Deadly Sting

too-smooth skin.

“Then there was Owen,” I continued. “Since you were in charge of the gala, you knew exactly who was coming. When you saw his name on the guest list, you realized you could force him to help Clementine open the vault. Plus, you would never pass up a chance to hurt my friends and family. No doubt, you told Clementine to kill Owen immediately after he opened the vault for her.”

McAllister shrugged. “You’d taken away my son. So yes, I wanted you dead, but I wanted the rest of your band of miscreants to suffer too. Killing Grayson seemed like an ideal way to do that, and I was going to make it look like he was working with Clementine the whole time. Just think of the problems that would have created for that sister of his. Everyone in Ashland would have been pounding on her door, demanding to know what her brother did with all of that stolen art. It would have been amusing to watch.”

The brandy really must have bolstered his courage, because he was actually bragging—bragging about how he’d planned to hurt the people that I loved. Rage pulsed through my body. It had been bad enough that he’d put Owen in the line of fire, but to frame him after the fact . . . it almost made me rethink my plan for McAllister.

Almost.

“But the most interesting thing is exactly why you hired Clementine and her crew to break into the vault,” I continued. “That’s the really fascinating thing about all of this—what you wanted her to steal.”

I reached down. McAllister tensed, but I wasn’t going for one of my knives. Instead, I pulled the ebony tube out of a pocket on the front of my vest. I set it on the desk and scooted it forward, then turned it so he could see the sunburst rune glinting on the side.

“When I first went into the vault, I had no idea what Clementine was after,” I said. “There were lots of treasures in there. Art, jewelry, paintings worth tens of millions. But all she wanted—all you wanted—was this. You didn’t want anything else from the museum, not even the jewels that Clementine took from the partygoers. No, all you were after—all you needed—was this one little tube.”

McAllister’s face pinched even tighter than before, the flush in his cheeks taking on a fiery tomato tint, and I could tell that he was struggling to control himself. So I decided to be a good guest and answer his silent questions.

“It took me a few minutes, but I figured out how to open it,” I said. “And I know what’s inside. In fact, I’ve spent the last few days reading and rereading Mab’s will. Quite a bit shorter than I thought it would be. But fascinating all the same for what it says—and what it doesn’t.”

“And what do you think you’ve figured out from it?” he sneered.

“Why you wanted Mab’s will so badly,” I replied. “I must say I’m a little shocked that she didn’t leave you a little something-something for all your years of loyal service. But you aren’t mentioned in the will at all. She didn’t leave you a nickel’s worth of anything. No cash, no land, no personal property. Not even so much as a silverstone pen or a cheap gold watch. No wonder you were so pissed.”

McAllister stared at the tube, his cold, furious gaze locked onto the sunburst rune. “You have no idea what it was like working for her. Being at her beck and call night and day for years—years. Constantly knowing that one wrong word, one wrong move, and she’d kill me with her Fire magic right where I stood with no warning and no sympathy. Mab wasn’t even particularly clever. She was just strong. All that power, all that magic, all that money. She could have done so much with it. But she never could think big enough.”

I’d thought Mab had dreamed plenty big, since she’d practically run Ashland, but I didn’t contradict McAllister. Even he had a right to rant here at the end.

“But you know what the really ironic thing is? Mab actually had me draw up that will. I guess she thought she’d be around a lot longer than I would. Elementals.” He snorted. “They all think that they’re so much better than the rest of us. So much stronger, so much more powerful. But they die just like everyone else does.”

He let out a dark laugh. “You definitely proved that to Mab.”

I shrugged.

He raised his brandy glass to me. “I should thank you for that. For killing that bitch. For finally freeing me from her. I would have been content to do just that. Live and let live, if you will—if you hadn’t killed my son.”

McAllister moved to the end of the bar, reached down, and picked up a photo from a nearby table. A younger, larger, beefier version of himself stared out from beneath the glass—his son, Jake. McAllister stared at the photo a moment before setting it back down on the table. He nudged it with his index finger, making sure it was in exactly the same spot as before.

“Admittedly, Jake was an idiot and a colossal screwup. He wasn’t worth all of the money I wasted bailing him out of one scrape after another over the years. But nobody fucks with a McAllister—not even you.”

I tipped my head, telling him that I understood his sentiment. You didn’t have anything, you weren’t worth anything, if you couldn’t protect your friends and family. But if you did fail them, the only thing left to do was get retribution. And in a place like Ashland, that was only paid out in one way: in blood.

“I have to admit that I was still a bit confused after I found the will,” I said. “I wondered who would hire Clementine to steal it. At first, I thought that maybe it was the mysterious M. M. Monroe who was mentioned in it, but then I realized that he or she had no reason to swipe the will, since Mab had left everything to him or her already. That led me back to you, Jonah. Although I wondered at the show you had Clementine put on. Why not quietly break into the vault after hours and steal the will? But then I remembered something Finn had said about the will being made public during the gala. You had to get the will before that happened, but you didn’t want anyone to know what you were really after. The heist was the perfect cover for that. I imagine part of it was also payback.”

“You’re damn right it was payback,” McAllister muttered. “Ever since Mab’s death, everyone in the underworld’s been thumbing their noses at me. Well, they weren’t laughing at the museum, were they?”

“No. Nobody was laughing.”

McAllister brooded into his brandy for a few seconds before raising his head to me again. “So tell me the rest of it. Why do you think I wanted the will?”

“Oh, the answer to that is simple: because you’ve been embezzling money from Mab for years.”

He froze, shocked that his dirty little secret was finally out in the open after being buried for so long. For a moment, panic flared in his eyes, and his gaze flicked toward the doorway as if he expected Mab to storm inside and roast him on the spot for his betrayal. After a moment, he seemed to snap back to reality, because he laughed again, the sound even darker and harsher than before. But there was another emotion mixed in with all of the ugliness: relief. I wondered if it was because Mab was dead and couldn’t hurt him or that he could finally share his secret with someone—even if that someone was me.

When his laughter finally faded away, I continued with my story.

“You see, when I started putting it all together, it only made sense that you would steal the will. You were Mab’s lawyer, so of course you drew up it for her. That also meant that you knew exactly what was in it,” I said. “So after I read it, I figured there was something you didn’t want M. M. Monroe to find out about Mab’s estate— something you’d done. Embezzlement seemed like just the sort of thing you’d want to cover up, so I had Finn do some checking. He said you hid your tracks very well but not quite well enough. Exactly how much have you skimmed from Mab over the years?”

He sighed. “Close to thirty million. With my investments, I’ve grown it into more than fifty. And it wasn’t easy—it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. That woman watched her money like a hawk, wanting to know where every little penny went. She had hundreds of millions at her disposal, and I still had to send her receipts for every dime I spent. Miserly bitch.”

I wanted to point out that Mab had had good reason to be suspicious, given how much he’d swindled from her, but I graciously kept that thought to myself.

And now came the final question I had, the one thing that I most wanted an answer to. But I kept my voice light and casual. No sense in tipping him off about how important it was to me. It would be just like the lawyer to pick up on that and decide to mess with me, especially since he thought he had nothing to lose now.

“So who is the mysterious M. M. Monroe?” I asked. “The one you’ve gone to so much trouble to avoid.”

For several seconds, the only sound was the tick-tick-tick of the grandfather clock.