house. Once inside, Gin would kill Jimmy, leave the house, and walk the several blocks over to the Pork Pit, where I’d be waiting for her.
I just hadn’t told my apprentice that I’d be watching from the shadows to make sure that everything went smoothly tonight. No reason to hurt the girl’s pride just because I worried about her like I was her real father. Just because I didn’t want to admit that she was growing up and coming into her own as an assassin, as the Spider. She was already better than I’d been at her age. Colder. Calmer. More focused. One day soon, she’d be better than I’d ever dreamed of being.
I just hoped that my training her would be enough to make up for how I’d failed her so miserably before. For my part in her mother and older sister’s deaths. For how I’d failed to protect Gin and the rest of her family from the fiery wrath of Mab Monroe.
Perhaps it was my dark thoughts or the intense focus of my gaze on her, but Gin sensed that not all was as it should be. She turned away from the house and scanned the rest of the block, her gray eyes peering into the shadows. Maybe the cracked pavement under my feet had given me away. As a Stone elemental, Gin could sense vibrations in whatever form the element took around her, from a brick house to a concrete sidewalk to a weathered granite tombstone. People’s feelings and emotions sank into the stone around them over time, and Gin could listen to and interpret those impressions. Perhaps she could sense my mixed feelings of worry and pride even now, rippling through the pavement toward her.
Jackson fished something out of the back of the car, and I spotted a glint of metal before he stuck the gun in his coat pocket. I frowned. The kid brother packing a pistol had not been part of my calculations tonight, but I wasn’t too worried. Jackson wasn’t the only one here with a gun tonight or the know-how to use it.
Jackson moved to take Gin’s arm and started leading her toward the row house. After a moment, Gin let him take her the direction that she wanted to go anyway. Jackson escorted her up the sagging steps and opened the door. Golden light from inside the house slanted across Gin’s face, emphasizing the hard set of her features. Whatever she might be feeling on the inside, no emotions flickered in her eyes. No doubt about what she was here to do, and certainly no fear. My heart swelled with pride. She was my girl, all right.
“I can’t wait to introduce you to my brother,” Jackson’s voice drifted across the street to where Jo-Jo and I stood. “He’s going to love you, Gin.”
“Of course he will,” she replied. “He’s going to love me to death.”
With those ominous words, my apprentice stepped inside the house.
The door had barely closed behind Gin when Jo-Jo poked me in the shoulder.
“Well? What are you waiting for?” the dwarf said. “Go around to the back of the house and keep an eye on her in case she gets into trouble.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
Jo-Jo’s pale eyes narrowed, but her lips curved up into a smile, showing the laugh lines on her face. “Don’t you tease me, Fletcher Lane. I’ve got a hundred-plus years on you. Didn’t your mama ever teach you to respect your elders?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I repeated and ducked out of the way before Jo-Jo could jab me with her finger again.
I left the dwarf behind, crossed the street, and slipped into the alley that ran beside the row house. Garbage carpeted the pavement, and the steady, cool, October breeze sent more than one soda can skittering into the wall. The air reeked of sour beer and stale cigarettes. These sorts of places always smelled the same, as the sweat and desperation so prevalent in Southtown soaked into the landscape. I wondered if Gin could sense those same feelings with her elemental Stone magic. She probably could. Sometimes, I thought it was better to be a simple human and largely ignorant of such foul things.
It took me less than two minutes to work my way around to the back side of the house and crawl up onto the top of a metal Dumpster. From there, I was able to grab hold of the fire escape and scale the rickety iron ladder up to the third story of the house, something that I was able to do with ease, despite my sixty-some years. An old man, Gin often called me, which was her own term of endearment for me. Maybe I was with my wispy, whitening hair and wrinkled face, but I was still as spry as the devil himself.
My position on the fire escape gave me a clear view through a window and into Jimmy Fontaine’s office. If there was one thing that I’d learned from all my years of being an assassin, of being the Tin Man, it was that nobody ever bothered to close their curtains above the first floor. Fontaine was no exception, which is why I was able to spot him sitting at his chrome-and-glass desk.
Jimmy Fontaine was a giant, which meant that he topped out at around seven feet, with the strong, thick body to match his large frame. He had blond hair and blue eyes just like his kid brother Jackson did, but the sheer meanness in his gaze twisted his good looks into something hard and ugly. He sported a sharp black suit, as though he were a real businessman instead of a sick, greedy bastard who made his money off the backs of teenagers coked up on drugs and forced into prostitution.
Fontaine shuffled a few papers around on his desk. A minute later, a knock sounded on the door, and Gin stepped inside, followed by Jackson. The younger giant closed the door behind the two of them—then discreetly locked it.
Gin’s gray eyes cut to the side, and I knew that she’d heard the lock click home. Her hand twitched, like she wanted to palm the silverstone knife that she had hidden up her sleeve, but she restrained herself. Good girl. Move too early, and she ran the risk of missing Jimmy Fontaine. Gin knew as well as I did that the giant would beat her to death with his fists if he thought that she was any kind of threat to him. That’s how he’d gotten to where he was in the first place—by beating down any opposition and competition that came his way.
Fontaine also had another four giants stationed throughout the lower two floors of the house, all making sure that things ran smoothly and that none of the teens tried to bolt. The iron bars on the windows helped with that too. But I wasn’t worried about Fontaine screaming for help, since the giant had had his office soundproofed long ago. He just hadn’t realized that one day it might be the death of him.
“Jimmy, this is Gin,” Jackson said, leading Gin forward and making the introductions. “Gin, this is Jimmy.”
Jimmy Fontaine got to his feet, buttoned his suit jacket, and extended a hand to my apprentice. “Gin, it’s so nice to meet you. Jimmy’s told me so much about you.”
Gin shook the giant’s hand, although she let out a little snort of disbelief as she did so. “Really? I find that kind of hard to believe, since I only met him like an hour ago.”
Jimmy’s blue eyes narrowed at her disbelieving tone, and he gave Jackson a dark look. Fontaine wasn’t stupid. Like most predators, he could sense when others were near, and I could tell that his radar was already pinging when it came to Gin. He dropped her hand and stared at her with suspicion, but my girl just gave him a winsome smile and started exploring the room the way that any curious kid might.
“Gin’s a runaway,” Jackson explained, trying to smooth things over.
“Is that true?” Jimmy asked, his blue eyes locked on Gin.
Gin shrugged and picked up what looked like a real Ming vase. “Not really. But my family’s all dead and burned to ash, so what the hell does it matter?”
Jimmy frowned at her words, but Gin put the vase down and moved over to a painting hanging on the far wall. To a casual observer, she was doing nothing more than wandering aimlessly through the room, but I knew that she was doing exactly what I’d trained her to do—scanning the area for hidden weapons, hidden guards, or anything else that might be a threat to her.
Jimmy Fontaine watched Gin for another minute, but when she didn’t do anything else suspicious or threatening, his unease faded away, and his eyes latched onto her ass. In addition to pimping out young girls and boys, Fontaine also like to sample the merchandise himself.
Fontaine stepped out from behind his desk, moved over, and sat down on a wide white couch that took up the better part of the right wall. He patted the cushion beside him. “Why don’t you come over here? I’d like to get to know you better. Jackson’s told you what we do here right? How we run a sort of halfway house for teens who don’t fit in anywhere else.”
That was the bullshit line that Jackson fed to other teens to get them into the row house in the first place. After that, Jimmy, his men, and his drugs made sure that they didn’t leave until they were all used up— or dead.
“Sure,” Gin chirped in a bright voice, but once again, her smile didn’t reach her eyes.
