"Nice defensive maneuver," Finn said.
"Somebody doesn't want Caine talking about what really happened." Finn shook his head. "Honesty will get you killed in this city."
All the reporters started speaking at once, a flock of cawing crows shouting questions at Caine and the other officials. Captain Stephenson held out his arms for silence.
"We want to send a message to the woman who killed Mr. Giles. Whoever you are, wherever you are, if you're out there watching us, know this-we're going to do everything in our power to find you."
Finn elbowed me. "Looks like somebody's got the hots for you, Gin." The captain, Stephenson, kept talking. "Mr. Giles was a respected businessman and upstanding member of the community. Mr. Giles's employer, Halo Industries, has authorized me to announce a reward for information leading to the capture and arrest of his murderer."
The captain gestured to his right, and Alexis James stepped forward. Sometime during the night she'd traded her little black cocktail dress for a severe black pantsuit.
The pearls still wringed her throat and wrist. Why would she be at the press conference instead of her sister, Haley? Then I remembered. Alexis was the head of marketing and public relations. The company mouthpiece.
The sight of Alexis James added to the reporters' frenzy.
"Alexis! Alexis! How much are you offering?" one of them screamed over the din.
Alexis put her lips close to the microphone. "One million dollars." Finn and I sat there in stunned silence.
But Alexis James wasn't finished. She talked about what a great guy Gordon Giles was and how she hoped the reward money would help the police catch me, the evil bitch who'd killed him.
The press conference finally ended, but the reporters weren't ready to let their sources slip away. They tried to ask the police captain and Donovan Caine a few more questions. But Stephenson waved them off, and he and Caine left the podium and disappeared from sight, along with Alexis James.
"A million bucks? Fuck," Finn said. That summed up my feelings perfectly.
Chapter Eleven
Nothing more to do or say. Not tonight. Finn shuffled into the spare bedroom, while I took a shower to wash the matted blood out of my hair. The vampire hooker's ruined clothes went into the trash. I'd take them down to the incinerator in the basement and burn them later.
Thanks to Jo-Jo and her healing magic, my left shoulder and arm no longer throbbed where Brutus had shot and knifed me. But my chest still burned with cold rage from losing Fletcher. At what had been done to him. At the desecration of the Pork Pit. The sadistic glee the Air elemental had taken in accomplishing both. And for what? So I could be blamed for a murder I didn't even commit? Pointless. All of it.
I couldn't believe Fletcher was gone. Dead. That I hadn't gotten to him in time. That I hadn't been able to save him, like he'd saved me so long ago.
My troubled thoughts turned to the last conversation I'd had with Fletcher. Do this job, and you can retire. His gruff voice whispered the words in my mind. I'd scoffed at his suggestion, sneered, dismissed it, the way I had for six months now, ever since the old man had first brought up the subject of me quitting the business.
Maybe-just maybe-if I'd listened to him the first time he'd asked me to retire all those months ago, Fletcher would still be alive. Maybe if I'd quit killing people back then, the Gordon Giles hit would have never come his way at all. Maybe if I'd just given in to his wishes, to his hopes of a more normal life for me, the old man would be over at the Pork Pit right now, reading a book and drinking coffee, instead of staring up at the ceiling with dull, sightless eyes. Maybe if I'd retired when he'd first asked me to, Fletcher might still be alive.
My fault. Everything was my fucking fault.
Guilt and grief welled up in my chest, cracking the walls around my heart, crumbling the cold stone to dust. My throat closed up, and tears, hotter than the water cascading around me, scalded my eyes. I sank to my knees in the shower, huddling against the slick tile.
And for the first time in seventeen years, I truly, deeply wept.
Ten minutes passed, maybe fifteen. I wasn't sure. But the cooling water cut through my grief, and I shivered against the shower wall. Some might have called me a hypocrite for my grief at Fletcher's death and my rage at the Air elemental who'd killed him. I had buckets of blood on my hands, and my actions had left plenty of folks crying for their loved ones. But there were lines, rules, codes, no matter how twisted they might appear. No kids, no pets, no torture, no framing someone else for what I did. The way the elemental had tortured Fletcher ... she deserved to be punished for that alone. Put down like a rabid dog before she did it to someone else.
Fletcher was gone, but I was still here. So was Finn. And I was going to do everything in my power to keep it that way. The old man had drilled survival into my head above all else-emotions, conscience, fear, regrets. If that made me a hypocrite, so be it.
Worse things to be. Like dead.
I forced myself to go through the motions of my late-night rituals. Washing my body, shampooing my hair, drying off, slipping into my softest flannel pajamas, the ones Jo-Jo had given me with the puffy blue clouds on them. Guilt, tears, and emotional breakdown aside, I'd need to be at my best tomorrow. And for the foreseeable future.
Oh, I wasn't worried about the bounty. Fletcher had taught me how to be careful, how to be invisible, a skill I'd perfected these last seventeen years. Which made it all the stranger that someone had been able to target us. I still didn't understand how or when we'd been that careless, that sloppy. But somebody, somewhere, sometime had talked about what the three of us did. When I got up close and personal with the Air elemental, I was going to ask how she'd found Fletcher-and I wasn't going to ask nicely.
Before I went to bed, I shuffled around the apartment and pressed my hand to the stone around the door frame and all the windows one more time, checking my protection runes. The stone murmured in response before falling back down to its usual, low hum.
As added insurance, I tucked a silverstone knife under both my pillows and put a few more on the nightstand within easy reach. Then I curled into a tight ball underneath the soft sheets. The tension in my body slowly unknotted, and I dreamed ...
Great, heaving, breath-stealing sobs wracked my body, shaking me from head to toe.
Tears rushed down my chapped face in an endless torrent, mixing with the dirt on my hands. I drew in a ragged breath and licked my cracked lips, tasting my own salt.
"That's not doing you any good," a low voice cut through my misery.
Footsteps sounded on the blacktop, and I glanced up, sniffling. A man stood in front of me, middle-aged and tall, with dark brown hair. A greasy apron hid his blue work shirt and pants. Brown boots covered his feet, and a black trash bag dangled from his right hand.
"Tears are a waste of time, energy, and resources," he said in a serious tone, as though imparting some great, mystical secret to me.
My mother and sisters were dead. People wanted to kill me. I was alone and living on the streets. Cold. Tired. Hungry. So hungry. I had plenty to cry about.
The man looked at me, his green gaze taking in my dirty face, matted hair, and ripped clothes. He sighed, then reached into the black trash bag.
I tensed, reaching for the magic flowing through my veins. If he pulled out a knife and came at me, I would use my power on him. Make the bricks fly out of the alley wall and smash him in the face. Form an Ice dagger with my bare hands and stab him with it. Whatever it took. Even if it meant using my magic to kill-again.
The man pulled out a crumpled, white paper bag. I was sitting down, my knees drawn tight to my chest. My eyes were just level with the pig logo printed on the side of the bag.
"Here." The man held out the bag. "There's a burger in here. Takeout somebody didn't pick up. Baked beans, too. You can have them, if you want." My stomach screamed yes, but I shook my head no. Nobody gave you anything for free on the streets of Ashland. He'd probably want me to blow him here in the alley. I wasn't desperate enough to do that. Not yet. I didn't have much to offer at thirteen, besides barely developed breasts and thin hips, but I'd realized most men looking to get laid didn't care, as long as they got off.
The man shrugged. "Suit yourself, kid."
He opened the Dumpster and threw away the black bag. The white one followed.
Whistling, he opened the back door to the restaurant and disappeared inside. I counted the seconds in my head. Ten, twenty, thirty ... When I reached forty-five, I got to my feet, ran to the Dumpster, and plucked the white bag out of the smelly, shadowy depths.
I darted back across the alley and slipped into a black hole. The crack was big enough for me to worm into, but not so large that anyone could come in after me. I ripped open the bag, tore into the sandwich, and chewed. So good, I wanted to cry. I couldn't remember the last time I'd had meat, especially this much. Hands shaking, I popped the top off the Styrofoam cup, tilted back the container, and let the lukewarm baked beans slide into my mouth. The sauce on them was sweet, but with a spicy kick. After the garbage I'd been eating, it tasted like heaven - "Son of a bitch!"
The cursing woke me. I cracked open my gray eyes, my hand already around the hilt of the silverstone knife under my pillow.
"Son of a bitch!"
The exasperated voice came again. Finn. Just Finn. I relaxed my grip, slid out of bed, and padded into the den. Finn stood in the kitchen, flipping a toaster pastry from one hand to the other to keep from getting burned.
"What time is it?" I asked, my voice thick with sleep and dreamlike memories I couldn't quite banish. "Five in the afternoon." Finn took a bite of the pastry and almost spit it back out because it was so hot. "Twelve hours? Why did you let me sleep so long?"
"Because you needed the rest. We both did."
He was right. Jo-Jo might be the best, but being healed by an Air elemental still took a toll, as your body tried to adjust from being severely injured to suddenly being well again. Despite my day of sleep, I still felt tired, my arms and legs moving slower than usual. Or perhaps that was because I'd used my body so strenuously for so long last night. But magic always had a cost, which was another reason I didn't like to use my power to kill. I didn't like paying the price afterward. It always drained me, made me weak. I couldn't afford to be weak. Ever.
The toaster burped up another pastry. Finn grabbed it and tossed it to me. I clutched the thin wafer in my right hand. The heat didn't bother me. Then again, Finn wasn't the one with scars on his hands. Wasn't the one who'd felt the spider rune burn into his flesh. Silverstone metal could contain only so much magic. The Fire elemental who'd been torturing me had had more than enough to turn my rune into superheated liquid, mark me forever, and laugh all the while. The memory made my head ache, and I massaged my temple.
The television was on, although the sound was muted. Some incomprehensible game show with what looked like screaming contestants flickered on the screen. I changed the channel to the Food Network.
"Any more news about my botched hit last night?"
"Nothing much," Finn said. "More press conferences at lunchtime with the police, namely Captain Wayne Stephenson vowing to catch you no matter what. Another one with Alexis James talking about what a great guy Gordon Giles was and how she hopes the reward will help bring his killer to justice. Do you know they've gotten more than a thousand tips since she offered that money last night?"
"A million dollars." I shook my head. "Every nut job in Ashland, elemental and otherwise, will be after me. Or at least chasing my ghost."
"Hell, for that much, I'm tempted to turn you in myself." I stared at him.
"Not that I ever would," Finn amended. "Friendship is much more important than money."
I arched an eyebrow. Finn's lips started to twitch, and he let out a low chuckle. I snorted. "I can't believe you said that with a straight face."
"Me either," he confessed.
I threw one of the sofa pillows at him. Finn ducked out of the way.
His smile faded, and he jerked his head at one of the windows that fronted the street.
"Sophia called the cops to the Pork Pit. They arrived around three this afternoon." I got up and stared through a crack in the curtains at the street below. Yellow crime-scene tape hung across the front door of the restaurant. The afternoon sun flashed on the slick tape, creating a bright spot that burned my eyes. No one moved inside the storefront. Normally, at five on a weekday afternoon, folks would be waiting to get in and be seated. But people passing by only slowed their steps and shot curious but knowing looks at the restaurant. In Ashland, crime-scene tape was better than an obit in the newspaper.
I usually worked in the afternoons, since the restaurant was so slammed, and I missed the noise and rush of the supper crowd, along with just knowing that Fletcher was leaning against the cash register, sipping his chicory coffee and reading a few pages of his latest book the way he had for so many years now.
Things that the old man would never do again.
The grief and guilt threatened to overwhelm me again, but I focused on the cold rage in my chest, letting it freeze out the other, softer emotions. I'd had my crying fit last night. Now was the time to be strong. For me, for Fletcher, and especially for Finn.
I'd let Fletcher down. I wasn't going to do the same to his son.
"The cops are gone already?" I murmured.
"Yeah," Finn said. "Bastards weren't even there an hour. The coroner arrived before they did. The cops looked around a few minutes, loaded up his body, and left." We stood there a minute, watching the world turn. A world Fletcher wasn't part of any more. The cold rage beat in my chest, a slow, steady drum.
