Widow's Web (Elemental Assassin) Read Online Free PDF Page B

he’d been guessing how long he should maintain the kiss and the allotted time was up. I managed to smile at him, pretending I didn’t notice the sudden distance between us, distance that Salina had somehow created just by walking into the restaurant.
    I got out of the car and shut the door behind me. Owen put the vehicle in gear and turned it around. He paused to wave good night to me, and I lifted my hand in return. A moment later, the car disappeared down the driveway.
    I stood there alone in the dark and wondered who the hell Salina Dubois really was, why she seemed to have such an effect on my lover, and what I was going to do about her. Because this was a matter of the heart—and one problem that all my knives and all my prowess as the Spider wouldn’t help me solve.

4
    Despite my unease and questions about Salina, the next day was business as usual at the Pork Pit, the barbecue restaurant I owned—right down to me checking for booby traps.
    It was just before eleven, and I’d spent the last twenty minutes looking at everything in the restaurant storefront, from the well-worn but clean blue and pink vinyl booths to the long counter that ran down the back wall to the framed, blood-spattered copy of Where the Red Fern Grows that hung on the wall beside the cash register. I peered underneath each one of the tables and chairs, examined the front door for any signs of tampering, and checked every single one of the windows for the slightest hint of a crack, chip, or break. I even got down on my hands and knees and followed the paths of the faded, peeling, blue and pink pig tracks on the floor all the way back to the men’s and women’s restrooms. Then I examined both of those areas top to bottom as well, just tomake sure nothing was hidden in a trash can or taped to the back of a toilet.
    “Anything?” a harsh voice rasped.
    I walked back out into the storefront and looked at the source of the voice: Sophia Deveraux, the dwarf who was the head cook at the Pit and chief Spider-related body dumper. Sophia had sat in one of the booths, calm and cool as could be, while I checked for traps, but she was causing quite a stir on the street outside, as people saw her through the windows and stopped to stare at her.
    That’s because Sophia was Goth. Today, the dwarf wore her usual black boots and jeans, topped off by a white T-shirt that had a bright red cherry bomb in the center of it—one with a lit fuse. The bomb’s scarlet color matched the spiked silverstone collar ringing her neck and the cuffs on her wrists. Her lipstick was as black as her hair, and smoky shadow arched over her dark eyes as well, making her face seem as pale as the moon in comparison.
    I eyed the cherry bomb T-shirt, wondering if Sophia had worn it as some sort of joke, given the volatile nature of the Ashland underworld these days. It was hard to tell with her sometimes. The dwarf didn’t talk much due to her voice, which had been ruined years ago when she’d been forced to breathe in elemental Fire.
    “Anything?” Sophia asked again, sounding like there was a cheese grater scraping against her vocal cords.
    “Nope,” I replied. “Nobody left us any nasty surprises. So you can go into the alley out back and tell the waitstaff to come on in.”
    Sophia nodded, got up, and walked the length of therestaurant before pushing through the swinging double doors that led into the back.
    I looked over the storefront a final time, double-checking to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. Checking out the Pit was something I did every morning now, given all the folks who would love to see me dead. In addition to using them as their personal or business symbols, elementals could also imbue runes with their magic and get those symbols to flare to life and perform specific functions—like firebombing my restaurant and hopefully killing me in the process. It would be far too easy for a Fire elemental to casually stroll by the restaurant late one night,