Jennifer Estep - Tangled Threads

Guilt and self-loathing gave her lilting voice a harsh, ugly tone. It looked as though I wasn’t the only one who had carried around the emotional baggage of that night for all these years. I didn’t blame Bria for what she’d done. There was only one person at fault in all of this — Mab Monroe. And she was going to pay for what she’d done to us, more than she’d ever imagined.

Bria wouldn’t look at me, so I slowly reached over and took her hand in mine. Her fingers felt as cold as ice against my own.

“You were eight years old, Bria. Just a kid. There was nothing you could have done to help me, nothing you could have done to stop Mab.”

She stared at the tabletop. “You were just a kid too, Gene — Gin. And look what you did. You sat there, and you didn’t say a word about me. Not one word. And I know how much Mab hurt you. I heard your screams all the way outside the house, even after I went back out into the courtyard. I had to put my fingers in my ears to block the sound.”

We didn’t say anything for a few minutes. Instead, we just sat there, staring at our hands stacked one on top of the other.

“What happened then?” I finally asked. “After you — left?”

Bria shrugged. “I don’t remember a lot of it. I ran back through the house for what seemed like forever, stopping to hide every time I saw one of Mab’s men searching for me. But finally I made it all the way back to the staircase where you’d told me to wait before two of Mab’s men spotted me. One of them grabbed me, and I started screaming.”

I remembered the sound of her screams that night. The awful, awful sound. The one that always made me wake up in a cold sweat.

“Anyway, I don’t really know what happened after that. I guess it was you and your magic, because the house started to collapse right on top of us. Part of it fell on one of the giants and buried him.”

That must have been the one whose arm I’d seen near the fountain.

“I jerked away from the other giant, ran past the staircase, and managed to make it out of the courtyard. But he wasn’t as fast as I was. I saw the staircase fall and crush him to death.” She gave me a tight smile. “I know it’s horrible now, but at the time, I remember thinking that his blood squirted out of him just like juice from a tomato. I imagine that’s whose blood was on the rocks you found. His, not mine.”

It wasn’t any more horrible than all the things I’d done as the Spider, but instead of telling her that, I just nodded.

“Anyway, I just kept on running, going deeper and deeper into the forest around our house until I collapsed. After that, things get a bit blurry,” Bria said. “All I really remember is that sometime later, this man found me out there in the middle of nowhere. I don’t really remember much about him, just that he had the greenest eyes I’ve ever seen. All slick and shiny-looking, like glass or something. Anyway, he took me … somewhere. Fed me, bathed me, and made sure that I was okay. The next thing I knew, I had a new mom and dad. They were wonderful people, Gin. I think you would have liked them. But it wasn’t — the same. It wasn’t ever the same.”

I looked over at the wall beside the cash register and the photo of Fletcher Lane that was hung there. In the faded picture, a young Fletcher held up the catch from his fishing trip, beaming proudly at the camera. Somehow, I knew that the mystery man that Bria was talking about was him.

And once more, I was stunned — simply stunned. The old man had found Bria all those years ago? Had given her to her foster parents? Why? Had he been looking for me as well?

More importantly, had he known about Mab’s attack on our family? Had he been there that night? Had Fletcher been there as the assassin the Tin Man, as one of Mab’s men? That horrible thought slammed into me with the force of one of my own silverstone knives, slicing my heart in two. Had the old man in some way been responsible for the murder of my mother and older sister?

For a moment, the world tilted crazily, and I couldn’t breathe. I just couldn’t breathe —

“You’re not the only one who has dreams,” Bria said in a low voice, cutting into my troubled thoughts. “Last night in the train yard, I was doing just what you wanted me to — getting out of there. But I couldn’t stop thinking about that night and how I had acted back then. And I decided that I didn’t want to run away again.”

Somehow I pushed my speculations about Fletcher aside and concentrated on her once more.

“Is — is that why you came back for me last night? Because you felt guilty about running away all those years ago?”

Bria bit her lip and nodded. “I was a coward once before when my big sister needed me. I didn’t want to be one again. Especially over an arrogant assassin like Elektra LaFleur. So I ran back to the giant you had killed, the one with the gun, picked it up, and circled around behind her. The two of you were struggling, so I couldn’t get a clear shot. But then she started using her magic, and you collapsed at her feet. I thought she was going to kill you, and I just — lost it. That’s why I started shooting. But I didn’t think to check to see how many shots were left, which is why I ran out of bullets before I could kill her.”

“Believe me,” I said in a wry tone. “I was grateful for the shots you took. It distracted her long enough to let me do what needed to be done.”

Bria nodded and lifted her eyes to meet mine. “And that’s what you specialize in, isn’t it? Because you’re the Spider.”

I stared at her. “Does it bother you? The fact that I used to be an assassin? The fact that I’ve decided to go after Mab and make her pay for all the evil things she’s done? For what she did to our family, to us?”

Bria didn’t say anything, but I could see the struggle in her face. She hated Mab as much as I did, but my sister was still a cop. She still believed in things like law, order, justice. She’d spent her whole life believing in them and fighting against people like me. She couldn’t just put all that aside because she’d found out that her long-lost sister was a notorious assassin. No matter how much I might want her to.

“So you really are the Spider?” she finally asked.

I nodded.

“And how many people have you killed over the years?”

I didn’t want to push her farther away, but I wasn’t going to lie to her either. Not anymore. So I shrugged. “I quit keeping count a long time ago. You wouldn’t want to know anyway, not really.”

“No,” she said in a thoughtful tone. “I wouldn’t want to know. Not really.”

We didn’t speak for several moments.

“So what now?” I asked. “We’ve both been searching for each other for weeks, and we both want Mab to pay for what she did to our family. So where does that leave us?”

Bria hesitated. “You have to understand that I’ve spent my whole adult life being a cop, Gin. That I was raised by a cop, a good one. Rules, procedure, the law, all of those things mean something to me. I don’t think that they do to you.”

I shrugged again. No, they didn’t, because I had my own rules, my own procedure, my own law. But I didn’t think that Bria wanted to hear about the Spider’s cynical, bloody, violent worldview right now.

“I should be turning you in for everything you’ve done, including killing Elektra LaFleur and Mab Monroe’s men, even if they deserved it,” Bria said. “But I just can’t seem to bring myself to do it. I don’t know why.”

Her reluctance to rat me out wasn’t much, but it was a place to start.

“Well, I know what I want,” I said. “You’re my sister, Bria. I want what I’ve always wanted — a relationship with you. You back in my life in some way. I want to get to know you and see how much you’re like the little girl I remember, the one I used to play all those games with, and have such fun with. Don’t you want that too? After everything we’ve been through? After all these long years we’ve been apart?”