Except this girl.

For the first time, I really looked at her. Girl probably wasn't the right term for her. With her ample breasts, wide hips, and curved booty, she was a full-grown woman. Still young, though. Eighteen, maybe nineteen. She probably thought she was twenty pounds too heavy, but the extra weight rounded her face and filled out her chest.

Square black glasses gave her a slightly brainy air. Her sandy blond hair was cropped short, and the rain outside had turned it into a mound of frizz. Her dark brown eyes and pecan-colored skin whispered of some Hispanic or maybe even Native American heritage. The Cherokee still inhabited the mountains around Ashland, and more Hispanic folks came to the city every summer to pick strawberries, tomatoes, and other crops. Once the picking season was over, lots of the migrants stayed and put down roots.

I continued my examination. She wore jeans faded from wear, not design, and a heavy black turtleneck sweater that made her eyes seem darker than they were.

Scuffed sneakers, a heavy jacket, some silver hoops in her ears. Nothing on her cost more than fifty bucks. Which didn't inspire confidence about her even being able to afford an assassin like the Tin Man.

The words Tin Man had also gotten the others' attention.

Finn peered at the girl over the top of the financial section. Sophia looked up from the celery she'd been chopping for her macaroni salad.

"Tin Man?" I asked. "That's a funny name."

The girl, Violet, forced out a smile that wilted under my cold gray gaze. "Yeah, that's what I thought too."

"There's nobody here by that name. No old man, either."

Not anymore.

Out of sight below the counter, my thumb traced over the hilt of the silverstone knife that I'd palmed. Violet Fox might look about as dangerous as a wet kitten, but that didn't mean she wasn't working for someone else. Maybe someone who wanted to hire the mysterious Tin Man.

Someone looking for revenge. Or maybe even the cops.

Didn't much matter who. If the girl breathed wrong, she was going to die where she stood.

Violet chewed her lower lip. For a moment, I thought she might ask me about Fletcher again. But after a moment, her shoulders drooped in defeat.

"Doesn't matter," she said in a tired voice. "He couldn't have helped me anyway. Sorry to bother you."

She turned to go. I glanced at Finn, who shrugged. He didn't know what to make of it either. Sophia grunted and turned back to her celery.

"He couldn't have helped you with what?" I called out.

Curiosity. Something the old man had instilled in me over the years. Fletcher Lane had always wanted to know everything about everyone, and he'd taught me to be the same way. Now it was the one emotion that always seemed to get the best of me, no matter how hard I tried to squash it.

The girl, Violet, turned to look at me. "Oh, um, well, it's sort of personal - "

That's all she got out before someone started shooting at us.

Chapter Five

A bullet smacked into one of the storefront windows.

The sharp, sudden burst of sound caught the girl's attention.

Her head snapped toward the front of the restaurant.

"What was that - "

That was all the Violet got out before I darted around the counter and threw myself on top of her, forcing her to the floor.

"Oof!"

We hit the ground hard. I knocked the wind out of the girl, but I didn't care. Until I figured out what she wanted with the Tin Man, Violet Fox needed to keep breathing.

I didn't have to worry about Finn. Like me, he knew exactly what that particular sound was and had heard it too many times before to ignore it now. Somehow, he'd already wormed under one of the tables, with several chairs further shielding him. Finnegan Lane had an excellent sense of self-preservation.

Sophia stood by the back counter and kept chopping celery. She didn't even look up at the crack of the gunshot.

Bullets didn't worry her. Dwarves were even tougher than giants, and Sophia could take a couple bullets in the back. They'd catch her in hard muscles long before they hit anything vital. Elemental magic was just about the only thing that could quickly penetrate a dwarf 's thick skin. And even the majority of that would only make her angry, instead of doing any real damage.

Smack!

Smack! Smack!

Three more bullets slammed into the front of the restaurant.

I looked up, trying to judge where the shots were coming from, but the angle from the floor was all wrong.

I could see the storefront windows, but not who or what lay beyond them.

My eyes flicked to the projectiles. A large caliber, probably a fifty, from the looks of them. And whoever was shooting knew what he was doing. Despite their size, the bullets formed a small, circular cluster about the size of my fist. Kill shots, all of them.

The four metal missiles had cracked and caught in the storefront glass, which kept them from punching through into the Pork Pit itself. Still, the sharp, sudden impacts had ruined the windows. Macabre patterns ran out from the silver bullets, as though a swarm of spiders were stringing their delicate webs through the thick glass.

I shook one of my sleeves, and a knife slipped into my other hand, the hilt resting on the scar on my palm. I hoped the bastard got tired of shooting through the windows and decided to come inside and finish the job. He'd be in for a nasty surprise. One he wouldn't recover from.

With every breath, I expected more bullets to slam into the windows. Or for the door to be yanked open and someone to storm inside. Jake McAllister, most likely, trying to make good on his threat to come back and kill me.

Instead - silence.

I counted off the seconds in my head. Ten...twenty... thirty... forty-five...

The girl shifted, trying to get out from underneath me. Or at least get her face up off the floor. I rolled off her so she could catch her breath, but I kept one hand on her back, holding her in place.

"Be still," I snapped. "He could be waiting for us to get to our feet before he fires another shot."

Violet nodded and lay on the floor, sucking in deep breaths through her open mouth.

After ninety seconds had passed without another gunshot, I rose to my knees and looked outside. The cracked glass distorted my vision, but I didn't see anyone standing directly outside the restaurant, gun in hand. No parked cars idling at the curb. No one running down the sidewalk.

I stood up and examined the bullets. Fifty caliber all the way around, probably from a rifle. Not what I'd expected from somebody like Jake McAllister. He struck me as an Uzi kind of guy. Something showy, something flashy, something to prove what a badass he was.

I also noticed the bullets hadn't hit the glass dead-on.

They'd struck at a downward angle, which meant they'd been fired from somewhere higher up. Hmm. I moved off to one side to a section of glass that hadn't been cracked by the bullets and peered outside.

There. Across the street, curtains flapped against an open window on the second floor of an apartment building.

Not an unusual sight - in the summer. But it was November. Fifty degrees out, with a steady drizzle of cold rain. Nobody in his right mind would have his window open on a day like this unless he had a good reason. Like trying to kill me.

Made sense. I hadn't heard a car peel away from the curb after the shots had been fired, and I didn't see any new tread marks on the street outside, which meant it hadn't been a drive-by. Jake McAllister had been stationary when he'd put four bullets into the front of my restaurant.

My eyes focused on the flapping curtain. Time to see if the cuckoo had left his nest or not.

"Stay here," I told Finn.

"Where are you going?" Finn asked from underneath the table.

I gripped my knives a little tighter. "To find the bastard who just ruined my storefront windows."

Normally, I wouldn't have gone out the front door of the Pork Pit. Not after somebody had just shot up my windows.

That was just asking for trouble, for the shooter to put a bullet in my chest when I stepped outside to investigate.

But I was angry, and I had my elemental magic.

So I reached for my Stone power, pulling it up into my veins, letting the cool magic spread out over my skin. It took less than a second for the magic to harden my fingers, torso, toes, and everything in between, to turn my body into a rock-hard shell. As long as I held onto my magic, kept concentrating on it, even my hair would stop a bullet.

Then I yanked open the door and stepped outside.

I stood by the front door a few seconds, my eyes scanning the block again. Nothing. No runners, no parked cars, no flash of light from a rifle scope in the window across the street.

After another thirty seconds, when no more bullets zipped through the air, the people who'd been on the street when the shooting started slowly raised their heads.

One by one, they eased out from behind the parked cars and metal mailboxes that they'd ducked behind, got to their feet, and hurried on about their business.

Since the gunman hadn't taken the easy shot I'd offered him, I marched across the street to the apartment building, an older structure with small, dingy windows and chipped façade that hadn't been upgraded or renovated since it had been built forty years ago. I pressed my hand against the stone that framed the entrance, listening to the murmur of the cold, wet brick underneath my bare fingers. A mishmash of emotions greeted me. Childish shrieks of glee. Older, adult grumbles. Sharp, worried murmurs. A babble of English and Spanish. It all added up to the noises of a typical apartment building. Nothing unusual so far.

Older buildings often lacked good security features, and this one was no different. There wasn't even a lock on the glass door to keep out the homeless stragglers. The door led to a small hallway with stairs branching off either side, and an elevator lying at the end. I headed up the west stairs, staying to the shadows. The building smelled like bleach mixed with garlic and urine.

I reached the second-floor landing and another empty hallway. The walk across the street and up the stairs had cooled my anger. My skin might be as hard as stone, but all it took was one moment, one waver, one second I let my magic slip to get dead. Fletcher Lane had drilled that into me. Jake McAllister might be a punk, but that didn't mean he couldn't get lucky and kill me. I wasn't going to give him that chance, so I paused to listen and evaluate.

Muted quiet. Most of the building's tenants were out working at their day jobs, trying to come up with enough cash for next month's rent. My fingers tightened around the knives in my hands, and I crept forward. Since he hadn't taken a shot at me when I'd crossed the street, there was a very slim chance Jake McAllister was still in the apartment. But I continued to move cautiously, quietly.

Three apartments on this floor faced the street. I tiptoed past the first two doors to the third one - the one I wanted.

I paused in front of the beige-painted door, waiting and listening. More silence. I put my hand on the stone that framed the door, but its murmur was low and muted.

Nobody lived here, judging from the lack of emotions and vibrations, which was probably why Jake McAllister had picked this apartment to fire from.

I closed my hand around the knob. The cold metal tickled the spider rune scar on my palm. The knob turned, and the door opened.

I nudged the door inward with my boot, careful to stay to one side of the door frame. It didn't even creak as it swung open. I stayed in the hall and waited, counting off the seconds in my head. Ten... twenty... thirty... Noises from the other apartments farther down the hall leaked out to me. A television blaring out some children's cartoon. Another one tuned to a soap opera. A couple arguing about Ralph drinking too much and getting fired from his latest job.

I stayed outside three minutes. Empty. The apartment was empty. If Jake McAllister had been inside to see or hear the door open, he would have come out to investigate by now. Most people weren't good at waiting. They moved too soon, too quickly, and then they got dead.

A minute was enough to unnerve most people. Three, enough to drive all but the most consummate professional assassin crazy with adrenaline. Even I didn't like waiting three minutes for something to happen. But there was a reason Fletcher had dubbed me the Spider - because I could be infinitely patient. Because I had that internal restraint. Because I could wait those long, long three minutes, if it meant getting to my target - or not becoming one myself.

I slipped inside the apartment and closed the door behind me.

It was a small space, divided up into even smaller rooms that reminded me of a rat's maze. Knives in hands, I slipped from one room to the next, checking them all with extreme caution and care.

Empty. The place was totally empty.

No furniture, no appliances, not even a couple of fastfood wrappers crumpled and discarded on the linoleum floor. It didn't even smell of anything except the cold rain gusting in through the open window. Not bleach, not food, nothing. I frowned. Not what I'd expected. Jake McAllister didn't strike me as a patient person - much less the kind to pick up after himself. If the Fire elemental had been up here for any length of time, there should have been some evidence of it. Beer cans, cigarettes, an empty soda bottle, some candy bar wrappers. Instead, there was nothing. I didn't even see any roach traps hidden in the corners.

I dropped my Stone magic and let my skin revert back to its normal texture. Then, I moved to the back of the apartment and the open window where the shooter had been when he'd fired into the Pork Pit.

Again, there was nothing. No cups, no wrappers, no evidence anyone had been inside the apartment today or anytime in the recent past. I peered under the window.

He'd even policed his brass, picking up the spent shell casings from the bullets he'd fired. Again, not something I would expect from a reckless, twitchy, Fire elemental hothead like Jake McAllister.