Deadly Sting

that would hurt, ache, and burn with every move, but relief pulsed through me that it wasn’t worse.

“It looks like a through-and-through,” I said in a soft voice.

“Just help me bandage it up. It stings, but it’s not that bad.” Owen grimaced. “Not nearly as bad as what Dixon did to Phillip.”

I ripped his jacket up and used it to make a tight bandage. Owen grimaced, and sweat beaded on his forehead, but he swallowed down most of the pain.

Once that was done, I crouched down a few feet away, with my back to the river and my gaze on the faint path we’d made through the thorns. I didn’t think the giants would venture this far from the museum, but I wanted to be ready in case they did.

And then we waited.

In the distance, I could hear the giants’ shouts as they searched for us. I just hoped they would focus on this side of the island and not the front, where Bria and Xavier would be coming in any minute now. I pulled my cell phone off my belt, intending to text my sister about the new danger, but the moonlight filtering down through the trees revealed a bullet hole in the middle of the device. I bit back a curse and clipped the phone to my belt once more, even though it was useless now. Bria and Xavier were on their own—just like Owen and me.

A minute passed. Then two. Then five.

All the while, the giants swarmed through the gardens, yelling back and forth to one another.

“Where are they?”

“Do you see them?”

“Where did they go?”

Every once in a while, the bright beam of a flashlight would cut across the foliage above our heads, making Owen and me duck down further in the shadows. But the briars made the giants keep their distance, and they didn’t find us.

Eventually, the sounds of their shouts died away altogether, along with the beams of light, and I relaxed. The danger had passed us by—for now.

Finally, Owen spoke, his voice a hard, flat note against the cheery chirp of the crickets in the underbrush. “Jillian’s dead.”

“Yes,” I said. “She is.”

Still keeping watch for the giants, I told him about Clementine sidling up to me first in the rotunda and then later on in the bathroom. I also told him how she had left and Jillian had come in, although I didn’t mention that we’d talked about him.

“Jillian never had a chance,” I said. “Dixon was waiting for her as soon as she stepped out of the bathroom. I don’t know if I would have had a chance to react either.”

Owen’s gaze dropped to my dress. The designer gown was a tattered, ruined, ragged mess, stained with blood, soaked with sweat, and scorched with black bullet holes. His mouth tightened, and he rubbed his forehead. No doubt he was thinking about Jillian and the fact that she was dead because of me.

I wondered if he was still thinking about Salina and how she was also dead because of me—by my own hand, no less.

“I’m sorry,” I said in a quiet voice. “About Jillian. She didn’t deserve to die like that.”

Owen looked away from me. “Me too. She was a friend.”

I wanted to ask if that was all she had been, but I kept my mouth shut. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer. I dropped my gaze from Owen, and both of us concentrated on the thorns around us instead of staring at each other. We were both silent until he finally cleared his throat.

“So now what?” he asked. “We might be out here away from the giants, but Eva, Phillip, and the others are still inside.”

“Now we see what kind of leverage we have.”

I pulled the small ebony tube out of the pouch on my utility belt. Mab’s sunburst rune glimmered in the moonlight, deadly and beautiful, just like the Fire elemental herself had been. I reached for my Stone magic, used it to harden my skin, and traced my finger over the sunburst, wondering if the rune might hold some sort of booby-trap. But the symbol didn’t flare to life or spew explosive, elemental Fire in my face.

Still, the problem was that I didn’t see a way to open the tube. Flat discs of silverstone covered both ends of the wood, but I couldn’t pry them off with either my nails or the tip of my knife. I handed the tube to Owen, who ran his fingers up and down it, but he couldn’t figure out how to get inside it either. It had to open, because there was something inside, something that rustled back and forth whenever I shook the tube. I needed to know what that something was so I could deal with Clementine accordingly.

Of course Mab wouldn’t make it easy to loot whatever was inside the tube, especially when I was under pressure and pressed for time. I imagined the Fire elemental was laughing at me even now from wherever she was in the great beyond.

“Laugh your ass off, Mab,” I muttered. “You’ve certainly earned it tonight.”

I held up the tube, wondering if there was something I was missing. Once again, my eyes focused on the sunburst rune. The wavy golden rays took on a muted silver tinge in the moonlight, while the ruby smoldered like a dull, banked ember in the middle of the design. Maybe it was the mocking way the rune seemed to wink at me, but an idea popped into my mind. I put my thumb on the ruby and pressed in on it.

A soft click sounded, and one of the silverstone discs on the end of the tube popped up.

“Here goes nothing,” I murmured.

I hinged the silverstone to one side and tipped the contents of the tube into my hand. I’d been expecting jewels, a fistful of rubies or something like that, something that would have been in keeping with Mab’s bold, flashy, fiery nature.

Instead, a single piece of rolled-up paper slid out of the hollowed-out wood.

“That’s it?” Owen asked. “That’s all that’s in there?”

I shook the wood, but nothing else came out. “Yep, that’s it. So let’s see what’s so important about it.”

I carefully unrolled the paper. It was hard to make out everything, since the print was so small and the night was so dark, despite the golden glow from the garden lights in the distance, but I managed to skim through it.

“It looks like some sort of legal document. I think . . . I think this is Mab’s will.”

Owen frowned. “Why would Clementine go to so much trouble to steal Mab’s will?”

“I don’t know,” I murmured. “But apparently, she wanted it bad enough to arrange the heist and everything else tonight. But you’re right. The question is why.”

“Well, what does it say?” he asked. “Who did Mab leave what to?”

I squinted and read a few more paragraphs. “A bunch of legal mumbo jumbo, and . . . it looks like . . . she left everything to one person. Someone whose last name is also Monroe—M. M. Monroe.”

* * *

I stared at the paper. It seemed innocent enough, but I couldn’t help but feel like the earth had just opened up at my feet and I was about to tumble into an abyss.

“M. M. Monroe?” Owen asked. “Did I hear you right?”

All I could do was nod.

Finn had mentioned there was a rumor that the contents of Mab’s will were going to be revealed at the gala tonight. Now that I’d read the document myself, I could easily imagine Mab arranging for things to go down like that. Like Finn had said, it would have been one last hurrah for her—an opportunity to remind everyone how powerful she had been, and a chance to announce her successor in the most dramatic way possible.

Because Mab hadn’t left anything to Jonah McAllister, her other business associates, or even charity. No, she’d given everything to this M. M. Monroe.

I wondered if this mysterious relative had the same devastating Fire magic Mab had wielded.

I wondered if this person knew about the massive fortune he or she had inherited.

I wondered if this Monroe would decide to come to Ashland to oversee Mab’s empire in person—and how much trouble he or she might cause for me if so.

My mother and Mab had been enemies for years before Mab had murdered her and my older sister. Their parents had been enemies before them, and their parents before them. At least, that’s how it had been according