The Spider
Page 38
But all I felt was empty—sad and empty—just like he’d said I was.
I had started to move away from him when I noticed a single blue rose lying on the table where we’d had our last struggle. Somehow it had escaped the destruction of our fight and was as perfect as if it had been cut for a bouquet. I picked up the flower and brought it to my nose. Despite the chaos, the rose smelled as sweet as ever. I hesitated, then tossed it down on top of Sebastian’s body.
It was the only bit of sentiment that I had left—and far more regard than he deserved after everything he’d done.
I stared at Sebastian another moment before turning and walking away.
I grabbed my knife from where it had fallen, then left the greenhouse behind and made my way through the grounds, across the lawn, and back up to the library. I picked up the knife that I’d thrown in here earlier at Sebastian, then went over to his father’s desk to conduct my long-delayed search for the file that Coolidge had compiled on Sebastian. It didn’t take me long to find it, since it was lying on top of a stack of papers on the desk, the folder wide open, as though Sebastian had been admiring his own handiwork over a drink. He probably had.
I took the file too. After that, it was just a matter of hobbling down the stairs, out of the mansion, and onto the driveway toward the front gate. At this point, I didn’t care who saw me leaving the scene of the crime. I doubted there was anyone left to look, anyway. If they’d been smart, all of the workers would have fled the mansion the second Sebastian had started to unleash his Stone magic throughout the structure.
So no one was around to see the Spider take her victory lap—such as it was.
No one except Fletcher.
The old man was waiting in his white van down the street from the open gate. I staggered across the sidewalk, opened the door, and crawled into the passenger seat, cradling my broken wrist and the folder against my chest.
Fletcher’s sharp green eyes tracked up and down my body, silently assessing my injuries. Broken wrist, stab wound in my shoulder, dozens of cuts and bruises from where Sebastian’s rocks had battered me. His shoulders sagged with a tiny bit of relief, although he kept his face calm and composed.
“Looks like we need to get over to Jo-Jo’s,” he said.
All I could do was nod.
He threw the van into gear and headed in that direction. Fletcher drove slowly and carefully, mindful of my injuries, but every bump and jostle of the van made me wince. So I concentrated on breathing, surfing the waves of pain as best I could.
It was several minutes before he spoke again.
“Seems like you caused quite the commotion in there,” Fletcher said in a mild voice. “The staff couldn’t drive away fast enough. They all piled in on top of one another, like a bunch of clowns all trying to get into the same cars.”
“Good for them.”
I hoped no one else had been injured inside the mansion.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
I shook my head. “Not tonight. Maybe . . . later. Okay?”
Fletcher nodded back.
But I didn’t have any intention of talking about what had happened tonight. Not to Fletcher, not to anyone, not ever. Part of it was because I was still humiliated by how easily Sebastian had tricked me and how hard I’d fallen for him. And the other part of it, well, I couldn’t quite say. All I knew was that all of the things Sebastian had done and said were my burdens to bear now, more secrets to add to the ones I already had.
“Maybe in a few days, when you’re feeling better, we can go look at those apartments across from the Pork Pit,” Fletcher said. “After all, an assassin should have her own place. Especially one like the Spider, don’t you think?”
A quiet note of pride rippled through the old man’s voice. He’d called me the Spider many times over the years, but this time, I knew he meant it in a way that he never had before. Maybe one day soon, I’d tell him that I finally understood all the lessons he’d been trying to teach me for so long. About when to wait and when to act and how to find that delicate balance between the two. But knowing Fletcher, he realized all of that already. Just like I knew that I wouldn’t have survived tonight if not for him.
“Gin?”
I smiled because he expected me to, even though getting my own apartment was the last thing on my mind right now. Still, I knew that he was trying to do something nice, trying to tell me that I’d proven myself in more ways than one tonight.
“Yeah,” I said. “That would be great.”
He nodded, and we both fell silent.
I leaned my head against the car window, breathed through another surge of pain, and brooded into the night, still thinking of Sebastian and everything that had happened between us. With every mile that passed, I slowly let his betrayal and cruelty ice over the few soft parts of my heart that were left, and I vowed never to let them thaw again.
Not for anyone.
Ever.
36
PRESENT DAY
I finished my story and leaned back, feeling tired and drained, as though I’d just relived the whole fight with Sebastian and had once again suffered all the injuries that he’d inflicted on my body and my heart back then. It took me a moment to let go of the memories and realize that I was in the Pork Pit, that what I had described had taken place ten years ago, instead of just ten minutes ago.
“You?” Owen asked. “You killed Sebastian Vaughn?”
I grinned. “Who else?”
“I remember that,” he said. “It was the talk of Ashland for weeks. It was all over the news. How part of the mansion was destroyed, how the cops found a dead giant inside the house and then Sebastian out in the greenhouse. From what I remember, the police thought that the same person who killed Cesar had killed Sebastian too.”
I grimaced. “Well, they were actually right about that. For a change.”
Owen took my hand, giving it a gentle squeeze. He didn’t ask me to say anything else, and he didn’t make any comments about what I’d told him. He simply let me know that he was here for me.
“And to think,” he murmured. “We actually met back then.”
“I know,” I replied. “I’d mostly forgotten about it until now. Did you ever think about that girl you picked up on the side of the road that night?”
“Sometimes,” he said. “I hoped that she—you—were okay. And that you’d told that dick boyfriend of yours what was what.”
“Well, I guess I did that, after all.”
I grimaced again, and Owen tightened his grip on my hand.
We stayed like that for a while before he reached out and picked up one of the roses, twirling it around in his hand.
He frowned. “But I don’t understand. Why the roses? Why the note? Why now, ten years later, on the day you killed Sebastian? Who sent them? You killed Sebastian and Porter and even Cesar. There’s nobody left.”
I reached out and fingered the edge of one of the petals. Soft and smooth, just like Sebastian had said.
“You’re forgetting,” I said. “I let one person live.”
It was a few minutes before midnight when the woman turned on the lights in the library and stepped back into the arms of the man she was with. Both of them were in their twenties, giggling, kissing, and messing around the way young couples do. The guy was a cute blond, with short, spiky hair and a smattering of freckles across his cheeks. The woman was a brunette, with a short bob of black hair and expressive brown eyes.
I stood in the shadows and watched them canoodle. If it went any further, I’d have to excuse myself quietly and come back another night. I wasn’t much for being a voyeur. But I hoped they would wrap up their little tête-à-tête soon. I wanted to finish this—tonight.
Finally, reluctantly, the woman pulled back. “Sorry, babe, but I’ve got some work that I’ve got to get done tonight. See you in thirty?”
The guy gave her a coy smile. “I’ll draw us a bath. But don’t wait too long . . . or the water might get cold. Me too.”
The two kissed again before the guy left the library. The woman watched him go, a small smile playing across her lips. Then she turned to the desk in the back of the room and headed toward it.
It took her three steps before she noticed the white paper bag bearing the Pork Pit’s pig logo that I’d placed in the middle of the desk, along with the chocolate-chip cookie cake. She hurried over to the desk and stared down at the message I’d written in chocolate icing on the cake. Happy (Late) Birthday.
Her eyes widened in surprise, and her gaze shot around the library, looking for me. So I stepped out into the light where she could see me.
“Hello, Charlotte,” I said.
Charlotte Vaughn drew in a startled breath, and her hand flew to her throat, clutching the pink cameo she wore there, the same one she’d gotten at her birthday party all those years ago.
“Whoa!” she exclaimed. “You scared me to death.”
I gave her a thin smile. “We both know that I could do a lot more than that if I wanted to.”
Charlotte’s dark eyes narrowed. “Is that a threat, Gin?”
“I don’t know. Were the roses a threat?”
She stared at me. “Why would you think that?”
“Well, your brother gave me roses like that once upon a time. Things didn’t turn out that well for any of us—you, me, him.”
Charlotte’s gaze flicked to the mantel over the fireplace, where a series of photos in silver frames were propped up. I’d looked at them earlier when I’d first come into the library. Most of the photos showed a teenage Charlotte with her father, but there was one of Sebastian standing by himself, smiling for the camera. His smile was the same as I remembered—smug, confident, cocky. I hadn’t forgotten one thing about him, but it had still been like a kick to the gut to see his smiling face, frozen in time.
Charlotte glanced at the photo of Sebastian for a moment before turning away. “No, things didn’t turn out so well for Sebastian—or my father.”
Her mouth tightened, and pain flashed in her eyes, along with more than a little anger.
“You have every right to hate me for what I did to him. I took him away from you. Not Sebastian, not anyone else, just me.”
Charlotte let out a bitter laugh. “Well, you might have killed him, but Sebastian put you up to it. Even as a kid, I knew that. If it hadn’t been you, he would have found some other assassin to do the job. I don’t blame you for Papa’s death. Well, not as much as I blame Sebastian.”
“So why the roses? Why the cryptic message? Why now?”
She shrugged. “I suppose I wanted to see if you remembered me after all these years. If you remembered Papa . . . and Sebastian.”
“I haven’t forgotten any of it, not one thing. No matter how much I might have wanted to.” This time, my mouth twisted with bitterness.
Charlotte stared at me, then moved over to a cabinet in the back corner of the library. She opened one of the glass doors, reached inside, and drew out a bottle of gin. She held it up so I could see it.
“How about a drink?” she asked. “For old times’ sake?”
I nodded and settled myself in one of the chairs in front of the fireplace. While Charlotte fixed our drinks, I reached out with my magic, listening to the stones around me. According to the news reports, part of the Vaughn mansion had collapsed in on itself the night I killed Sebastian. After his death, it had stood empty for years. But now it looked eerily similar to how it had all those years ago, with one notable difference: the stones no longer murmured with Sebastian’s cruelty.
Oh, a current of darkness still rippled through them, but it was the emotion of someone who’d known her share of horrors and would never, ever forget them. Mostly, though, the marble and granite murmured with pride at all the hard work she’d done to restore them to their former glory. Looked like Charlotte had inherited more of her father’s Stone magic than Sebastian had realized.
Charlotte walked over and handed me a crystal tumbler full of clear liquid, a few ice cubes, and a thick wedge of line.
“Gin for Gin, right?” she murmured, settling into the chair across from me.
“You’ve done your homework.”
She shrugged. “I had a lot of time to think about things in foster care. That’s where I ended up, after everything that happened.”
I took a sip of the gin, feeling the cold liquid slide down my throat, then start its slow, familiar burn in my stomach. Charlotte and I sat there sipping our drinks. All around me, the stones kept whispering of secrets—hers and mine.
“The first foster home they sent me to was terrible,” she said, staring into her glass. “The sort of place where the adults are only in it for those sweet little checks the government sends them every month. The husband and wife constantly screamed at each other. One day, the husband hit the wife—and me too. So badly that I ended up in the emergency room with a broken arm.”
“Something that sadly is not uncommon in the system.”
Charlotte shrugged, then raised her eyes to mine. “It’s funny, though. The next day—the very next day—they found the husband in an alley behind some Southtown bar. He’d been beaten to a pulp.”
“Imagine that,” I drawled. “But that’s the risk you take when you wander over into Southtown, day or night.”
Charlotte snorted. “Well, his beating got the cops involved, and I got shipped to another foster home, a much nicer one, with an older couple. They treated me like their own daughter.” She jerked her head at another photo on the mantel, one that showed Charlotte standing between a man and a woman. “The Smithson family.”
I had started to move away from him when I noticed a single blue rose lying on the table where we’d had our last struggle. Somehow it had escaped the destruction of our fight and was as perfect as if it had been cut for a bouquet. I picked up the flower and brought it to my nose. Despite the chaos, the rose smelled as sweet as ever. I hesitated, then tossed it down on top of Sebastian’s body.
It was the only bit of sentiment that I had left—and far more regard than he deserved after everything he’d done.
I stared at Sebastian another moment before turning and walking away.
I grabbed my knife from where it had fallen, then left the greenhouse behind and made my way through the grounds, across the lawn, and back up to the library. I picked up the knife that I’d thrown in here earlier at Sebastian, then went over to his father’s desk to conduct my long-delayed search for the file that Coolidge had compiled on Sebastian. It didn’t take me long to find it, since it was lying on top of a stack of papers on the desk, the folder wide open, as though Sebastian had been admiring his own handiwork over a drink. He probably had.
I took the file too. After that, it was just a matter of hobbling down the stairs, out of the mansion, and onto the driveway toward the front gate. At this point, I didn’t care who saw me leaving the scene of the crime. I doubted there was anyone left to look, anyway. If they’d been smart, all of the workers would have fled the mansion the second Sebastian had started to unleash his Stone magic throughout the structure.
So no one was around to see the Spider take her victory lap—such as it was.
No one except Fletcher.
The old man was waiting in his white van down the street from the open gate. I staggered across the sidewalk, opened the door, and crawled into the passenger seat, cradling my broken wrist and the folder against my chest.
Fletcher’s sharp green eyes tracked up and down my body, silently assessing my injuries. Broken wrist, stab wound in my shoulder, dozens of cuts and bruises from where Sebastian’s rocks had battered me. His shoulders sagged with a tiny bit of relief, although he kept his face calm and composed.
“Looks like we need to get over to Jo-Jo’s,” he said.
All I could do was nod.
He threw the van into gear and headed in that direction. Fletcher drove slowly and carefully, mindful of my injuries, but every bump and jostle of the van made me wince. So I concentrated on breathing, surfing the waves of pain as best I could.
It was several minutes before he spoke again.
“Seems like you caused quite the commotion in there,” Fletcher said in a mild voice. “The staff couldn’t drive away fast enough. They all piled in on top of one another, like a bunch of clowns all trying to get into the same cars.”
“Good for them.”
I hoped no one else had been injured inside the mansion.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
I shook my head. “Not tonight. Maybe . . . later. Okay?”
Fletcher nodded back.
But I didn’t have any intention of talking about what had happened tonight. Not to Fletcher, not to anyone, not ever. Part of it was because I was still humiliated by how easily Sebastian had tricked me and how hard I’d fallen for him. And the other part of it, well, I couldn’t quite say. All I knew was that all of the things Sebastian had done and said were my burdens to bear now, more secrets to add to the ones I already had.
“Maybe in a few days, when you’re feeling better, we can go look at those apartments across from the Pork Pit,” Fletcher said. “After all, an assassin should have her own place. Especially one like the Spider, don’t you think?”
A quiet note of pride rippled through the old man’s voice. He’d called me the Spider many times over the years, but this time, I knew he meant it in a way that he never had before. Maybe one day soon, I’d tell him that I finally understood all the lessons he’d been trying to teach me for so long. About when to wait and when to act and how to find that delicate balance between the two. But knowing Fletcher, he realized all of that already. Just like I knew that I wouldn’t have survived tonight if not for him.
“Gin?”
I smiled because he expected me to, even though getting my own apartment was the last thing on my mind right now. Still, I knew that he was trying to do something nice, trying to tell me that I’d proven myself in more ways than one tonight.
“Yeah,” I said. “That would be great.”
He nodded, and we both fell silent.
I leaned my head against the car window, breathed through another surge of pain, and brooded into the night, still thinking of Sebastian and everything that had happened between us. With every mile that passed, I slowly let his betrayal and cruelty ice over the few soft parts of my heart that were left, and I vowed never to let them thaw again.
Not for anyone.
Ever.
36
PRESENT DAY
I finished my story and leaned back, feeling tired and drained, as though I’d just relived the whole fight with Sebastian and had once again suffered all the injuries that he’d inflicted on my body and my heart back then. It took me a moment to let go of the memories and realize that I was in the Pork Pit, that what I had described had taken place ten years ago, instead of just ten minutes ago.
“You?” Owen asked. “You killed Sebastian Vaughn?”
I grinned. “Who else?”
“I remember that,” he said. “It was the talk of Ashland for weeks. It was all over the news. How part of the mansion was destroyed, how the cops found a dead giant inside the house and then Sebastian out in the greenhouse. From what I remember, the police thought that the same person who killed Cesar had killed Sebastian too.”
I grimaced. “Well, they were actually right about that. For a change.”
Owen took my hand, giving it a gentle squeeze. He didn’t ask me to say anything else, and he didn’t make any comments about what I’d told him. He simply let me know that he was here for me.
“And to think,” he murmured. “We actually met back then.”
“I know,” I replied. “I’d mostly forgotten about it until now. Did you ever think about that girl you picked up on the side of the road that night?”
“Sometimes,” he said. “I hoped that she—you—were okay. And that you’d told that dick boyfriend of yours what was what.”
“Well, I guess I did that, after all.”
I grimaced again, and Owen tightened his grip on my hand.
We stayed like that for a while before he reached out and picked up one of the roses, twirling it around in his hand.
He frowned. “But I don’t understand. Why the roses? Why the note? Why now, ten years later, on the day you killed Sebastian? Who sent them? You killed Sebastian and Porter and even Cesar. There’s nobody left.”
I reached out and fingered the edge of one of the petals. Soft and smooth, just like Sebastian had said.
“You’re forgetting,” I said. “I let one person live.”
It was a few minutes before midnight when the woman turned on the lights in the library and stepped back into the arms of the man she was with. Both of them were in their twenties, giggling, kissing, and messing around the way young couples do. The guy was a cute blond, with short, spiky hair and a smattering of freckles across his cheeks. The woman was a brunette, with a short bob of black hair and expressive brown eyes.
I stood in the shadows and watched them canoodle. If it went any further, I’d have to excuse myself quietly and come back another night. I wasn’t much for being a voyeur. But I hoped they would wrap up their little tête-à-tête soon. I wanted to finish this—tonight.
Finally, reluctantly, the woman pulled back. “Sorry, babe, but I’ve got some work that I’ve got to get done tonight. See you in thirty?”
The guy gave her a coy smile. “I’ll draw us a bath. But don’t wait too long . . . or the water might get cold. Me too.”
The two kissed again before the guy left the library. The woman watched him go, a small smile playing across her lips. Then she turned to the desk in the back of the room and headed toward it.
It took her three steps before she noticed the white paper bag bearing the Pork Pit’s pig logo that I’d placed in the middle of the desk, along with the chocolate-chip cookie cake. She hurried over to the desk and stared down at the message I’d written in chocolate icing on the cake. Happy (Late) Birthday.
Her eyes widened in surprise, and her gaze shot around the library, looking for me. So I stepped out into the light where she could see me.
“Hello, Charlotte,” I said.
Charlotte Vaughn drew in a startled breath, and her hand flew to her throat, clutching the pink cameo she wore there, the same one she’d gotten at her birthday party all those years ago.
“Whoa!” she exclaimed. “You scared me to death.”
I gave her a thin smile. “We both know that I could do a lot more than that if I wanted to.”
Charlotte’s dark eyes narrowed. “Is that a threat, Gin?”
“I don’t know. Were the roses a threat?”
She stared at me. “Why would you think that?”
“Well, your brother gave me roses like that once upon a time. Things didn’t turn out that well for any of us—you, me, him.”
Charlotte’s gaze flicked to the mantel over the fireplace, where a series of photos in silver frames were propped up. I’d looked at them earlier when I’d first come into the library. Most of the photos showed a teenage Charlotte with her father, but there was one of Sebastian standing by himself, smiling for the camera. His smile was the same as I remembered—smug, confident, cocky. I hadn’t forgotten one thing about him, but it had still been like a kick to the gut to see his smiling face, frozen in time.
Charlotte glanced at the photo of Sebastian for a moment before turning away. “No, things didn’t turn out so well for Sebastian—or my father.”
Her mouth tightened, and pain flashed in her eyes, along with more than a little anger.
“You have every right to hate me for what I did to him. I took him away from you. Not Sebastian, not anyone else, just me.”
Charlotte let out a bitter laugh. “Well, you might have killed him, but Sebastian put you up to it. Even as a kid, I knew that. If it hadn’t been you, he would have found some other assassin to do the job. I don’t blame you for Papa’s death. Well, not as much as I blame Sebastian.”
“So why the roses? Why the cryptic message? Why now?”
She shrugged. “I suppose I wanted to see if you remembered me after all these years. If you remembered Papa . . . and Sebastian.”
“I haven’t forgotten any of it, not one thing. No matter how much I might have wanted to.” This time, my mouth twisted with bitterness.
Charlotte stared at me, then moved over to a cabinet in the back corner of the library. She opened one of the glass doors, reached inside, and drew out a bottle of gin. She held it up so I could see it.
“How about a drink?” she asked. “For old times’ sake?”
I nodded and settled myself in one of the chairs in front of the fireplace. While Charlotte fixed our drinks, I reached out with my magic, listening to the stones around me. According to the news reports, part of the Vaughn mansion had collapsed in on itself the night I killed Sebastian. After his death, it had stood empty for years. But now it looked eerily similar to how it had all those years ago, with one notable difference: the stones no longer murmured with Sebastian’s cruelty.
Oh, a current of darkness still rippled through them, but it was the emotion of someone who’d known her share of horrors and would never, ever forget them. Mostly, though, the marble and granite murmured with pride at all the hard work she’d done to restore them to their former glory. Looked like Charlotte had inherited more of her father’s Stone magic than Sebastian had realized.
Charlotte walked over and handed me a crystal tumbler full of clear liquid, a few ice cubes, and a thick wedge of line.
“Gin for Gin, right?” she murmured, settling into the chair across from me.
“You’ve done your homework.”
She shrugged. “I had a lot of time to think about things in foster care. That’s where I ended up, after everything that happened.”
I took a sip of the gin, feeling the cold liquid slide down my throat, then start its slow, familiar burn in my stomach. Charlotte and I sat there sipping our drinks. All around me, the stones kept whispering of secrets—hers and mine.
“The first foster home they sent me to was terrible,” she said, staring into her glass. “The sort of place where the adults are only in it for those sweet little checks the government sends them every month. The husband and wife constantly screamed at each other. One day, the husband hit the wife—and me too. So badly that I ended up in the emergency room with a broken arm.”
“Something that sadly is not uncommon in the system.”
Charlotte shrugged, then raised her eyes to mine. “It’s funny, though. The next day—the very next day—they found the husband in an alley behind some Southtown bar. He’d been beaten to a pulp.”
“Imagine that,” I drawled. “But that’s the risk you take when you wander over into Southtown, day or night.”
Charlotte snorted. “Well, his beating got the cops involved, and I got shipped to another foster home, a much nicer one, with an older couple. They treated me like their own daughter.” She jerked her head at another photo on the mantel, one that showed Charlotte standing between a man and a woman. “The Smithson family.”
