t even get out of his wicker basket in the corner of the salon unless there was food in the offing or a chance of getting his fat tummy rubbed. No doubt Eva Grayson and her best friend, Violet Fox, would spoil the dog even more than Jo-Jo already did.

  “Once Rosco was taken care of, Sophia and I drove down lickety-split, since I had a feeling that you’d need me,” Jo-Jo continued.

  In addition to being able to heal others, Jo-Jo also had a bit of precognition. Her Air magic let her hear all the whispers on the wind, all the possibilities and hints of things that might come to pass, just like my Stone magic muttered to me of all the things that had already come to be, all the ways and all the places that people had hurt the others around them.

  “Good thing too, since you showed up this morning looking like death warmed over. But I took care of that.”

  The dwarf reached over and patted my hand. Along with dolling up the folks who came into her salon, Jo-Jo also happened to be one of the best healers around. I’d lost count of the number of times she’d patched me up when I’d shown up at her house late at night, covered with blood and bruises from my latest job as the Spider.

  The needles that I’d sensed when I’d been weaving in and out of consciousness hadn’t been Dekes at all—the pricking sensation had been Jo-Jo using her magic on me. The dwarf could tap into and control all the natural gases in the air the way that I could the stone around me. That’s how Air elementals healed others—by grabbing hold of the oxygen in the atmosphere and forcing it to circulate through wounds, cleaning out the cuts and scrapes, and making the molecules mend together all the rips, tears, and holes in someone’s skin—in my skin.

  I reached up and touched my right shoulder; my collarbone was completely mended, the broken bones fused together and in their appropriate places once more. I’d expected nothing less, but still, something felt slightly off, like I wasn’t completely healed, although I knew that Jo-Jo wouldn’t have stopped using her Air magic on me until I was fully well again.

  Thinking about the dwarf’s magic made me reach for my own power, and it was then that I realized what was wrong with me, what was missing—my magic.

  I was always aware of my Ice and Stone magic, of the elemental power flowing through my veins, the way that a giant or dwarf would subconsciously sense their own inherent strength or humans would their fingers and toes. But now, that hidden force wasn’t there anymore. It was like a piece of my heart had been cut out and all that was left was an empty, aching chasm inside my chest. In a way, I felt as cold, numb, and dead inside as I had in the library last night after Dekes had shot me with that tranquilizer dart.

  “It’s gone,” I whispered, looking at Jo-Jo. “My magic’s gone.”

  The dwarf shook her head. “Not gone, darling. Not entirely. Your gas tank’s just running a little low right now. That’s what happens when a vampire sucks so much blood out of you. Reach for your power, really concentrate, and you’ll see what I mean.”

  I did as she said. It took a moment, but I realized Jo-Jo was right. My magic was still there, that cool power deep down in the very center of my being—but there was just barely any of it to work with. I reached for my power. A few silvery sparks of magic flickered in my hand, centered over the spider rune scar in my palm, but that was it. There was no bright glow, no cold crystals, and no other indication that I had any kind of real elemental power at all. I grabbed my magic again, and the same thing happened. After a moment, I let go of my power completely. I didn’t want to waste what little I had left.

  “A vampire sucking out someone’s magic is one of the few things that even I can’t heal,” Jo-Jo said. “I’m sorry, Gin. I wish I could fix it for you like I did everything else.”

  I shrugged, struggling not to let her see just how upset I was, how hollow and empty I felt without my magic. “You did the best you could. It’s not your fault. Believe me, I’m plenty grateful for everything you did heal.”

  I hesitated. “But how long will it take? For my magic to come back? Will it even . . . come back?”

  Jo-Jo reached over and clasped my hand. “Of course it will come back. No matter what, your magic is a part of you, Gin. It comes from you, not anyone else. Never doubt that.”

  Her words made some of the tightness in my chest ease.

  “As for exactly when it will come back . . .” This time, Jo-Jo shrugged. “It’s hard to say. It will probably take a few days, at the very least.”

  My stomach clenched. “That long?”

  Jo-Jo nodded. “You’re a strong elemental, Gin, with a lot of raw power, but Dekes took almost everything you had last night. Your blood, your magic, and almost your life. Your neck was the worse mess that I’ve seen a vampire make in a long time.”

  My fingers eased over to my neck, but the skin there was smooth and unbroken, and I knew there wouldn’t be any marks of Dekes’s vicious attack on me—not on the outside, anyway. But the vamp had hurt me more than I would have liked to admit, making me feel something that I didn’t often experience—fear.

  The image of him rose up in my mind, his eyes glowing with my Ice and Stone magic, my blood smeared all over his lips, his fangs gleaming like crimson-coated daggers in his mouth. Phantom pain lanced through my neck, and my whole body tightened, as if the vamp were here and getting ready to sink his teeth into me again.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” Jo-Jo asked in a soft voice.

  Despite how tightly I held on to my emotions, the dwarf could always sense when I was struggling with something—that’s how well she knew me.

  I shifted on the bed. “The bastard gnawed on my neck like a dog chewing a bone. He hurt me, Jo-Jo. More than I thought he would, more than I thought he could. I didn’t think there was anyone as powerful as Mab, but Dekes showed me just how wrong I was last night. I stupidly thought I could go in and take care of him as easily as I did his men at the hotel, but he almost killed me instead. Hell, he would have killed me if I hadn’t managed to play dead. It was just dumb luck on my part that I got away from him.”

  “Your fight with Mab was a long time coming,” Jo-Jo said, her clear eyes locking with my gray ones. “You’ve focused so much energy on her these past few months that you’ve turned a blind eye to everything else. The fact is that there are people out there who are just as dangerous as Mab ever was, some of them with magic, and some of them without. The Fire elemental dying at your hands doesn’t change that.”

  “So what do I do about it?” I asked, feeling just as lost as if I were still plodding through the dark marsh.

  Jo-Jo smiled and patted my hand. “You do what you always do, darling. You keep going and fighting and struggling—and then you take the bastard down any way you can.”

  The dwarf got up and started moving around the room, humming under her breath as she gathered up some clean towels and clothes so I could take a shower and wash the rest of the stink of the long night off me. I sat there on the bed and watched her work, turning over her words in my mind.

  Jo-Jo was right. I’d been so focused on Mab that I’d forgotten that someone didn’t have to be an elemental to be dangerous—and that a vampire could kill me as easily as anyone else could. Whether I liked it or not, Dekes had almost done the deed so many others had tried to do and failed. But even worse, the vampire had scared me. I’d accepted that Mab would probably get the best of me, but I hadn’t thought Dekes would be such a threat, that he could come so close to killing me. The vampire had proved to me just how wrong I’d been. Sure, I’d had something of a deadline, given Callie’s situation, but I’d been stupid, arrogant, and sloppy even to waltz into his mansion without more information, especially about what kind of elemental magic he did or didn’t have, and I’d almost paid the ultimate price for my foolishness.

>   But if there was one thing I was good at, it was learning from my mistakes. Yes, Dekes had gotten the best of me last night, but I was still alive, still breathing, which meant I still had another chance to take the vamp down.

  Jo-Jo might have healed my wounds from Dekes’s gruesome bites, but the horror that I’d endured at the vampire’s hands had still scarred me. The vicious brutality of his attack had left its own grooves and nicks on my black heart, right alongside the ones that Mab, LaFleur, Elliot Slater, and so many others had before.

  But I’d repaid those marks in spades to the people who’d caused them—and I was going to do the same thing to Dekes very, very soon.

  I got out of bed, took a shower, and put on some clean clothes. I still felt a little tired, the way I always did whenever Jo-Jo used her Air magic to bring me back from the brink of death. It would take my mind a few hours to play catch-up and realize that my body was whole and well once more. Normally, I would have gone back to bed for a few more hours, but I couldn’t rest today.

  Not while Callie was still in danger. Not while Vanessa and her sister were still being held hostage at the vampire’s mansion. Not while Randall Dekes was still breathing. I’d rest after the vamp was dead.

  It was going to be sooner than he’d ever fucking dreamed.

  It was noon now, and the others were waiting in the downstairs living room, staring out at the ocean without really seeing the waves or the bright, sunny beauty of the day. They all jumped to their feet when I came into the room, and Owen immediately wrapped his arms around me, holding me tight. I buried my face in his neck and breathed in, letting his scent fill my nose.

  “I was so worried about you,” he whispered.

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  I didn’t tell him that something like this wouldn’t happen again because we both knew it would. Like it or not, violence was a part of my life. It had been ever since I was thirteen, and it wouldn’t stop now just because Mab was dead. But I was the Spider, and Fletcher had trained me to face whatever the world threw my way. He’d made me strong enough to do it time and time again, to take my licks and come back even tougher and more determined than before. I wasn’t about to disappoint the old man now, even if he was dead and gone.