Elemental Assassin: The Spider Part 14

"Gin?"

I gave him another smile, hiding my inner turmoil, then stood on my tiptoes and kissed his cheek. "I would love to talk about our future-later. Right now, though, we've got a party to attend."

Sebastian grinned, tightened his grip on my arm, and led me up the stairs and into the mansion. For a moment, I felt a sinking sense of deja vu. I'd jokingly told Fletcher that I wasn't some character out of a fairy tale, doomed to heartbreak, that I wasn't Cinderella, but that's exactly who and what I was tonight, because my time with Sebastian was rapidly running out.

And there was nothing that I could do to keep the clock from striking midnight.

Sebastian led me to the grand ballroom on the second floor of the mansion.

It looked like a scene out of one of those old Hollywood movies that Sophia loved to watch. The wooden parquet floor had been waxed until it glinted like gold underfoot, while the crystal chandeliers dripped down from the ceiling like cl.u.s.ters of diamonds, throwing out rainbow sprays of color in every direction. Vases full of those dark blue roses perched in alcoves in the walls, adding more color to the scene. Food tables had been set up around the perimeter of the room, along with several elemental Ice bars, the frosty surfaces steaming slightly underneath the heat from the lights. Members of an orchestra were checking their instruments and warming up in the back corner of the room. Sebastian had had people working around the clock the last few days to get ready for the party, and it had more than paid off. The ballroom had been transformed from a simple open s.p.a.ce into a place of lush, opulent elegance.

"What do you think?" Sebastian asked.

"It's beautiful."

"I'm glad you think so, miss," another voice cut in.

A dwarven woman strode into the ballroom behind us. She held a clipboard in her hand, while a black plastic headset was clamped down over her frizzy black hair. I blinked. Meredith Ruiz. The same event planner who'd put together the dinner at Tobias Dawson's mansion.

Meredith's gaze took in my silver dress, shoes, and purse. I waited for her eyes to narrow and sharpen, but all she did was turn up the wattage on her bland, polite smile. She didn't recognize me. Why would she? I wasn't one of the waitresses she could bully around, so I was of no use to her.

She turned to Sebastian. "Now, sir, if you'll step over to the patio doors with me, there's something that I need to discuss with you . . ."

Meredith grabbed his arm and led him away, but I stayed where I was, looking at first one thing, then another. The glistening chandeliers, the silver platters of gourmet food, the golden champagne that the bartenders were pouring into delicate crystal flutes. I was so focused on the sights that it took me a few moments to realize that the stone walls of the ballroom were whispering. But not with pride at how the room had been transformed.

No, the stones muttered with malice and ill intent.

I frowned, reaching out with my magic, wondering why the stones were so upset. Now that Vaughn was dead, I'd thought that the harsh whispers would slowly start to fade away, but instead, it seemed as if they'd only intensified since I'd last been in the mansion a few days ago- "Sorry about that," Sebastian said, coming back over to me. "Apparently, there's a last-minute problem with the new fountain that I ordered for the lawn. I wanted the jets hidden inside it to put on a water show to the orchestra music, but the event planner says that Mr. Stills, the blacksmith installing the fountain, tells her that it's not possible on such short notice." He shrugged, as though it were a minor inconvenience. "In the meantime, shall we?"

Sebastian held out his arm to me. I shut the sounds of the muttering stones out of my mind, took it, and let him lead me deeper into the ballroom.

Sebastian's guests started arriving shortly after that. I stood by his side inside the ballroom doors. He shook hands with every single person, thanking them all for coming and offering them all a hearty smile. Sometimes he would engage them in brief conversation. Other times, the guests would wander off in search of food and drink. But more than a few folks lingered around the door, wanting some face time with the man of the hour. In fact, so many people cl.u.s.tered around him that I soon had to stand against the wall so I wouldn't be swept away from him entirely.

Sebastian didn't introduce me to anyone, but I didn't mind. This was his night, and I preferred to stay in the background, anyway. I was thinking about slipping away to get a drink when Mab Monroe walked through the open doors.

The Fire elemental was dressed in a strapless velvet gown in a deep, b.l.o.o.d.y crimson that somehow set off her creamy skin and coppery hair at the same time. Her makeup was expertly applied, her eyes made even blacker by the heavy liner and shadow that rimmed them. In contrast, her sunburst necklace flashed like a ring of wavy golden fire around her throat, the ruby in the middle sparking like an ember about to ignite.

The crowd around Sebastian quieted and fell away at Mab's slow approach, and suddenly, I was the only one standing next to him. He reached out and gripped my hand, his palm sweaty against mine. Surprised, I looked at him. He hadn't had any problems greeting any of the other power players. But then again, this was Mab, queen of them all, the person most likely to burn you to death on the spot for the smallest perceived slight.

Sebastian bowed his head as Mab stopped in front of him. "Ms. Monroe. What an honor to welcome you to my estate tonight." He held out his hand.

She gave him a slow once-over, then took his hand in hers. "Being the man of the manor seems to suit you, Sebastian," Mab murmured, her crimson lips curving up into a small smile, as though she'd made some sort of joke.

He nodded at her in return, but Mab didn't notice. Instead, she looked past him at me. Her black gaze flicked over me, far less interested than she'd been in Sebastian, but she did the polite thing and held out her hand.

I had no choice but to take it.

Tiny, invisible needles started stabbing into my body the second her warm fingers closed over my cool ones. I'd thought that Mab's Fire magic had felt intense when I'd been spying on her through the windows at Dawson's mansion, but the sensation was worse now that I was face-to-face with her-so much worse. My skin felt hot enough to spontaneously combust and the bones underneath liquefy just by touching her. No wonder so many people feared her. All it would take would be the merest wave of her hand to reduce all but the strongest elemental to charred ash. More than once, I'd wondered if Mab could be the Fire elemental who'd murdered my family. She certainly had the magic for it, although I couldn't imagine why she would have targeted any of us.

I had to grind my teeth to keep the pleasant, bland smile fixed on my face as I held her hand, but I managed it. Because if there was one thing that I could not afford to do, it was to draw attention to myself from the likes of Mab Monroe or let her know that I could feel her magic.

Mab quickly dropped my hand and moved farther out into the ballroom, trailed by Elliot Slater, who'd apparently come along as her bodyguard tonight. I looked around, wondering if someone else might be with her, since Fletcher had mentioned that there was another Monroe on the guest list, someone with initials instead of a first name. But I didn't see anyone following along behind Mab or Slater, so I focused on Sebastian again.

He grinned at me. "Well, I guess that went about as well as could be expected."

I shrugged. Anything that didn't involve Mab Monroe killing you outright should be considered a victory.

But the next person through the doors surprised me even more than the Fire elemental did: Harry Coolidge.

Like everyone else, he'd dressed up in a black tuxedo, although he kept fiddling with his bow tie, as if he wasn't used to wearing one. Probably not, given that horrible rose-patterned shirt that I'd seen him sporting at the construction compound. Still, the cop cut a handsome figure, and he wasn't alone.

A woman and a young girl stepped into the ballroom behind him. The woman's strawberry-blond hair was swept up into a bun, and her blue eyes were kind in her round face. She wore a modest blue evening gown that clung to what curves she had, and a simple string of small pearls gleamed around her throat. Matching pearl studs adorned her ears.

But it was the girl who captured my attention and made my heart squeeze painfully in my chest-she looked just like Bria.

Long blond hair, rosy cheeks, big blue eyes. The girl couldn't be more than fourteen or fifteen, but she was already stunningly pretty, like a perfect porcelain doll come to life. She wore a simple white dress with a blue ribbon cinched around the waist. A matching blue ribbon circled her throat, although she kept rubbing the blue cameo that dangled off the end between her fingers, as though it annoyed her in the same way that Coolidge's bow tie bothered him.

Coolidge stepped forward. "Sebastian."

"Harry."

They shook hands, but Harry obviously wasn't happy about it. He kept frowning at Sebastian, as if the sight of the younger man greatly upset him for some reason.

I forced myself to focus on Sebastian and put the girl out of my mind. I even went so far as to turn so that I was facing him instead of her. This night was about Sebastian, not me dwelling on ghosts from my past. Besides, this wasn't the first time I'd seen someone who looked like Bria, even if this girl did resemble her a bit more than most.

"Once again, I want to tell you how sorry I am about your father," Harry said, his blue eyes dark and serious. "If the police and your investigators don't come up with something soon, I hope that you'll consider letting me take a crack at things."

Sebastian's mouth puckered. The lack of leads into his father's murder remained a sore spot for him. I tensed too, but for another reason entirely. From what Fletcher had told me, Harry Coolidge was a dedicated cop, the sort who wouldn't stop digging until he found out the truth about Vaughn's murder-and my part in it.

"Where's Charlotte?" the girl asked, interrupting the two men.

I let myself take another quick glance at her. For the first time, I realized that she was carrying a small white box in her hand, tied with a pale pink ribbon. Tonight was Charlotte's birthday, and a pile of presents had acc.u.mulated on a table off to one side of the room. Charlotte had come down to the ballroom when the guests started arriving, but I'd been so focused on Sebastian that I hadn't paid much attention to her. I hadn't seen her in a while, though. I wondered if she was back in the library, hiding under her father's desk again. The thought saddened me, since I was the cause of her grief.

Sebastian waved his hand. "Oh, I'm sure that Charlotte's around here somewhere."

The woman held out her hand to the girl. "Come on, sweetheart. Let's go find Charlotte so you can give her the present you brought her. Sebastian, thank you for inviting us tonight."

He tipped his head at her. "Of course, Henrietta. You know that you guys were like family to my father."

Harry gave Sebastian one more hard stare before moving off into the crowd with his wife and daughter.

"Arrogant a.s.s," Sebastian muttered under his breath.

"Him?" I asked, focusing on Harry again instead of his daughter. "What's wrong with him? He seemed okay."

For a cop who would haul me off to jail if he ever learned what I'd done to his friend.

Sebastian shook his head. "He's an old friend of my father's, and he's been sniffing around ever since Papa's death. I think that Harry blames me because the cops haven't found my father's killer yet. As if it's my fault that the police in this town are so incompetent. As if he could do any better."

No doubt Coolidge could do better. He would at least try, which was more than could be said for most of the cops in Ashland.

Still, I wondered at the venom in Sebastian's voice and the seeming bad blood between the two men. From what little I'd seen and heard, Harry Coolidge had appeared to be a loyal friend to Vaughn. He was certainly doting on his wife and daughter. He'd already braved the crowd at one of the bars to fetch his wife a gla.s.s of white wine and his daughter some ginger ale. The girl giggled as her father made an exaggerated bow and presented her with the soda, while the mother looked on with a smile on her face. Such a nice, happy family. For a moment, I felt achingly envious of Bria's look-alike.

Sebastian moved in front of me, cutting off my view of the Coolidge family.

"Well, that looks like the last of the guests," he said. "I'm going to go find Charlotte and welcome everyone properly. After the party gets started up again, we'll slip away and have our own private celebration. Okay?"

I smiled, once again feeling that peculiar mix of longing, desire, guilt, and sorrow thrumming through my chest. "It's a date."

He nodded. "Wish me luck."

"Good lu-"

But Sebastian had already turned and was striding away.

18.

Sebastian moved through the ballroom, shaking hands and greeting his guests again. He disappeared from sight but reappeared a few minutes later in the center of the floor, his arm around Charlotte's shoulder, his head bent down as he whispered something in her ear. I wondered where she'd been hiding.

Like her friend, Charlotte wore a simple dress, although hers was black with splashes of deep blue, almost like abstract roses blooming across the pouffy skirt. Her black hair was pulled back into another French braid, the end tied off with a blue ribbon.

Sebastian left Charlotte standing by herself while he went over, grabbed a champagne flute and a fork from one of the bartenders, and gently ting-ting-tinged the tines against his gla.s.s. Slowly, the orchestra's cla.s.sical music faded away, and the crowd quieted down.

Sebastian moved back to the center of the ballroom, putting his arm around Charlotte's shoulder again.

"I want to welcome you all here tonight," he said, looking from one side of the crowd to the other. "Thank you all for coming and helping Charlotte and me honor our father. Tonight is my sister's fourteenth birthday, and it would have been his fifty-first. I can't think of a more fitting tribute to him than being here with all of you, his friends, his family."

Sebastian's gaze flicked over to Mab. An amused smile flitted across her face, as though she were in on some private joke that no one else knew about. Maybe she was simply glad that Vaughn was dead, and some of the problems that he'd caused for her along with him.

"A lot of rumors have been going around about my father's death," Sebastian said. "The police are still investigating this horrible crime, but I wanted to make all of you a promise here tonight. His killer will be brought to justice. My father wouldn't accept anything less, and neither will I."

The crowd clapped heartily at his words. This time, Sebastian looked straight at Harry Coolidge, who had his arms crossed over his chest and a sour look on his face. I wondered what the cop knew that I didn't. But like Fletcher had said, I couldn't exactly ask him.

"My father is gone," Sebastian continued. "And although we are here tonight to celebrate his birthday, his memory, his legacy, we all know that we cannot dwell on the past and that we must move forward. That is why I will be a.s.suming control of Vaughn Construction, effective immediately."

Sebastian straightened, and his voice boomed through the ballroom as he outlined how he wanted to continue the work and projects that his father had started. Truth be told, I tuned most of it out, since it was obvious that Sebastian was trying to rea.s.sure his business a.s.sociates that everything with the company would proceed on time and on budget. I wondered if that was why he'd invited Mab. Fletcher had said that she owned a significant stake in Vaughn Construction, and she wasn't the sort of investor you disappointed-not if you wanted to keep breathing.

Charlotte squirmed out from under her brother's arm, although Sebastian caught her hand and kept her close to him. She stared down at the polished floor under her black sandals. I wondered if all the talk about what a great man her father had been upset her, if that was what she wanted to get away from. I wondered if she was thinking about all the times he'd hit her, all the times he'd abused her, all the times he'd hurt her simply because he could.

"And so tonight begins a new era, not only for Charlotte and myself but also for Vaughn Construction . . ." Sebastian went on with his speech.

"What a boring, pompous, long-winded jacka.s.s," a snide voice murmured in my ear. "Some people just do not know when to shut up. What do you see in him?"

Startled, I looked over to my right at Finn's grinning face. Not many people could sneak up on me, but he was one of them. Finn was lighter on his feet than a cat. Despite my annoyance with him over the past several days, I had to admit that he cut an impressive figure in his tuxedo, and his hair gleamed like polished walnut in the soft glow from the chandeliers. Not that I would ever tell him that, though. His ego was big enough already.

"When did you get here?"

He waved his hand. "Not important. Just like everything your boyfriend is spouting up there on his soapbox."

"He's thanking people for coming and supporting him and Charlotte," I said, rolling my eyes. "There's nothing wrong with that. Give the guy a break. His dad just died a few weeks ago."

"You mean, you just killed his dad a few weeks ago."

Fury flashed through me like lightning striking the earth. My eyes narrowed, and my hands balled into fists. "Is that why you came here? To remind me of that? Because my memory's not that short. I never forget them-any of them."

I remembered all the a.s.signments that Fletcher had sent me out on, all the random people who'd foolishly decided to mess with me, all the punks who'd wanted to hurt me when I'd been living on the streets-all the people I'd killed. I remembered the way they looked, talked, laughed, snarled, smelled, and I especially remembered how they'd died and that I'd been the cause of their sudden, violent demises. Maybe that was where my dreams, my memories, were coming from. The fact that I just couldn't forget about all the bad things that I'd done, even if some had been necessary simply to survive.

Finn's face softened at my harsh words. "Look, I'm sorry. I didn't come here to fight. I just don't know what you see in that guy, Gin. Look at him, holding court in the middle of the ballroom, crowing about all the things he plans to do now that his father is gone. He's trying too hard, yet again, like a prince who's finally seized the king's throne and doesn't want anyone to know exactly how ill suited he is for the job."

I glanced at Sebastian. Sometime while I'd been talking to Finn, Sebastian had let go of Charlotte, who'd disappeared into the crowd, and was now waving around his free hand and stabbing his index finger up to the ceiling in order to punctuate his points. Maybe he was being a little overly dramatic, but I knew how important it was for him to make a good impression tonight, now that he was the head of the Vaughn family.

"He's doing the best he can," I said, turning back to Finn. "You can't blame him for that."

"No, I suppose not." Finn sighed. "Just . . . be careful with this guy, okay, Gin? I've seen the way you look at him."

"And how is that?"

For once, Finn's green gaze was dark and serious. "Like you're halfway in love with him."

I kept my face cold, calm, and expressionless, but he must have seen the uneasy agreement in my eyes, because he reached out and gently touched my arm, as if I were a piece of delicate gla.s.s. That's exactly how I felt right now-brittle, fragile, and utterly exposed.

"You know that it can never work out, right?" Finn said in a soft voice.

"Of course I know that." I sneered. "I killed his father. I might be an a.s.sa.s.sin, but I'm not stupid."

Finn shook his head. "It's more than just that. It's what we do versus what he does. Our world versus his."

"And here I thought that we all lived in the same world."

"Not people like us. Our world is in the background, in the shadows, in the darkness, where few people dare to tread."

"And his isn't?"

Finn held out his hand, gesturing at the ballroom. "This is about as far from the shadows as you can get, Gin. And I think you know that deep down inside. You can be one thing or the other-you can't be both." He paused. "Except maybe if you're Mab Monroe."

Everything that he was saying was undeniably true. But I had just been so . . . so . . . happy with Sebastian, so thrilled with the way he made me feel like I was the most wonderful person he'd ever met. I'd never had that before.