Jennifer Estep: Widow's Web

He sighed again. “Anyway, it’s over, and it has been for a long time now. I hadn’t seen or heard from Salina in years . . .”

“Until she left that message at your office last week.”

He nodded. “Right.”

And that would have been about the time Owen had started acting distant and distracted. Ah. Lightbulb finally on, and a bloody little slice on my heart and ego to go along with it. To realize that Owen had been preoccupied because of Salina—and that my lover hadn’t told me the first thing about her until forced to tonight. Reunions with old lovers rarely went well, and it seemed like there was more history between the two of them than most. Still, I didn’t care too much about Owen’s past with Salina, as long as he knew that I was his present—and, most importantly, his future. Something I planned on showing him tonight.

I reached out and trailed my fingers down his face. “Come in?” I asked.

He hesitated. “I really shouldn’t. I’ve got an early meeting tomorrow.”

“I understand,” I murmured, keeping my face smooth and hiding the hurt that pricked my heart.

Owen gently reached for my hand and kissed my palm, right in the middle of my spider rune scar. “Rain check?”

“Of course.” This time, I was the one with the faint voice.

Owen hesitated again, then leaned over and pressed his lips to mine—but he pulled back far too soon, like he’d been guessing how long he should maintain the kiss and the allotted time was up. I managed to smile at him, pretending I didn’t notice the sudden distance between us, distance that Salina had somehow created just by walking into the restaurant.

I got out of the car and shut the door behind me. Owen put the vehicle in gear and turned it around. He paused to wave good night to me, and I lifted my hand in return. A moment later, the car disappeared down the driveway.

I stood there alone in the dark and wondered who the hell Salina Dubois really was, why she seemed to have such an effect on my lover, and what I was going to do about her. Because this was a matter of the heart—and one problem that all my knives and all my prowess as the Spider wouldn’t help me solve.

Despite my unease and questions about Salina, the next day was business as usual at the Pork Pit, the barbecue restaurant I owned—right down to me checking for booby traps.

It was just before eleven, and I’d spent the last twenty minutes looking at everything in the restaurant storefront, from the well-worn but clean blue and pink vinyl booths to the long counter that ran down the back wall to the framed, blood-spattered copy of Where the Red Fern Grows that hung on the wall beside the cash register. I peered underneath each one of the tables and chairs, examined the front door for any signs of tampering, and checked every single one of the windows for the slightest hint of a crack, chip, or break. I even got down on my hands and knees and followed the paths of the faded, peeling, blue and pink pig tracks on the floor all the way back to the men’s and women’s restrooms. Then I examined both of those areas top to bottom as well, just to make sure nothing was hidden in a trash can or taped to the back of a toilet.

“Anything?” a harsh voice rasped.

I walked back out into the storefront and looked at the source of the voice: Sophia Deveraux, the dwarf who was the head cook at the Pit and chief Spider-related body dumper. Sophia had sat in one of the booths, calm and cool as could be, while I checked for traps, but she was causing quite a stir on the street outside, as people saw her through the windows and stopped to stare at her.

That’s because Sophia was Goth. Today, the dwarf wore her usual black boots and jeans, topped off by a white T-shirt that had a bright red cherry bomb in the center of it—one with a lit fuse. The bomb’s scarlet color matched the spiked silverstone collar ringing her neck and the cuffs on her wrists. Her lipstick was as black as her hair, and smoky shadow arched over her dark eyes as well, making her face seem as pale as the moon in comparison.

I eyed the cherry bomb T-shirt, wondering if Sophia had worn it as some sort of joke, given the volatile nature of the Ashland underworld these days. It was hard to tell with her sometimes. The dwarf didn’t talk much due to her voice, which had been ruined years ago when she’d been forced to breathe in elemental Fire.

“Anything?” Sophia asked again, sounding like there was a cheese grater scraping against her vocal cords.

“Nope,” I replied. “Nobody left us any nasty surprises. So you can go into the alley out back and tell the waitstaff to come on in.”

Sophia nodded, got up, and walked the length of the restaurant before pushing through the swinging double doors that led into the back.

I looked over the storefront a final time, double-checking to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. Checking out the Pit was something I did every morning now, given all the folks who would love to see me dead. In addition to using them as their personal or business symbols, elementals could also imbue runes with their magic and get those symbols to flare to life and perform specific functions—like firebombing my restaurant and hopefully killing me in the process. It would be far too easy for a Fire elemental to casually stroll by the restaurant late one night, pause a moment, and trace an incendiary rune into the wooden doorframe that would erupt in flames as soon as I opened the front door the next morning.

So far, no one had tried that particular trick, but it was only a matter of time before someone thought of it—and I planned to be ready when they did. That was why I checked the restaurant, and it was why I kept an eye on all the diners who scarfed down the thick, hearty, barbecue sandwiches and other greasy Southern treats Sophia and I served up at the Pit.

Satisfied that no one had laid any traps for me, I flipped the sign on the door over to Open and moved back behind the counter to start cooking for the day.

Given the warm, bright, inviting May sunshine, it didn’t take long for folks to leave their offices, head outside, and flock to the restaurant in search of an early lunch. Catalina Vasquez and the rest of the waitstaff seated everyone and took their orders, before bustling back over with their drinks a few minutes later. Meanwhile, Sophia and I manned the ovens, the stoves, and the french fryers. I also mixed up a batch of Fletcher’s secret barbecue sauce and set that pot on one of the back burners to simmer away. I breathed in, enjoying how the sauce’s spicy cumin kick mixed with all the other rich, dense flavors in the air.

In between cooking and dishing up food, my gaze went from one diner to the next, but they were all focused on their meals and companions. Oh, they still watched me, of course, giving me quick glances out of the corners of their eyes when they thought I wasn’t looking. After all, I was rumored to be the Spider, the assassin who’d killed the supposedly unkillable Mab Monroe. The whispers were more widespread among the underworld denizens, but they were slowly starting to circulate among regular folks as well. Hell, I was something of a tourist attraction in Ashland these days, and people came from near and far just to get a glimpse of me, sit in my restaurant, and eat my food. I’d even heard rumors that some particularly enterprising soul was selling T-shirts with the slogan I ate at the Pork Pit . . . and lived! emblazoned on them, but so far no one had been bold enough to wear one inside the restaurant.