Jennifer Estep - Web of Lies

A shadow passed over Fletcher’s face. “Some little girls.”

“So why didn’t you do it?”

Fletcher stared at me. “Because there are rules, Gin. Things even assassins shouldn’t do. Killing innocent kids is one of them.”

I thought of the Fire elemental and all the questions she’d asked me about Bria, my baby sister. I hadn’t answered the elemental, not even when she’d burned me with my own spider rune. Because I’d known what would happen. I would die, and then so would Bria.

“What happens when someone breaks the rules?” I asked in a hoarse whisper.

Fletcher stared at me. “I try to make it so they can’t hurt anyone else.”

I knew he meant kill them. I thought of Douglas and the way the giant had looked at me. What he would have done to me if I hadn’t done it to him first. I shivered. “That must be nice. To be able to take care of other people like that. To be that strong.” The last word came out as a raspy whisper.

Fletcher stared at me, a strange look on his lined face, as though he was considering something important. Like telling me to get lost. I decided to make it easy for him. I owed him that much, if only for the last few weeks of security he’d given me.

“Do you want me to leave?”

Fletcher frowned. “Of course not. Why would you think that?”

I stared at the blood on my hands and didn’t say anything.

“Oh, Gin,” he said in a soft voice. “You don’t really realize what you did tonight, do you? You saved me. Finn too. Douglas would have killed all three of us if you hadn’t stabbed him. Don’t you dare feel bad about stabbing that sick bastard. You did what you had to do. Nothing else.”

The knot in my stomach loosened. Maybe I wasn’t such a monster after all. Or maybe I just didn’t care anymore.

“I want you to stay, Gin,” Fletcher said. “For as long as you want. And, if you’ll let me, if you want to, I’d like to train you.”

I stared at him, confused. “Train me to do what? You’re already teaching me how to cook.”

He hesitated. “To be like me. To do what I do. To be an assassin.”

Maybe I should have been surprised. Shocked. Horrified.

But I wasn’t. Instead, I thought of Douglas, the giant. How he’d come at me and how I’d defended myself. I knew my stabbing him had been more dumb luck than anything else.

But my family was gone, and I was alone. I was tired of living on the streets and being weak and small and helpless.

Tired of hiding from everyone and everything. I looked at Fletcher. It wasn’t just that he was an adult, older than me, taller, more muscled. Fletcher Lane had an inner strength that set him apart from other people. I suddenly realized it was a strength I wanted. A strength I needed to survive.

“What about Finn?” I asked. “He’s your son. Shouldn’t you train him instead?”

Fletcher smiled. “He is my son, and I love him, but he doesn’t have the right temperament. He’s too reckless, too flashy. You’re different. Calmer. You take the time to think things through before you do them.”

I didn’t know about all that. But I decided to take what Fletcher was offering me. Grab on to it with both hands and never look back. Genevieve Snow was dead. Her family was dead. But Gin Blanco was still alive. And I wanted to stay that way.

“Okay,” I said. “You can train me.”

Fletcher nodded. “All right then. We start tonight. Come on. Let’s go back into the restaurant.”

He got to his feet and stretched out his hand to me. I stared at it a minute. I was going to be an assassin. Might as well start acting like one. Which, to me, meant getting to my own feet by myself. Which I did.

Fletcher’s green eyes brightened as he smiled—

I gasped in a breath, waking from the dreamy memory.

It took me a moment to remember where I was, what had happened — and the fact I was probably buried alive.

Panic welled up in me, threatening to break loose. But I pushed down the hot, worrisome emotion, smothering it with cold logic. I was still alive, still breathing. Which meant I still had a chance, however small it might be.

I didn’t know how long I’d huddled there under the lip of rock, with the earth shaking below my body and the cavern collapsing in on top of me. Minutes had passed, maybe hours, for all I knew. But it was quiet now. The earth had quit trembling, and the stones had quit falling, which meant it was time to come back to myself.

I opened my eyes to blackness. Again, panic filled me, and once again, I forced it down. I hadn’t been afraid of the dark since I was a child. Besides, Tobias Dawson and his giants were dead. They couldn’t hurt me anymore.

There was nothing down here but me and the rocks and the water. Nothing I couldn’t handle.

So I began to blink, focus, and strain my eyes. Slowly, the blackness lessened to a midnight gray, and the world came back into focus. What I could see of it, anyway.

Which was nothing more than a big pile of rocks. They partially blocked the entrance to the small recess where I’d taken shelter from the cave-in. I stopped a minute to assess my body. Wiggled my fingers and toes, and went through the whole routine I’d done when I’d first woken up in the cavern. Sore, scraped, raw, aching, bone-weary.

Same as before, but everything was more or less in working order.

I reached down, searching for my purse and the healing supplies Jo-Jo Deveraux had given me. But the purse was long gone. So was my blond wig, and I didn’t feel the blue contacts in my eyes anymore. They’d popped out somewhere along the way. The only thing I had left were my black dress and stilettos, which were no help at all. So I blew out a breath, crawled forward, put my hands out, and shoved.

To my surprise, the rocks moved. Bits and pieces broke off like eggshells where I touched them, and I got to work. I don’t know how long I crouched there, half under the recess, scooping rocks out of the way so I could wiggle forward and get to my feet. Slow going given my various aches and pains, but eventually I cleared a space large enough for me to worm my way through. I got up on my knees first, then lurched forward, and used my legs to push myself up and out of the hole. The rocks tore into the thin fabric of my dress and scraped my stomach, but I didn’t care.

Slowly, I got to my feet. There was almost no light, but maybe I could fix that. I uncurled my dirty palms. Even though I couldn’t see them, I knew the spider rune scars were still on my hands. I’d always been able to create a little light with my magic, especially with my Ice power.

The familiar silver light flickered over my palm anytime I made a simple cube or Ice pick.

But before, when I’d made that final, desperate reach for my Ice magic to stop Tobias Dawson, the spider rune scars on my palms had ignited and burned with cold, silvery flames of Ice magic. Something they’d never done before.

I wondered what the silverstone scars would do now that the danger wasn’t so imminent. Time to find out.

I reached for my Ice magic. Cautiously, this time, drawing on a small trickle of power. But again, it came to me far easier than it ever had before. It only took a moment of concentration to make the scars on my palms burn with cold silver fire. Better than a fucking flashlight.

“Well, that’s something new and different,” I murmured.

I held out my glowing palms. The silver light flickered over what remained of the cavern, and I surveyed the damage I’d wrought with my Stone and Ice magic.