Normally, the sight of the restaurant with its simple, well-worn furnishings and cozy atmosphere was enough to lift even my darkest mood. Not today. Not given my nightmares. And especially not when I still had no idea what Madeline was up to.

But there was nothing to be done about my growing unease and dread, so I closed the door behind me and got to work. Turned on the appliances, wiped down the tables and counter, washed the pots and pans, mopped the floor, refilled all the ketchup bottles. I even whipped up a pot of Fletcher’s secret barbecue sauce, going a little heavy on the cumin and black pepper to give it an extra-smoky, spicy kick, and put that on one of the stovetops to simmer away.

By the time I finished with my morning chores, I felt much calmer. Madeline might be plotting against me, but I could handle whatever she dished out, just like I’d taken care of Mab all those months ago—by shoving my knife through her black heart. Like mother, like daughter would be just fine with me in that regard.

Finally, the only thing left to do was to take out the trash, a far more dangerous endeavor than it should have been. I swung the plastic bag over my shoulder and cautiously opened the back door of the restaurant.

More than one person had tried to kill me in the alley that ran behind the Pork Pit. All of the crime bosses wanted me dead because whoever accomplished my murder would have a clear claim on Mab’s vacant throne as the head of the Ashland underworld. Hence all the minions they’d sent to jump me these past several months.

But things had been quiet ever since I dispatched Beauregard Benson a few weeks ago on the street right in front of his Southtown mansion. I’d only had to drop two bodies back here since then. The quiet was another thing that worried me. Because if the underworld bosses weren’t sending folks to attack me, that meant they were scheming other ways to mess with me. I had enough problems with Madeline already. I didn’t need any more.

But no one was clenching his fists and lying in wait for me beyond the back door, clutching a gun and crouching down beside a Dumpster, or cupping a ball of elemental Fire in his hand, eager to rush forward from the far end of the corridor and roast me alive.

I lingered in the alley, looking left and right, but it was deserted, and I didn’t even hear the usual rats, cats, and stray dogs scurrying across the pavement, looking for whatever garbage they could eat that had oozed out of the overflowing trash cans.

So I dumped my bag of garbage, went back inside the restaurant, and pushed through the double doors, stepping back out into the storefront—

A cast-iron skillet zoomed toward my head.

I ducked, and the skillet slammed into the wall behind me instead of plowing straight into my skull. I whirled up and around, turning to face my attacker. It was a woman, about my size, five-seven or so, with murder in her eyes and bright red hair that was pulled back into a bun.

I looked past her and realized that the front door was partially open. I’d been so worried about Madeline that I’d forgotten to lock it behind me when I came in to work this morning, giving my would-be killer easy access to the restaurant. I cursed my own sloppiness for a moment before focusing on my attacker again.

Her white, button-up shirt, black pants, and black sneakers were as anonymous as her plain features were. My gaze kept going back to her copper-colored hair, her only distinguishing trait. I’d seen that hair, that sleek, tight bun, somewhere before, sometime very recently, although I couldn’t quite remember where. But it didn’t much matter who the woman was, whom she worked for, or why they both wanted me dead. She’d come in here intent on killing me, and she was only going out one way—bloody.

“Die, bitch!” the woman screamed.

“You first!” I hissed back.

She’d been rifling through the cookware while I’d been dumping the garbage because she’d dragged out all of the pots and pans and had lined them up on the counter in a neat row. She grabbed the closest one to her—an old cast-iron skillet of Jo-Jo’s that I baked corn bread in—and came at me again.

It was one thing to be attacked in my own restaurant. I expected that these days. But using my favorite skillet against me? That was just plain rude.

I sidestepped the woman’s second blow, but instead of whirling around for a third one, she kept going all the way over to the end of the counter where a butcher’s block full of knives sat. She grabbed the biggest blade out of the block, then whipped back around and waggled the utensil at me.

“I’m going to carve you up with one of your own knives,” she growled.

I rolled my eyes. Like I hadn’t heard that one a hundred times before. Folks really needed to be more creative with their death threats.

The woman let out a loud battle cry and darted forward, brandishing both the blade and the pan at me this time. No one had ever attacked me with my own cookware before, so it was a bit of a new experience to be dodging knives and skillets, instead of bullets and magic. But I managed it.

With one hand, I blocked her overhead blow with the skillet. With my other hand, I chopped down on the woman’s wrist, making her lose her grip on the knife. For an extra punch, I grabbed hold of my Stone magic at the last second, using it to harden my hand so that it was as heavy as a concrete block slamming into her wrist. Her bones snapped like carrot sticks. The woman howled with pain and staggered back, giving me the chance to dart forward and kick the dropped knife away, sending it flying up under the counter.

She swung the skillet at me again with her uninjured arm, but this time, I stepped up, turned my hip into her body, and jerked the heavy iron from her hand as she stumbled past me. But I didn’t let her go too far. I darted forward, grabbed her shoulder, and yanked her back toward me, even as I brought the pan forward as hard as I could.

CRACK!

You could do a lot more than just cook with a cast-iron skillet, and that one blow was more than enough to cave in the back of the woman’s skull. All of the movement in her body just stopped, and she dropped to the floor like a brick someone had tossed out a window.

Thud.

Blood poured out from the deep, ugly wound I’d opened up in her skull, like water spewing out of a freshly cracked coconut. Gravity lolled her head to the side, turning her empty hazel eyes toward the front door, almost as if she were still seeing it and wishing that she’d stayed on the other side, instead of venturing in here and meeting her death so bright and early in the morning.

I let the pan slip to the floor, then put my hands on my knees, trying to get my breath back. The fight hadn’t been all that long, but the cast-iron skillet was heavier than it looked, and it had taken quite a bit of muscle to use it so viciously.