"Not if I kill her first," I murmured. "Not if I kill the bitch first."

Finn and I went back downstairs. Jo-Jo and Sophia had finished the last of the cleanup and stood by the front door ready to go. Bria was still asleep on the sofa. Once again, I was struck by how angelic she looked lying there, how calm and peaceful. You'd never guess that she spent her free time digging up dirt on the most dangerous woman in town.

"How long will she be out of it?" I asked Jo-Jo.

The dwarf stared at my sister. "That shot to the kidney took a lot out of her, but she should wake up within the hour. Two, at most."

I eyed a clock on the wall. Just after two in the morning. Finn said Elliot Slater was busy getting patched up himself, which meant the giant wouldn't be back for Bria. Not tonight, anyway.

"All right, we need to be gone before she wakes up," I said. "So grab whatever supplies you brought in and leave. Finn, you help them, please. I'll be out in a minute."

Finn opened the front door, and Jo-Jo and Sophia gathered up their gear and went outside. Finn followed and shut the door behind the three of them.

I moved over to the sofa and stared down at Bria. Sleep eased out the sharp planes of her face, and a dewy pink color freshened up her cheeks, thanks to Jo-Jo's healing elemental Air magic. At this moment, Bria didn't look anything like the icy professional I'd seen that night at the community college or the calm cop holding a gun on Elliot Slater at Northern Aggression. She seemed younger, softer, like this. More like a grown-up version of the sweet little girl that I'd once known.

And she was going to stay this way, I vowed. I was going to lullaby Elliot Slater very, very soon. Once the giant was removed, I'd go after Mab Monroe. The time for keeping to the shadows like a tiny spider had passed. It was time to show Mab and her minions that I had some bite-and that they were next on my fucking to-do list.

I looked at Bria a moment longer, then turned away.

"Sweet dreams, baby sister," I murmured before walking out the front door.

Chapter Thirteen

The next day it was business as usual at the Pork Pit. Crowds of customers. Harried waitresses. The hiss, spit, and sizzle of the grill. The spicy smells of baked beans and barbecue sauce flavoring the air. Sophia Deveraux cooking up a storm.

And me plotting someone's demise.

"I just don't see how you're going to do it," Finn said, wiping a bit of barbecue sauce off his mouth. "Elliot Slater's sure to be on his guard now. Not only against you, but Bria too. You could try to snipe him from a distance, but as big and strong and tough as he is, you'd probably have to put several bullets or arrows in him in just the right places. Which you probably wouldn't have time to do before he started ducking for cover."

I nodded my head, agreeing with him. I'd killed people with rifles and crossbows before, but I preferred using my silverstone knives. It was just easier to make sure someone got good and dead that way.

"As for something more personal, which we both know you prefer anyway, he'll be looking suspiciously at any woman who's trying to get close to him in a dark alley, in a dark room, in a dark car. Anywhere dark, basically," Finn continued. "Which is where you do your best work, Gin."

It was after three the next afternoon. The lunch crowd had already come and gone, and it wasn't quite time for the dinner rush yet. Which is why Finnegan Lane sat on a stool beside the cash register shooting the breeze with me. In between scarfing down two hot dogs loaded with spicy chili, onions, shredded Cheddar cheese, and sweet honey mustard, along with baked beans and a big slice of my still-warm chocolate-chip pound cake.

I looked up from my copy of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and stared at my partner in crime. "Don't worry. You'll find an opening for me. You're my handler now. It's what you do, remember?"

"I am the best," Finn said in a not-so-modest voice. He chewed another bite of his hot dog. "But even I can't make you invisible, Gin. And that's what it's going to take to get close to Elliot Slater right now."

"I'm good at being invisible, remember?"

"True," Finn agreed. "But people tend to notice pesky little things like screams and bloodstains. Especially when there's a body to go along with them."

I rolled my eyes and went back to my book. Finn had come over for an early dinner and to help me brainstorm how I could get close enough to Elliot Slater to bury my silverstone knives in his broad back. So far, all Finn had done was eat my food and muse about how difficult it was going to be making sure the giant got dead before he killed Roslyn Phillips-or Bria. Finn's defeatist attitude wasn't helping, and since I hadn't come up with any bright ideas of my own, I'd turned to Huck in hopes that something would spring to mind while I was reading about someone else's adventures. But nothing had so far-

The front door opened, causing the bell to chime. I looked up from my book, ready to greet my potential customer. To my surprise, Roslyn Phillips stepped inside the restaurant. Today the vamp wore a short, plum-colored coat over a pair of winter white pants, which looked both elegant and sexy on her at the same time. A silverstone pin gleamed on the lapel of Roslyn's jacket-a heart with an arrow through it. The symbol for her nightclub, Northern Aggression. Like most magic types, Roslyn wore her rune with pride.

The vamp paused in the doorway a moment, her toffee eyes sweeping over the interior. Roslyn had come during the postlunch lull, so the waitresses that had been working were in the alley behind the restaurant taking a long smoke break and eating their own dinner. Several customers still sat at the tables and booths against the windows, finishing up their meals, lost in their own bubbles of conversation. When she realized no one was within earshot of Finn and me, she nodded, yanked the door shut behind her, and stomped over in our direction. The vampire's high heels clattered against the floor like falling silverware.

Roslyn slammed her small handbag down on the counter next to Finn, startling him and making him jiggle the spoonful of baked beans he'd been ready to shove into his mouth. The beans slipped off his spoon and splattered on his gray suit jacket, along with a healthy amount of barbecue sauce. Finn cursed and reached for a white paper napkin.

But Roslyn didn't care about Finn's fashion emergency. The vamp only had eyes for me-eyes that flashed with hot anger.

"What the fuck did you do to Elliot Slater last night?" she snarled.

"Lovely to see you again too, Roslyn." I marked my place in my book with a wayward credit card receipt and set it aside. "Care to take a seat?"

Roslyn plopped down on the stool next to Finn's, her back as tall and straight as the arrow in her rune pin. The vamp's hot gaze never left my face.

"I ask again," she snapped in a low voice only the three of us could hear. "What did you do to Elliot Slater last night?"

I shrugged. "Nothing much. Killed a couple of his men. I was going to do him too, but the bastard ducked out a window and ran away before I could get down to business with him."

My confession didn't appease Roslyn. If anything, it made her angrier. I could tell by the way the vamp bared her pearl-white fangs at me. Finn gave Roslyn a sidelong glance and kept trying to rub the barbecue sauce out of his suit, more concerned about the stain setting in his jacket than the danger presented by the pissed-off vampire. He was rather impractical that way.

"I take it there's a problem with Slater?" I asked in a quiet tone. "Beyond what you told me yesterday?"

Roslyn stared at me. I met her gaze with a calm one of my own. If anyone else had busted into my gin joint and bitched about the way I handled my bloody, dangerous business, I would have set her straight, perhaps with the point of my knife. But Roslyn was the victim in all this, had suffered so much because of me, I was going to be as gentle with her as I could. Even if gentle was something I didn't really know how to do-or that I hadn't been myself in a long, long time.

After a few seconds, the vamp made a visible effort to get herself under control. Finn gave his stained jacket up as a lost cause. He sighed and tossed his crumpled napkin in the middle of his plate. Dinnertime was officially over.

"Would you care for something to eat or drink?" I asked, trying to be the responsible hostess once more.

"No," Roslyn muttered.

I ignored her curt answer and moved over to a glass cake stand resting on the counter against the back wall. I cut Roslyn a piece of the chocolate-chip pound cake and put the dessert in front of her, along with a tall glass of milk and a fork. Since no one liked warm milk, I wrapped my hand around the glass and reached for my Ice magic. A silver light glowed on my palm, centered on the spider rune scar embedded in my flesh. Ice crystals immediately formed on the surface of the mug, and a moment later, it was as cold and frosty as if I'd just taken it out of the freezer. Steam curled up from the lip of the glass.

Not so long ago, doing something as simple as cooling a drink had been about the extent of my Ice magic. Now it wasn't any harder than breathing. Jo-Jo Deveraux claimed that the silverstone metal melted into my palms had inhibited my Ice magic, since Ice elementals tended to release their power through their hands to make cubes, daggers, and other shapes-or just to blast someone with their cold magic.

But I'd finally overcome the blockage during a desperate moment when I was facing off with another elemental, when my life had been on the line. Now, doing things with my Ice power was far easier than it had been before. I was getting stronger in it too. Jo-Jo claimed that my Ice magic would continue to grow until it was just as powerful as my Stone power, making me the rarest of elementals-someone who was equally strong in two elements.

I wasn't exactly comfortable with that idea for a variety of reasons. Mainly because I'd seen my mother, Eira's, Ice magic let her down when she'd gone up against Mab Monroe. I wasn't so sure I wanted to tempt fate by relying on my own Ice magic when Mab and I had our inevitable confrontation. Because it would be damned ironic if Mab killed me the exact same way she had my mother and older sister. Irony. Always out to get you.

Roslyn eyed me some more, and I realized that I'd never done any kind of magic in front of the vamp before. That she hadn't even known I was an elemental until now. The other customers were all still too busy with their food to notice my small magical display.

I wasn't worried about Roslyn telling anyone, though. She'd agreed to keep quiet after what had happened to Fletcher Lane, and she'd held up once already under Elliot Slater's questioning. Her word was good.

Roslyn opened her mouth to turn down the food I'd just shoved her way, but I cut her off.

"You're welcome," I said. "Now, you want to tell me what's going on? And why you decided to storm in here like Sherman marching through Atlanta? I know you've been around a while, but the Civil War ended a long time ago."

Roslyn sighed, and some of the angry fight sagged out of her slim shoulders. "Elliot called me last night, around three in the morning, demanding to know where I was, what I was doing, and if there was anyone with me."

I frowned. "Why would he want to know all that?"

Finn snorted. "You mean besides the fact that the bastard's obsessed with her? That he wants to know and control her every movement?"

I ignored Finn's snide comment. "What did Slater want?"

Roslyn fiddled with the fork I'd set down in front of her. "He said he had some trouble with someone last night. That someone had come after him, and he was worried that they'd come after me in order to get to him." Her mouth twisted. "Because everyone knew how much he cares about me. How fucking precious I am to him."

The vamp's hand tightened around the fork, and her eyes darkened like she was wishing she could shove the silverware into Elliot Slater's jugular. I admired her spirit, if not her practicality. Roslyn would have been much better off using a butter knife, if death by silverware was going to be her modus operandi.

I filled Roslyn in on what had really happened last night. How Finn and I had been following Elliot Slater when we'd seen him get the order from Mab, get his goons together, and go after Bria.

Roslyn frowned. "Why do you care if Elliot kills some new cop in town? Why interfere?"

I wasn't about to confess my familial connection to Bria to the vamp, so I gave her a flip answer. "I thought I could take him out right then and there and let the cop take credit for things. It worked once before, you know."

Roslyn grimaced. She knew what I was referring to-the night a couple of months ago when I'd killed Alexis James in the Ashland Rock Quarry. Roslyn had been there as one of Alexis's hostages, along with Finn. Roslyn was the one who'd backed up Donovan Caine's claim that he'd killed the Air elemental, instead of me.

I thought about what Roslyn had said. So Elliot Slater thought I'd been there to off him last night, not to save Bria from getting dead. Not surprising. Like Mab Monroe, Slater didn't strike me as someone who thought about other people-except what he wanted to take from them. Still, Finn had been right. Slater would be on his guard now, which would make him that much tougher to kill.

"Anyway, whatever you did, Slater was worried about me. It was all I could do to convince him not to come over to the club and check on me right then." Roslyn shuddered. "Xavier was at the club with me. If Slater had come over, the mood he was in, he would have killed Xavier just for being there."

Finn and I nodded. We both knew that I'd pissed off Slater by killing his men last night, and he would have taken his anger out on Xavier-maybe even Roslyn too. Hell, the giant could do that at any time. Beat the vampire to death with his fists the way he'd almost done to me at the community college. That's the kind of sick bastard he was. And why he needed to get dead as soon as possible.