Jennifer Estep - Web of Lies

I poured myself a glass of lemonade, then wrapped my hand around the container and concentrated, reaching for the cool power deep inside myself. In addition to being a Stone elemental, I also had the rare talent of being able to manipulate another element — Ice. My Ice magic was far weaker, though. All I could really do with it was make small shapes, like cubes or chips. The occasional lock pick. A knife, when the need arose. But often it was the little things that saved you. A lesson I’d learned when battling Alexis James a few weeks ago. The Air elemental would have killed me, would have flayed me alive with her magic, if I hadn’t formed a jagged icicle with my power and cut her throat with it.

I reached for my cool Ice magic, and a moment later, small, snowflake-shaped Ice crystals spread out from my palm and fingertips. They frosted up the side of the glass, arced over the lip, and ran down into the lemonade. Then I held my hand palm up and reached for my magic again.

A cold, silver light flickered there, centered in the spider rune scar embedded in my palm. After a moment, the light coalesced into a couple of Ice cubes, which I dropped into the tart beverage.

I took my lemonade into the den, plopped down in one of the recliners, and put my socked feet up on the scarred coffee table. As always, my eyes flicked to a series of framed drawings propped up on the mantel over the fireplace. Three pencil drawings I’d done for one of my community college classes and another, more recent, one.

The first three drawings depicted a series of runes — the symbols of my dead family. A snowflake, the rune for the Snow family, and my mother, Eira’s, symbol, representing icy calm. A curling ivy vine for my older sister, Annabella, representing elegance. A delicate, intricate primrose for my younger sister, Bria, symbolizing beauty.

The fourth rune was shaped like a pig holding a platter of food. An exact rendering of the multicolored neon sign that hung over the entrance to the Pork Pit. Not a rune, not really, but I’d drawn it in honor of Fletcher Lane. The Pork Pit had been my home for the past seventeen years, since the murder of my mother and older sister. It and Fletcher were one and the same to me.

I held my lemonade up in a silent toast to the runes, to the family I’d lost long ago, and to Fletcher, whose death was still a raw, aching wound in my chest.

But the drawings on the mantel weren’t the only runes to be found in the house. I had a rune as well. Two of them, actually — embedded in my flesh.

I put down my lemonade, uncurled my palms, and looked at the silverstone scars that decorated my skin. A small circle surrounded by eight thin rays, one on either hand. My rune, representing a spider, the symbol for patience.

The rune had once been a medallion, an innocent charm strung on a silverstone chain — until the Fire elemental who’d murdered my family had tortured me by duct-taping the rune in between my hands and making me hold on to the metal while she superheated it. The silverstone had eventually melted into my hands, forever marking me with the rune. Forever branding me as the Spider in more ways than one.

And I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t forget the past.

I leaned forward, picked up a thick folder from the coffee table, and plucked a picture out of the file. A woman stared up at me. A beautiful creature, with blond hair, cornflower blue eyes, and rosy skin. But her eyes were cold and hard, her mouth a tight slash in her face that detracted from her delicate features. A rune hung off a chain around her neck. A primrose. The symbol for beauty.

Bria. My baby sister.

For seventeen years, I’d thought Bria had died that night, along with our mother and older sister. Thought that she’d been crushed to death by the falling stones of our burning house. That I’d caused her death by using my Stone magic to collapse the house in order to try to escape my torturers and save her.

But Fletcher Lane had sent me a final gift from beyond the grave — Bria’s photo. Proof that she was still alive somewhere out there in the world. The picture was the only nice thing in the folder. The rest of it dealt with my family’s murder. Police reports, autopsy photos, and all the speculation that had followed the brutal, unexpected murder of the Snow family.

“Why did you do it, Fletcher?” I murmured. “Why leave me the information about my family? About their murder? Why the picture of Bria? Where is she? How did you find her? When were you going to tell me about her?”

Silence.

Fletcher had gone where I couldn’t question him, and he was never coming back. All I had left was this folder of gruesome information and a single picture of Bria — neither of which had helped me locate my baby sister.

But Bria’s photo hadn’t been the only surprise in the folder. There had also been a slip of paper with a name on it. Mab Monroe, written and underlined twice in Fletcher’s tight, controlled handwriting. That was all that had been on the paper. I still didn’t know why Fletcher had written her name down and slipped it inside with the rest of the information. Was Mab Monroe the Fire elemental who’d killed my mother and older sister? If so, why? Why had she done it?

Mab Monroe might be powerful, but she’d also made a lot of enemies over the years. Back when I’d still been working as the assassin the Spider, Fletcher had gotten several requests a year from folks wanting her to be eliminated.

We’d both agreed it was an impossible job, that Mab had too many people around her, that she was just too strong in her magic to be taken down quietly by a single person. But that hadn’t stopped Fletcher from compiling all the information he could on the Fire elemental, her minions, and her organization. It had always seemed to me like Fletcher Lane had some secret interest in wanting Mab Monroe dead. A desire I’d never been able to figure out — unless it had something to do with me and my family’s murder.

It was all a great big circle of speculation. I just didn’t know the answers to anything, and I’d been driving myself crazy trying to figure them out. Frustrated and disgusted once again, I threw the folder and Bria’s picture down on the coffee table and got to my feet.

My sudden movements rattled the framed drawings on the mantel. Fletcher’s drawing — the one of the pig sign over the Pork Pit — slid down. I stared at it a moment.

Then I sighed.

The old man had compiled the information about my family’s murder for a reason. He just hadn’t told me what it was before he’d been murdered. It wasn’t his fault I wasn’t smart enough to figure it out — or find Bria. Something I wasn’t quite sure I even wanted to do. It had taken me years to put my family’s murder behind me. I didn’t know if I wanted to dig up the past again — or how Bria would react when she saw me and learned what I’d been doing all these years.

But nothing was going to be resolved tonight. Not tonight, maybe not ever. Fretting over it wouldn’t help me unravel the mysteries Fletcher Lane had left behind.

Sighing, I went over and ran my fingers over each one of the four drawings, pushing Fletcher’s crooked frame back up into its proper position. Then I turned and headed into the bathroom to wash off the day’s grease, grime, and blood.

“I’m going to kill this person,” I said in a cold voice.

“Slowly. Painfully. Really make it hurt. Really make him feel it.”

I slapped the morning edition of the Ashland Trumpet down onto the empty space beside the cash register.

There it was, on top of the B section. A story detailing the attempted robbery at the Pork Pit last night, along with a file shot of the outside of the restaurant. The headline read “Owner, cook thwart restaurant robbery” and ran all the way across the damn page in fifty-four-point type.