Deadly Sting

by Jennifer Estep

  I shrugged. “Just taking it day by day. Although coming here tonight and seeing Owen with someone else hasn’t exactly done wonders for my confidence that we can work through our issues.”

  The vampire stared across the room, studying the couple. “Oh, she’s definitely interested in him, all right. Anyone can see that from her body language, the way she’s smiling at him, how close she’s standing to him, the way she’s keeping hold of his arm as they wander around the room. But I don’t think Owen is into her at all.”

  “Why not?”

  She turned back to me. “Because he keeps sneaking looks at you.”

  Hope surged through me at her words—bright, beautiful, shining hope. But then I heard Jillian laugh and Owen chuckling along with her, and the happy emotion was snuffed out like a candle flame being doused by a blizzard. Owen might be looking in my direction every once in a while, but he was still here with another woman.

  “It’ll be okay, Gin,” Roslyn said, picking up on my darkening mood. “You’ll see. You and Owen care about each other too much not to work things out eventually.”

  I let out a breath. “Even though I killed his first love?”

  The vampire shrugged her slender shoulders. For all she knew about men and women, even she couldn’t answer that.

  And neither could I.

  5

  Roslyn gave my arm a sympathetic squeeze, then moved off to talk to a male vampire who was waving at her.

  That left me standing alone with Finn. Somehow, while I’d been talking to Roslyn, he’d managed to snag a whole tray of hors d’oeuvres from one of the female waiters. In addition to the deep-fried macaroni, he was also scarfing down baked phyllo cups stuffed with creamy gourmet chicken-apple salad, pineapple boats piled high with a light, airy mixture of cream cheese and toasted slivered almonds, and mini fruit tarts topped with fresh blackberries, raspberries, and strawberries.

  “You should make these mac-and-cheese things at the restaurant,” Finn said, popping another one into his mouth. “Because they are absolutely divine.”

  I grabbed one off the tray and bit into it. The crust was crispy, buttery, and golden brown, while the inside was the perfect temperature—not too hot to burn your tongue but warm enough that the sharp cheddar cheese still melted in your mouth.

  “Not bad,” I said after I’d finished it. “But they could use some more cheese and a bit of spicy kick in the filling. A dash or two of cayenne pepper or maybe even a sprinkle of cumin to give it some smoky heat.”

  Finn huffed. “Well, I think they’re pretty good just the way they are. If you’re going to criticize, then I’m eating the rest of them.”

  “Knock yourself out.”

  One by one, Finn devoured every single thing on the tray. When it was empty, he looked mournfully at the crumbs on the smooth silver surface, his mouth turning down into a pout. Then a waiter passed by with another tray of champagne, and Finn perked right back up. He bowed and gallantly handed the empty tray to the waiter in exchange for a glass of bubbly.

  “Now, on to more important matters,” Finn said, after his thirst had been quenched. He stabbed his finger in Owen’s direction. “Sandy and Samantha are going to hear all about this little fashion faux pas.”

  I frowned. “What do you mean? Who are you talking about?”

  “The two saleswomen at the Posh boutique. Sandy was the blonde, Samantha was the redhead,” Finn said. “Don’t you remember?”

  I shook my head. I hadn’t bothered to get their names. I figured saving them from the robber was good enough.

  “Well, they assured me that your dress was an original, an absolute one-of-a-kind. In fact, they swore up one side and down the other that you were the only person to ever even try it on, so I happily let you pay their outrageous price for it.”

  “How noble of you.”

  Finn pretended not to hear my snide words and went right on with his rant. “But now here’s some other sweet young thing wearing your dress at the biggest event of the summer. And not just any other woman but the one who came waltzing in on Owen’s arm.” He fumed for a moment. “Oh, yes, Sandy and Samantha are going to be getting a very harsh phone call from me Monday morning.”

  “It’s just a dress. So another woman has on the same one. So what?”

  His mouth dropped open, and he looked at me in horror. “Please tell me that those words did not just come out of your mouth. It is not just a dress—it is your dress. At least, I thought it was. Sandy and Samantha assured me that it was. They are going to be very, very sorry they misled me.”

  Finn went on a tear then, pacing back and forth, gesturing wildly with his champagne glass, and talking all about how he was going to take his fashion wrath out on the two saleswomen for daring to sell my dress to another woman.

  I just sighed and listened to him rant. No matter how long I knew him, I didn’t think that I would ever fully figure out or understand the inner workings of the mercurial mind of Finnegan Lane.

  * * *

  Finn eventually wound down, and the two of us strolled around the rotunda, but I couldn’t concentrate on the showcase of Mab’s loot. Two things were on my mind: how I could come back later and steal my family’s runes, and Owen and Jillian.

  The first one wouldn’t be too much of a problem. Other than the plethora of giant guards working tonight, security at the museum didn’t seem all that tight. Oh, I was sure there were some lasers, alarms, and other hidden measures that would snap on when the lights went out, but there weren’t nearly as many cameras as there should have been in the museum, and it would be easy enough for me to stroll through their blind spots. Nothing I couldn’t handle.

  As for Owen and Jillian, I kept watching the two of them out of the corners of my eyes. Laughing, talking, drinking champagne. They seemed to be having a good time together. But more than once, my eyes met Owen’s, and it was all I could do to look away. But then, two minutes later, my gaze would find his again.

  If I stayed in the rotunda, I’d just keep staring at Owen, so I decided to leave. Besides, several of the underworld bosses were still eyeing me with hostile intent, and I was tired of their murderous glances.

  “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” I told Finn. “I need some air.”

  He was now talking to a petite vampire wearing an emerald choker and a matching tiara. He waved a distracted hand at me, telling me that he’d be fine on his own. Of course he would. Finn had never met a stranger.

  I shook my head and left the exhibit room. I hadn’t noticed before, but the crush of people inside the rotunda had raised the temperature in there by several degrees, and the cool, drafty air outside felt good against my flushed cheeks. I wandered from one hallway to the next, looking at all the objects on display. I hadn’t taken an art class in a while, but I began to think that maybe I should mix it up and try painting or some sort of sculpture course next semester, instead of another literature class.

  All of the art was housed on the first, main floor of the museum, and I roamed from one wing to the next and back again. The upper levels had all been closed off for the gala, but there wasn’t much to see in them, anyway, just staff offices, spaces for artists to work, and rooms where paintings and more were being slowly, lovingly restored and authenticated.

  The rotunda was in the front of the main wing of the museum, and it took me a while to make a full circuit through all of the hallways that curved around it. I passed a few more giants in my wanderings, but there weren’t nearly as many guards out here as there had been in the rotunda. Eventually, I wound up back where I started, standing in the entrance that led to the exhibit of Mab’s things. Since I wasn’t ready to go in and look for Finn just yet, I headed for the bathroom.

  Like everything else at Briartop, the bathroom was done on a grand, impressive scale. Several white crushed-velvet settees and matching overstuffed chairs had been arranged in the outer powder room, while the bathroom itself featured more gray marble, along with silver faucets and o
val-shaped, silver gilded mirrors. A tangle of briars and brambles curving around a fancy letter B—the museum’s rune—had been etched into the edges of the glass, adding to the mirrors’ slick, glossy elegance.

  I went into a stall, did my lady business, and came back out. A couple of women finished washing their hands and left, leaving me alone. I washed my hands, then leaned forward and peered at my reflection.

  On the outside, I looked as calm as ever—distant, remote, cold even. I wondered if I was the only one who could see the purple smudges under my eyes, the ones the makeup couldn’t quite hide. I wondered if I was the only one who noticed the faint slump in my shoulders or the way my mouth always seemed to turn down with a hint of sadness these days.

  Because the truth was that Owen wasn’t the only one haunted by Salina’s death—I was too.

  More than once, I’d dreamed of the night I’d killed her. The sharp, curved thorns of her water magic ripping into my skin, trying to tear me apart. My desperate struggle to release enough magic to overcome hers. My elemental Ice glittering all around us like a field of cold crystal. The way Salina’s blood had spilled down her neck in a cascade of crimson teardrops.

  Killing Salina had been a necessity. She’d told me herself that she’d never quit, not until she’d taken her revenge on everyone she thought had wronged her. And that she’d never stop loving Owen or trying to win him back by any means necessary—including murdering me.

  Yes, killing her was something that just had to be done, but it didn’t make the memories any easier to bear.

  Because there was a second twisted truth to this situation, one that kept me up late brooding into the dark of the night: the fact that I was more like Salina than I cared to admit. Cold, brutal, ruthless. And I’d done some of the same things she had over the years, like killing people for revenge, or money, or because letting them live just didn’t fit into my plans.

  Maybe Owen was right to keep his distance from me. Maybe it would be better for both of us if I went ahead and ended our relationship for good. That way, at least maybe he could move on, even if I couldn’t—

  The door erupted open with such force that it almost banged against the marble wall before a hand reached out and stopped it at the last second. My head snapped to the right. Thoughts of Salina still filled my mind, and for a crazy moment, I thought the water elemental was coming after me again, or at least her ghost was.

  But it wasn’t Salina who stepped into the bathroom—it was the giant waiter who’d spoken to me earlier. Curly auburn hair, hazel eyes, nice features. The same waiter who’d been hovering nearby while McAllister and I had been insulting each other.

  The giant realized that I was watching her. Maybe it was the hard, flat stare I gave her, but she hesitated a moment before stepping into the bathroom and letting the door swing shut behind her.

  “Sorry about the door,” she said, a slightly sheepish tone in her twangy voice. “It got away from me.”

  I didn’t respond. All giants were strong, but she’d practically ripped the door out of its frame in her haste to get in here. And she’d pulled at least one of the hinges loose, since the door didn’t quite line up with the wall anymore.

  Given her seeming urgency, I expected the giant to scurry into a stall, but instead, she meandered over to one of the sinks and turned on the faucet. For a moment, the only sound was the steady hiss of water streaming over her hands.

  “Lovely night, isn’t it?” she said.

  “Just gorgeous,” I muttered.

  The giant quickly washed her hands and dried them, before throwing her used paper towel into the silver trash container. I’d thought she’d go back out to the party, but instead, she turned to look at me again. She stared at me for another second before smiling and leaving the bathroom. The door shut behind her, once again not quite closing the way it should.

  Well, that had certainly been odd. But since the giant hadn’t pulled a gun out of her pants pocket, come at me with clenched fists, or otherwise tried to end my existence, I put her out of my mind and turned back to the mirror.

  I was staring at my reflection and brooding once more when the door opened again a few seconds later. Only this time, it wasn’t the giant who stepped through—it was Jillian Delancey. Of course. Because that was just my kind of luck.

  Jillian stopped when she saw me standing in front of the mirrors. I wondered if she was as offended by the fact that we were both wearing the same dress as Finn was, but I decided not to be rude and ask.

  “Oh,” she said. “Hello again . . .”

  “Gin,” I said, when it became apparent that she didn’t remember my name. “Like the liquor.”

  “Gin. Right.”

  Jillian walked over and put her small black beaded clutch down on the counter. Even though Finn had made me buy a purse to match my dress, I hadn’t bothered bringing it inside the museum. I had my knives. That was all I needed.

  Jillian opened up her clutch and pulled out a tube of scarlet lipstick, along with a small compact so she could touch up her face.

  I washed my hands again, just to have something to do, and I took my sweet time drying them off. Finally, Jillian finished with her makeup. She put everything back into her bag, snapped the top shut, and headed toward the door. But just before she reached it, she turned around and faced me.

  “So,” she said. “Do I need to be worried about you and Owen?”

  “Me and Owen?”

  She hesitated. “When I came over to the two of you earlier, it looked like you were both . . . involved in something.”

  I didn’t know that we were involved, so much as feeling awkward with each other, but I could imagine how we must have looked to her, each one of us staring at the other, pain and tension glinting in our eyes.

  “No,” I said. “We weren’t involved in anything except a nice little chat. Owen and I are old friends.”

  That’s what I’d introduced myself as to her before, and that’s what I was going with now, since it was far less complicated than the truth. I’d hoped that would be enough to satisfy her, but Jillian kept staring at me, her brown eyes dark and thoughtful.

  “So I’m not encroaching on your territory, then?” she asked in a blunt tone. “Because I’m not the kind of woman who goes around trying to poach men who are already involved with someone else. And I especially don’t like being anybody’s rebound fling.”

  I arched an eyebrow. “Well, that’s a colorful way of putting things.”

  She shrugged, but she lifted her chin and kept her eyes steady on mine. I admired her for that—I admired her a lot for that. It took moxy to confront your date’s ex, or whatever I was these days, and ask her point-blank what was going on. So I decided to be polite about things.

  “Owen’s a big boy,” I said. “His actions are his own—and so are mine.”

  Jillian frowned, clearly not understanding my words, but I didn’t feel like explaining them to her. I wasn’t quite sure what I meant myself. But if she wanted to make a play for Owen and he decided to move on with her, I wasn’t going to stand in their way. I owed Owen that much—her too. No matter how much it hurt.

  “What I’m trying to say is that I hope you have a nice night,” I said. “With or without Owen.”

  She nodded, accepting my words. What she really thought about them and me, I couldn’t tell, but they seemed to ease her mind.

  “Well, I guess I should be getting back to the party,” she said. “I believe Mr. McAllister is about to start his speech.”

  “Oh,” I drawled. “You certainly wouldn’t want to miss that.”

  Finn had told me that sometime during the evening McAllister and a few of the muckety-mucks who were on the Briartop board were going to talk about what a wonderful benefactor of the arts Mab had been, how much she’d supported the museum throughout the years, and how generous it was of her to endow Briartop with her art collection postmortem. Lies, lies, and more lies, all the way around. The only things Mab had ever gen
erously dished out had been pain, misery, and suffering, courtesy of her Fire magic.

  If that was what was next on the agenda, I’d be quite happy staying in the bathroom until all the pretty speeches were over with. I’d rather scrub my hands until they were red, raw, cracked, and bleeding than listen to people prattle on about how damn noble the Fire elemental had supposedly been. And I certainly wasn’t going to raise a glass of champagne and toast Mab with it. Especially not now, when I’d discovered that she’d had my mother’s and Annabella’s rune necklaces all these years—

  “Anyway, it was nice seeing you again, Gin,” Jillian said, cutting into my dark thoughts. “You have excellent taste in clothes. And men.”

  She was trying to make a joke and lighten the mood, so I forced myself to laugh, hoping she wouldn’t notice how tight and hollow the sound really was. “You too.”

  Jillian smiled at me a final time, then opened the bathroom door and headed out into the powder room. But the door didn’t quite shut behind her, and I watched her through the wide gap. Jillian walked through the powder room, opened the exterior door, and stepped through to the other side. That door was just swinging shut behind her when she jerked and let out a small, startled gasp, then—

  Pfft! Pfft! Pfft!

  The sounds were soft, no more than harsh whispers, but they made me reach for one of my knives all the same.

  Because unless I was mistaken, someone had just been shot with a silenced gun.

  6

  The first thing I did was toe off my shoes so the heels wouldn’t clack against the marble floor. At the same time, I reached through a slit in my skirt. I’d just stepped out of my second shoe when my hand closed around one of the two knives I had strapped to my thighs. I slid the weapon free and pulled open the interior door just wide enough for me to slip into the powder room. Then I tiptoed over to the exterior door. I stood there, head cocked toward the heavy wood, but I didn’t hear anything else.

  But there was a pane of glass that served as a vent in the top of the door, so I picked up one of the white velvet chairs, carried it over to the door, and climbed up onto the seat so I could see through the glass.