Widow's Web

but apparently that sort of thing doesn’t bother you.”

Salina shrugged again. “Your opinion doesn’t matter to me in the slightest. The only one I care about is Owen’s, and we all know how . . . forgiving men can be when they see something they want.”

To that, I didn’t have an answer—and we both knew it.

Salina smiled again, gracefully slid out of the booth, and got to her feet. “As lovely as our conversation has been, I’m afraid I’ve got to run. I have a meeting with Jonah and some final preparations to make for my dinner party. I’m so looking forward to reintroducing myself to everyone who matters in Ashland.”

It took a lot to get to me, but there was something ominous about the way she said dinner party that made my skin crawl. I made a mental note to get Finn to check into this shindig Salina was throwing, and to see if he could find out anything about her mental health. It seemed like there was a disconnect going on with Salina, who talked as if framing Kincaid for rape had been of no big consequence and that Owen would just forgive her for doing something so horrible to his best friend, and for killing others.

Once again, I couldn’t decide if she was a master manipulator who was supremely confident in her skills or if she just rearranged things in her own mind to suit the situation. Either way, she knew exactly what she was doing when it came to pushing every single one of Owen’s buttons. But how could she think that he would come back to her after everything she’d done, especially to Eva? If Salina really did have that twisted a view of reality, if she really believed that what she did didn’t matter, then she was even more dangerous than anyone had realized—even me.

“It’s been a pleasure talking to you, Gin. I’m sure I’ll be seeing you again soon,” Salina said. “Do be a dear and give my regards to Owen, will you? Tell him I’ve been thinking about him for ages now, and I’m looking forward to finally getting reacquainted again after all these long, lonely years apart.”

Her voice was calm, pleasant, as if she’d asked me to say good-bye to Owen instead of let him know that she had set her sights on him again. I wanted to palm one of my knives and drive it straight into her heart, but I restrained myself, especially since the other customers had picked up on the tension between us and were staring at me like they expected me to take her out in the middle of the restaurant.

I entertained the thought but quickly discarded it. I didn’t want to upset my diners.

Not to mention how Owen would react to me murdering his ex-fiancee right in front of him with seemingly no provocation.

Salina was unconcerned by my lack of response. Instead, she waggled her fingers good-bye at Owen, blew him a suggestive kiss, and then sashayed over to the front door and out of the restaurant.

And all I could do was just sit there, watch her go, and wonder how I was going to unravel all the lies this black widow had told Owen—as well as the ones it looked like she was telling herself too.

19

I stayed in the booth, thinking back over everything Salina had said. All the threats she’d made, all the awful promises she’d so casually dropped. As much as I hated to admit it, she had a right to be confident. With Mab gone, Salina could potentially revive her father’s business empire. And if she was willing to use her water magic like she had last night, then she could easily be among the most dangerous people in the city.

And then there was the threat she represented to my relationship with Owen.

The past could be a powerful thing, especially when it came to love lost. I wondered if Salina’s past with Owen would trump whatever future my lover and I had together. Thanks to my promise to Eva, I had a funny feeling I was going to find out—one way or another.

Owen finished his phone call, came back over, and sat down in the booth. “Where did Salina go?”

“She had a meeting with Jonah McAllister,” I said. “Something about a dinner she’s hosting tomorrow night.”

“We need to tell her about McAllister, what a snake he is.”

I frowned, wondering again at his seeming blind spot when it came to Salina. Did he really think she needed protecting from McAllister? Maybe Salina wasn’t the only one disconnected from reality, especially if Owen thought the lawyer was doing anything other than what Salina wanted him to.

I shook my head. “Don’t worry. I get the feeling Salina always knows exactly what she’s doing.”

“What do you mean by that?”

I looked at my lover. I’d had some small, foolish hope the situation might resolve itself. That Owen and I could just go on like we had before Salina came to town. But there were too many people involved in this mess now. Someone had to tell Owen the truth about his ex-fiancee, and it looked like the job had fallen to me. Now came the hard part—convincing Owen that Salina wasn’t the victim he’d thought her to be all these years. He hadn’t believed Kincaid back then, and I didn’t know if he’d listen to me now, but I had to try—for all our sakes.

“I talked to Eva last night after you went to bed,” I said in a soft voice. “She told me a very different story from the one you did about the night Kincaid supposedly attacked Salina.”

He stared at me. “Eva spoke to you about that?”

“Is that so surprising?”

Owen shook his head. “She never really talked to me about what happened. . . . All she ever said was that Phillip didn’t hurt Salina, but obviously that wasn’t true. I assumed she’d blocked most of it out, that it was just too traumatic for her to realize or remember what Phillip had done to Salina. So I eventually gave up trying to get her to talk about it. I didn’t want to bring it up over and over and have her constantly be haunted by that night.”

I didn’t tell him that Eva had been too scared of the water elemental and her threats to confide in her big brother. That was Eva’s part of the story to tell—not mine.

I leaned forward. “I believe Eva. She’s telling the truth about what happened—and so is Kincaid, like it or not.”

Owen didn’t say anything, but he shook his head again, and I could see the same weariness in his eyes I had last night.

“Think about it, Owen,” I said before he could speak, before he could stick up for Salina again. “Forget your feelings for Salina and really think about things. You walked in and found Kincaid beating Salina. No one’s disputing that. But he was, what, fifteen then? Still a scrawny kid. And Salina was the same age as you, right? About nineteen, four years older than Kincaid?”

He nodded, confirming the information in Fletcher’s file.

“So Salina was older. Not only that, she had elemental magic. Even if Kincaid had tried to rape her, why would he attack her in the bathroom, of all places? With Eva only a few feet away in the tub, a tub with all that water in it? Why didn’t Salina use her water magic to fight him off? Why did she insist you beat him to death instead?”

Owen didn’t say anything, but I could see him thinking back and struggling to review everything with an objective eye. He sat there, working through it all. I leaned back in my side of the booth and kept quiet, wanting him to draw his own conclusions—the right ones this time.

“It could have happened the way you think it did,” he finally said. “Maybe Phillip didn’t try to rape Salina. But why were they fighting? Why was he beating her? What did she do to him that was so terrible? Because he would have killed her if I hadn’t come back when I did.”

Now it was time to rip the scabs off all the old wounds—no matter how much it was going to hurt Owen.

I drew in a breath. “They were fighting because Salina was torturing Eva with her water magic. Salina was using her power to hold Eva down under the water in the bathtub. She was drowning Eva again and again.”

All around us, everything went on as usual. The other diners talked and laughed; the waitstaff hurried from one table to another; Sophia dished up plate after plate of food; the chatter of the customers and the clink-clink-clink of dishes and silverware sounded; and the air smelled of hot grease mixed with smoky spices.

Yes, the world went on just like it had before. But for Owen, everything had changed.

For a moment, he was absolutely still, as if frozen to where he sat. Then, everything happened at once. All