Poison

Poison Elemental Assassin - 2.6 by Jennifer Estep

I hated the girl.

I hated everything about her, from her painfully thin body to her big, wounded eyes to her absolute eagerness to do whatever my father, Fletcher Lane, told her to.

Most especially, I hated the fact that Dad had decided to train her to be an assassin instead of me.

The girl set a triple chocolate milkshake down on the counter in front of me. “Here you go, Finn.”

Her voice was soft, just like everything else about her. Soft brown hair, soft gray eyes, soft, small body. Even her clothes were soft and big and baggy and utterly forgettable. She never raised her voice, she never interrupted a conversation, she never did anything the least bit dangerous or naughty or risky. It was as if she was determined to draw as little attention to herself as possible and blend into the background no matter what.

She annoyed the hell out of me.

I didn’t even say thanks as I stuck a straw into the frothy concoction and started sucking down the milkshake.

“Do you like it?” the girl asked, a bit of hope creeping into her voice. “I followed Fletcher’s recipe, but then I decided to add in even more chocolate to make it really rich and creamy.”

The milkshake was wonderful, absolutely wonderful, and even better than the ones that Dad made for me here at the Pork Pit. But I wasn’t about to tell her that. Most days, I didn’t even bother to speak to her.

I grunted. “It’ll do, I suppose.”

Behind the counter, Sophia Deveraux gave me a sharp stare. Most people would have been intimidated by the look, since the muscular dwarf was as hard and blunt as the girl was soft. Sophia wore solid black from the bottom of her heavy boots to the T-shirt that covered her chest to the leather collar that wrapped around her neck. Even her hair was black, and she’d painted her lips the same dark color. Sophia was the real deal—a Goth through and through. She made the wannabes at my high school look like kids playing dress-up, which, of course, they were.

Sophia’s pointed look didn’t faze me in the least, since I knew that I had both Sophia and her older sister, Jo-Jo, wrapped around my finger. The dwarves had helped Dad raise me, and I knew that they thought of me as their own son. For some reason, though, both Sophia and Jo-Jo had taken an immediate liking to the girl, fussing over her just as much as they did over me. I didn’t know why. I didn’t think there was anything to like about Gin.

Gin—that’s what the girl called herself. Heh. We all knew that wasn’t her real name, but Dad had accepted it anyway. He’d even given her a last name too—Blanco. Gin Blanco. As if that wasn’t the cheesiest thing that anyone had ever heard.

But Dad hadn’t stopped there. He’d created a whole new identity for the girl, claiming that she was some distant cousin of his that he’d taken in after her family had died in a car wreck. She’d been with us several weeks now, and Dad had bought her clothes and fed her and even enrolled her in school with me. Since she was thirteen and I was fifteen, she wasn’t in my class, though. One small thing to be happy about.

Since I was tired of looking at Gin, I swiveled around on my stool, still sucking on my milkshake. It was Monday afternoon, and business was a little slow at the Pork Pit, Dad’s barbecue restaurant in downtown Ashland. Only a few customers sat in the blue and pink vinyl booths in front of the storefront windows, although they were all eating their barbecue sandwiches, baked beans, and thick, steak-cut fries with obvious enthusiasm.

A girl about my age put down her napkin, slid out of her booth, and started following the pink pig tracks on the floor to the women’s restroom. I smiled at her as she passed. She stopped a moment to look at me, and my grin widened. With my walnut-colored hair and green eyes, I was the spitting image of my dad and just as handsome as he was. I winked at the girl, who giggled, ducked her head, and hurried on by.

Normally, my dad, Fletcher Lane, would have been here, sitting on a stool behind the cash register and reading a book in between helping Gin and Sophia dish up barbecue. But Dad was off on one of his jobs tonight, killing people for money. As the assassin the Tin Man, it was something that he was exceptionally good at.

And now, he was determined to teach Gin everything that he knew.

He’d told me about his plan last night, even though I’d seen it coming way before then. A few weeks ago, a man named Douglas, one of Dad’s disgruntled clients, had stormed into the restaurant and almost killed him. In fact, Douglas would have killed Dad and me too—if Gin hadn’t stabbed him to death with the knife that she was using to chop onions with at the time.

For some reason, Dad thought that made Gin a prime candidate to become an assassin, just like him. Hell, he’d already given her a name—the Spider. Another fake, cheesy name to go along with her other one.

It should have been me that he was planning on training—I was his son, his flesh and blood. My mother had died when I was a kid, and it had always been just the two of us. I just didn’t understand what Dad saw in Gin that he didn’t see in me. What he thought that she had that I didn’t. I was older than her, smarter, stronger, tougher. I was already as good a shot as Dad was with his guns. I wanted to learn the rest of the business too, but Dad didn’t see it that way. He said that Gin would make the better assassin, that she had the patience for it, and I didn’t.

That had hurt worse than anything else that he’d ever said to me.

The milkshake soured in my stomach, and I suddenly felt like I’d been drinking poison instead of melted chocolate. Maybe I had been. I’d seen what Gin had done to Douglas with that knife. She’d stabbed Douglas over and over like he was a pinata that she was whacking all the candy out of. I wouldn’t put anything past her, not even offing me so she could have my dad all to herself.

I turned back around to the counter that ran down the back wall of the restaurant, sat my empty glass down, and pushed it away with one finger.

“You must have liked it,” Gin said, still looking at me. “You drank all of it.”

Instead of responding to her, I got to my feet, grabbed my leather jacket off the stool next to me, and put it on. It was the second jacket that I’d bought in as many weeks. Gin had given my first one away to some homeless kid, just plucked it off the coat rack in the restaurant like it was hers instead of mine. Something else that she’d done to piss me off. That poisonous feeling curled up in my stomach, burning like acid.

“Whatever,” I said. “I’m out of here.”

“Where?” Sophia rasped in her harsh, broken voice.

I shrugged. “I’ve been invited to a party. I plan on going and having a good time.”

Gin frowned. “The one that Fletcher told you last week that you couldn’t go to?”

I didn’t say anything.

“Fletcher’s not going to like that,” Gin said in that soft voice again, the one that made me grind my teeth together. “Especially since it’s over in Southtown. That’s why he told you that you couldn’t go in the first place. Because it’s dangerous over there.”

Next to Gin, Sophia grunted her agreement.

“I don’t care what Dad does or doesn’t like,” I growled. “Because he certainly doesn’t give a damn about what I do or don’t like. For example, I didn’t like it when he brought you in here. I still don’t. But yet, here you are anyway.”

Gin didn’t flinch at my words, but for a moment, the faintest flicker of hurt filled her eyes. For some reason, it made me feel like shit.

“Finn,” Sophia growled, clearly wanting me to apologize.

For a moment, I opened my mouth, intending to do just that—to force out a gruff Sorry. I knew that Gin had been through something horrible, something that had forced her to live on the streets. Hell, I’d seen the spider rune scars that had been branded into her palms—a small circle surrounded by eight thin rays, one on either hand. But I just didn’t understand how or why her problems had become Dad’s problems—and now, mine too.