Deadly Sting

ahead and killed him. He’s certainly caused you enough trouble.”

“I know. But there’s still a chance McAllister could be useful.”

“Because of this mystery person Mab left everything to?” he said. “McAllister said he didn’t know who it was, not even if it was a he or a she.”

“I know. And I actually think he was telling the truth about that.”

“But?”

“But if Mab actually had some family left, why weren’t they here with her in Ashland?” I asked. “Why didn’t they live with her? Or in some other mansion in Northtown?”

Finn shrugged. “Maybe they didn’t get along. Maybe this other person hated her. I certainly wouldn’t want to claim Mab Monroe as any sort of kin. Would you?”

“No,” I replied. “But I would think that Mab would want to keep an eye on her family. There are only a few reasons I can think of for her not to have kept this person close. One, they are either too young or too old to be of any use to her. Then there’s the other, more troubling reason.”

“And that would be?”

“That this person was simply too dangerous to have around—too much of a threat to Mab herself.”

Finn eyed me. “You think there’s another Mab out there running around? Someone with the same sort of Fire magic she had? Someone as strong as her?”

I shrugged. “Maybe. Or at least strong enough to make Mab think twice about having them hanging around in Ashland, scheming to take her out, to have everything all to himself or herself.”

He let out a low whistle. “Another Mab. Imagine that.”

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t tell him that I’d imagined that in my dreams—in my nightmares—a thousand times. That the thought—the sheer possibility—kept me awake for hours on end, worrying in the darkness. That I’d even started scouring through Fletcher’s files, going through every single one, every single photo and piece of paper, to see if there was any mention of Mab’s mysterious relative and any clue to what kind of magic, if any, he or she might have.

Maybe there was another reason, a perfectly innocent reason, that Mab had kept this relative a secret from everyone, even McAllister. Maybe they just didn’t get along, like Finn said.

Or maybe there was a whole new generation of trouble headed my way.

“We could speculate forever about Mab’s relative,” I said. “But if this person is anything like Mab, he or she will be plenty pissed to find out that McAllister was stealing from Mab—from them both—all these years. Maybe even pissed enough to come to Ashland and take care of him.”

That was my hope anyway. I couldn’t deal with a danger I didn’t know about, and I was hoping that by using McAllister as bait—as another stalking horse—I could lure Mab’s heir to the city. Maybe this person would just take Mab’s money and run—or maybe he or she would be just as dangerous as the Fire elemental had been. Maybe the heir would thank me for killing her—or maybe he or she would come after me, wanting to avenge her death. Either way, I was going to get out in front of this person, instead of sitting around and waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“I’m on it,” Finn said. “I’ve already spread money around to all the right people. We’ll know everyone McAllister talks to, everyone he calls, even everyone he bends over for in the shower.”

“I don’t think we need to be quite that detailed,” I drawled.

He smirked. “Anything worth doing is worth doing right. Don’t you remember Dad telling us that?”

I snorted. “Sure, I remember that particular pearl of wisdom. But I don’t think Fletcher intended that to mean getting the lowdown on McAllister’s prison lovers.”

Finn laughed.

We rode the rest of the way to the police station in silence, although I was still thinking about McAllister, Mab, and her long-lost heir. But there was nothing I could do about any of that tonight, so I pushed my worries aside and decided to make the best of the situation. After all, you usually only got to see your nemesis carted off to jail once.

Finn parked in front of the police station in a primo spot that gave us a clear view of the entrance. He’d tipped off his contacts at the local newspaper, TV stations, and radio stations, so there was already a passel of reporters waiting on the steps. The cameras started clicking and flashing before Bria even got the sedan parked. The media feeding frenzy reached a fever pitch as Xavier hauled McAllister out of the back of the sedan and led him toward the steps. Finn rolled down the car windows so we could hear the reporters’ barrage of questions.

“Jonah! Jonah! Are the charges true?”

“Did you arrange the attempted robbery at the Briartop museum?”

“Why was Mab Monroe’s will among the contents taken from the vault?”

McAllister winced and ducked his head, cringing against the sudden onslaught of light, noise, sound, and fury, but he clenched his jaw and kept his mouth shut. He knew that the court of public opinion could be the most damning. No doubt, he was already thinking about how he could spin things to his advantage. Let him try. It wouldn’t save him. Not this time.

Finn pulled out his phone. “The newspaper’s already posted it as breaking news on its website. It’ll go viral in a few minutes. Come morning, this place will be swarming with press from all over.”

“Good,” I said. “So unless Mab’s heir is hiding under a rock, he or she should see the story sometime in the next few days.”

“That’s the plan,” he said. “Your plan. I would have just gone ahead and killed him.”

“I know, I know. But I can always kill him later. This way, at least we get to humiliate him first.”

Finn eyed me. “Sometimes I think you’re even more devious, twisted, and vicious than I am.”

I grinned. “You only wish you could be as ruthless as me.”

“Absolutely.”

We sat there and watched the flashes and lights of the cameras explode in McAllister’s face over and over again, brighter than fireworks on the Fourth of July. Xavier got halfway up the steps, then dramatically paused and turned so that he and the lawyer were facing out toward the crowd of reporters. Bria stepped to one side, making sure that all of the reporters, photographers, and camera people got a good, long look at the lawyer. For his part, McAllister kept squinting into the glare. He seemed more shocked and frozen than a possum caught by a pair of headlights on a dark country road. I’d waited a long, long time to see that cringing, beaten, vulnerable look on his face, and I savored every single second of it.

After another minute, Bria grabbed McAllister’s arm and led him up the rest of the steps and into the police station. Xavier stayed on the steps, holding his hands out wide and keeping the media vultures from storming inside.

“Now what?” Finn asked.

“Now we wait for Bria to take McAllister to booking,” I said. “Maybe if we ask nicely, Bria will send us a copy of McAllister’s mug shot. I think that would look marvelous matted, framed, and mounted on one of the walls in Fletcher’s office or maybe even at the Pork Pit. Don’t you?”

33

Life more or less went back to normal, although Jonah McAllister’s arrest and alleged involvement in the Briartop heist dominated the news. The media didn’t exactly convict the lawyer, but they raised enough questions to get all the crime bosses good and interested in exactly what had gone down that night and who had hired Clementine and her giants.

McAllister put some of Mab’s embezzled money to use to pay his three-million-dollar bail. I saw him on the news a few times, giving press conferences where he proclaimed his innocence before quickly ducking back into his house. The lawyer looked pale, thin, and shaken, and even his thick coif of silver hair had lost its normal shiny luster. Even when the cameras were fixed on him, his eyes always darted back and forth, as if he expected a hail of gunfire to ring out at any second and put him down for the count.