“But in the end, Blanco was the instrument of her own destruction,” Madeline continued. “Rather than face justice for her many crimes, she barricaded herself in her own rattrap restaurant and then burned the place down. As far as I’m concerned, she couldn’t have met a better, more poetic end.”

Satisfaction surged through Madeline’s voice, and it matched the growing buoyant mood in the ballroom. Yes, yes, everyone was glad that I was finally dead. I grinned. Which was going to make it all the more fun to see their horror when they realized that I was still alive.

Still, it surprised me that Madeline wasn’t taking outright credit for my death. Then again, she didn’t need to. Everyone knew that she’d orchestrated the whole thing, right down to starting the fire at the Pork Pit, and I had no doubt that these people both feared and respected her for it. Now here she was, weaving her web over the whole lot of them. They wouldn’t even realize that they were trapped in the tangled threads until it was too late.

“So Blanco is finally dead, and I say good riddance.” Madeline raised her glass again.

More murmurs of agreement sounded, with more than a few muttering, I’ll drink to that. Tough crowd here tonight.

“With our number one enemy dead, I say that we return to the old ways,” Madeline said. “Because we are Ashland, we are the people who haunt its darkest corners, we are the people who meet the deviant demands and dark desires of the so-called good citizens of our fair city. We’re the ones they always turn to in the end, no matter how desperate they are to keep all their secret vices hidden.”

She glanced around the room, judging the response to her speech, but everyone was still hanging on to her every word, so she continued with her sales pitch.

“So I say that we take what we want, what we had back when my mother was still alive. Who’s with me?”

This time, loud, enthusiastic cheers erupted from the crowd, and everyone raised their champagne glasses high again. A few hoots and hollers broke out, which Madeline encouraged with a benevolent smile. Oh, yes. She was a slippery one. Mab would just have stormed into the room, said that she’d murdered me, and that it would be business as usual, with everyone bowing down to and paying tribute to her right then and there. She would probably have already ordered everyone to get out of her mansion so she could enjoy the spoils of her victory in peace.

But Madeline . . . she wanted to be liked, as well as feared. It was almost as if she had some desperate need deep down inside to bend people to her will without their even realizing that they were kneeling down in front of her. I wondered if it was because she truly delighted in such cruel mind games or that she wanted to be the exact opposite of Mab and make her own scorched mark on Ashland.

“But of course,” Madeline continued when the cheers had died down, “this is a business venture like any other. And we all know that any business needs one thing above all others to succeed—a strong leader.”

This time, the murmurs were more speculative than happy. This was the heart of Madeline’s speech, the thing that would impact every single person here, and they all knew it. She had her hand around their throats, and now all that was left was to see how hard she was going to squeeze. I was willing to bet that it was going to be a death grip.

“I think that we can all agree that I am going to be that leader.” She paused. “And for my services in that capacity, each one of you will pay me forty percent of everything you earn.”

I almost choked on my champagne, and I wasn’t the only one. Forty percent? As far as tribute went, that was outrageous. Even Mab had never dared to demand that much. Madeline didn’t just want to be queen. She wanted to own everyone and everything in the entire city.

For the first time, I wondered if her ambition extended beyond Ashland. If one city wasn’t enough for her. If this was just going to be her staging area for bigger and better things, maybe even for a move against someone else, some other boss, although I had no idea who else might be out there for her to conquer next.

Still, as shocking as it was, Madeline’s pronouncement was met with uneasy but agreeing silence—at first.

Everyone in the ballroom looked back and forth at each other, thinking furiously. They didn’t like an outsider coming in and taking over, especially not at a hefty forty percent, but they didn’t want one of their enemies to do it either.

But finally, someone stepped forward to protest. Don Montoya ran a series of sports and other bookies out in the suburbs. He was tall, fit, and handsome, with bronze skin and a shiny black pompadour that made him look like a middle-aged Elvis. “And why should we let you just waltz into town and take over?” he demanded.

Madeline’s eyes glittered like chips of green ice in her beautiful face. “Because I did what none of you could—I killed Blanco. That earns me the right to be the boss.”

“Please,” Montoya sneered. “You didn’t kill her. Not really. You spun your little lies, and she got caught in them. That’s all. You didn’t do the honorable thing. You didn’t face her down yourself. You didn’t stand in the shadows with a gun in your hand and put three bullets in the back of her head.”

More than a few mutters of agreement rose up at his words. For as crooked, low-down, dirty, rotten, and double-dealing as the members of the Ashland underworld were, they still respected one thing above all others—strength.

Trapping your enemy with lies, bribes, and other machinations was all well and good. But twisting the knife in your enemy’s heart yourself? Well, that was even better. It proved that you had the guts to take what you wanted, and damn anyone who tried to show you the error of your ways. That’s what Mab had done, and it was one of the reasons she’d held on to her power, position, and influence for so long.

Madeline strolled over to Montoya, her long white gown rippling around her body. The crowd fell back so that the two of them stood alone in the center of the dance floor.

“Just because I didn’t kill Blanco with my bare hands or some crude instrument doesn’t mean that I wasn’t responsible for her death,” Madeline said. “She lost everything because of me, and her friends are well on their way to doing the same. I’ve always had a slightly different philosophical approach than my mother. Why merely kill your enemies when you can torture them before you utterly destroy them?”

“Please,” Montoya sneered again. “You can spout your pretty words all you want, but we all know the real reason you didn’t face down Blanco yourself—because you don’t have the magic to do something like that. Your mother, now, she was a real elemental, and she showed us all just how much power she had. So many times that we could never, ever forget. But you? You’re nothing but a spoiled little princess, coming in here, stomping your foot, and telling us all how you think it’s going to be.”