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The den was a comfortable room, with a couple of recliners and a worn sofa that had been around so long that each section was perfectly grooved to fit someone's ass. I plopped down on the sofa, letting my tired body sink into the thick, soft cushions, and propped my socked feet up on the scarred coffee table.
As always, my eyes lifted up to the mantel on the fireplace across from me-and the series of framed drawings that were propped up there.
I'd done the first three drawings a while back for a class that I'd taken over at Ashland Community College. I was one of the college's perpetual students, taking any and every course that appealed to me, especially those that dealt with cooking or literature, two of my passions. One of the projects in the art class that I'd audited had been to create a series of drawings, all different but linked together by a common theme.
I'd drawn a series of runes-the symbols of my dead family.
A snowflake, a curling ivy vine, and a primrose. The symbols for icy calm, elegance, and beauty. The snowflake had belonged to my mother, Eira, being the main rune for the Snow family, the one that had identified us to other elementals. The other two symbols had been fashioned into medallions that my sisters had worn. The ivy vine for my older sister, Annabelle, and the primrose for my younger sister, Bria.
But the fourth rune was relatively new. I'd done it only a couple of months ago, after Fletcher had been tortured to death by an Air elemental. That drawing was shaped like a pig holding a platter of food. An exact rendering of the multicolored neon sign that hung over the entrance to the Pork Pit. Not a rune, not exactly, but I'd drawn it in honor of the old man. Fletcher had been the only father I'd ever really known, and I'd wanted to honor him, just the way I had the rest of my family.
I stared at the runes for another moment. Then I rubbed my hands over my face, took my feet off the coffee table, leaned forward, and picked up one of two manila folders lying there. The first file had been on the table for weeks now, since it dealt with my sister Bria, but I'd retrieved the second folder earlier today from Fletcher's cluttered office in another part of the house. That was the one I was interested in tonight.
I flipped open the folder and stared at the pages of information-everything that Fletcher had ever been able to dig up on the assassin known as LaFleur. I'd seen her electrical elemental magic for myself the other night, of course, but information was its own kind of power, and I wanted to be as prepared as possible when the two of us finally danced.
Besides, I was willing to bet that wherever Natasha was, whatever dark hole she'd been stashed in, LaFleur wouldn't be too far away from it. When I found the little girl, I'd find the assassin. And then, I'd kill her-or die trying.
So I leaned back against the sofa, put the file in my lap, and started reading.
I read through all the information on LaFleur, absorbing every fact, tidbit, rumor, and sheer speculation that Fletcher had been able to piece together about the other assassin. Of course, what I was really looking for was any sign of weakness, anything that I could use against the other assassin to kill her before she killed me.
But there wasn't anything in the file to give me any hope of accomplishing that. At least, not without getting dead myself.
The file started out by listing all of LaFleur's vital stats. Height: Five foot two. Weight: One hundred fifteen pounds. Black hair. Green eyes. Asian heritage. Rumored to have some sort of tattoo on her, probably in the shape of a rune. Cliche, yes, surprising, no. As a general rule, assassins liked symbols and catchy nicknames almost as much as magic users did.
Fletcher had also pegged her age at thirty-three and concluded that LaFleur was actually part of a family of elite assassins, all of whom sold their services to the highest bidder. Included was a sheet about a brother that LaFleur supposedly had, an assassin just like her. But since the page just referenced another one of Fletcher's files, instead of spelling out the information for me here, I didn't get up and go into the old man's office to look for it. LaFleur's brother, whoever the hell he might be, wasn't important at this point.
The bottom line was that killing people was in LaFleur's blood, as much a part of who and what she was as my spider rune scars were to me. Interesting to know, but not particularly helpful when it came to actually taking her down.
So I moved on to the pages that dealt with LaFleur's accomplishments as an assassin. LaFleur had killed dozens and dozens of people over the years, everyone from common street thugs to the richest, most heavily guarded businessmen. As far as Fletcher knew, she had a one hundred percent kill rate and the exorbitant fees to match.
When success was guaranteed, you could charge whatever you wanted to for it. According to the file, LaFleur pulled down north of three million for a simple assassination. Depending on who the target was, how hard it would be to get to him, and how much someone wanted it to look like an accident, the price went up from there. Even during my heyday as the Spider, I'd only topped out at around two and a half mil myself.
"Bitch," I muttered and kept reading.
LaFleur was skilled with all sorts of weapons and was rumored to be even better at hand-to-hand combat. Naturally. She wouldn't have been much of an assassin if she couldn't kill people six ways from Sunday-and then some.
However, instead of her fists or other weapons, LaFleur mainly used her electrical magic to kill. Given the number of people she'd taken out with it over the years, Fletcher had concluded that she was an extremely strong elemental-far stronger than the vast majority of those who could tap into the more common areas, like Air, Fire, Ice, and Stone. Wonderful.
But that was LaFleur's trademark-electrocuting people and then leaving a single white orchid behind on their smoking corpses. Just like she'd done to the dwarf that she'd fried down at the docks the other night in front of me and Finn.
I wondered about the orchid, though. Lots of assassins left things behind to mark their kills. Names and runes, mostly. But even among assassins, an orchid was a strange thing to use. Mainly because they were so delicate and so expensive. Why waste all that money signing your kills when you could just draw something on the nearest wall in your victim's blood? But I'd given up trying to figure out other assassins a long time ago. Hell, I couldn't even figure myself out most of the time.
I read through the rest of the file, but nothing jumped out at me. LaFleur was skilled, efficient, and deadly, just like I was. Smart, ruthless, and brutal, just like I was. And she had elemental magic, just like I did. All of which meant that it was fifty-fifty which one of us would win against the other in the end. And with LaFleur having access to Mab Monroe's men to help back her up, well, let's just say that it didn't do wonders for my confidence about making it to Christmas without getting dead.
Bah, humbug.
Chapter 11
It had been a long night, so I put the file aside, took a hot shower to wash the giants' blood off me, and then crawled into bed.
Maybe Finn would have a bright idea tomorrow about how I could find Natasha and kill LaFleur. Before we'd left Jo-Jo's, he'd promised to dig up everything that he could find on the assassin, her new job as Mab's number one enforcer, and where Mab's new nightclub might be located.
I was so tired that for once it was easy for me to put those thoughts out of my mind. I fell asleep almost immediately, but sometime during the night, the dreams took over, the way that they always seemed to these days . . .
I'd never known that I'd had this much magic before. Never dreamed that I was this strong. Never even imagined, hoped, or wished for it.
But I was. And then some.
