“I’m sorry,” I said in a quiet voice. “About Jillian. She didn’t deserve to die like that.”
Owen looked away from me. “Me too. She was a friend.”
I wanted to ask if that was all she had been, but I kept my mouth shut. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer. I dropped my gaze from Owen, and both of us concentrated on the thorns around us instead of staring at each other. We were both silent until he finally cleared his throat.
“So now what?” he asked. “We might be out here away from the giants, but Eva, Phillip, and the others are still inside.”
“Now we see what kind of leverage we have.”
I pulled the small ebony tube out of the pouch on my utility belt. Mab’s sunburst rune glimmered in the moonlight, deadly and beautiful, just like the Fire elemental herself had been. I reached for my Stone magic, used it to harden my skin, and traced my finger over the sunburst, wondering if the rune might hold some sort of booby-trap. But the symbol didn’t flare to life or spew explosive, elemental Fire in my face.
Still, the problem was that I didn’t see a way to open the tube. Flat discs of silverstone covered both ends of the wood, but I couldn’t pry them off with either my nails or the tip of my knife. I handed the tube to Owen, who ran his fingers up and down it, but he couldn’t figure out how to get inside it either. It had to open, because there was something inside, something that rustled back and forth whenever I shook the tube. I needed to know what that something was so I could deal with Clementine accordingly.
Of course Mab wouldn’t make it easy to loot whatever was inside the tube, especially when I was under pressure and pressed for time. I imagined the Fire elemental was laughing at me even now from wherever she was in the great beyond.
“Laugh your ass off, Mab,” I muttered. “You’ve certainly earned it tonight.”
I held up the tube, wondering if there was something I was missing. Once again, my eyes focused on the sunburst rune. The wavy golden rays took on a muted silver tinge in the moonlight, while the ruby smoldered like a dull, banked ember in the middle of the design. Maybe it was the mocking way the rune seemed to wink at me, but an idea popped into my mind. I put my thumb on the ruby and pressed in on it.
A soft click sounded, and one of the silverstone discs on the end of the tube popped up.
“Here goes nothing,” I murmured.
I hinged the silverstone to one side and tipped the contents of the tube into my hand. I’d been expecting jewels, a fistful of rubies or something like that, something that would have been in keeping with Mab’s bold, flashy, fiery nature.
Instead, a single piece of rolled-up paper slid out of the hollowed-out wood.
“That’s it?” Owen asked. “That’s all that’s in there?”
I shook the wood, but nothing else came out. “Yep, that’s it. So let’s see what’s so important about it.”
I carefully unrolled the paper. It was hard to make out everything, since the print was so small and the night was so dark, despite the golden glow from the garden lights in the distance, but I managed to skim through it.
“It looks like some sort of legal document. I think . . . I think this is Mab’s will.”
Owen frowned. “Why would Clementine go to so much trouble to steal Mab’s will?”
“I don’t know,” I murmured. “But apparently, she wanted it bad enough to arrange the heist and everything else tonight. But you’re right. The question is why.”
“Well, what does it say?” he asked. “Who did Mab leave what to?”
I squinted and read a few more paragraphs. “A bunch of legal mumbo jumbo, and . . . it looks like . . . she left everything to one person. Someone whose last name is also Monroe—M. M. Monroe.”
I stared at the paper. It seemed innocent enough, but I couldn’t help but feel like the earth had just opened up at my feet and I was about to tumble into an abyss.
“M. M. Monroe?” Owen asked. “Did I hear you right?”
All I could do was nod.
Finn had mentioned there was a rumor that the contents of Mab’s will were going to be revealed at the gala tonight. Now that I’d read the document myself, I could easily imagine Mab arranging for things to go down like that. Like Finn had said, it would have been one last hurrah for her—an opportunity to remind everyone how powerful she had been, and a chance to announce her successor in the most dramatic way possible.
Because Mab hadn’t left anything to Jonah McAllister, her other business associates, or even charity. No, she’d given everything to this M. M. Monroe.
I wondered if this mysterious relative had the same devastating Fire magic Mab had wielded.
I wondered if this person knew about the massive fortune he or she had inherited.
I wondered if this Monroe would decide to come to Ashland to oversee Mab’s empire in person—and how much trouble he or she might cause for me if so.
My mother and Mab had been enemies for years before Mab had murdered her and my older sister. Their parents had been enemies before them, and their parents before them. At least, that’s how it had been according to Mab. So it wasn’t too much of a stretch to think that the family feud would continue on into another generation, if that’s what this was. It already had with me and Mab, really.
Once again, I’d thought that I’d taken care of everything when I’d killed the Fire elemental, that I’d finally set myself free from her, but she just kept screwing with me, even from six feet under.
“It doesn’t really matter who Mab left her fortune to,” I finally said, rolling up the paper and sliding it back into the tube. “Just that we have the will and Clementine wants it. We can use it for leverage.”
Owen shook his head. “She’s not going to let the hostages go, if that’s what you’re thinking. You know that as well as I do. Not now, when everyone’s seen her face and knows exactly who she is. She can’t afford to let any of them live.”
“That’s what I thought at first too. But I think good ole Clem has a slightly different plan in mind.”
I told Owen about the bombs I’d found on the bridge and under the bumper of the moving truck.
He frowned. “Okay, I understand about the destroying the bridge to help with their escape, but why would Clementine want to blow up the moving trucks?”
I shrugged. “I haven’t quite figured that out yet. But it doesn’t really matter, because the only way she’s leaving this island is in a body bag.”
Owen studied me in the moonlight. “Because of what she and Dixon did to Jillian?”
I didn’t say anything, but he could see the answer in my cold, angry eyes—along with the guilt.
“That wasn’t your fault, Gin,” he said. “It was a mistake, her having on the same dress as you. Just a stupid, simple, cruel twist of fate.” He hesitated. “She was a friend, but you don’t have to avenge her for me, if that’s what you’re thinking. I wouldn’t ask you to do that.”
No, he wouldn’t. Owen preferred to handle such things himself, just like I did. It was one of the many things I admired about him.
“I know you wouldn’t ask me that,” I said. “But I need to avenge Jillian for me. Because it should have been my face that got blown off, not hers.”
“I’m not blaming you for Jillian’s death, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“No,” I replied, weariness creeping into my voice. “You just blame me for Salina.”
His ex-fiancée’s name hung in the air between us, writhing around and around like a poisonous snake. But I’d said the words, and there was no taking them back. Despite the danger we were in, the danger we were all in, Eva, Phillip, and the others were right: Owen and I needed to start talking, to start figuring out where we stood and what kind of future we might have together. If I was going to die tonight, if we both might die tonight, well, I wanted to clear the air between us—about this, anyway.