I flipped open the folder and stared at the pages of information-everything that Fletcher had ever been able to dig up on the assassin known as LaFleur. I'd seen her electrical elemental magic for myself the other night, of course, but information was its own kind of power, and I wanted to be as prepared as possible when the two of us finally danced.

Besides, I was willing to bet that wherever Natasha was, whatever dark hole she'd been stashed in, LaFleur wouldn't be too far away from it. When I found the little girl, I'd find the assassin. And then, I'd kill her-or die trying.

So I leaned back against the sofa, put the file in my lap, and started reading.

I read through all the information on LaFleur, absorbing every fact, tidbit, rumor, and sheer speculation that Fletcher had been able to piece together about the other assassin. Of course, what I was really looking for was any sign of weakness, anything that I could use against the other assassin to kill her before she killed me.

But there wasn't anything in the file to give me any hope of accomplishing that. At least, not without getting dead myself.

The file started out by listing all of LaFleur's vital stats. Height: Five foot two. Weight: One hundred fifteen pounds. Black hair. Green eyes. Asian heritage. Rumored to have some sort of tattoo on her, probably in the shape of a rune. Cliche, yes, surprising, no. As a general rule, assassins liked symbols and catchy nicknames almost as much as magic users did.

Fletcher had also pegged her age at thirty-three and concluded that LaFleur was actually part of a family of elite assassins, all of whom sold their services to the highest bidder. Included was a sheet about a brother that LaFleur supposedly had, an assassin just like her. But since the page just referenced another one of Fletcher's files, instead of spelling out the information for me here, I didn't get up and go into the old man's office to look for it. LaFleur's brother, whoever the hell he might be, wasn't important at this point.

The bottom line was that killing people was in LaFleur's blood, as much a part of who and what she was as my spider rune scars were to me. Interesting to know, but not particularly helpful when it came to actually taking her down.

So I moved on to the pages that dealt with LaFleur's accomplishments as an assassin. LaFleur had killed dozens and dozens of people over the years, everyone from common street thugs to the richest, most heavily guarded businessmen. As far as Fletcher knew, she had a one hundred percent kill rate and the exorbitant fees to match.

When success was guaranteed, you could charge whatever you wanted to for it. According to the file, LaFleur pulled down north of three million for a simple assassination. Depending on who the target was, how hard it would be to get to him, and how much someone wanted it to look like an accident, the price went up from there. Even during my heyday as the Spider, I'd only topped out at around two and a half mil myself.

"Bitch," I muttered and kept reading.

LaFleur was skilled with all sorts of weapons and was rumored to be even better at hand-to-hand combat. Naturally. She wouldn't have been much of an assassin if she couldn't kill people six ways from Sunday-and then some.

However, instead of her fists or other weapons, LaFleur mainly used her electrical magic to kill. Given the number of people she'd taken out with it over the years, Fletcher had concluded that she was an extremely strong elemental-far stronger than the vast majority of those who could tap into the more common areas, like Air, Fire, Ice, and Stone. Wonderful.

But that was LaFleur's trademark-electrocuting people and then leaving a single white orchid behind on their smoking corpses. Just like she'd done to the dwarf that she'd fried down at the docks the other night in front of me and Finn.

I wondered about the orchid, though. Lots of assassins left things behind to mark their kills. Names and runes, mostly. But even among assassins, an orchid was a strange thing to use. Mainly because they were so delicate and so expensive. Why waste all that money signing your kills when you could just draw something on the nearest wall in your victim's blood? But I'd given up trying to figure out other assassins a long time ago. Hell, I couldn't even figure myself out most of the time.

I read through the rest of the file, but nothing jumped out at me. LaFleur was skilled, efficient, and deadly, just like I was. Smart, ruthless, and brutal, just like I was. And she had elemental magic, just like I did. All of which meant that it was fifty-fifty which one of us would win against the other in the end. And with LaFleur having access to Mab Monroe's men to help back her up, well, let's just say that it didn't do wonders for my confidence about making it to Christmas without getting dead.

Bah, humbug.

Chapter 11

It had been a long night, so I put the file aside, took a hot shower to wash the giants' blood off me, and then crawled into bed.

Maybe Finn would have a bright idea tomorrow about how I could find Natasha and kill LaFleur. Before we'd left Jo-Jo's, he'd promised to dig up everything that he could find on the assassin, her new job as Mab's number one enforcer, and where Mab's new nightclub might be located.

I was so tired that for once it was easy for me to put those thoughts out of my mind. I fell asleep almost immediately, but sometime during the night, the dreams took over, the way that they always seemed to these days ...

I'd never known that I'd had this much magic before. Never dreamed that I was this strong. Never even imagined, hoped, or wished for it.

But I was. And then some.

Those were the odd thoughts that flashed through my mind in the split-second before my Ice and Stone power lashed out, reverberating through my whole house like a giant frozen jackhammer, pounding into everything that it touched.

And crumbling it all to dust.

There was a loud, violent, angry, collective roar as the stones in the ceiling above my head splintered. Seeing the long, deep cracks zigzag through the rocks was like watching spiders suddenly swarm out of a dark hole, hurrying out and out and out as fast as they could, dragging their silken strings behind them. That's what it reminded me of, as weird as it might seem.

For a moment, I sat there, stunned by what I'd just done with my magic. The terrible thing that I'd wrought with it. I'd only been trying to get free of the heavy ropes that tied me down to the chair I was sitting in. Ropes that the Fire elemental had had her giant lash around me while I'd been unconscious. Ropes that kept me from moving when she'd questioned me about Bria. Ropes that had kept me from fighting back when she'd superheated the spider rune medallion duct-taped in between my hands-her cruel, cruel way of torturing me. As if killing my mother and Annabella hadn't been horrible enough.

I didn't remember much of what happened after the Fire elemental had started torturing me. Only the red-hot, unending, searing pain as the silverstone rune melted into my hands and burned my palms. Even now, the air still smelled of charred flesh-my flesh. My stomach roiled at the acrid stench of it.

I'd been sitting here, tied to this chair, ever since, just drifting along in a dull daze of pain-until I'd heard Bria scream.

I knew what my baby sister's scream meant. That the Fire elemental or one of her men had finally found her, despite the hiding place that I'd put her in, the spot where I'd told her to wait for me while I'd gone back inside our smoldering mansion to lead all the bad guys away from her.

I'd heard Bria yell, and I knew that the Fire elemental was going to kill her, just like she had the rest of my family. So I'd let out my own scream of rage in response-one filled with all the Ice and Stone magic that I could muster.

The first chunk of the ceiling slammed into the ground beside me, snapping me back to the here and now and spraying bits of stone everywhere. Even now, in my shock and confusion, I could hear the black, angry, unending mutters of the stone-all the rage and fear and helplessness that I'd infected it with when I'd used my magic without thinking. All that coursed through the stone like a heart steadily beating, pushing my fury outward with every bloody pump. Thump-thump-thump.

Another piece of the ceiling fell. Then another, and another, until my own house was literally raining down on top of me.

And there was nothing I could do to stop it.

I couldn't even move my chair enough to try to get out of the way of the collapsing ceiling. But the stone did it for me. A large section plummeted to the floor right beside me, and the shock wave from it knocked my chair over and sent rubble flying all over me. I coughed and choked as the dust rose up like a cloud of gray death around me. I flailed around as much as I could, trying to get free from the ropes, from the chair, even though I couldn't see anything now but a thick, dull fog. Somehow, in the roaring confusion, I felt a sharp, jagged edge against my hand, a small piece of rock that had broken off into a daggerlike point.

Hope flared up in my chest, a tiny, sputtering match, and I moved my body as much as I could, trying to use the rock to cut through my heavy bonds.

To my surprise, it worked. Even as the stones rained down on top of me, I felt one of the ropes loosen. I got one of my shoulders out from under it, then my other shoulder. In the fog, I searched for that sharp point, pricking my finger on the edge of it and drawing blood. But that pain was nothing compared to all the others I'd endured tonight.

When I was sure that I knew where the point was, I maneuvered myself around until another one of my bonds was on top of it. Back and forth I rubbed first one rope, then another on top of that tiny, sharp piece of stone.

Finally, the ropes snapped free. It was too late to try to run, so I put my arms up over my head, curled into a tight ball, and protected myself as best as I could from the falling rubble.

I don't know how long it took for the house to collapse, for all the stone and wood and plaster and nails to cave in. But sometime later, the earth quit shaking, and the roar faded away. The stones still muttered around me, though, with low, dark, ugly murmurs that whispered of unending rage and pain. I might only be thirteen, but part of me instinctively knew that the sound would never, ever fade from them.

But I was somehow untouched by the falling debris. I hadn't felt any of it even hit me. My magic, I thought in a daze. I must have used my Ice and Stone magic to harden my skin, even though I didn't remember consciously doing it.

I was still alive-which meant that I needed to find Bria before the Fire elemental and her men recovered, assuming that they'd survived the collapse of the mansion. So I forced myself to open my eyes, push the rocky rubble off my body, and get up on my trembling, wobbling legs. It took a couple of minutes before my eyes adjusted to the gray, dust-choked air. When my vision finally snapped into focus once more, I wished that it hadn't.

It looked as though a bomb had gone off inside the house. It was just a disaster. Everything crumbled and broken and shattered and torn apart. Small fires flickered here and there in the dust, licking at splintered pieces of wood, furniture, and everything else that had once been part of this room. But the worst part was the glass from my mother's collection of snow globes. The shards littered the ground like a crystal carpet, catching the light from the fires and reflecting it back to me, every sly, bright twinkle reminding me just how much I'd lost tonight.

For a moment, I just stood there, shocked by the extreme damage. Oh, I wasn't proud or vain enough to think that I'd done it all on my own. The flames that the Fire elemental had spread in her wake as she'd gone from room to room, first killing my mother and then Annabella, had definitely weakened the thick wooden beams that supported the ceiling. But still.

I'd never known that I'd had this much magic before.

Somehow, I shook off my horrified daze and started picking my way through the piles of rubble. It wasn't until I was halfway across the room that I realized my hands were still bound together by the duct tape that the Fire elemental had used to make me hold on to my own spider rune medallion while she superheated it.

So I stopped, found another jagged piece of rock, and sliced through the tape. As for my hands, they didn't want to come apart, not with the silverstone melted in between them, holding them together. The magical metal was still warm from where the Fire elemental had heated it, and I knew that if I didn't move my hands now, the silverstone would cool and they'd more than likely be stuck together forever. I couldn't stand having the metal heated again to separate them. I just couldn't.

So I sat down in the rubble next to the sharp stone, gritted my teeth, and started working the rock in between my palms. Using the daggerlike tip to help me peel my hands apart, bit by agonizing bit. It was hard, one of the hardest things I'd ever had to do, and I almost passed out again from the pain more than once. Even then, I couldn't stop the tears that ran down my face or my screams that filled the air.

I would have given up completely, huddled on the floor, and waited to die, if I hadn't been so worried about Bria. My baby sister was the only thing that was keeping me going.

I don't know how long it took me, but I eventually did it. My hands finally separated and scraped down either side of the pointed stone, drawing more blood, but I didn't care. I turned them over and stared down at the marks that now adorned my palms.

A small circle surrounded by eight thin rays. A spider rune. My rune. The symbol for patience. My medallion that I'd worn every single day. Gone now, totally destroyed, except for the horrid red, raw, ugly marks on my palms.

It made me sick.

Everything about tonight made me sick. Despite the pain, I closed my eyes and curled my hands into tight fists so I wouldn't have to look at the marks. They weren't important right now.

Bria was. I had to find Bria before the Fire elemental did ...

I woke up in a cold sweat, thrashing around on the bed, the spider rune scars on my palms itching and burning, just the way they had that night so long ago. Just the way they always did whenever I was reminded of that awful time.