“Shut up,” I muttered.
As the speaker droned on, my wintry gray gaze swept over the park, and I thought about the last time I’d been here—and the men I’d killed. A vampire and a couple of giants, some of Mab’s minions, who were torturing and about to murder an innocent bartender before I’d intervened. The seesaws, the swing sets, the merry-go-round, the lawn. Men had died all over this park, and I’d even drawn my rune in one of the sandboxes in a dare to Mab to come find me, the Spider, the elusive assassin who was causing her such consternation.
And now here I was again, months later, confronted with the next Monroe who wanted to do me in.
Sometimes I wondered if I could ever really escape the past and all the consequences of it. Mab murdering my mother and my older sister, then trying to kill me and my younger sister, Bria, leaving me alone, injured, and homeless. Fletcher Lane, Finn’s dad, taking me in and training me to be an assassin. My finally killing Mab earlier this year. All the underworld bosses who’d been trying to murder me ever since then.
The city official finally wrapped up his tediously long speech and gestured at Madeline. She stepped forward, reached up, and took hold of a long black rope attached to an enormous white cloth that had been draped over the wrought-iron gate that arched over the park entrance. Madeline smiled at the crowd, pausing just a moment for dramatic effect, before she yanked on the rope, ripping away the cloth, while giving an elaborate flourish with her free hand.
Fancy, curlicued letters spelled out the new name in the black metal arch: Monroe Memorial Park.
I glared up at the sign, wishing I had one of the blacksmith hammers that my lover, Owen Grayson, used in his forge, so I could kneecap the gate, send it crashing to the ground, and then knock out each and every one of those damn letters in the toothy smile of the arch. Especially the ones in Monroe.
But of course, I couldn’t do that. Not now. Maybe late tonight, when the park was nice and deserted, and there was no one around to see me vent my pent-up rage on an innocent sign.
This wasn’t the first dedication I’d attended in the past few weeks. After finally making her grand appearance in Ashland back in September, Madeline had wasted no time in claiming her millions in inheritance as M.M. Monroe, moving into Mab’s mansion, and letting everyone know that she intended to pick up all of her mother’s business interests, legitimate and otherwise.
I didn’t know exactly what her master plan was, but Madeline had set about ingratiating herself with all sorts of civic, charitable, and municipal groups, saying she wanted to continue all of the good works her mother had funded while she was alive. Of course, she was lying through her perfect teeth, since Madeline was no more charitable than her mama had been. But if there was one thing that folks in Ashland responded to, it was cold, hard cash—or at least the promise of it.
And so the dedications had begun. A wing at the Briartop art museum, the new train station, several bridges, a good chunk of the interstate that wrapped around the downtown loop, and now this park. Every few days, it seemed like someone was engraving, chiseling, painting, broadcasting, or proclaiming something else in Mab’s name at dear, dutiful daughter Madeline’s teary and oh-so-grateful requests.
And I’d been to every single breakfast, luncheon, dinner, tea party, cocktail hour, coffee klatch, barbecue, and fish fry, trying to figure out what my new enemy was up to. But Madeline was an excellent actress; all she did was smile and make small talk and preen for the cameras. Every once in a while, I would catch her staring at me, a small smile playing across her lips, as though my obvious stakeouts were amusing her. Well, that made one of us.
Of course, I had Finn digging into Madeline, trying to find out everything he could about her past, her personal life, and her finances, in hopes that there might be a clue somewhere to what she was planning for me and the rest of the Ashland underworld. But so far, Finn hadn’t been able to find anything out of the ordinary. Neither had Silvio Sanchez, my new self-proclaimed personal assistant.
She had no criminal history. No massive debt load. No large cash withdrawals from her bank accounts. No sudden, hostile takeovers of any businesses—legal and otherwise—that Mab had once owned. And perhaps most telling of all, no late-night hush-hush meetings with the underworld bosses.
Yet.
Still, I knew that Madeline had some sort of scheme in mind for me. Impending evil always made my spider rune scars itch in warning—and anticipation of turning the tables on my enemies.
Usually, Madeline ignored me at the dedications, but apparently, she wanted to chitchat today, because she shook hands with the official, then strolled in my direction. And she wasn’t alone.
Two people followed Madeline. One of them was a giant bodyguard dressed in a white silk shirt and a black pantsuit, around seven feet tall, with light hazel eyes and a sleek bob of golden hair that curled under at the ends. The sun had reddened her milky cheeks, giving her skin a bit of hot, ruddy color and darkening the faint freckles that dotted her face. The other was a much shorter man, clutching a silverstone briefcase in front of him and dressed in a light gray suit that was even slicker and more expensive than Finn’s. A lion’s mane of hair wrapped around his head, the arches, dips, and waves as pretty and perfect as icing decorating a cake. His elegant silver coif hinted at his sixty-something age, despite the tight, tan, unlined skin of his face.
Emery Slater and Jonah McAllister. Emery was the niece of Elliot Slater, who’d been Mab’s number one giant enforcer before I’d taken credit for killing him, while Jonah had been Mab’s personal lawyer and someone whose many crimes I’d taken great pleasure in exposing back during the summer. Needless to say, there was plenty of hate to go around among the three of us.
“Incoming,” Finn murmured, straightening up, pushing away from the tree, and moving to stand beside me.
Madeline stopped in front of me, with Emery and Jonah flanking her. The giant and the lawyer both shot me icy glares, but Madeline’s features were warm and welcoming as she sidled a little closer to me, a serene smile stretched across her face.
“Why, Gin Blanco,” she purred. “How good of you to come out to my little dedication today. And looking so . . . spiffy.”
I wore what I always wore: black boots, dark jeans, and a long-sleeved black T-shirt. Next to Madeline and her crisp white suit, I resembled one of the hobos who sometimes slept in this park. Madeline might seem all sweetness and light on the outside, but on the inside, I knew that her heart was as full of venom and as vicious as mine.
“Why, Madeline,” I drawled right back at her. “You know that I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”
“Yes,” she murmured. “You do seem rather fond of popping up everywhere I go.”
“Well, you can hardly blame me for that. It’s always so very lovely to see someone of Mab’s stature honored in such small but touching ways.”
Madeline’s lips quirked again, as if she were having trouble holding back her laughter at my blatant lie. Yeah. Me too.
“Funny thing, though,” I said. “You know what I’ve noticed? That Mab’s name isn’t actually on anything. It’s always just ‘Monroe Memorial this’ and ‘Monroe Memorial that.’ Why, if I didn’t know better, I’d almost think that you were going around town putting your name on everything. Instead of your dearly departed mama’s.”
Finn chuckled. Emery and Jonah shifted their cold stares to him, but Finn kept laughing, completely immune to their dirty looks. He was rather incorrigible that way.
Madeline’s green eyes crinkled a bit at the corners, as if she were having to work to maintain her sunny smile. “I think that you’re mistaken, Gin. I’m honoring my mother exactly the way that she would have wanted me to.”
“And I think that you have as little love for your dead mama as I do,” I said. “You couldn’t care less about what she would have wanted.”
Anger flashed in Madeline’s eyes, making them flare an even brighter, more vibrant green, the same intense, wic
ked color as the acid that she could summon with just a wave of her French-manicured hand. She didn’t like me calling her out on her true feelings for her mother, and she especially didn’t like the fact that I’d pointed out that the dedications were all about her ego, not Mab’s.
Good. I wanted to make her angry. I wanted to piss her off. I wanted to rile her up so much that she couldn’t even see straight, much less think straight, especially when it came to me. Because that’s when she would make a mistake, and I could finally figure out what her endgame was and how I could stop it before she destroyed everything and everyone I cared about.
“But who am I to judge?” I drawled on. “I wouldn’t care either, not if she had been my mother. I guess it’s one of those little things that we’ll just have to agree to disagree on.”
Madeline blinked, and she forced her crimson lips to lift a little higher. “You know, I think that you’re right. We are just destined to agree to disagree—about a great many things.”
We stared each other down, our stances casual and our features perfectly pleasant but with a deadly, dangerous coldness lurking just below the smooth surfaces.
“Anyway, I’m afraid I must be going,” Madeline said, breaking the silence. “I have another dedication to prepare for tomorrow. This one’s at the library downtown.”
“I’ll be there with bells on.”
“No,” she said in a pleased voice. “I don’t think you will. But I do thank you for coming out here today, Gin. As you said, it’s always so very lovely to see you.”
Madeline smirked at me, then pivoted on her stiletto and moved back toward the podium, shaking hands and thanking everyone for their support and well wishes. Emery and Jonah each gave me one more hostile glare before they trailed after her. Soon the three of them were in the heart of the crowd, with Finn and me standing by ourselves underneath the maple.
“She really is something,” Finn said in an admiring tone, his eyes locked onto Madeline’s lithe, gorgeous figure.
Despite the fact that he was involved with Bria, Finn was still a shameless flirt who loved to charm every woman who crossed his path. He would never do that with Madeline, for obvious reasons, but that didn’t keep him from ogling her for all he was worth. I scoffed and rolled my eyes.
“What?” he protested. “She’s like a black widow spider. I can admire the beauty of such a creature, even if I know exactly how deadly it is.”
“Only you would think that being eaten during your postcoital bliss would be worth it.”
Finn shrugged, then flashed me a mischievous grin. “But what a way to go.”
He stared at Madeline another moment before looking over the rest of the crowd. He must have spotted someone he knew, perhaps one of the clients at his bank, because he waved, murmured an excuse to me, and headed in the direction of a wizened old dwarf who was wearing a large pink sun hat and an even larger diamond solitaire that could have had its own zip code. Finn never missed an opportunity to mix business with pleasure, and a moment later, he was attached to the dwarf’s side, having winked and wiggled his way past the female giant serving as her bodyguard. Finn gave the elderly woman a charming smile as he bent down and pressed a dainty kiss to her brown, wrinkled hand. Well, at least he was an equal opportunity flirt.
But I continued to watch Madeline, who was still shaking hands and was now standing directly below the arch that bore her family’s name. Maybe it was the way the sun was hitting the metal, but the word Monroe seemed to flicker and gleam with a particularly intense, sinister light, as though it were made out of some sort of black fire, instead of just sturdy old iron.
Madeline noticed me staring at her and gave me another haughty, pleased smirk before turning her back and ignoring me completely. Emery and Jonah did the same, moving to flank their boss again.
All I could do was stand there and watch my enemy have a grand old time, basking in the warm glow of everyone’s collective, attentive goodwill.
Maybe I was wrong when I told Finn that being eaten was the worst part.
Maybe waiting for the black widow to kill you was the real torture.
PHOTO © ANDRE TEAGUE
JENNIFER ESTEP is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author prowling the streets of her imagination in search of her next fantasy idea. Spider’s Bite, Web of Lies, Venom, Tangled Threads, Spider’s Revenge, By a Thread, Widow’s Web, Deadly Sting, Heart of Venom, and The Spider, along with the e-shorts Thread of Death, Parlor Tricks, and Kiss of Venom, are the other works in her red-hot Elemental Assassin urban fantasy series. Jennifer is also the author of the Mythos Academy young adult urban fantasy series and the Bigtime paranormal romance series. For more on Jennifer and her books, visit her at www.jenniferestep.com and @Jennifer_Estep.
FOR MORE ON THIS AUTHOR: authors.simonandschuster.com/Jennifer-Estep
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BOOKS IN THE ELEMENTAL ASSASSIN SERIES BY JENNIFER ESTEP
Spider’s Bite
Web of Lies
Venom
Tangled Threads
Spider’s Revenge
By a Thread
Widow’s Web
Deadly Sting
Heart of Venom
The Spider
Poison Promise
Black Widow
E-SHORTS
Thread of Death
Parlor Tricks (in the Carniepunk anthology)
Kiss of Venom
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 by Jennifer Estep
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First Pocket Books paperback edition August 2014
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ISBN 978-1-4767-7150-2
ISBN 978-1-4767-7152-6 (ebook)
Poison Promise Page 32