Heart of Venom

breath, Finn.”

“Gin, wait—”

I hung up on him. The phone started ringing a second later. No doubt, Finn thought that he could talk me out of it. He should have known better.

Chapter Ten

With my phone turned off and tossed onto the passenger seat of Roslyn’s car, I left Jo-Jo’s salon and drove over to Fletcher’s house, my house now. I zoomed up the driveway, making the tires spit out gravel in every direction, crested the ridge, and parked.

The ramshackle structure looked a bit odd, since it featured a mishmash of white clapboard, brown brick, and gray stone, all topped off by a tin roof. But to me, it was simply home. To the right of the house, the yard stretched out before abruptly dropping off into a series of jagged cliffs. To the left, the woods formed a solid line of green, gray, and brown.

I got out of the car and headed for the front porch.

Normally, I took a moment to reach out with my magic and listen to the stones around me, in case anyone had decided to lie in wait to ambush the Spider at home. But today I didn’t even bother. If someone was out there, then today was the unluckiest day of his life, because the idiot would be my warm-up for Harley Grimes.

But as I opened the heavy black granite front door shot through with thick veins of silverstone, nothing seemed out of the ordinary in the chirping of the birds in the trees or the rustle of the rabbits in the underbrush. Good. I didn’t want anything else to slow me down and keep me from reaching Sophia as quickly as possible.

I stepped inside, shut the door behind me, and headed straight for Fletcher’s office. I hated delaying even a second, but I needed more information before I went after Grimes, and this was the one place I was sure I could get it.

A large maple tree shaded this part of the house, and even with the day’s sun, Fletcher’s office was dark enough that I had to turn the lights on to see what I was doing.

The room was a mess, with papers, pens, and folders stacked everywhere, from the desk in the back to the bookcases standing against the walls to the file cabinets that squatted on either side of the door. But there had been a method to Fletcher’s madness, and I’d slowly been figuring out his system.

In fact, I’d been spending more and more time in his office over the past few weeks, trying to track down the mysterious M. M. Monroe, the long-lost relative that

Mab’s will had listed as heir to all of her earthly possessions. I hadn’t had any luck so far, but going through the files had finally nudged me into straightening up the old man’s office. At least a little bit. I left most of his things where Fletcher had kept them, though. In a way, it made me feel like he was still there, still guiding me, even though he’d been dead since last fall.

I hadn’t run across any information about Grimes, Hazel, and their men, but there had to be something there.

Fletcher and Grimes had almost killed each other over Sophia, and the old man had made Grimes stay away on his mountain ever since then. Still, Fletcher had liked to keep tabs on everyone who was up to no good in Ashland, and there was no way that he wouldn’t have tracked Grimes through the years, especially if he thought that

Grimes might be a threat to the Deveraux sisters again someday.

I started with the file cabinets beside the door, flipping through all of the folders inside. No file on Grimes.

I moved over to the bookcases, rifling through the items on every shelf. No file. I went over to the desk, sorting through all the papers on the battered surface and then all the ones in the various drawers. Still no file.

Frustrated, I slammed the last drawer on the desk shut, then swiveled Fletcher’s chair back and forth, making the wheels go screech-screech-screech. I studied every part of the office, wondering if there was anything that I’d missed, any possible place that Fletcher might have stashed some information on Grimes that I’d overlooked.

And that’s when I noticed the sticker on one of the bookcases.

It was a small sticker, stuck on the bottom right corner of the case, a few feet away from the desk. Odd that Fletcher would put a sticker on the wood way down there where no one was likely to notice it. But what was odder still was the sticker itself: a couple of white scythes crossed over a red heart, all on a black background. It wasn’t Fletcher’s style at all . . .

But it was definitely Sophia’s.

My heart quickening, I got down on my knees and ran my hands all over the bookcase, searching for a secret compartment, but there wasn’t one. The case was just a case, solid wood from top to bottom. Puzzled, I rocked back on my heels, wondering where the file could be, since it wasn’t actually sitting on one of the shelves.

Then I remembered something that Fletcher had always said: Simpler is better. I let out a laugh, leaned forward, and reached under the bookcase. A second later, my fingers closed around a folder, and I pulled it out into the light. Unlike the manila folders that Fletcher used for everything else, this one was black and simply had Sophia scrawled across the front in silver ink. I sat on the floor, leaned my back against the desk, and opened it.

Hello, Gin. If you are reading this, then I am dead, but Harley Grimes is not.

I recognized the old man’s handwriting, and the distinctive flow and cadence of his words made it feel like he was sitting there right beside me, slowly, carefully, quietly reviewing the information with me.

If Harley Grimes has any sort of heart at all, then it is a heart of venom—cold, cruel, and delighting in the suffering of others. Sophia wasn’t the first girl he took, and she certainly wasn’t the last . . .

Fletcher went on to detail everything that Jo-Jo had told me. How Grimes had seen Sophia, wanted her, and kidnapped her. How Jo-Jo had reached out to Fletcher and hired him as the Tin Man to rescue Sophia. Fletcher’s journey up Bone Mountain to where Grimes had his camp. The guerrilla tactics that he had used to pick off

Grimes’s men one by one. And finally, his last battle with Grimes.

I had already killed Horace and Henry, Grimes’s older brothers, and wounded Hazel, his younger sister, and I managed to trick Grimes himself into using up all of his Fire magic before I finally confronted him face-to-face.

We fought. He used his fists. I had my knives. It was a long, hard battle, but I was wearing him down and moving in for the kill when Hazel snuck up behind me and gutshot me with a pistol. I stabbed Grimes in the chest, but he ran away, and I knew that the wound wouldn’t kill him—but that mine would if I didn’t get to Jo- Jo in time.

So I left. I regret that. I should have stayed and finished the job, even if I would have died up there on the mountain with Grimes. At least then I would have known that Sophia and Jo-Jo were safe from him forever . . .

Fletcher went on to describe how he and Sophia had helped each other down the mountain and how they’d gotten back to his car and then over to Jo-Jo’s house so she could heal them both. He also detailed some other skirmishes that he’d had with Grimes over the years, but by then, he’d had other things to think about—like me and Mab.

But the file contained other useful things, including a map of the mountain where Grimes made his home and detailed sketches of the camp itself. Apparently, Fletcher had trekked up there every single year to see

what Grimes was up to. His final trip had been in May of last year, several months before his death. That meant that the map and the sketches were more than a year old, but they would have to do. Besides, given the old-fashioned suit that I’d seen him wearing earlier and the fact that Fletcher’s own maps didn’t vary much year to