Jennifer Estep: The Spider

Of course, I could have used my magic to help me climb—my Ice magic.

In addition to my Stone power, I was one of the rare elementals who was gifted in another one of the four main areas—Ice, in my case—although that magic was far weaker than my Stone power. Still, I could have made a couple of small Ice knives to dig into the rocks and help me work my way up the ridge.

But I decided not to. The sniper didn’t have any magic, so he wouldn’t sense me actively using my power like another elemental might have. But he’d made it to the top without using magic. So would I. Besides, I didn’t like using my magic any more than necessary. I didn’t want it to become a crutch that I couldn’t function without.

I couldn’t afford for that to happen—not as the Spider.

I would have liked to have hoisted myself up the rocks as quickly as possible, but that would be far too noisy, and I was too determined to win to risk my victory like that. So I slowly, carefully, quietly scaled the ridge, moving from one patch of rocks to the next and working my way higher and higher up the steep slope. It was after eight in the evening, and while the sun might not be directly overhead anymore, heat still shimmered up out of the quarry, rising in sultry, sticky waves. It was almost August, which was often the hottest month in Ashland, but the heat seemed particularly blistering this year. The rocks were pleasantly warm under my hands, while bits of white and rose quartz glittered like pale, milky diamonds between my grasping fingers. Perhaps when I had taken care of the sniper, I’d get my own pickax, come back out here one day, and see if I could find any gemstones for myself.

I reached the top of the ridge and hung there for a moment, like a spider dangling from the top of its own stony web. Then, still being as quiet as possible, I slowly hoisted myself up so that I could peer over the lip of rock and see what the sniper was doing and whether he’d heard my approach and aimed his rifle in my direction, ready to put three bullets through my right eye the second he saw me.

The sniper was here, all right, but he hadn’t realized that I was too.

Another rule he’d forgotten: arrogance will get you, every single time.

He was turned away from me, lying flat on his stomach, his rifle pointed out toward the gate at the front of the quarry, in the same position as when I’d first seen him. In fact, it looked like he hadn’t moved an inch the whole time I’d been climbing. He had his right eye close to the scope mounted on the weapon, and his entire body was a study in stillness as he waited for me to step into his sights. Good for him for being so diligent. Too bad it wasn’t going to save him.

“Where are you?” he whispered, the breeze blowing his words back to me. “Where are you hiding?”

I grinned. He’d find that out in another minute, two tops.

Still being as quiet as possible, I hooked one leg over the edge of the ridge, then the other, before coming up into a low crouch. The sniper might have his rifle, but I had something even better: my five silverstone knives. One up either sleeve, one tucked into the small of my back, and two hidden in the sides of my boots.

Still crouching low, I palmed one of the knives up my sleeve and headed toward the sniper. I didn’t try to be quiet anymore, not now, when I knew that I had already won.

Too late, he heard my boots scrape against the stones. He rolled over, trying to raise his rifle to get a shot off at me, but I was quicker. I kicked the weapon out of his hands, sending it skittering across the rocks. He reached for the second gun tucked into the holster on his black leather belt, but I threw myself on top of him and pressed my knife up against his throat, telling him exactly what would happen if he decided to struggle.

Action always triumphs—and so do I.

“Say it.” I sneered in his face. “C’mon. Say it .”

My opponent arched his head away from me, as if I would be dumb enough to drop the knife from his throat just because he wanted me to. My foster brother’s green eyes blazed with anger in his handsome face, although his walnut-colored hair had remained perfectly, artfully in place, despite our scuffle.

“Fine,” Finnegan Lane muttered. “You win, Gin. Again . There, are you happy now?”

I grinned. “Ecstatic.”

I rolled off him, bounced up onto my feet, and tucked my knife back up my sleeve. Then I leaned over and held out my hand to him. Finn stared at the silvery mark branded into my palm, a small circle surrounded by eight thin rays. A spider rune—the symbol for patience and my assassin name.

Finn gave me another sour look, but he reached up, took my hand, and let me pull him to his feet. He might be my foster brother, but he didn’t like to lose when we played our war games. Then again, neither did I.

“So where do you think the old man is?” Finn asked, staring down into the quarry.

I froze. “You haven’t seen him? Then that means—”

A red dot appeared on Finn’s chest. Before I could react, before I could move, before I could try to duck, the dot zoomed over to land on my chest, right over my heart.

Dammit. My annoyance returned, stronger than ever, along with more than a little anger. At him for being such a sneaky bastard but mostly at myself for falling for such a simple trick.

“That means I’ve just killed you both,” a low, deep voice called out.

Finn might have taken the primo spot at the front of the ridge beneath the pines, but a few scraggly rhododendron bushes clung to the far left side, along with a tangle of blackberry briars. The bushes and thorny branches whipped back and forth as a man stood up and eased out of the dense thicket of leaves and limbs.

He wore a short-sleeved blue work shirt, along with matching pants, while brown boots covered his feet. His hair was more silver than walnut now, with a slight wave in the front, while faint lines fanned out from his eyes and grooved around his mouth, showing all of the living he’d done in his sixty-some years. Still, his eyes were the same glassy green as Finn’s and just as sharp and bright as his son’s. A rifle with a laser sight attached to it was propped up on his right shoulder—the weapon he’d used to mock-kill us with.

Fletcher Lane. Finn’s dad. My mentor. The assassin the Tin Man.

“You should have made sure that you were the only one clever enough to think of using this ridge as a sniper’s perch,” Fletcher drawled, eyeing his son. “I’d already been up here for twenty minutes before you showed up.”

“I know, I know,” Finn grumbled. “There are no original ideas anymore, especially when it comes to the assassination business.”

Fletcher nodded before he fixed his gaze on me. “And you should have made sure that he was alone before you approached him. That someone wasn’t lying in wait to kill you both.”

His voice was far sterner with me than it had been with Finn, since Fletcher was training me to be an assassin, training me to be the Spider, like he had ever since he’d taken me in off the streets when I was thirteen.

I gave him a curt nod. I managed to hide my wince, if not the embarrassed flush that stained my cheeks. Even though I was twenty now, Fletcher still had the ability to make me feel like that lost little girl, the one who had no clue how to defend herself. Seven years of training, and he’d gotten the best of me—again—not by being tougher or stronger or having more magic but simply by being smarter .

Fletcher was always telling me to take things slow, to think, to wait and plot and plan, but I’d seen an opportunity to beat Finn, so I’d seized it without doing any of those things. My action had gotten me exactly one thing: eliminated. Fletcher was right. I should have known better.