Jennifer Estep - Spider's Revenge

Maybe I should have stepped in and told him to knock it off. Having the two of them at odds didn’t exactly make for warm, fuzzy family moments. But for once, a woman was getting the best of Finnegan Lane, and damned if I wasn’t enjoying the show.

“Detective,” Finn crooned in his most seductive voice. “You’re looking smashing, as always.”

Bria smiled at him, although as many teeth as she bared, it was more of a warning. “Lane. I see you’re as oily and smarmy as ever.”

Finn pouted and put his hand over his heart. “Oh, detective, how you—”

“Wound you.” Bria finished his sentence and snorted. “If I ever did hurt you, Lane, you’d know it.”

Finn raised an eyebrow and turned to look at me. “I see that your sister has the same violent streak that you do, Gin.”

I gave him a toothy smile that matched Bria’s. “Must run in the family.”

Farther down the counter, Sophia let out a soft, raspy laugh. The Goth dwarf enjoyed Finn’s discomfort just as much as I did.

Despite Bria’s icy attitude, Finn didn’t give up. He focused all of his attention on her, as if he were a general and she was just another battle to be won no matter what casualties he might suffer along the way — including the complete and utter loss of his self-respect, pride, and dignity. Bria coolly rebuffed all of his advances, but she wasn’t completely immune to his charms. Interest sparked in her gaze whenever she looked at him out of the corner of her eye. Bria enjoyed being chased just as much as Finn liked running after her.

“So, what’ll it be?” I asked.

Xavier ordered a double cheeseburger with all the fixings, along with fries and baked beans. Bria opted for the Pork Pit’s most excellent grilled cheese sandwich, along with some potato salad and a piece of strawberry pie — the final slice that Finn hadn’t managed to scarf down yet.

Sophia and I worked on the food, and the five of us talked back and forth across the counter. The dwarf and I slid the steaming food over to Xavier and Bria, and the two of them spent the next twenty minutes stuffing their faces, while Finn talked enough for everyone. Food, friends, and my sister, all in one place. It was about as good as things could get for me. Almost good enough to let me forget about how I’d botched my hit on Mab last night.

Almost.

Bria and Xavier polished off their food, but instead of saying their good-byes, the two of them lingered in the Pork Pit. It wasn’t like either one of them to do that, not while they were on duty, no matter how good the food was. Something was going on.

Bria kept sneaking glances at first me, then Xavier. The giant nodded his shaved head at her, telling her to get on with it. Still, she hesitated. So I decided to make things easy for her, seeing as how the relationship between us hadn’t exactly been smooth sailing so far.

“Something on your mind, Bria?” I asked.

Bria looked up, startled by my question. Then a rueful grin spread across her pretty face. “Is it that obvious?”

“Probably not to anyone else but me.”

She nodded, accepting my explanation. “Actually, there is another reason that Xavier and I came by the Pit today, other than the food.”

Bria drew in a breath and stared at me. “We need your help, Gin.”

My sister asking for my help — especially considering the violent, bloody kind of help that I specialized in — was a new experience. But I wasn’t about to deny her. Anything that Bria asked of me, I would happily give her — and then some. Still, if my sister, the straight arrow, the upstanding detective, had turned to me, the morally bankrupt assassin, for aid, then something really big must be up.

I raised an eyebrow. “Really? You need my help? Who exactly needs killing?”

Bria winced. “It’s not — it’s not like that. Not like that at all, Gin. I don’t want anybody dead.”

I stared at her another moment before my gaze cut to Xavier. The giant just shrugged his massive shoulders, telling me that Bria had the lead on this thing, whatever it was.

“So what’s up?” I asked. “Why do two such esteemed members of the Ashland po-po need my help? Got a dirty cop you need to bust or something?”

Xavier snorted, with good reason. Besides the giant and Bria, honest cops were rarer than blizzards in the summertime in Ashland. Most members of the police force preferred to take wads of C-notes to look the other way, rather than actually try to solve the many crimes that plagued the city. It was easier, less dangerous, and far more profitable for everyone involved that way. For most folks, the only justice in Ashland was what they made for themselves — with whatever sharp, pointed weapon happened to be nearby.

Bria took a sip of her blackberry lemonade and tapped her left index finger on the counter before reaching down and twisting around the two rings that she wore there. Turn, turn, turn. Twisting the silverstone bands around and around was Bria’s tell, something that she did whenever she was thinking hard about a problem. Light pooled in the snowflake and ivy symbols embedded in the metal and flashed the runes back at me.

“It’s not that we need your help,” she finally said. “It’s just that we can’t quite figure things out.”

“What do you mean?”

Bria looked at me. “I’m sure you’ve noticed that there’s been a bit more crime lately in Ashland than usual.”

“Especially for the dead of winter,” Xavier chimed in. “Usually, crime around here goes down the more the snow piles up, since most folks don’t want to get out into the cold. Of course, we get a few bums squatting in abandoned buildings over in Southtown, some trash-can fires that get out of control, but that’s about it, except for the usual stuff.”

By the usual stuff , Xavier meant all the domestic disputes, robberies, rapes, gang violence, and assorted murders that took place in the city on a daily basis. From a distance, Ashland might resemble a larger version of Mayberry, but in reality, the city was about as far removed from that quaint Southern ideal as could be. The only whistling folks did in Ashland was after they’d bashed you over the head, ripped your purse off your arm, and were strolling away counting the bills inside.

“Crime around the city has skyrocketed in the past few days,” Bria continued. “Bar fights, robberies, beatings, murders. It’s like some kind of army has invaded Ashland and is determined to tear up as much stuff as they can.”

I frowned, and my mind flashed back to last night and the dinner guests that I’d seen at Mab’s mansion. They’d all had a hard edge to them, a sharpness in their faces, and a twitch in their fingers that had marked them as potential dangerous troublemakers. I glanced at Finn, who was staring back at me, the same thought shining in his eyes.

“You think the crime spree has something to do with Mab’s guests?” I asked him.

Finn shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. Although the people that Mab does business with usually have a little more self-control than to go around getting into bar fights.”

He had a point, so I waved at Bria, telling her to continue.

“The whole department’s been trying to crack down, but no one can figure out what the hell is going on, who these people are, and why they’ve all suddenly come to Ashland,” Bria said.

“Yeah,” Xavier agreed. “Normally, we’d at least get a few whispers about what was up. But even the guys on the take don’t have a clue — and you’d figure they’d hear something from their sugar daddies so they could cut off some of the problems before they got started.”

“So more people are hurting and killing each other,” I said. “Around these parts, that happens every time the moon’s full. What exactly do you need me for?”