I'd taken only ten lazy steps away from the building before LaFleur stopped at the edge of the parking lot. I paused as well, ambling back and forth on the fringes of a group of smokers huddled together for warmth, keeping close enough to them to look like I belonged there. Just another face in the crowd sucking down her cancer stick as fast as she could.

LaFleur stood in the shadow of a weeping willow tree, its long, delicate, swaying tendrils just brushing the top of her emerald headband. She put her back to the tree and turned to face the entrance to Northern Aggression once more. She examined everything, from the people waiting in line, to the group of smokers that I was standing with, to the flashing heart-and-arrow sign above the building. The assassin took it all in, analyzing everything just the way that I would have, looking for any threats to her, anything suspicious, unusual, or out of the ordinary.

I was glad that I'd stopped at the bar for my props. Otherwise, the other assassin would have spotted me storming out of the club after her. And then, well, things would have gotten interesting.

But LaFleur didn't see me or anything else that threatened her. Her watchful stance relaxed, and she made herself a little more comfortable against the tree, just leaning the tops of her shoulders against it, instead of the full length of her slender body.

And then she waited.

Ten ... twenty ... forty-five ... I counted off the seconds in my head. LaFleur didn't move a muscle for three minutes. She could have been a statue planted under the tree for all the emotion she showed. I frowned. So not only did she have deadly electrical magic but LaFleur could be patient as well-just as patient as I could be. Mab Monroe had chosen her assassin very wisely.

I wondered what LaFleur was waiting for, though. Had she told Vinnie Volga to break away from his station at the Ice bar and come outside and meet her? Because the way he'd reacted to her had told me that Vinnie knew exactly how dangerous the assassin was. Did she really think that the bartender would want to be alone in the dark with her? Especially after her little trap down at the docks had failed to net her the Spider?

But Vinnie didn't come outside, and five minutes and three horrible, disgusting cigarettes later, I got my answer as to what LaFleur was doing lurking outside Northern Aggression.

A black stretch limo rolled through the parking lot, coming to a stop in front of her. The assassin pushed away from the weeping willow and straightened, her hands loose and open by her sides, but she made no move to step forward toward the rumbling car. My eyes narrowed. Whom was she meeting now? And why?

The driver scurried out of the front seat of the limo and ran around to the back. He opened the door and stuck his hand inside the dark depths. He helped a woman out and to her feet, then bowed and stepped back. I recognized her at once. As if I could ever forget her.

Mab Monroe.

Mab looked like she either had been or was going out for the night. The Fire elemental wore a long black evening gown with a strapless, sweetheart neckline. A matching black fur wrap was draped around her creamy shoulders. The paleness of her skin contrasted with her hair, which was the bright, polished red of a new penny. It curled softly to her shoulders. But Mab's eyes were her most striking feature. They were even blacker than her dress and looked like two pieces of hard jet set into her milky face.

My gaze fell to the Fire elemental's throat. As always, she wore her signature rune necklace-a large ruby set in a ring of curvy, gold rays. The diamond cutting on the gold caught the light from the neon sign outside the club and made it seem that the rays were actually flickering, that they were real, burning flames. No wonder, since the necklace represented a sunburst. The symbol for fire. Mab's personal rune, used by her alone. She never went anywhere without it, just as I never left home without my silverstone knives.

I watched as Mab approached LaFleur. The assassin bowed her head respectfully to Mab, but she never took her eyes off the Fire elemental, not even for a second. LaFleur might be working for Mab, but she didn't trust her. Smart girl.

The two women put their heads together and started talking. I was too far away to hear what they were saying, and Mab wasn't the sort of person you just walked up to in the dark. I couldn't move any closer to them without attracting attention to myself. At least, not without circling all the way around the back of the club and coming at them from a different angle. Knowing my luck, they'd probably be long gone by the time I did that.

What I really wanted to know was what the hell the Fire elemental was doing outside Roslyn's club. As far as I knew, Mab had never come here before. She and the drunk yuppies who frequented Northern Aggression didn't exactly run in the same circles.

So why would she meet LaFleur out here in the open instead of somewhere more private? What was going on between the two of them? And how much was it going to fuck up my plans to kill the Fire elemental sooner rather than later?

In the pocket of my jeans, my cell phone let out a low, steady buzz. Still pretending to be nothing more than a drunk smoker, I ambled away from the group of people that I'd been standing next to. My phone kept vibrating, so I dug it out and flipped it open.

"What?" I growled.

"We've got a problem," Finn said in my ear. "Vinnie left the bar. At least, he tried to. He didn't get five steps before three guys came out of the crowd, surrounded him, and helped him on his way."

So that's why LaFleur had come back outside Northern Aggression so quickly. She'd left her men behind inside the nightclub to watch Vinnie in case he decided to bolt. Just as I would have.

"They went out through a side door," Finn said. "From the looks of them, I think they're going to take Vinnie for a walk that he won't come back from-ever."

As I stood there listening to Finn, I kept staring at LaFleur and Mab. Emotions surged through me, and for a moment, I considered palming my silverstone knives, sprinting toward the two women, and stabbing them to death. Mab didn't have any of her usual giant guards with her. No backup, nothing. This was my chance to finally kill her. To do to her what she'd done to my family all those years ago.

My whole body burned with the need to kill her-right here, right now. Enemy, enemy, enemy, a primal little voice muttered in the back of my head. Here is your enemy. In the open. Exposed. Vulnerable. Kill her now, before she leaves. Before she hurts anyone else that you love.

But I forced the hot, aching, greedy, reckless rage aside and buried it under the cold, inescapable logic of the situation. Because the part of me that was the Spider-the cold, hard, rational, ruthless part of me that would always be the Spider-realized that attacking Mab now would be suicide.

LaFleur would be tricky enough to take out by myself. First of all, she was an assassin, trained, skilled, and deadly, just like me. She hadn't earned her stellar reputation by being weak or sloppy. But even more important than that was the fact that her electrical elemental magic had felt just as strong as my Ice and Stone power. Face-to-face, I didn't know which one of us would win. Besides, even if I killed LaFleur, that would still leave Mab to deal with. I wouldn't survive a fight with both of them-not at the same time. Together, their magic was just greater than my own.

Even if I'd been reckless enough to attack the two women, they made my decision for me. Mab gestured to LaFleur, and the two of them walked over to the waiting limo and slid into the back. A moment later, the long car pulled out of the parking lot and disappeared into the cold night. My enemies would live to see another day. And so would I.

Equal parts relief and frustration filled me. I sighed, and my breath frosted in the night air.

"Gin?" Finn's voice murmured in my ear. "Are you listening to me? LaFleur's men have Vinnie. What do you want to do?"

I snapped out of my reverie. "Tell me which way they went. LaFleur might be gone, but I still plan on having a little chat with Vinnie tonight."

Chapter 6

I stubbed out my latest cigarette, walked into the parking lot, and left the pack and lighter on the hood of the closest car, along with my martini glass.

"They went out the west side," Finn said. "Through the door next to the hall that leads to the VIP rooms."

Following Finn's directions, I headed through the parking lot, slipping past rows of cars, and moving at an angle past the long line of people still waiting to get into Northern Aggression. I finally rounded the side of the building and reached one of the far parking lots. Sure enough, I spotted a group of men up ahead of me.

Vinnie Volga stood in the middle of the group, a man on either side of him, their hands on his arms, forcibly walking him somewhere. Another guy in front led the way. Every few steps, Vinnie would jerk against his captors, trying to break free, but it was no use. Both men were giants, judging by their bulky, seven-foot frames, and giants were incredibly strong, with grips like steel vises. The only way that Vinnie could wrench free from them would be to tear his own arms off in the process.

They were about two hundred feet ahead of me. I let out a soft curse and quickened my pace. I needed to get to them before they got into a car. Otherwise, I'd never see Vinnie again-alive anyway.

To my surprise, the three men didn't herd the bartender into a waiting vehicle. Instead, they reached the edge of the nightclub parking lot and kept right on walking down the street. I frowned. Where were they taking Vinnie?

"Gin? What's happening?" Finn asked.

"They're on foot," I told Finn. "Still heading west. What else is out here?"

Through the phone, I could hear the roar of the club's rocking music and Finn having some sort of muffled conversation. He must still be sitting in the booth with Roslyn.

"Roslyn says that there's a park about half a mile down the road," Finn said. "She's taken Catherine there a few times."

Catherine was Roslyn's young niece, whom the vampire adored.

"Ask her what's there," I said.

Finn murmured something else to Roslyn. Ahead of me, the men kept walking, and I kept following them, moving from the shadow of one car to the next.

"Roslyn says there's a playground with a swing set, a sandbox, and some other stuff for kids. Lots of trees, too. It wouldn't be a bad place to have a quiet little chat with someone this late at night."

"Especially if you didn't want to get blood in your car," I murmured. "Our new friends are headed in that direction. They don't seem to be in a particular hurry, so I'm going to amble along behind them. It might be nice if you could come out and join the party."

"Roger that," Finn said. "On my way."

We both hung up. I stuffed the phone back into my jeans pocket. When I reached the edge of the parking lot, I stopped, half-hidden behind a large SUV. The group of men herding Vinnie along had already crossed the street and were busy cutting through another parking lot on the other side that flanked two more industrial-looking buildings.

I shook my sleeve, and a silverstone knife slid into my hand. The hilt of the weapon rested against the spider rune scar branded into my palm. The blade was as familiar to me as my own face, and a natural extension of myself in so many ways. And now, it was time for the Spider to hunt with it once more.

A cold smile curved my lips as I stepped into the waiting darkness.

There wasn't nearly as much cover as I would have liked, but it was easy enough for me to slide from shadow to shadow without the giants seeing me. Besides, they weren't the most observant of men, more interested in making sure that Vinnie didn't break free and bolt than worried about who might be watching them. The two giants holding the bartender shot a couple of cursory looks over their broad shoulders, but that was about it. Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy.

Their casual inattention was going to be the death of them-real soon.

After several minutes of walking, the men reached the edge of the park that Finn had mentioned. An iron gate curved over the entrance, and a maple tree rune set in the middle of the design denoted it as a park, along with the name Green Acres. Just the place that I wanted to be. Old-fashioned iron streetlights lined a cobblestone walk-way that led farther into the park.

I cocked my head to one side and reached for my Stone magic, listening to every part of the element around me, from the pavement and sidewalks that I'd just left behind to the cobblestones stretching out in front of me.

The pavement and sidewalks behind me only whispered of the steady grind of traffic, while the cobblestones ahead gave off low, quiet murmurs of the wind rustling in the trees, the pit-pat of small, eager feet, and the easy lope of animals across the grass. This was the sort of place that families came to enjoy a picnic lunch or an afternoon in the summer sun. Nothing else.

So I waited until the men were about two hundred feet in front of me, deep into the park, before following them.

I stayed off the well-lit path, instead moving from tree to tree, and keeping the men within sight. As I skulked, I also kept an eye out for LaFleur. Just because the assassin had gotten into a limo with Mab didn't mean that she wasn't meeting up with her men later. Hell, she could be on her way here right now. LaFleur might want the pleasure of killing Vinnie herself. Some assassins were twisted like that, and she'd certainly seemed to enjoy frying the dwarf with her electrical magic last night.

Finally, the men reached their destination-the playground that Finn had told me about. Since this was Northtown, the playground was a monstrous, elaborate affair, with at least ten swings, several seesaws, a large merry-go-round, and a sandbox that was almost big enough to be its own private beach. The metal gleamed a dull silver underneath the white glow of the streetlights, while the sand glinted like gold. I slithered behind the thick trunk of a maple tree so that the swing set stood between me and the men.

The giants slung Vinnie down in the middle of the sandbox. The Ice elemental bartender did a header into the ground, his face plunging into the loose sand like he was an ostrich. After a moment, he flailed up onto his knees, coughing, choking, and trying to spit out the sand all at once.