I didn’t have any magic left, not even enough to make another Ice pick so that I could unshackle myself from her dead body. I just sat there and stared dully at the handcuffs.
“Let me help you with those.”
Bria must have sensed what I was thinking, because she held out her hand and reached for her own Ice magic. A blue light flickered in her palm, and the familiar caress of her elemental power flowed over me like a cool, refreshing breeze, washing away the static remains of LaFleur’s electricity. Somehow, Bria’s magic made my injuries, my pain inside and out, just a little easier to bear. It felt so good, so right that it made me want to weep.
A second later, Bria had two Ice picks in her hand that looked identical to the ones that I’d made earlier tonight. She crouched down beside me and went to work on the handcuffs. It took her a couple of minutes and a few soft curses, but eventually the silverstone clinked open, and LaFleur’s dead arm fell back to the ground to join the rest of her.
Bria sat back on her heels, crouching there in the cold beside me. She stared at me, then at the dead assassin beside me. I couldn’t read the emotions flashing in her eyes — or maybe I just didn’t care to tonight. Maybe I was just afraid of what I would see.
“What are you going to do now?” I asked.
She knew what I was asking — if she was going to arrest me and turn me in for being the Spider. For killing Mab’s men and all the others I’d murdered over the years.
Bria sighed and ran her hand through her hair. Green static crackled around her fingers. She shuddered and dropped her hand. “I’m going to call in and report that I was abducted tonight by someone claiming to be an assassin. That she was going to torture and kill me before the Spider intervened. Mainly, that the assassin is dead and that I was locked in a railcar the whole time and didn’t see a thing.”
“You’re not turning me in?” I whispered.
Bria looked at me. Without a word, she shook her head. I didn’t ask her why. I didn’t think she even knew the reason herself. But that wasn’t the only issue between us.
“And what about us? We’re sisters, Bria.”
“You’re … It’s just … I can’t …” She sighed. “I don’t know, Gene — Gin. I just don’t know. I need some time to think about things. You’re not exactly what I expected to find when I came back to Ashland. None of this has turned out the way I thought it would.”
“What did you think would happen?”
A humorless smile lifted her lips. “I thought I’d charge Mab Monroe with the murder of my mother and older sister and see her dragged away in chains, for starters. But that’s not going to happen now. Neither is the picture-perfect reunion I’d imagined having with my big sister, Genevieve.”
There was no real judgment in her voice, no condemnation in her tone, just weariness, the same weariness I felt right now. But her words still hurt. I knew that my being the Spider was the thing that stood between us. My deadly skills might have saved us tonight, but they were also tearing us apart now. Maybe forever.
All I wanted to do right now was put my arms around Bria and make sure she was really okay. Tell her — no, promise her — that everything was going to be okay, just as I had when we were both little girls and she skinned her knee or lost her favorite doll.
But we were both too old for such childish things now, and there was just too much between us. Too much history, too much emotion, too many things left unsaid and undone.
Bria’s eyes met and held mine. With all our feelings shining there inside for the other to see. Her shock. My hope. And no resolution to either one in sight.
Then my baby sister got to her feet and stalked off into the darkness to make her call.
I sat there huddled on the cold, loose gravel, slowly moving my body and cataloguing my injuries while I waited for Bria to come back. Elektra LaFleur hadn’t beaten me as badly as Elliot Slater had, but the other assassin hadn’t pulled her punches either. My face had already started to bruise and swell from where she’d hit me, and not all of the blood on me was hers. A slow, steady trickle of it slid down my face from a cut that she’d opened on my left cheekbone. Ugly, nasty, electrical burns also covered most of my exposed skin, especially on my hands and arms.
But I could still move, still walk, talk, and breathe, so I wasn’t too concerned. Jo-Jo Deveraux could heal anything short of death. I might hurt like hell, but I’d live until I got to the dwarven Air elemental healer.
A few minutes later, Bria returned. She clutched a small silver cell phone in her hand that she passed down to me.
“Here,” she said in a quiet voice. “That’s LaFleur’s phone. I got it out of the back of the limo where she left it. I didn’t want to go digging through the giants’ pockets to find theirs.”
I didn’t have to ask her why — because I’d slashed into the men with my silverstone knives, filleting them like fish, until there was probably more blood on the ground around them than was still left in their bodies. Even now, I could hear the gravel of the train yard muttering all around me, the stones whispering of all the dark, ugly, bloody things that had been done here tonight.
“I thought that you might want to call your friend Finnegan Lane first,” Bria said. “Before I do my thing.”
“Thank you,” I said and dialed Finn’s number.
It rang only once before he picked it up.
“Where the hell are you!?” Finn screamed in my ear. “We’ve been looking everywhere for you!”
I winced at his voice blaring out at me. “I’m fine. I’m back at the train yard. LaFleur jumped me behind the Pork Pit and decided to take me for a little drive tonight.”
“Well, I hope that you had the good sense to kill her for interrupting your evening,” Finn sniffed. “And for making us worry.”
“I did. But I wasn’t the only one that she nabbed. Bria’s here with me.”
Silence. I could hear Finn thinking through the phone. He knew that in order to kill LaFleur I’d had to show Bria who I really was — and exactly what I was capable of.
“And how is she taking the news?” Finn finally asked.
I looked over at my sister, who was crouched down and examining LaFleur’s body, along with my silverstone knife, which was still stuck in the assassin’s chest. “Well, she hasn’t screamed and run away yet. I suppose that’s something.”
“Sit tight,” Finn said. “We’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“Don’t worry,” I said in a wry tone. “I’m not going anywhere.”
I hung up the phone and held it back out to Bria. “He’ll be here in ten minutes. It’ll take the po-po at least twenty to get here. So go ahead and make your call, if you want.”
She nodded. Bria started to take the phone from me, but before she could touch it, the cell started ringing. My eyes narrowed. I hadn’t given Finn the number, and there was only one person I knew of who would have a reason to call LaFleur right now.
So I snapped the phone open and answered it. “Hello, Mab.”
Silence.
I waited a few seconds. After it became apparent that she wasn’t going to answer me, I decided to initiate the conversation.
“Your girl LaFleur’s dead,” I said in the cheeriest tone that I could manage, considering the fact that I’d almost been electrocuted tonight. I stared at the other assassin’s body. “And growing colder by the second.”
“You.” Mab’s voice was dark, cold, and ugly in my ear.
“Me,” I replied, a bucket of sunshine in comparison. “You’ve been busy since the last time we talked. When was that? Oh, yeah. The night that I killed Elliot Slater at his quaint little mountain retreat.”