Jennifer Estep: Web of Lies

The girl had a level head on her shoulders and a firm grip on her emotions. But that didn’t mean she wouldn’t crash later.

I held the plate out to her. “You too.”

Eva took a cookie, broke it in two, and stuffed half of it into her mouth. Not shy, either.

I also plucked one of the chocolate treats off the stack.

Not because I had shaky nerves, but because they were damn good cookies. I’d made them myself, and I was just as good a cook as I had been an assassin.

I looked at the two unconscious men on the floor.

Lance lay spread-eagled next to one of the booths where Sophia had dropped him. Blood continued to drip from the cuts on Jake’s throat and temple, staining the floor a rusty brown.

I grabbed another cookie off the plate and watched him bleed.

A couple of uniformed patrol officers showed up twenty minutes later. Late, as usual. If we’d really needed them, our bodies would have been getting cold and sticky on the floor. The cops barreled through the front door and stopped, surprised by the calm scene.

Eva and Cassidy sat in their original booth. Cassidy munched on her fourth cookie and took a swig of the milk I’d given her. Eva leaned one elbow on the tabletop, holding her head up with her hand. With her free hand, she methodically broke apart a cookie and slowly ate it, piece by piece. Looked like the shock had finally caught up with her.

At the stove, Sophia ladled baked beans into glass Mason jars to take home to her older sister, Jo-Jo. I perched on my usual stool behind the cash register, eating my third cookie and reading about Odysseus blinding a cyclops.

The first cop was about my height, five seven or so, a wiry Hispanic guy with nut-brown skin and a mop of matching curls that escaped the toboggan he’d stuffed them under. Dark freckles dotted his cheeks like walnuts.

He had his gun out and held down against his leg.

In contrast, the other officer was around seven feet tall, with a shaved head as big as a cantaloupe and matching, ham-size fists. His skin was so black it was glossy, like polished jet. So were his eyes. His name was Xavier. I’d seen him working as a bouncer out at Northern Aggression, a trendy nightclub I’d had occasion to visit recently.

I hadn’t realized he was a member of the police force as well.

Xavier recognized me too and tipped his head in my direction. I returned the gesture.

Xavier didn’t have his gun out. Didn’t need to. Giants could take a couple bullets in the chest before they went down, and one well-placed punch from his fists would snap just about anyone’s neck. Strange that he’d be working as a cop, though. Most of the giants in Ashland hired themselves out as private security. Paid better, even if it was just as dangerous.

“We had a call about a robbery,” the first cop spoke.

His voice was high and whiny, like a power saw.

“Yeah. Those two guys busted in and tried to rob me. That one,” I pointed to Jake, “came into the store and told everybody to freeze. When I started to open the cash register for him, he grabbed one of the girls and held a knife to her throat. He’s a Fire elemental. Put flames on his knife and almost burned the girl with it. But luckily, my cook and I were able to subdue them both.”

The cops looked at the two men, then at me, then Sophia, and finally the girls.

“Is that how it happened?” the short cop asked.

Eva and Cassidy nodded their heads. Sophia grunted her agreement.

“That’s exactly how it happened,” I said.

The short cop focused on Lance. “And the other guy there?”

“His buddy. Tried to calm him down. Didn’t work.”

The cop looked at the two men a moment more, then back at me. “And you did this to them? With what? A baseball bat?”

“No,” I replied. “I just handled the first guy, the big one. My cook took care of the other man. Neither one of us had a weapon.”

With her great strength, Sophia didn’t need a weapon anymore than a giant did. And I didn’t think it was necessary to mention the five silverstone knives currently hidden on my body. Or the others placed in strategic locations throughout the restaurant. Or the fact that I could have just formed a jagged icicle with my Ice magic and cut Jake’s throat with it. Or even used my other elemental Stone power to collapse the whole restaurant on top of his head.

The short cop let out a low whistle. “Picked the wrong place to rob, didn’t they?”

I didn’t respond. He could see exactly how wrong they’d been from the blood spatters on the floor.

The two men were starting to come around. Lance rocked back and forth on the floor, holding his stomach, as if that would lessen the ache from where Sophia had punched him. Jake lay on his back and blinked up at the ceiling as though he wasn’t really seeing it.

The giant cop, Xavier, reached down, picked up Lance by the scruff of his neck with one hand, and slapped a set of silverstone cuffs on him with the other. “You. Stand still.”

Lance was too busy trying not to puke to do something stupid, like run. Xavier got down on one knee and started to repeat the handcuff process on Jake. He stared into his face. Xavier frowned, then looked up at me with his black eyes.

“You know who this is?” he rumbled.

“No. Should I?”

The giant nodded his head. “Yeah, Jake McAllister.”

My gray eyes narrowed. “McAllister? As in Jonah McAllister? The lawyer?”

“The one and only,” Xavier rumbled. “Jake here is his son. Third time he’s been in trouble since Halloween.”

The beginnings of a headache throbbed behind my eyes. Jonah McAllister was Ashland’s highest priced and most successful lawyer. A charismatic showman who could make the most violent, irredeemable, sociopathic criminal seem like an innocent schoolgirl — and make the jury weep with compassion while he did it. McAllister didn’t care whether people were guilty or not, as long as they could pay his astronomical fees.

But even more problematic was the fact Jonah McAllister was also the personal counsel to Mab Monroe. Ashland might have all the municipal trappings of any other city. Police and fire departments, a city council, a mayor.

But Mab Monroe was the one who really ran the town, in addition to her own lucrative, Mob-like empire. To most folks, Mab was the richest businesswoman in the city, who generously, selflessly, used her wealth to help the less fortunate. But those of us who moved in the shady side of life knew Mab did everything from ordering kidnappings, to bribing government officials, to murdering anyone who got in her way.

Mab had money, but her real power came from the fact she was a Fire elemental, just like Jake McAllister.

Being an elemental meant Mab could create, control, and manipulate fire just about any way she wanted to. But Mab Monroe had far more power than Jake McAllister had ever dreamed of. Rumor had it that Mab had more magic, more raw power, than any elemental born in the last five hundred years. Given her stranglehold on the city and queenlike position in the Ashland underworld, it wasn’t so much a rumor as a commonly known fact.

Anyone who went up against Mab Monroe got dead in a hurry.

Jonah McAllister was more than just Mab’s lawyer — he was one of her top lieutenants, along with Elliot Slater, the giant who handled Mab’s security and brutally enforced her wishes. McAllister’s job was to deal with anyone who challenged Mab through legal means. To bury them in enough paperwork and red tape to drown an elephant so that they either gave up outright or were forced to when they went bankrupt trying to pay their own attorneys.

No, Jonah McAllister wouldn’t be pleased about my beating down his son. He, and by extension Mab Monroe, could make problems for me — problems that weren’t as easily solvable now that I was just Gin Blanco and not moonlighting as the assassin the Spider anymore.