I didn’t add that Sebastian had seemed to enjoy our conversation as much as I had or the promise that he’d made to track me down for a date. Fletcher would have pulled me off the job immediately if he’d known about any of that. But I was going to be the one to kill Vaughn, not him. I wanted to be the one to do the hit, for Charlotte’s sake.

“All right,” Fletcher replied. “You did the best you could. I know his type. A pretty boy who thinks that he’s entitled to whatever he wants. Just ignore him. He’ll move on to someone else soon enough.”

I nodded, picked up the tray of bread, and hurried over to the table with it. I moved behind the row of guests, stopping every few feet to deposit baskets in the appropriate spots. All too soon, though, I reached Sebastian’s seat. Instead of ignoring me like all the other diners had, he turned in his chair and took the basket from me, his fingers brushing against mine for the briefest instant.

Once again, that strange, unwanted heat flooded my face, before the flush spread down my neck, but it was nothing compared with the warmth racing through the rest of my body. Sebastian noticed my embarrassment, and his lips curved up into a smile. I hurried on with the rest of the bread, but all the while, I was aware of his gaze on me, and I couldn’t help but glance in his direction. He was still staring at me, that same small, satisfied smile on his face, his eyes dark with some sort of secret triumph.

I swallowed and continued with my serving duties, but I couldn’t help but think that ignoring Sebastian Vaughn was easier said than done.

7

The rest of the night passed by in a blur—except for the heated looks that Sebastian kept giving me.

His gaze stayed on me most of the evening, long enough that his father noticed and started frowning, as though he didn’t like the thought of his son making googly eyes at a lowly waitress. I wondered if Vaughn would have changed his mind if he knew exactly who and what I was.

Probably not.

But I kept my head down and blended in with the other waiters, serving soup, salad, and the main course, which was some sort of seared bear steak that Dawson had flown in special from Alaska. Naturally. I wondered if he’d gone out there and killed the bears himself so he could add their heads to his collection.

Finally, three hours later, I cleared away the remains of the dessert course, the chocolate soufflés that Fletcher had made earlier, along with fresh summer berries topped with a light, airy vanilla bean pudding and garnished with thin, crispy shortbread cookies. The party was over, and Dawson stood by the open doors, shaking hands with his guests as they headed out to their limos, which were waiting in the front drive to whisk them back to their own mansions.

Sebastian hesitated, like he wanted to come over and flirt with me one final time, but his father clapped his hand on his son’s shoulder and led him out of the room. Good. That was good, despite the strange sense of disappointment that filled me. I didn’t know why I felt that way. Sebastian Vaughn wasn’t the first pretty boy ever to chat me up, but he’d definitely made more of an impression than most.

Fletcher and I helped the rest of the staff clean up, and it was after one in the morning when we got into his van and left Dawson’s estate. We drove in silence for about ten minutes before the old man spoke.

“I shouldn’t have to say this,” Fletcher began, a small note of reproach in his voice. “But you need to stay away from Sebastian Vaughn.”

I sighed. “Like I told you before, we talked outside the library. That’s all.”

“That didn’t look like all it was in the dining room. The two of you were staring at each other all through dinner.”

I sank a little lower in my seat and crossed my arms over my chest. “It’s nothing,” I repeated. “He was having a little fun. Amusing himself with the help. You know how it goes.”

“And what were you doing?”

I rolled my eyes. “So maybe I was having a little fun too. A cute guy wanted to talk to me. Sue me for enjoying the attention. But that’s all it was. He won’t even remember what I look like tomorrow.”

“Maybe,” Fletcher murmured. “Maybe not. Either way, things are starting to get complicated. I don’t like how exposed you were tonight. Vaughn noticed you too, or at least he noticed his son staring at you. I think it’s time to pull the plug on the job, return the up-front money, and tell the client to find someone else.”

I straightened up. “No! You can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

Charlotte’s sorrowful face filled my mind.

“Because . . . because . . . it would be unprofessional,” I finished in a weak voice. “You told the client that you would do the job—that I would do the job. You can’t back out now. Besides, we’re trying to build up my reputation as an assassin, remember? I’m finally starting to make a quiet name for myself, and my asking price is slowly rising. Passing on this job will set us back months.”

“Is this about protecting your burgeoning reputation as the Spider or something else?”

“What else would it be about?”

“Charlotte Vaughn.”

Damn. No, that one word wasn’t enough to adequately express my surprise and frustration. Damn . . . and . . . and . . . double damn. I should have known that I couldn’t hide anything from Fletcher, especially not my own murky motivations. Still, that didn’t keep me from trying.

“Of course not,” I insisted. “I don’t make jobs be about people, and I don’t let anyone’s situation influence me in any way, shape, or form. Book the assignment, do the research, complete the hit, take the money, and walk away. That’s what assassins do. That’s what you’ve taught me to do as the Spider. Nothing else matters.”

“Not even a girl being abused?” Fletcher asked again in a soft, knowing voice. “Being hurt like you were hurt, Gin?”

Every muscle in my body tightened with tension, until I felt like a taut bow string about to snap from the strain. The memories roared up in my mind, trying to crack my calm façade from the inside out. Memories of heat and smoke and fire and death and, most of all, the unending, unrelenting, unbearable agony in my hands. The spider rune scars embedded in my palms itched and burned with the phantom pain, the way they so often did when I thought about that horrible night and the torture that I’d endured. But I didn’t give in to the searing sensation and start rubbing the marks. Instead, I made myself slowly flatten my palms against my legs and kept my features schooled into a perfect mask of blank indifference.

Fletcher had never really asked what had happened to my family or how I’d ended up living on the streets with silverstone branded into my hands, although I suspected that he’d found out on his own. The violent, gruesome deaths of the Snow family had been big news at the time, and it wouldn’t have been too hard for him to connect the thin, ragged homeless girl digging through the Dumpsters behind the Pork Pit with Genevieve Snow, the middle daughter who’d supposedly perished in the fiery collapse of the family mansion, along with her mother and two sisters.

But he’d never asked, and I’d never told him. Fletcher respected my privacy that way, just as I respected his. The old man had his secrets, and I had mine, and we both had enough care, concern, and love for each other not to try to uncover them. Or at least to pretend that we weren’t secretly prying and to keep all the facts that we did discover to ourselves.

“Gin?” Fletcher asked. “Is this about Cesar Vaughn? Or you and Charlotte?”

I turned so he could see how cold and hard my gray eyes were. “It’s about doing the job, getting paid, and walking away. Nothing else. Now, are we going to talk about how I can best get close to Vaughn, or do you want to discuss my feelings some more?”

Fletcher stared at me, watching the play of light and shadow on my face. Given the late hour, there was darkness more than anything else. There always was.

“All right,” he said, the earlier reproach in his voice melting into tired resignation. “Tell me everything you learned from watching Vaughn tonight.”

Fletcher quizzed me about Vaughn the rest of the ride home, but he seemed satisfied with my answers. Yeah, maybe I’d been a bit more charmed by Sebastian than I should have, but I’d been there to do recon on my target, and I’d followed through with that.

I always did what was needed.

He pulled into the driveway, and we stepped into the house and went our separate ways. Fletcher ambled back to the den to watch some TV and unwind before going to bed, while I headed upstairs and took a long, hot shower.

As I brushed out my wet hair, I couldn’t help but lean closer to the bathroom mirror and peer at my own reflection, trying to see myself through Sebastian’s eyes. Oh, I was pretty enough, with my dark brown hair, pale skin, and gray eyes, but I was certainly no great beauty. Not like my mother, Eira, and Annabella had been, with their golden hair, rosy skin, and cornflower-blue eyes. And Bria would have been even more beautiful than both of them, if she’d gotten the chance to grow up.

My body was lean, fit, and strong, thanks to all the years training with Fletcher and then my time on the job as the Spider. My br**sts weren’t large, but they were decent enough, and I had a few soft curves here and there. All put together, it was a nice package, but I didn’t know that it was enough to hook someone like Sebastian Vaughn and get him to look past my seeming lack of money, magic, and social standing—at least, not for very long.

But the way he’d smiled, laughed, and flirted with me . . . no man had looked at me like that . . . well, ever, really. Oh, I got enough attention from the guys at Ashland Community College, where I took some classes, but all they were interested in was banging me in between beers and ballgames. And the professors, well, they just wanted to feel young again by sleeping with a coed. Neither option exactly screamed romance. But more important, no one had really seemed interested in me, and absolutely none of them had sparked my own interest like Sebastian had.

But Fletcher was right. It was stupid to daydream about having any sort of relationship with Sebastian. Someone had hired me to kill his father. Not exactly the sort of thing that you looked for in a potential girlfriend.

Girlfriend? I snorted. What was I thinking? I’d never had that sort of relationship with any guy. I’d accused Sebastian of being a love-’em-and-leave-’em type, but the truth was that I was that way too. I had to be, as the Spider. And not just because I didn’t want to end up dead or in jail for my many crimes. Because what kind of guy would ever really be okay with his girlfriend being a coldhearted assassin?

Still, as I left the bathroom, put on my pajamas, and slid into bed, I couldn’t help but think back to the warm interest in Sebastian’s eyes, his teasing grins, and all the sly, saucy winks he’d given me during dinner. For once, I let myself remember. Not only that, but I reveled in the memories, replaying them over and over again in my mind.

Even though nothing would ever come of it, even though nothing could ever come of it, it was still nice to be noticed, to be admired, to be wanted, if only for an evening.

I went to sleep with a smile on my lips.

8

Over the next few days, I plotted the best way to kill Cesar Vaughn.

Where to do the job, how to get close to him, how to actually kill him and then slip away after the fact. I reviewed all of the information that Fletcher had given me, then went out and collected my own, discreetly following Vaughn as he went about his days, seeing what his routines were, how much security he had, and what his vices were, if he even had any. I wanted to go to his home the night after the dinner party and kill him, but Fletcher put his foot down, talking about “procedure” and “caution.” Whatever. I gave in, if only because I knew that he would cancel the hit entirely if I didn’t, and I wanted to protect Charlotte from her father.

But Vaughn was indeed the upstanding, hardworking, hands-on businessman that he appeared to be. After a quick visit to his office in the morning, he spent most of the day driving around Ashland, going from one construction site to the next and checking on his crews and their progress, before grabbing a quick lunch somewhere on the road.

This was the third day that I was following him, and I didn’t think anything of it when he parked his car on one of the downtown streets, got out, and started ambling along the sidewalk. It was lunchtime, so he was probably on the prowl for some sort of vittles before going to the next job site. But as he walked by restaurant after restaurant, passing up everything from Mexican to Italian to Thai food, my unease slowly cranked up notch by notch by notch. Because Vaughn was rapidly running out of dining options in this part of town, unless he was in the mood for one thing in particular.

Barbecue.

Sure enough, he headed straight for the Pork Pit, opened the door, and stepped inside.

I was so surprised that I stopped cold in the middle of the sidewalk and would have stayed that way if someone hadn’t bumped my shoulder, snapping me out of my shock. I hurried out of the flow of traffic on the sidewalk, but I stayed outside the restaurant, pretending to be talking on my cell phone, when I was really peering in through the storefront windows, wondering if I’d somehow been made, if Vaughn had figured out that I was following him, who I was, where I worked, and that I had plans to kill him as soon as I could.

My heart pounded, and a bit of nervous sweat gathered at the nape of my neck as I watched him walk to the back of the restaurant and take a seat at the counter, three stools down from where Fletcher was sitting behind the cash register.

Vaughn leaned over toward Fletcher, as though he were going to talk to him.

I tensed up a little more. This was bad, so very, very bad. . . .