Sharpest Sting

by Jennifer Estep

Just like Fletcher had been a stranger to me.

  All sorts of unwanted, unwelcome feelings bubbled up inside me, but I pushed them down just like I had done all afternoon long. I trudged over and sat down in the old man’s chair, as though everything was normal, as though everything was fine. I laid the sapphire paperweight on the desk next to the bottle of gin, then opened the two folders and got to work.

  Even though I’d already seen the information on my father’s death, I studied the photos much more carefully this time. Bria had asked me how Stone magic could be used in such a violent, vicious manner, and now I had time to really think about it. How much force, how much power, how much raw magic and ugly determination it would take to break someone’s bones and then crush and twist and yank them so far out of place.

  The answer? Quite a lot of magic—and much, much more power than I had.

  I also coldly, calmly, ruthlessly considered how much pain doing such things would cause the victim. Breaking a bone hurt plenty on its own, but then having those bones crushed and forcibly pulled even farther apart…it would be excruciating.

  Tristan must have suffered so much.

  My stomach roiled, but I poured myself some gin and quickly downed it. The lukewarm liquor slid down my throat and exploded into that sweet, slow burn in my stomach. The gin drowned out the worst of the nausea, so I kept going. Clinically analyzing the horrible ways Mason had tortured my father was definitely morbid and gruesome, but maybe if I knew exactly how Mason used his magic, then I could figure out a way to defeat him.

  But nothing came to me. No answers, no ideas, no sparks, glimmers, or shimmers of hope. Nothing.

  I had felt Mason’s magic earlier, and he had so much pure, raw power that I knew I couldn’t go toe to toe with him. Not elemental-to-elemental in a duel to the death, as people were so fond of doing in Ashland. Mason would crush me the same way he had crushed my father.

  If I had any hope of beating him, killing him, then I had to be smarter than Mason, and not just when it came to my magic—I also had to outthink him.

  I’d already taken a step in that direction by hiring Liam Carter. I still didn’t know if Liam would hold up his end of our bargain, but at least I’d given myself a fighting chance, just like Jo-Jo had said earlier.

  So I sat there, drank some more gin, and forced myself to think about how I could possibly survive a full-frontal assault by Mason if—when—it came down to that.

  The first thing I did was pick up the sapphire paperweight. The gemstone had been in a box of Mab’s things that I’d bought at the recent auction at the Eaton Estate. When I’d initially found the sapphire, I’d thought it odd that Mab would have something that emanated so much Stone magic, since the invisible waves of power would have been a constant annoyance to a Fire elemental like herself. Of course, now I realized that Mason had coated the sapphire with his magic and given it to Mab, probably as a warning about how much power he had and to stay in line—or else.

  I played around with the sapphire for several minutes, seeing how the Stone magic already coating it reacted to my own. I’d thought Mason’s power might mix badly with mine, but I should have known better. After all, my uncle and I were gifted in the same element and were from the same bloodline. The sapphire’s color actually brightened at my probing it with my magic, as if it was eager to soak up my power and add it to Mason’s.

  The only thing the sapphire didn’t like was when I switched gears and coated it with my Ice magic. The gemstone shrieked in protest as the cold crystals engulfed it, although the layer of elemental Ice muffled the sound. The Ice also seemed to blunt the feel of Mason’s magic, just a bit. Interesting but not particularly helpful, so I set the gemstone aside.

  I swallowed the rest of my gin and poured myself another glass. When I was properly fortified, I let out a breath and slowly cracked open the folder that chronicled Fletcher’s relationship with Mason.

  Once again, the first thing I saw was that photo of Fletcher and Mason grinning at each other inside the Pork Pit.

  The sight turned my stomach, just as it had earlier, but I grabbed the photo, tilted it toward the light, and studied every little thing about it. There wasn’t much to see. Fletcher and Mason smiling widely, as though they were best friends, inside the blurry confines of the restaurant.

  I set that photo aside and flipped through the others, but it was more of the same. More images of the two men and no real clues in any of them—except for the last photo.

  The final picture showed Fletcher and Mason standing in the woods, although I couldn’t tell where it might have been taken. Still, this image was a bit different from the others. For one thing, Fletcher looked older than he had in the first photo. For another, he wasn’t smiling. Hmm.

  I opened the center desk drawer and rummaged around until I found Fletcher’s old magnifying glass. Then I peered through the lens at the photo, studying every little line, crease, and wrinkle on his tan face. Nothing in his features was particularly noteworthy, but I did notice something strange about the photo.

  Fletcher was wearing a suit.

  Perhaps that was why he looked so uncomfortable. The only time I’d ever seen him wear a suit was for some somber or formal occasion, like a funeral or Finn’s and my high school and college graduations. Fletcher had been far more comfortable in his old blue work clothes than anything else, but there he was, wearing a black suit jacket over a white shirt. Why?

  I looked through the magnifying glass again. Not only was Fletcher wearing a suit, but he was also sporting a tie pin. A disgusted snort erupted out of my lips. Mason must have had far more influence over the old man than I’d realized. I had never seen Fletcher wear a tie pin, or any other adornments, not even to a funeral. Finn had bought the old man a pair of silver cuff links for Christmas one year, and he’d never put them on, not even once. Then again, Finn should have known better than to give his father something like that. Suits, tie pins, and cuff links might be Finn’s style, but they definitely weren’t Fletcher’s.

  So why was he wearing them in this photo?

  I peered through the magnifying glass again. The tie pin was a small circle with several thin rays radiating out of it that made it look like…

  A spider rune.

  Surprise spiked through me. I almost dropped the photo, along with the magnifying glass, but I tightened my grip on both and looked at the image again. It was an old picture, taken well before the days of digital cameras, so the resolution wasn’t great, and I didn’t have a crystal-clear view. Fletcher’s tie pin might have been a spider rune, or it could have been some other round symbol. No way to know for sure.

  Still, the longer I stared at the photo, the more anger bubbled up inside me. Fletcher had set this whole thing up like a treasure hunt. First, I’d found a box of keepsakes he’d hidden in Deirdre Shaw’s empty casket. That discovery had eventually led me to find a note and a key buried in my mother’s grave. The key had pointed me to several safety-deposit boxes at First Trust bank that had contained information and photos of all the Circle members—except for Mason.

  Over the past few months, I’d wondered why Fletcher hadn’t included Mason’s photo with the others. This whole time, I’d thought he had been trying to spare me from the sickening discovery that my uncle had killed my father and ordered Mab Monroe to execute my mother, my sisters, and me. Now I finally knew the whole dirty, unvarnished truth. Fletcher hadn’t been trying to protect me.

  He’d been trying to protect himself.

  Fletcher Lane worked for the Circle…

  Fletcher worked for…

  Fletcher…

  Mason’s sly voice echoed in my mind over and over again. Each and every one of his words was like a sharp sting in my heart, but what hurt the most wasn’t that Fletcher had worked for Mason and killed people for the Circle. No, I could forgive him for those sins, for being lost in the fog of his anger, grief, embarrassment, and confusion over Deirdre’s dark nature, just as Jo-Jo had said earlier. />
  What I couldn’t forgive was Fletcher keeping this information to himself. He’d hidden the truth about what had really happened to my parents, and he’d never told me about the very real threat that Mason posed to me and everyone I cared about. I’d trusted the old man with my life, with my love, respect, and devotion, and it was the cruelest irony that he hadn’t done the same.

  Fletcher hadn’t trusted me with anything—and that was the sharpest sting of all.

  The anger pounding through my body doubled, tripled in size and kept right on growing and growing, until my heart felt like it was about to explode right out of my chest. I glanced over at the framed photo of Fletcher sitting on the desk. I couldn’t stand to look at his smiling face right now, so I slapped the frame away. It skidded sideways, toppled over, and landed facedown on the desk.

  That one soft thump seemed to boom as loudly as a sledgehammer cracking against a concrete block, and the sound blasted through the icy dam I’d built around the turbulent emotions churning inside my heart.

  Suddenly, I couldn’t stand the sight of the two glasses and the bottle of gin on the desk, so I slapped them away too. They flew off the edge and hit the floor with three loud, distinct, satisfying crack-crack-cracks. The caustic scent of the gin filled the air, burning almost as hot as my rage.

  Next, I slapped the two manila folders off the desk, and they both landed among the broken glass and spilled liquor.

  One by one, I snatched up the autopsy report and other papers dealing with my father’s murder, crumpled them into tight balls, and threw them aside as well.

  Finally, I came to the photos. I shoved them off the side of the desk en masse and watched while they dropped on top of the rest of the mess on the floor. Naturally, the photo of Fletcher and Mason inside the Pork Pit landed faceup, their happy smiles mocking my own rage, grief, heartbreak, and misery—

  “Gin?” a soft voice called out.

  My head snapped up. Owen was standing in the office doorway, a concerned look on his face.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  No. Of course not. I didn’t know if I would ever be okay again. But I couldn’t let him know that. I couldn’t let anyone know that. Not when we were in so much danger. Not when I needed to be strong for everyone.

  I shot to my feet, sucked down a breath, and opened my mouth to lie and say that I was fine, but my gaze darted back down to that photo of Fletcher and Mason. Instead of a calm denial, a choked sob tumbled from my lips. I staggered around the desk, my knees shaking.

  “Gin!”

  Owen hurried forward. His arms closed around me, catching me, but I didn’t have the strength to stand, and he lowered me to the floor and eased me back, so that I was leaning up against the front of Fletcher’s desk.

  Owen crouched down beside me and cupped my cheek in his hand, his thumb gently sliding across my skin. “Oh, Gin,” he murmured. “I’m sorry. So sorry.”

  Once again, I tried to smile, lie, and say that I was fine, but all that came out of my mouth was another one of those damn sobs. This time, I couldn’t hold the rest of them back.

  Hot tears slid down my cheeks, and great big wrenching, heaving sobs ballooned in my chest, zipped up my throat, and spewed out of my lips.

  Owen sat down on the floor, put his arms around me, and rocked me back and forth like I was a child he was trying to soothe. “It’s okay, Gin. It’s okay. I know how much it hurts. I’m right here with you. Just let it all out…”

  He kept saying those same things over and over again as I cried and cried about how Fletcher had betrayed me.

  Chapter Twelve

  I didn’t cry for long, maybe five minutes.

  Slowly, my sobs stopped, and my torrent of tears diminished to a salty trickle. I swiped the unwanted wetness off my face and focused on once again building an icy dam around the rest of my anger, grief, and heartache.

  I didn’t have time to cry—I had a ledger to find and an uncle to kill.

  “Gin?” Owen asked again. “Are you okay?”

  I pulled away from his warm, comforting embrace. “Yeah. I just needed to…let that out.”

  He gave me a sympathetic look. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  I shook my head. “You’re already doing it, just by being here, just by believing I can get us out of this mess.”

  Unlike Fletcher, my treacherous inner voice whispered, but I squashed the snide sound. I didn’t have time for it either.

  Owen gently brushed a wayward tear off my cheek. “Of course I believe in you, Gin. You’ll figure this out, just like you always do, and you’ll make Mason regret every horrible thing he ever did to your family.”

  The certainty ringing in his voice and burning in his violet eyes touched me more than I could ever say, so I grabbed his hand and pressed a kiss to the center of his palm instead. Owen curled his fingers into mine, stroking his thumb over the back of my hand, still trying to comfort me.

  Someone cleared his throat, and Silvio stepped into the office. I had never really seen my assistant after hours, out of his usual suit, and he was wearing a dark gray flannel robe over light gray silk pajamas. The only thing that ruined his man-of-leisure look was his slippers, which were neon pink and covered with sparkly black sequined hearts.

  Silvio caught me eyeing his slippers and held out one of his feet. “A Christmas present from Sophia. They are surprisingly warm and comfortable.”

  He wandered over and pretended to examine the books on the shelves, while Owen and I got to our feet, and I finished pulling myself together.

  “All right, boys,” I said when I was calm again. “Time’s a-wasting. Let’s start looking for the ledger.”

  We began in the office. This was the most logical place for Fletcher to have hidden the book, and I had found sensitive files secreted in here before. Owen and Silvio examined the filing cabinets, while I took the bookcases and the desk. Together we checked the floor, the walls, even the ceiling.

  We didn’t find anything. No ledger, no hidden files, no secret compartments, not so much as a random doodle on a piece of scrap paper.

  “I don’t think it’s in here,” Silvio said, after we’d been searching for almost an hour.

  I shoved one of the books back into its slot on the shelf. “I think you’re right. Let’s try the den.”

  We went to that part of the house. Owen and Silvio pulled the couch out from the wall and searched on that side of the room, while I put my hand on the fireplace, listening to the stones’ murmurs. But there were no secret hiding spots in the fireplace that I didn’t already know about, and the stones only whispered about the burning and smoke of the fires I had recently lit.

  Frustration filled me, but we kept going and searched the rest of the house from top to bottom. Owen, Silvio, and I squeezed the couch cushions, rapped on the furniture, jumped up and down on the floorboards, and searched a dozen other different ways, but we didn’t find anything. No ledger, no hidden files, no secret compartments, not so much as an old, misplaced grocery list.

  Finally, around one in the morning, we gave up. The ledger wasn’t in the house. No one said anything, but I could almost see the gears grinding in Owen’s and Silvio’s minds, and I knew they were thinking the same thing I was.

  If Fletcher hadn’t hidden the ledger in his own house, his sanctum, the place he felt the safest, then where was it?

  * * *

  We went back to bed, but I didn’t sleep much the rest of the night. The next morning, Thursday, I got up, took a shower, and went to the Pork Pit like usual. Silvio and I rode in his car, and we followed Owen over to his downtown office building and made sure he got inside okay.

  Once Owen was safe and secure, Silvio drove me over to the restaurant. He parked the car while I checked the front door for rune traps, bombs, and other nasty surprises an enemy might have left overnight. The storefront was clean, and I found myself staring up at the sign over the door, the pig holding a platter of food, the symbol that always
reminded me of Fletcher.

  Once again, the sharp sting of his betrayal throbbed in my heart like a red-hot poker, but I pushed it aside. I didn’t have any more time to cry or wonder what Fletcher had been thinking when he agreed to work for Mason. All that mattered was finding the black ledger before my uncle’s midnight Saturday deadline. So I unlocked the front door, went inside, and got busy wiping down the long counter in the back of the restaurant.

  Sophia showed up a few minutes later, and Silvio told her about our failed attempt to find the ledger in Fletcher’s house.

  I looked at the Goth dwarf. “Do you have any idea where Fletcher would have stored it? In the past, he hid files in his office or at First Trust bank, but Finn texted me this morning. He and Mosley double-checked the safety-deposit boxes, and the ledger isn’t there. I’m running out of places to look.”

  Sophia stirred a pot of baked beans and stared off into space, thinking. After several seconds, she shook her head. “Nope. No idea. Jo-Jo and I will check our house tonight, but he could have hidden it anywhere.”

  She didn’t say anything else, but I could hear and see her unspoken words hanging in the air like a dark, ominous cloud. They were the same ones I was thinking.

  And we might never find it.

  I shoved that worry to the back of my mind, tied on my blue apron, and started on the day’s cooking. Fifteen minutes before we opened, a loud knock sounded on the front door. Sophia and Silvio froze, while I palmed a knife and whirled around in that direction.

  Liam Carter was standing outside, peering in through one of the windows.

  I let out a tense breath, tucked my knife back up my sleeve, and unlocked the door.

  Liam stripped off his navy overcoat and hung it on the rack by the front door. “You know, Gin, I can’t exactly help if you won’t even let me inside your restaurant,” he said in a chiding voice.

  “How did things go with Mallory and Mosley last night?” I asked, deliberately changing the subject.

  Liam had followed the dwarven couple over to Lorelei’s mansion so he could get cracking on his security plan for the wedding.