Just because no one had attempted to kill me at the community college yet didn’t mean that some enterprising fool wouldn’t have the bright idea to try. They’d certainly made the effort pretty much everywhere else I went. So many people had tried to murder me at my barbecue restaurant, the Pork Pit, that I’d lost count of how many of them I’d offed instead.
People had been trying to take me out ever since I killed Mab Monroe, the head of the Ashland underworld, back in the winter. With Mab gone, there was an opening for a new king or queen of crime in the city, and many folks saw my murder, the Spider’s murder, as a stepping-stone to the throne.
Me? Well, at first, I’d just been trying to fly under the radar and survive all of the assassination attempts. But now people were really starting to piss me off. You’d think that I had killed enough lowlifes for all the others to get the message to leave me the fuck alone already, but apparently, brains were not in abundance in Ashland. Shocking, I know.
But I made it over to the parking lot without anyone jumping out of the shadows, shouting, screaming, and trying to shoot, stab, bludgeon, or magic me to death. Still, I remained vigilant as I approached my car, since this area was close to Southtown, the dangerous part of Ashland, home to gangbangers, hookers, their pimps, and down-on-their-luck homeless bums. And those were some of the nicer folks around here. They wouldn’t care about murdering me because I was the Spider. They’d be more than happy to kill me for my phone, my car keys, and what might be in my wallet.
I stopped at the end of the path and scanned the lot in front of me. Like most places this close to Southtown, the area was a bit worse for wear. Jagged cracks zigzagged across the pavement, before collapsing into wide potholes, while the white paint that marked the parking spaces was so faded that you could barely make out the lines. Fast-food bags, crushed cigarettes, and jumbo-size soda cups overflowed out of the trash cans, and the steady breeze sent them gusting along the blacktop, along with the tinkle-tinkle-tinkle of glass from broken beer bottles.
A variety of gang runes and graffiti tags had been spray-painted onto the concrete barriers that cordoned off the lot from the construction site next door. The words Vaughn Construction were embossed on a metal sign hanging on the chain-link fence that ran behind the barriers, although the V in Vaughn had been turned into a giant red heart, thanks to some tagger’s artistic talents. I made a mental note to get Finn to find out what Charlotte Vaughn was building here. Or perhaps I’d pay Charlotte a visit one night and ask her myself.
I didn’t see anyone, but instead of moving forward, I held my position and reached out with my magic. People’s feelings, actions, and intentions sink into whatever stone is around them, and as a Stone elemental, I can hear and interpret all of those emotional vibrations. Like, say, if someone was lurking behind one of those concrete barriers, a gun in his hand, ready to rise up and shoot me the second I was in range, then the barriers would mutter to me, the same way a man might mutter under his breath as he impatiently waited for me to hurry up and get here, already.
But the concrete and the pavement only grumbled with displeasure about all of the spray paint, cracks, and potholes that marred their surfaces. No one was here to try to kill me. Good. Perhaps I would actually get through one day without having to fight for my life.
I strolled through the lot, listening to Owen and still looking for any signs of trouble, but my silver Aston Martin was right where I’d left it. I’d bought the car a few weeks ago at Finn’s insistence. He had demanded that I have my own Aston, since I had a bad habit of getting his keyed, beaten, dented, bloodied, and generally destroyed.
I glanced around a final time, still half-expecting some idiot to pop up from between two cars, yell, and charge at me with a weapon, but I was the only one here, so I focused on my conversation with Owen again.
“So what’s on tap for tonight?” I asked.
“Well,” he said, “I thought we would stay in and have a quiet evening. You, me, a nice dinner, perhaps some quality time watching TV in my bedroom.”
“Watching TV? Really?”
“Well, if you absolutely insist, we can skip the TV-viewing portion of the evening,” Owen suggested in a husky tone.
Even though he couldn’t see me, I still smiled. “Let’s.”
He laughed, and we kept chatting as I pulled my keys out of my jeans pocket and unlocked the car door—
“Where do you think you’re going?”
The harsh words and the smug tone that went with them made me stop and look over my shoulder. While I’d been talking to Owen, three twenty-something guys had entered the parking lot, all of them wearing jeans, polo shirts, and sneakers. A girl the same age hurried along in front of them, her arms crossed over her chest and her head down, her speed increasing with every step as she tried to get clear of the guys.
The girl’s backpack bounced on her right shoulder, and a large pin shaped like a pig holding a plate of food, all done in blue and pink crystals, winked at me. I frowned. I knew that pin. It was a rough approximation of the neon sign that hung outside the Pork Pit. Sophia Deveraux, the head cook, had ordered a whole box of the pig pins and given them to the restaurant’s waitstaff to wear.
I focused on the girl and realized that I knew her too. Long, wavy black hair, hazel eyes, bronze skin, pretty features. Catalina Vasquez. She worked as a waitress at the Pit and took classes at the college, just like I did.
And it looked like she was in trouble, just like I was most days.
Catalina scurried forward, moving as fast as she could without actually running, but the guys weren’t going to let her get away that easy. One reached forward and grabbed her backpack, jerking it off her shoulder and making it fall to the ground. Books, notepads, pens, and more tumbled out of the bag. Catalina scowled, but she didn’t make a move to bend down and pick up her stuff. Instead, she stood her ground, her hands clenched into tight fists, as though she wanted to throw herself at the guys and give them a good pounding.
I leaned against the side of my car, watching the situation unfold.
“Listen, Troy, I’ve told you before. I’m not into drugs. I don’t use them, I don’t buy them, I don’t sell them, and I sure as hell don’t date guys who do,” Catalina said.
Troy, the guy who’d grabbed the backpack, stepped forward. He was around six feet tall, with dirty-blond hair, brown eyes, a beefy build, and a mean smile. My own lips curved in response in a smile that was far meaner than his.
“Ah, come on, Cat,” Troy purred, stepping closer to her. “Don’t be like that. We used to be friends. We used to be a lot more. I remember how good we were together, don’t you?”
Troy reached out, as if he were going to curl a lock of Catalina’s hair around his finger, but she slapped his hand away before he could touch her.
“That was a long time ago,” she snapped. “Before I knew better.”
Troy’s eyes narrowed. “You know, given our history, I was going to be nice about this. Not anymore.”
He snapped his fingers. One of the other guys stepped forward, unzipped the black backpack he was holding, and pulled out a fistful of plastic bags, all filled with pills. He handed the bags to Troy, who held them up so that Catalina could see them.