I dumped the platters on the table much the same way that I had their drinks. But there was no water slopping around, so LaFleur couldn’t shock me again this time. “Enjoy.”
I hoped they both choked on their food, but I knew that was just too much to ask. Especially with my bad luck.
“Oh,” LaFleur drawled. “We will.”
I looked at her, careful to keep the calm, cold violence out of my face. LaFleur stared at me a second longer before turning to her food. Apparently she thought that she knew everything there was to know about me. She just didn’t realize I could wear the mask of a simple restaurant owner as well and easily as she wore her expensive clothes. That I’d been taught how to do so by Fletcher Lane, by the Tin Man, one of the best assassins there had ever been.
One of the other couples was ready to leave, so I went back to the cash register, took their money, and sent them on their way. Then I plopped down on my stool behind the counter and picked up the latest book that I was reading, The Iliad. Winter classes weren’t due to start back up at Ashland Community College until after the first of the year, but I was getting a head start on the classic Greek literature course I’d already signed up for.
Everything was quiet for the next thirty minutes. I read my book, Sophia cooked her latest batch of beans, the other couple gobbled up their dinner, and my enemies dug into theirs.
Finally, Jonah McAllister and Elektra LaFleur finished their meal and headed over to the cash register. McAllister reached into his wallet and handed me some bills. I was vaguely surprised that he was even bothering to pay at all, but I supposed that he wanted me to think he’d come here tonight only for the food. As if I could be that stupid.
“Keep the change, Gin,” McAllister said in a smarmy, mocking voice. “Consider it an early Christmas present.”
“Aw,” I drawled. “A whopping thirteen cents. You’re too kind, Jonah. Why, you’d put Ebenezer Scrooge to shame with your bighearted generosity.”
McAllister’s smooth face darkened at my insult, but LaFleur looped her arm through his, and the anger glittering in Jonah’s brown eyes melted into sly certainty.
“Well, you should spend it while you can, Ms. Blanco,” McAllister said. “You just never know what might happen in these uncertain times.”
He and the assassin headed toward the door. Just before they stepped outside into the cold, Elektra LaFleur turned back to me, her green eyes as bright and hard as jade in her face.
“The food was excellent. I imagine that I’ll be coming back here soon, Gin. Real soon.”
With a smirk, Elektra walked out the door after Jonah. I watched them leave.
“Not if I kill you first, bitch,” I muttered. “Not if I kill you first.”
14
Sophia came over to stand beside me, her black eyes still fixed on the front door that Jonah McAllister and Elektra LaFleur had just walked out of.
“Assassin?” she rasped.
“Yeah, that was LaFleur,” I said. “Did you see the way that she was checking out the place?”
Sophia nodded instead of actually answering me. The Goth dwarf spoke as little as possible, since her broken, raspy voice sounded like she’d spent her entire life downing rotgut whiskey, puffing on cigarettes, and gargling gasoline. Sophia didn’t have any of those vices, at least not that I knew of, and I always wondered what had happened to the dwarf to so completely ruin her voice. But I never asked her. Whatever it was, I knew that it couldn’t possibly be good. Sophia’s secret pain was her own to share or not. Just like mine was.
“Problem?” Sophia asked, cutting into my reverie.
“Yeah, LaFleur’s going to make a run at me here at the Pit,” I said. “That’s the only reason I can think of that McAllister brought her here. She was planning the best way to kill me, probably sometime in the next few days. McAllister wants me dead, and he’s asked her to do it while she’s in town.”
“Ready,” Sophia said, reached over, and squeezed.
I squeezed back and smiled at the dwarf. “I know you’ll be ready. And I will be too. Elektra LaFleur’s going to get the surprise of her life when she comes here to kill Gin Blanco — and finds the Spider waiting for her instead.”
Sophia and I went back to work, cleaning up the restaurant for the night. The other couple paid up and left, and I was thinking about flipping the sign on the door over to Closed when the front bell chimed and a woman stepped inside the Pork Pit. As always, her appearance startled me and took my breath away at the same time — as well as filling me with a touch of cold dread.
Detective Bria Coolidge. My baby sister.
Like so many others moving about on the frosty streets this evening, Bria wore a long coat over a pair of jeans and thick but stylish black Bella Bulluci boots. Her V-neck sweater was a Christmas green in keeping with the season, while a gold badge winked on the leather belt around her slender waist. In contrast, her gun looked like a blob of black ink next to it.
The badge marked Bria as a detective with the Ashland Police Department, but she didn’t really look like a cop. She was far too pretty for that, with her longish shag of blond hair, cornflower blue eyes, rosy cheeks, and rocking figure.
Besides the badge and the gun, Bria also wore a silverstone medallion on a short chain around her neck. A delicate primrose, the symbol for beauty. The same rune, the same necklace, that our mother had given her as a child, one that I’d never seen her without, even now as an adult. Three rings also gleamed on her left index finger, thin silverstone bands each sporting tiny runes. Snowflakes ringed the bottom band, while ivy vines curled around the middle one. The final ring, the top one, was stamped with a single symbol in the middle — a spider rune. My rune, the symbol for patience. I supposed that the rings were Bria’s way of remembering our shattered family, just as the drawings on the mantel at Fletcher Lane’s house were mine.
“Gin,” Bria said in her high, lilting voice. “Good to see you again.”
She nodded at me, and I returned the favor. Bria and I hadn’t exactly started off on the right foot. I’d first seen her a few weeks ago, the night that Slater had attacked me at the community college. To say that it had been a shock would be a serious understatement. I’d known that my sister was alive, after thinking her dead for years, but seeing her in the flesh had been something else. Enough to make me cry, especially since I’d been looking for her myself with no success. But there she had been, as large as life and back in Ashland after so many long years gone.
Bria had also been the detective assigned to find out what had happened to me that night, and she’d dogged my steps after that, trying to get me to tell her who had hurt me and why. She’d also suspected me of somehow being involved with Roslyn Phillips, of keeping the vampire’s location from her when Roslyn had been hiding from Slater. But since everything had turned out all right in the end, with Roslyn living and Slater rotting in the ground, Bria’s icy attitude toward me had thawed a bit. As had my wary one toward her.
“You too, detective,” I said and meant it. “What can I do for you this evening?”
She moved closer, putting her hands up on the counter beside the cash register. The lights made her silverstone rings wink at me one after another, like all-seeing eyes that knew every one of my deep, dark secrets. “I called earlier. I’m here to pick up my takeout.”
That must have been the order that Sophia had taken over the phone before McAllister and LaFleur had come into the Pork Pit. But she hadn’t bothered to tell me it was Bria’s, even though Sophia knew all about my sister. I looked at the dwarf, who gave me a small grin and went back to wiping down the counter. I supposed that this was Sophia’s way of getting me to talk to Bria. The Goth dwarf could be sneaky when she put her mind to it.