Finn eyed the almond-flavored sugar cookies in the cake stand on the counter with hungry interest. “I should get something for schlepping all the way over here on a moment’s notice. You can give me, say, a dozen of those cookies. After I finish my milkshake, of course.”
I snorted.
While Finn kept eating, I filled him in about my run-in with Troy and his goons, in addition to Catalina’s nice car and her even nicer address. I also told him the tidbit Violet had mentioned about Catalina’s mother passing away.
“I’ve never heard of the guy, but if her mom died, she could be living off some sort of insurance settlement,” Finn suggested, polishing off the rest of the dead man’s grilled cheese. “That might explain the car and the apartment.”
“Maybe,” I murmured, watching Catalina seat a couple, hand them menus, and take their drink orders. “Either way, I want to know everything there is to know about her. And Troy Mannis too. He doesn’t strike me as the type of guy who takes the word no very well, much less the ass-kicking that I gave him and his friends.”
“Consider it done.”
Finn pushed his empty plate away and slurped down the dregs of his milkshake. But instead of untucking the napkin at his chin, getting to his feet, and leaving, he crossed his arms over his chest and gave me an expectant look.
“What?” I growled.
“You know what,” he replied in an annoying, singsong voice. “You’re the one who brought it up in the first place.”
I sighed, grabbed the glass cake stand, and pushed it over to him. Finn cackled with glee as he removed the top and started cramming cookies into his mouth.
“Now that we’ve taken care of business, let’s get back to what’s really important: your birthday party,” he mumbled between bites.
I groaned.
“Mark my words,” Finn crowed. “By the time I get done, you’re going to have the best birthday ever.”
I closed my eyes as he started chattering on about my party again. I would have laid my head down on the counter and cried, but there were too many witnesses for that.
• • •
After he got his sugar fix, Finn left the restaurant. In between torturing me with what he might cook up for my not-so-surprise party, he did also promise to dig to the very depths of Catalina, Troy, and anyone and everyone they might know. That was comforting, even if all the birthday talk wasn’t.
I kept one eye on Catalina as she worked her shift, but the rest of the day passed by quietly, and no one else came into the restaurant with the sole intention of killing me. In fact, nothing particularly noteworthy happened at all, and I was starting to think that I would get through unscathed.
Until two women strolled through the front door.
One of them was a giant, seven feet tall, with a short, sleek bob of golden hair, hazel eyes, and milky skin covered with a smattering of pale freckles. The other woman was my size, about five-seven or so, with a beautiful mane of wavy hair that flowed past her slender shoulders. At first, her hair seemed to be a rich sable brown, but then she stepped into a patch of sunlight, and I realized that it was actually an intense auburn, with coppery streaks woven in among her lustrous locks, almost like her hair was glowing with some sort of inner fire. Both of them wore expensive pantsuits, black for the giant and a cool white for the other woman.
Catalina directed them over to a booth that was right across from my position at the cash register, and the two women sat down.
The giant glanced around, her cold gaze taking in everyone, from the other customers to the waitstaff to the people passing by on the sidewalk outside. I recognized the hard stare and the mental calculations. So she was a bodyguard, then, one who seemed to be exceptionally protective of her client, judging by the way she sized up every person who walked by in terms of how much of a potential threat they might be and how fast she could take them down. And I was willing to bet that it was fast. Her body wasn’t as heavily muscled as that of other giants, but her tall figure hinted at a lean, coiled strength that would crack out at you like a whip—fast, stinging, and merciless.
In contrast, the second, shorter woman seemed completely unconcerned by her surroundings. Then again, why should she be worried when she had a seven-foot-tall meat shield watching over her?
The auburn-haired woman took the menu that Catalina offered her, then glanced around the storefront. Her face was neutral, but I got the feeling that she was analyzing every single thing in the restaurant, albeit in a different way from how the giant had.
Finally, her gaze met mine.
Sculpted eyebrows, high cheekbones, heart-shaped mouth. Her features were flawless in their symmetrical beauty, and her creamy skin had a faint pink undertone to it, which made her look even more vibrant and alive. Her eyes were a vivid green, the intense color standing out against the black of her large pupils.
She realized that I was staring at her, and a small smile split her crimson lips, revealing her perfect white teeth. She returned my stare with one of her own, seeming deep in thought, before nodding at me. Then she turned back to the giant, leaned forward, and murmured something to her friend. The giant’s flat gaze flicked to me for a few seconds before she too leaned forward. Soon the two women were engrossed in their conversation and not paying any attention to me at all.
That should have reassured me, but it didn’t.
I frowned. Something about the woman’s soft smile and thoughtful expression nagged at me, making me think maybe I’d seen her somewhere before, somewhere important, somewhere that I should remember—
“Problem?” Sophia rasped.
The Goth dwarf was standing off to my right and stirring the pot of Fletcher’s secret barbecue sauce that was bubbling away on one of the stoves, flavoring the air with its rich, smoky mix of cumin, black pepper, and other spices. Sophia had noticed my keen interest in our new customers.
I kept staring at the two women. They both ignored me completely, which made more and more alarm bells start going off in my head. The only people who did that to me in my own restaurant were the ones who had some sort of sinister and dastardly plans for my demise.
By this point, the two mystery women had given Catalina their order of cheeseburgers, sweet-potato fries, and macaroni salad and were talking softly to each other in between checking their phones. Neither one of them so much as glanced in my direction, but I felt like they were aware of me all the same.
I hopped off my stool, went over to the counter close to where Sophia was standing by the stoves, and started slicing veggies for the rest of the day’s sandwiches. As I whacked my way through a red onion, I subtly tilted my head in the direction of the two women.
“You ever see them in here before?”
Sophia matched my casual cool move for move, reaching over and grabbing a ladle for the barbecue sauce as though she weren’t really eyeing the women.
“No,” she replied, sticking the ladle in the sauce. “Giant looks strong, though.”
“Do me a favor. See if you can snap a photo of them before they leave, and send it to Finn. Maybe he knows who they are.”
Sophia grunted her agreement, and we both went back to work.
An hour later, the two women had finally finished their meal and pushed their plates away. Sophia chose that moment to stroll back to the restrooms, tapping her fingers on her phone as though she were texting. She discreetly angled the phone at the women as she passed them, then finished her text and slid the device into the back pocket of her jeans before disappearing into the bathroom. She didn’t give me a thumbs-up, but I knew she’d gotten shots of them.
The two women slid out of the booth. I thought that they might come over to the cash register to pay for their food and make some not-so-veiled threats about ending my existence. But instead, the giant threw several bills down onto the table, then opened the front door for the other woman.
The two of them strolled outside. A black Audi with tinted windows pulled up to the curb, and the giant
opened the back door for the auburn-haired woman. A few seconds later, they were both inside the vehicle and cruising away to parts unknown.
Even though they had left and nothing had happened, the strange tension I’d felt ever since they’d stepped into the restaurant didn’t ease. I went over to their booth and peered out the windows, but the car and the women were long gone. Maybe they’d just wanted a hot meal and nothing else. Maybe they hadn’t had any hidden agenda for eating in my restaurant. Maybe I was just being overly paranoid—even for me.
I sighed and grabbed the plate that the auburn-haired woman had been using, along with her silverware.
The second my hand closed around her fork, a burning sensation shot through my skin, as though the silverware were red-hot.
I was so surprised that I dropped the utensil. It clattered to the floor with a loud, reverberating bang, almost as if someone had fired a gun inside the restaurant. Everyone turned to look at me—the other customers, Catalina, even Sophia, who had stepped out of the restroom. But I ignored their curious gazes and focused on the fork, expecting to see some sort of elemental Fire rune flare to life on the handle and wondering if I could reach for my Stone magic, use it to harden my skin, and throw myself down on top of it in time to protect everyone else from the upcoming blast of magic—
But nothing happened.
No runes, no Fire, no magic, no explosions, nothing that would indicate that the fork was anything other than a fork.
Catalina stopped her wipe-down of the next table over. “Gin?” she asked in the same cautious voice she’d been using with me all day. “Is something wrong?”
I shook my head. “Nah. It’s nothing. Just a case of butterfingers.”
Catalina gave me a strange look, like she didn’t believe me, but she finished wiping down the table, then moved over to the next one. The customers went back to their food and conversations, and Sophia returned to the stoves, although she raised her black eyebrows at me as she passed. I shook my head at her, then crouched down on the floor, still staring at the fork.
Folks had left me all sorts of nasty surprises in and around the Pork Pit these past few months. Everything from saw-shaped runes frosted into the doors that would spew out razor-sharp needles of elemental Ice when someone tried to open them, to trip-wires strung across the alley floor that would trigger a double-gauge shotgun, to good old-fashioned ticking time bombs hidden in the backs of the restroom toilets. No one had tried to booby-trap the silverware yet, although I supposed it was only a matter of time before someone thought of it.
But I wasn’t going to find out what was wrong by just staring at the fork, so I drew in a breath, reached out, and carefully picked it up again. Once more, it burned my hand, although the sensation was much fainter now. Whatever had made the metal feel like it was scorching my skin was slowly fading away, like warmth quickly seeping from a pan that had been taken out of a hot oven, but I’d been right about what had caused the sensation.
Magic—elemental magic.
I wrapped my hand around the metal and concentrated, trying to identify what kind of magic it was, but it didn’t feel like the Fire power that I’d expected it to be. Otherwise, hot, invisible pins and needles would have been stabbing into my skin, and I would have experienced a similar sensation if it had been Air magic. The faint, steady burn wasn’t cold or hard, so it wasn’t Ice or Stone magic either, the two areas I was gifted in, and it didn’t feel like some offshoot power like water or electricity.
I frowned. The auburn-haired woman was definitely an elemental, and her power—whatever it was—must have somehow soaked into the fork while she’d been eating. That was the only explanation that made sense, since some elementals constantly gave off invisible waves of magic, even when they weren’t actively using their power. But whatever her magic was, it was something I’d never felt before.
And that worried me more than anything else.
4
A few more customers came into the restaurant, but it looked like it was going to be a slow night, so I decided to close early.
Besides, I wanted to go home and go through Fletcher’s files to see if there was any mention of the auburn-haired woman and her giant friend. The two of them hadn’t said a single word to me, but I couldn’t help but think that they were a dangerous threat all the same. Folks always said that animals could sniff out evil, and I’d gotten pretty good at it myself these past few months. I’d had to, in order to survive.
Catalina was the last of the waitstaff to leave. She pushed through the double doors and stepped into the storefront, her backpack dangling from her hand. She called out a soft good night to Sophia, who grunted in response, and rounded the end of the counter.
Catalina stopped in front of me. “Good night, Gin,” she said, even though her gaze skittered away from mine just like it had all day long.
“Night.”
Catalina gave me a tight, awkward smile, still not really looking at me, then headed for the front door, opened it, and stepped outside. She stood on the sidewalk and hooked her backpack over her shoulder, the sunlight making the pig pin on the side of her bag sparkle with an evil light. Catalina pulled her phone out of her jeans pocket and started checking her messages as she strolled down the street and out of sight.
I stopped wiping down the counter and watched her go, wondering if Finn had found out anything yet about her, where her money was coming from, or her boy Troy—
Think of the devil, and he shall appear.
Troy Mannis stepped into view right outside of the windows. He stared in the direction Catalina had gone, then turned and said something to someone behind him. A second later, the same two vamps who’d been with him at the community college joined him. Together, the three of them headed after Catalina.
I’d been so sure that Troy would come after me for kicking his ass that it had never occurred to me that he might take his anger out on Catalina instead. But I didn’t need an Air elemental’s precognition to know what he and his friends would do to her the second they got her alone.
“Where does Catalina usually park her car?” I asked Sophia, throwing down my towel.
“Garage on Broad Street. Why?” the dwarf rasped.
“Her little problem from last night has reappeared.”
I had told Sophia what had happened to Catalina at the college when the dwarf had helped me open the restaurant this morning. Her black eyes sharpened. “Need some help?”
I shook my head. “Nah. Stay here and close down the Pit, please. Besides, it’s been a slow day. I could use the exercise. If I need you, I’ll call for pickup and disposal afterward. Okay?”
Sophia’s grin matched the ones of the hot pink skulls on her apron. “It’s a date.”
• • •
I pulled open the front door of the restaurant and stepped outside. It was still muggy out, although the heat wasn’t as oppressive as it had been earlier in the day, and the faintest note of fall whispered in the air, one that said that the warm day would soon give way to a deliciously cool night.
I scanned the pedestrians and spotted Troy about a block ahead of me. Despite the heat, he wore a black leather jacket, and so did the two vamps who were with him. You didn’t wear something like that in this weather unless you had something to hide. Like, say, a gun or some other weapon.
I needed to get to Catalina before Troy and his friends did, so I jogged across the street and cut through an alley on the far side. But the narrow passage wasn’t deserted—far from it.
Several hookers leaned against the Dumpsters that lined the walls, wearing sky-high stilettos, sequined tube tops, and leather miniskirts that were barely bigger than the towels that I used to wipe down tables. The women had been chatting and laughing before they started plying their wares for the night, but their easy camaraderie and chuckles faded the second I entered the alley.
One of them shot me an angry glare for daring to wander into their territory. “Get lost, honey. This ain’t no amateur hou
r around here.”
Another hooker grabbed her arm. “Shh! Don’t you know who that is?”
She whispered something in her friend’s ear that made the other woman’s mouth gape open and her knees knock together. My assassin moniker, most likely. The hookers who worked the streets around the restaurant had heard the rumors about who I really was, and they were smart enough to believe them. The first woman ducked her head to me in a silent apology, but I was in too much of a hurry to care.
Most of the women gave me sharp, respectful nods as I passed, even going so far as to step back so I could jog by them more easily. Others actually moved all the way behind the Dumpsters, plastering themselves up against the alley walls as flat and as fast as they could. None of them actually spoke to me, but they knew that I was even more dangerous than their pimps lounging in the cars parked on the surrounding streets, and they didn’t want to do anything to attract my attention.
I reached the end of that alley and cut through two more before I ended up on Broad Street. Since it wasn’t one of the main drags, this area was mostly deserted, except for the few commuters who hadn’t left downtown already and were rushing to their cars in the hopes of getting home in time for dinner and to tuck their kids into bed.
I looked left and right, but I didn’t see Catalina anywhere. She must be in the garage already. If I was lucky, she was alone, and Troy and his friends hadn’t gotten here yet. If I wasn’t lucky, well, Sophia would come and help me clean up the mess, like she’d promised. So I palmed one of the silverstone knives hidden up my sleeves, hopped over the metal pole that barred the exit, and entered the garage.
The stones started murmuring the second I stepped into the structure.
Naturally.
The cold, graffiti-tagged concrete bellowed like a chorus of bullfrogs—low, dark, and sinister. I tightened my grip on my knife and slid into the nearest shadow, scanning the rows of vehicles, wondering if Troy and his friends were already here. But the stone continued to rumble at a steady level, and I realized that it was only reflecting back the paranoia of all the folks who’d scurried to their cars, worried that they were going to be mugged, and especially of the ones who’d had their fears realized and their heads dashed against the pillars while some lowlife rifled through their pockets.