Chap­ter One

The bas­tards never would have even got­ten close to me if I hadn’t had the flu.

Cough­ing, sneez­ing, aching, wheez­ing. That was me. Gin Blanco. Restau­rant owner. Stone and Ice ele­men­tal. For­mer assas­sin. And all-around bad-ass. Laid low by a microbe.

It had started as a small, omi­nous tickle in my throat three days ago. And now, well, it wasn’t pretty. Watery eyes. Pale face. And a nose so red and bright even Rudolph would have been jeal­ous. Ugh.

The only rea­son I’d even crawled out of bed this evening was to come down to Ash­land Com­mu­nity Col­lege and take the final for the Great Lit­er­a­ture class I was audit­ing. I’d fin­ished my essay on sym­bol­ism in “The Odyssey” ten min­utes ago. Now, I plod­ded across one of the grassy cam­pus quads and fever­ishly dreamed of sink­ing back into my bed and not get­ting out of it for a week.

Just after seven on a cold, clear Decem­ber night. This was the last day of finals for the semes­ter, and cam­pus was largely deserted. Only a few lights burned in the win­dows of the kudzu-covered brick build­ings that rose above my head. The stones whis­pered of for­mu­las, the­o­ries, and knowl­edge. An old, sonorous, slightly pre­ten­tious sound that was decid­edly at odds with the sin­is­ter shad­ows that black­ened most of the quad. No one else was within sight. Which is prob­a­bly why they decided to jump me here. Well, that and the fact that kid­nap­ping me would be such a bother.

One sec­ond, I had my face buried in a tis­sue blow­ing my sore, drippy nose for the hun­dredth time today. The next, I looked up to find myself sur­rounded by three giants.

Oh, fuck.

I stopped, and they imme­di­ately closed ranks, form­ing a loose tri­an­gle of trou­ble around me. The giants were all around seven feet tall, with over­sized, bug-like eyes and fists almost as big as my head. One of them grinned at me and cracked his knuck­les. Some­one was anx­ious to get down to the busi­ness of beat­ing me.

My gray eyes flicked to the leader of the group, who had taken up a posi­tion in front of me—Elliot Slater. Slater was the tallest of the three giants, his enor­mous fig­ure mak­ing even his flunkies seem small in com­par­i­son. He was almost as wide as he was tall, with a solid, mus­cled frame. Gran­ite would be eas­ier to break than his ribs. Slater’s com­plex­ion was pale, bor­der­ing on albino, and almost seemed to glow in the faint light. His hazel eyes pro­vided a bit of color in his chalky skin, although his thin, tou­sled thatch of blonde hair did lit­tle to cover his large skull. A dia­mond in his pinkie ring sparked like a star in the dark night.

Up until my retire­ment a few months ago, I’d moon­lighted as an assas­sin known as the Spi­der. Over the years, I’d had plenty of deal­ings in the shady side of life, so I knew Slater by sight and rep­u­ta­tion. On paper, Elliot Slater was a highly respected secu­rity con­sul­tant with his own pla­toon of giant body­guards. In real­ity, Slater was the number-one enforcer for Mab Mon­roe, the Fire ele­men­tal who ran the South­ern metrop­o­lis of Ash­land like it was her own per­sonal fief­dom. Slater stepped in and either cut off, took care of, or per­ma­nently dis­posed of any pesky prob­lems Mab didn’t feel like deal­ing with herself.

And tonight, it looked like that prob­lem was me.

Not sur­pris­ing. A cou­ple of weeks ago, I’d stiffed some­one dur­ing a party at Mab Monroe’s man­sion. Need­less to say, the Fire ele­men­tal hadn’t been too thrilled about one of her guests being mur­dered in her own home when she’d been enter­tain­ing a few hun­dred of her clos­est busi­ness asso­ciates. I’d got­ten away with it so far, but I knew Mab was doing every­thing in her power to find the killer. To find me.

I snif­fled into my tis­sue. I won­dered if Mab had fig­ured out who I really was. If that was why Slater was here tonight—

Elliot Slater looked over his broad shoul­der. “Is this her?”

Slater slid to one side so another man, a much shorter human, could join the cir­cle of giants sur­round­ing me. Under­neath his clas­sic trench coat, the man wore a per­fect black suit, and his pol­ished wingtips gleamed like wet ink in the semi-darkness. His thick mane of gun­metal gray hair resem­bled a heavy man­tle of sil­ver that had some­how been swirled and sculpted around his head. Too bad hate made his brown eyes look like con­gealed lumps of blood in his smooth, tight face.

I rec­og­nized him too. Jonah McAl­lis­ter. On paper, McAl­lis­ter was the city’s top attor­ney, a charm­ing, bel­li­cose defense lawyer capa­ble of get­ting the most vicious killer off scot-free—for the right price. In real­ity, the slick attor­ney was another one of Mab Monroe’s top goons, just like Elliot Slater was. Jonah McAl­lis­ter was Mab’s per­sonal lawyer, respon­si­ble for bury­ing her ene­mies in legal red tape instead of in the ground like Slater did.

McAllister’s son, Jake, was the one I’d killed at Mab’s party. The twenty-something, beefy frat boy had threat­ened to rape and mur­der me, among other things. I’d con­sid­ered killing him pest exter­mi­na­tion more than any­thing else.

Elliot Slater and Jonah McAl­lis­ter tag-teaming me. This night just kept get­ting bet­ter and bet­ter. I snif­fled again. Really should have stayed home in bed.

Jonah McAl­lis­ter regarded me with cold eyes. “Oh, yes. That’s her. The lovely Ms. Gin Blanco. The bitch who was giv­ing my boy a hard time.”

A hard time? I sup­posed so, if you thought turn­ing him into the cops for attempted rob­bery, break­ing a plate full of food in his face, and ulti­mately stab­bing Jake McAl­lis­ter to death was a hard time. But I noticed that Jonah McAl­lis­ter didn’t say any­thing about me actu­ally killing his son. Hmm. Looked like this was some sort of fish­ing expe­di­tion. I decided to play along—for now.

“What is this meet­ing all about?” My voice came out some­where between a whiny wheeze and a phlegmy rasp. “Are you tak­ing up Jake’s bad habit of assault­ing inno­cent people?”

Jonah McAllister’s face hard­ened at my insult. As much as it could, any­way. Despite his sixty-some years, McAllister’s fea­tures were as smooth as pol­ished mar­ble, thanks to a vig­or­ous reg­i­men of expen­sive, Air ele­men­tal facial treat­ments. “I would hardly con­sider you inno­cent, Ms. Blanco. And you’re the one who assaulted my pre­cious boy first.”

“Your pre­cious boy came into my restau­rant, tried to rob me, and almost killed two of my cus­tomers with his Fire ele­men­tal magic.” I spat out the words, along with some phlegm. “All I did was defend myself. What does it mat­ter now any­way? Your boy is dead because of some weird heart con­di­tion. At least, that’s what was in the newspaper.”

Jonah McAl­lis­ter stared at me, try­ing to see if I knew more than I was let­ting on about his son’s untimely demise. I used the lull to blow my nose—again. Fuck­ing microbes.

McAllister’s mouth twisted with dis­gust at the sight and sound of my snif­fles. Admit­tedly, it wasn’t my most attrac­tive moment. McAl­lis­ter jerked his head at Elliot Slater, who nod­ded back.

“Now, Ms. Blanco,” Slater drawled. “The rea­son for this meet­ing is that Mr. McAl­lis­ter thought you might have some infor­ma­tion about his son’s death. Jake did have a bit of a heart con­di­tion, but there were also some mit­i­gat­ing cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing his pass­ing. Hap­pened a cou­ple of weeks ago.”

Mit­i­gat­ing cir­cum­stances? I assumed that was polite talk for a suck­ing stab wound to the chest. But I kept my face blank and ignorant.

“Why would I know any­thing about Jake’s death?” I asked. “The last time I saw the lit­tle punk was the day he brought his old man there down to the Pork Pit to threaten me into drop­ping the charges against him.”

Lies, of course. I’d run into Jake McAl­lis­ter one more time after that—at Mab Monroe’s party. Even though I’d been gussied up as a hooker, he’d still rec­og­nized me. Since I’d been there to kill some­one else, I’d lured sweet lit­tle Jakie into a bath­room, stabbed him to death, left his body in the bath­tub, and washed the blood off my dress before going back out to the party. Noth­ing I hadn’t done a hun­dred times before as the assas­sin the Spi­der. I cer­tainly hadn’t lost any sleep over it.

But right now, it looked like I might lose a whole lot more.

“See, that’s the prob­lem. My good friend Jonah doesn’t believe you. So he asked me and some of my boys to come down here and see if per­haps we could jog some­thing free from your mem­ory.” Slater smiled. His lips drew back, giv­ing me a glimpse of his pale pink gums. The giant’s grin reminded me of a jack-o’-lantern’s gap­ing maw—completely hol­low. “We’re going to pay these sorts of vis­its to any­one Jake might have had a prob­lem with. And your name was at the top of the list.”

Of course it was. I was prob­a­bly the only per­son in Ash­land who’d ever dared to stand up to Jake McAl­lis­ter. Now, his daddy was going to make me pay for it.

Slater took off his suit jacket, handed it to Jonah McAl­lis­ter, and started rolling up his shirt sleeves.

I snif­fled, blew my nose again, and con­sid­ered the sit­u­a­tion. Four-on-one odds were never ter­rific, espe­cially since three of the four men were giants. The over­sized goons could be hard to bring down, even for a for­mer assas­sin like me. None of the giants showed any obvi­ous ele­men­tal abil­i­ties, like let­ting flames flicker on their clenched fists or form­ing Ice dag­gers with their bare hands. But that didn’t mean they didn’t have magic. Which would make them dou­bly hard to get rid of.

Still, if I hadn’t had the flu, I might have con­sid­ered killing them—or at least cut­ting down a cou­ple so I could run away. I might have dragged myself out of bed this evening, but I’d grabbed my sil­ver­stone knives on the way out the door. Five of them. Two tucked in the pock­ets of my jacket. One nes­tled in the small of my back. Two more in the sides of my boots. Never left home with­out them.

Of course, being an ele­men­tal myself, I didn’t really need my knives to kill. I could just use my magic to take down the giants. My Stone power was so strong that I could do prac­ti­cally any­thing I wanted to with the ele­ment. Like make bricks fly out of the wall of one of the sur­round­ing build­ings and use them to brain the giants in their watermelon-size heads. Splat, splat, splat. It’d be eas­ier than using an Uzi. Hell, if I really wanted to show off, I could just crum­ble all four of the build­ings that ringed the quad down on top of them.

I was also one of the rare ele­men­tals who could con­trol more than one ele­ment. Stone and Ice, in my case. Until recently, my Ice magic had been far weaker than my Stone power. But thanks to a series of trau­matic events, I could do much more with it now. Like cre­ate a wall of Ice knives to fling at the men. I’d sliced through a dwarf’s skin doing just that. Giants weren’t quite as tough as dwarves, at least when it came to cut­ting into them. Even if they did have more blood to spare that their shorter compatriots.

But the odds or how to go about killing the giants wasn’t what was hold­ing me back. Not really. It was the con­se­quences, what would hap­pen after­wards when their boss, Mab Mon­roe, got involved.

Sev­en­teen years ago, Mab Mon­roe had used her Fire ele­men­tal magic to kill my mother and older sis­ter, a fact I’d only recently learned. She’d also tor­tured me, using her magic to super­heat and burn a spi­der rune into my palms. I was plan­ning to deal with Mab myself after I fig­ured out a few things, like why she’d mur­dered my fam­ily in the first place and where my long-lost baby sis­ter Bria was now.

Tak­ing care of Jonah McAl­lis­ter and the rest of his hired help tonight would def­i­nitely tip my hand and draw even more of Mab’s atten­tion my way. I didn’t want Mab and her min­ions to real­ize that I had any ele­men­tal magic. To sus­pect that I was any­thing more than the sim­ple restau­rant owner Jonah McAl­lis­ter wanted dead for tat­tling on his son to the cops. At least, not before I killed the bitch for what she’d done to me.

All that left me with only one option tonight—I was going to have to let the giants hurt me, beat me. That was the only way I could keep my cover iden­tity as Gin Blanco safe, along with who I really was, Genevieve Snow.

Fuck. This was going to hurt.

Elliot Slater fin­ished rolling up his sleeves. “Are you sure you don’t have any­thing to tell us, Ms. Blanco?”

I sighed and shook my head. “I told you before. I don’t know any­thing about Jake McAllister’s death except what I read in the newspaper.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Slater murmured.

The giant stepped for­ward and flexed his fin­gers, ready to get on with things. Time for me to put on a lit­tle show. I widened my gray eyes, as though it had just sunk into my flu-addled brain what Elliot Slater was plan­ning to do to me. I let out a phlegmy scream and turned to run, as though I’d for­got­ten all about the two giants stand­ing behind me. I ran right into them, of course, and the two giants imme­di­ately seized my upper arms. Even though I had no real inten­tion of try­ing to break free, I still strug­gled to keep up appear­ances. Yelling, flail­ing, kick­ing out with my legs. The giants laughed at me and my weak blows, and turned me around to face Elliot Slater once more.

And that’s when the fun really started.

Elliot Slater snapped his hand up and slammed his fist into my face. Bas­tard was quick, I’d give him that. I hadn’t braced myself for the blow, and I jerked back in the giants’ arms. The force almost tore me out of their grasp. Pain exploded like dyna­mite in my jaw.

But Slater didn’t stop there. He spent the next two min­utes beat­ing me. One punch broke my drippy nose. Another cracked two of my ribs. And I didn’t even want to think about the inter­nal bleed­ing or what my face looked like at this point. Thud, thud, thud. I might as well have been a piece of meat the giant was ten­der­iz­ing for din­ner. Every part of me hurt and burned and throbbed and pulsed with pain.

And he laughed the whole time. Low, soft, chuck­ling laughs that made my skin crawl. Elliot Slater enjoyed hurt­ing peo­ple. Really enjoyed it. His hard-on bulged against the zip­per on his black pants.

Slater hit me again and stepped back. By this point, I hung limp between the two giants, all pre­tense of being tough and strong long gone. I just wanted this to be over with.

A hand grabbed my chin and forced my face up. I stared into Elliot Slater’s hazel eyes. At least, I tried to. White star­bursts kept explod­ing over and over in my field of vision, mak­ing it hard to focus. The light show was bet­ter than fire­works on the Fourth of July.

“Now,” Elliot rum­bled. “Do you want to recon­sider what you know about Jake McAllister’s death? Maybe you have some­thing new to add?”

“I don’t know any­thing about Jake’s death,” I mum­bled through a mouth­ful of loose teeth. Blood spewed out of my split lips and cas­caded down my navy fleece jacket. “I swear.” I made my voice as low, weak, and whipped as I could.

Jonah McAl­lis­ter stepped for­ward and peered at me. Mali­cious glee shim­mered in his brown gaze. “Keep hit­ting her. I want the bitch to suffer.”

Elliot Slater nod­ded and stepped back.

The giant spent another two min­utes hit­ting me. More pain, more blood, more cracked ribs. As I coughed up another mouth­ful of cop­pery blood, it dawned on me that Slater just might beat me to death, right here in the mid­dle of the cam­pus quad. Jonah McAl­lis­ter cer­tainly wouldn’t have any objec­tions to that. Damn. Looked like I was going to have to go for my knives, blast them with my ele­men­tal magic, and blow my cover after all, if I still had the strength to do that—

“Enough.”

A low voice floated out from some­where deeper in the shad­ows. A soft, breathy sound that reminded me of silk wisp­ing together. I knew that tone, that sul­try cadence, knew exactly who it belonged to. So did my inner psy­che. Enemy, enemy, enemy, a lit­tle voice mut­tered in the back of my head. A strange, pri­mal, ele­men­tal urge flooded my body, the desire to use my Stone and Ice magic to lash out and kill who and what­ever was within strik­ing distance.

Elliot Slater ignored the com­mand and hit me again, adding to the pain that racked my body.

“I said enough.” The voice dropped to a low hiss that crack­led with power, men­ace, and the promise of death.

Elliot froze, his hand pulled halfway back to hit me again.

“Let her go. Now.”

The two giants who’d had their hands clamped around my upper arms dropped me like I had the plague. I lay on the ground, my blood soak­ing into the frosty grass. Despite the pain, I curled my beaten body into a small, defen­sive ball. I also plucked one of my sil­ver­stone knives out of my jacket pocket and palmed it. The weapon felt cold and com­fort­ing against the thick scar embed­ded in my palm.

Some­thing rus­tled, and Mab Mon­roe stepped out of the shad­ows to my left.

The Fire ele­men­tal wore a long wool coat done in a dark, for­est green. Her red hair gleamed like pol­ished cop­per, but her eyes were even blacker than the night sky. A bit of gold flashed around her pale throat in between the folds of her expen­sive coat.

I couldn’t see that well given the star­bursts still explod­ing in my vision, but I knew what the gold flash was. Mab Mon­roe never any­where with­out wear­ing her sig­na­ture rune neck­lace. A large, cir­cu­lar ruby sur­rounded by sev­eral dozen wavy rays. From pre­vi­ous sight­ings, I knew the intri­cate dia­mond cut­ting on the gold would catch the mea­ger light and make it seem as though the rays were actu­ally flick­er­ing. Or per­haps my vision was just that screwed up at the moment.

Still, I knew what the rune was. A sun­burst. The sym­bol for fire. Mab Monroe’s per­sonal rune, used by her and her alone.

At the sight, the sil­ver­stone scars on my own palms started to itch and burn. Mab wasn’t the only one here with a rune. I had one too. A small cir­cle sur­rounded by eight thin rays. A spi­der rune. The sym­bol for patience. The rune had once been a medal­lion I’d worn on a chain around my neck, until Mab had used her Fire ele­men­tal magic to super­heat and burn the sil­ver­stone metal into my palms like it was a cat­tle brand. That’s how she’d tor­tured me the night she’d mur­dered my fam­ily. I was look­ing for­ward to return­ing the favor—some day soon.

Enemy, enemy, enemy, the lit­tle voice in the back of my head kept up its mut­tered chorus.

Mab Mon­roe walked over and stood beside Elliot Slater and Jonah McAl­lis­ter. She glanced down at me with all the inter­est she might give a cock­roach before she crushed it under the toe of her boot. Her dark eyes swal­lowed up the avail­able light, the way a black hole might. I lay very, very still and tried to look like I was a mere inch away from death. Not much of a stretch tonight.

“I said enough, Jonah,” Mab said. “Or have you for­got­ten that you and Elliot work for me?”

After a moment, Elliot Slater stepped back and bowed his head in def­er­ence. The other two giants did the same. But Jonah McAl­lis­ter was too angry to heed the hard edge in Mab’s breathy tone.

“This bitch made prob­lems for my son, and I think she knows some­thing about his death,” McAl­lis­ter barked. “I want her to pay for that. I want her to die for that.”

Mab stared down at me again. “You’re let­ting your emo­tions cloud your judg­ment, Jonah. Ignor­ing the facts. It’s most unbecoming.”

“And what would those facts be?” McAl­lis­ter demanded.

“That Ms. Blanco is just a woman, a mere, weak woman with no ele­men­tal magic or other notable strength or skills. Oth­er­wise, I’m sure she would have used every­thing at her dis­posal to keep from being so viciously beaten tonight. She’s not the per­son you’re look­ing for, Jonah. More impor­tantly, she’s not the woman I’m look­ing for.”

McAllister’s brown eyes glit­tered. “You and your obses­sion with that blonde whore. Why can’t you accept the fact that she’s dead? Buried some­where in that coal mine, just like Tobias Daw­son and his two men were?”

Mab’s eyes grew even blacker. She reached for her Fire ele­men­tal magic, hold­ing the power close to her like she might a lover. As an ele­men­tal myself, I could feel her magic, espe­cially since she was con­sciously embrac­ing it. Just the way Mab might have been able to sense my Stone and Ice magic, if I’d been stu­pid enough to actu­ally reach for any of it.

Of course, I would have felt Mab’s magic any­way, since she was one of the ele­men­tals who con­stantly gave off waves of power. The Fire ele­men­tal lit­er­ally leaked magic, the way water would drip from a faucet. Unlike me. As long as I didn’t draw upon my own ele­men­tal strength, didn’t use it in any offen­sive way, oth­ers couldn’t sense my power. A trait that had saved me more than once over the years.

But Mab’s magic pricked at my skin like hot, invis­i­ble nee­dles, adding to my mis­ery, but I stayed still, giv­ing no indi­ca­tion I could sense it—or that I knew what they were talk­ing about.

“I doubt that hooker was a real hooker, and they never found her body in the rub­ble of the col­lapsed mine,” Mab replied in a cold voice. “Until I see her body, she’s not dead. I’m going to find her, Jonah, and then we can both have our revenge. She killed Daw­son, and she’s the one who killed your son. Not Ms. Blanco.”

They were talk­ing about the night of Mab’s party, when I’d dressed up as a hooker to get close to Tobias Daw­son, a greedy mine owner who was threat­en­ing some inno­cent peo­ple. Daw­son was the one I was sup­posed to kill that night, but Jake McAl­lis­ter had spot­ted me before I’d had a chance to do the hit. Mab had caught me in the bath­room a few min­utes after I’d stabbed Jake McAl­lis­ter to death. Evi­dently, the Fire ele­men­tal had put two and two together and real­ized that I’d stiffed Jake, then done the same to Tobias Daw­son later on in his own mine. Not good.

“I agreed to this lit­tle test with the under­stand­ing that Ms. Blanco would live through it, should she prove her­self to be inno­cent of your son’s mur­der,” Mab con­tin­ued. “She’s done so, at least to my sat­is­fac­tion. Nobody would will­ingly let her­self be beaten the way she has.”

So Mab Mon­roe didn’t under­stand the con­cept of self-sacrifice. Not sur­pris­ing. I might have laughed, if it wouldn’t have hurt so much. At the moment, I would have endured a whole new beat­ing just to get them to leave me alone in the dark­ness. Still, I was dou­bly glad that I’d let Elliot Slater hit me. Oth­er­wise, I would have been dead by now, ambushed from the side­lines by Mab Mon­roe and her Fire ele­men­tal magic.

“Who cares if the bitch lives or dies?” Jonah McAl­lis­ter scoffed. “She’s nobody.”

“That might be true, but unfor­tu­nately, Ms. Blanco is not with­out friends,” Mab replied. “Most notably the Dev­er­aux sisters.”

“I don’t care about those two dwar­ven bitches,” Jonah snapped. “You could eas­ily kill both of them.”

Mab gave a del­i­cate shrug of her shoul­ders. “Per­haps. But Jo-Jo Dev­er­aux is quite pop­u­lar. It might be enter­tain­ing, but killing her wouldn’t win me any favors. Besides, I have other con­cerns at the moment, most notably Coolidge.”

My dazed mind latched onto the unfa­mil­iar name. Coolidge? Who was Coolidge? And what had he done to piss off Mab Monroe?

“You’ve had your fun, Jonah. Face it, Ms. Blanco isn’t the one who killed Jake. And she’s suf­fered plenty tonight for what­ever insults she laid on him pre­vi­ously. Now, are you going to come qui­etly so we can talk busi­ness? Or should I start look­ing for a new attor­ney?” Mal­ice dripped from Mab’s voice like acid rain.

Jonah McAl­lis­ter finally real­ized he wasn’t going to win this one. And that if he kept argu­ing with his boss, she was likely to use her Fire ele­men­tal magic to fry him where he stood. So the lawyer clamped his lips together and nod­ded his head, acqui­esc­ing to his boss’ wishes. At least for tonight.

Then, the silver-haired bas­tard turned and kicked me in the stom­ach as hard as he could.

The blow wasn’t entirely unex­pected, but it still made me retch up even more blood. Some­thing hot and hard twisted in my stom­ach. I needed to get to Jo-Jo Dev­er­aux soon so the dwar­ven Air ele­men­tal could heal me. Oth­er­wise, I wouldn’t be breath­ing much longer.

“Fine. We’ll move on to the next per­son, then.” Jonah McAl­lis­ter leaned down and grabbed my brown pony­tail, pulling my face up to his. “You talk to the cops about this, bitch, and you will die. Under­stand me?”

Cops? Oh, I had no inten­tion of going to the cops. No siree. I was going to han­dle this mat­ter all by my lone­some. But to keep up the act, I let out a low groan and nod­ded my head. Sat­is­fied that I was suit­ably cowed this time, McAl­lis­ter let go. I flopped back onto the ground.

“Let’s get out of here,” the lawyer growled. “The bitch dripped blood all over my coat.”

Jonah McAl­lis­ter stepped over my prone body and dis­ap­peared into the dark­ness. Elliot Slater and the other two giants fol­lowed him. But Mab Mon­roe stayed where she was and stud­ied me with her dark gaze. Her power washed over me again, the invis­i­ble, fiery nee­dles prick­ing my bloody skin. I bit back another groan.

“I do hope you’ve learned your les­son this time, Ms. Blanco,” Mab said in a pleas­ant voice. “Because Jonah’s right. Next time you cross one of us—any of us—you will die. And I promise you that it will be far more excru­ci­at­ing than what you’ve expe­ri­enced here tonight.”

A bit of black fire flashed in her eyes, back­ing up her deadly promise. Mab Mon­roe smiled at me a moment longer, then turned on her boot heel and van­ished into the cold night.