Deadly Sting

time, I reached through a slit in my skirt. I’d just stepped out of my second shoe when my hand closed around one of the two knives I had strapped to my thighs. I slid the weapon free and pulled open the interior door just wide enough for me to slip into the powder room. Then I tiptoed over to the exterior door. I stood there, head cocked toward the heavy wood, but I didn’t hear anything else.

But there was a pane of glass that served as a vent in the top of the door, so I picked up one of the white velvet chairs, carried it over to the door, and climbed up onto the seat so I could see through the glass.

Jillian Delancey lay on the floor right outside the bathroom door—dead.

At least, I assumed it was Jillian. It was kind of hard to tell, since most of her face had been blown off.

But she wasn’t alone. A giant stood over her body. He was on the small side, a few inches short of seven feet tall, but he made up for it by having a ripped, chiseled figure that would have put any bodybuilder to shame. His biceps bulged so big I doubted that he could rest his arms down against his sides. His skin was exceptionally tan, bordering on orange, the sort of fake, unnatural color you got out of a bottle. Everything else about him was pale, though: his hazel eyes, his curly blond hair, even the wispy soul patch that clung to his chin like puffed-up peach fuzz.

But the most interesting thing about him was the fact that he was wearing the dark blue uniform of one of the museum’s security guards—one that didn’t quite fit. The pants legs stopped an inch short of his black socks, and the chest and sleeves of the shirt threatened to split open with every breath he took. It almost looked like he was playing dress-up in someone else’s clothes.

He clutched a silenced gun in his right hand, the weapon trained on Jillian as if he thought she was suddenly going to come back to life with that much of her face missing. Not even Mab could have survived something like that.

For a moment, sorrow washed over me. I hadn’t known a thing about Jillian Delancey, other than that she’d come here with Owen and had been interested in him, but she hadn’t deserved to die like that.

But the real question was, why had the giant killed her? Why here? Why now? All around me, the marble whispered as Jillian’s blood oozed across it and the giant’s ugly, violent actions soaked into it. I’d thought the stones had sounded upset before, but now they practically hummed with tension and whined with worry. Whatever was going down, it was happening now.

Lucky for me, there was a guy standing right outside the door who could tell me exactly what that was—and how I could stop it before anyone else got hurt.

I started to get down from the chair so I could yank open the door and confront the giant when another sound caught my ear—clack-clack-clack-clack. Footsteps, hurrying this way. The giant’s head snapped up, and he moved away from Jillian’s body so the new arrival could see his gruesome handiwork.

The giant waiter who’d entered the bathroom earlier stepped into view. Dropping to one knee beside Jillian, she was careful not to get too close to the blood spreading across the floor. She looked at Jillian—or what was left of her—and shook her head, making her tight curls bounce every which way before they settled back into place.

“What a fucking mess,” she said. “Why the hell did you shoot her in the face so many times?”

“Are you kidding me?” the second giant asked. His high, whiny voice reminded me of a mosquito buzzing around. “With her reputation? I wasn’t taking any chances. Not with this bitch. And see? It worked.”

Her reputation? My stomach clenched, and I started to get a bad, bad feeling.

“Yeah, it worked because you blew half her skull off.” The female giant shook her head again. “I told you to kill her, Dixon. Not splatter her brains everywhere.”

“Well, who cares as long as she’s dead?” Dixon, the male giant, said. “Come on, Clementine. You know I’m right about this.”

Clementine? That wasn’t a very common name, and it rang a bell in the back of my mind. I studied the giant, but once again, I couldn’t quite place who she was or where I might have seen her before tonight. I was going to find out, though—real soon.

“We’re the ones taking all the risks,” Dixon said, his voice taking on a pleading, petulant note. “I say we do whatever we want, as long as we get the job done in the end. This is the score of a lifetime. I don’t want anything to screw it up. Do you? So three in the head, and the Spider’s dead.”

The Spider. That sick, sick feeling ballooned up in my stomach, choking me from the inside out, burning as cruelly as the hottest elemental Fire. They thought that they’d killed the Spider; they thought that they’d murdered me. But it was Jillian lying there on the cold marble—or what was left of her.

Finn had been so upset when he’d realized that Jillian had on the same dress as I did. He’d never dreamed it would get her killed, and neither had I. Scarlet dress, dark brown hair, strong, slender build. Owen had mistaken me for Jillian earlier, and Dixon had made the same error in reverse.

The cold, cruel irony twisted into my gut, adding to my agonizing guilt, and my own scarlet gown seemed to cinch tightly around my waist, like a corset compressing my lungs and slowly suffocating me. I could feel each and every one of the delicate crystals around the waist digging into my stomach like tiny daggers. For a moment, I was seized by the unbearable urge to tear off the gown and rip it to shreds with my knife. I wanted to scream and shout and beat my fists against the marble walls about how fucking unfair it was that an innocent woman had died because of me.

But that wouldn’t calm my raging emotions.

Nothing would—except killing the giants.

Clementine studied Jillian’s body. After a moment, she nodded. “You’re right. Dead is dead, and dead is good in her case. Besides, it’s not like you can put her face back where it used to be.”

Dixon let out the breath he’d been holding. He smiled at the other giant, but it was a nervous expression, punctuated by a faint twitching of his left eye, and it took him a moment to relax the tight, white-knuckled grip he’d had on his gun. He’d known that Clementine wouldn’t be happy with what he’d done, and he’d been afraid of what she might do to him.

Whoever Clementine was, she was definitely in charge, and Dixon was scared of her. He had shot an unarmed woman in the face, but he was still taking pains to tiptoe around the other giant. That told me a few things about Clementine, namely that she was even more dangerous and ruthless than Dixon was.

Clementine got to her feet and glanced at her watch. I didn’t get a good look at it, but I could still see the flash of diamonds and the gleam of silverstone around her wrist. An expensive piece, one far too pricey for a simple waiter. Then again, Clementine wasn’t what she seemed to be, any more than I was.

Didn’t much matter. She was getting dead in another minute, two tops.

I’d wait until they left Jillian’s body behind, creep through the shadows after them, then ram my knife into Clementine’s back. Once she was dead, I’d find a quiet, secluded corner in the museum where I could question Dixon—a place where no one would hear him scream out the answers. Depending on what he told me, I’d either wipe his blood off my knives and go back to the exhibit, or I’d find Finn and tell him that we had a situation to deal with—

“Is everyone else in position?” Clementine asked.

Dixon reached down and grabbed a walkie-talkie that was clipped to the black leather belt around his waist. “Team one?”

A staticky crackle sounded, along with a male voice. “In position.”

“Team two?” he asked.

Another crackle, another voice, this one female. “In position.”

He repeated the procedure, checking in with three other teams. I didn’t know how many folks were on each team, but I was willing to bet that it was several. This was what the stones had been murmuring about all evening. Whatever was happening, I was going to stop it—and the giants.

Clementine nodded, satisfied. “All right. Grab her, and let’s get out of here.”

“Aw, do I have to?” Dixon whined again. “Why don’t you do it?”

“Because you’re the idiot who shot her in the face. You made the mess, so you can carry her. Do you have a problem with that?” Her voice was calm, polite even, but her hazel eyes were cold, flat, and empty.

“No, no, no, that’s okay,” Dixon said. “I can get her. No problem, boss.”