Finn grinned, his white teeth flashing in the darkness. “You know you love me and my bad puns.”

“Oh, yeah. Like a toothache that I can’t get rid of.”

“That’s me, baby. Finnegan Lane, rotten as they come.”

He saluted me with his gun a second time, proud that he’d gotten the last word in. I rolled my eyes again.

But I was smiling as I turned away from him, left the shadows behind, and hurried toward the mansion.

• • •

Being early January, the holidays were officially over, but someone was a little slow about putting away the decorations. White twinkle lights were still wrapped around the thick columns that supported the sprawling, two-story, gray stone mansion, along with strands of illuminated snowflakes that glowed a pale blue. Still more lights and snowflakes curved over the stone archways and outlined all of the windows, which also had white velvet bows hanging in them.

New year, new targets for the Spider.

I crossed the wide lawn, stepped onto a stone patio, and hunkered down behind some lounge chairs that ringed the heated pool, staying as far away from the cheery glow of the holiday lights as I could get. Then I peered around the chairs and over at the mansion.

It was after ten o’clock, and lights burned in every room on the first floor. I spotted several servants moving back and forth, tidying up and doing their final chores for the night. Through the windows closest to me, I saw two women plucking red and green glass balls off a massive Christmas tree that took up most of that room.

I watched the women and some other servants work for a little while longer, but no one moved toward the windows and looked outside. No one had seen me approach, so I raised my gaze to a particular window on the second floor. Lights burned in that room too, but I didn’t spot anyone moving around inside. Excellent.

I glanced over my shoulder, but the guard was at the very back of the lawn now, several hundred feet from me, still playing his game. I wouldn’t get a better chance than this. I slid my knife up my sleeve so as to have both hands free. Then I surged to my feet, got a running start, leaped up, and grabbed hold of a trellis that was attached to the side of the building.

The wood creaked and groaned under my weight, more accustomed to holding up pretty roses than a deadly assassin, but the slats didn’t crack, and I felt safe enough to keep climbing. It took me only about ten seconds to scale the trellis, hook my leg onto the first-story roof, and pull myself up. I lay flat on my stomach for several seconds, listening, but no surprised shouts or alarms sounded. I also glanced at the guard again, but he was a murky, indistinct shape in the night. No one had seen my quick spider climb.

Even though lying on the cold roof chilled my body from head to toe, I held my position, once again reaching out with my magic. Just like the ones at the caretaker’s cottage, the stones of the mansion whispered of dark, malicious intent, along with blood, violence, pain, and death. The mutterings were much fainter here, more sloppy slurs than clear, distinct notes, as though the stones themselves had been thoroughly soaked in all the alcohol that their owner so famously imbibed. Still, I could pick out the lingering emotional vibrations from all the evil deeds that had been committed here over the years. Exactly what I would expect to find in the home of a member of the Circle.

Sadly, though, the stones’ mutterings weren’t as disturbing as those of many of the other places I’d been, and the noise certainly wasn’t going to stop me from completing my mission. So I got to my feet and hurried over to the window that I wanted, the same one I’d looked at earlier. After a quick glance through the glass to make sure the room was still empty, I reached out and tried the window, which slid up easily.

I waited a few seconds, but no alarms blared. I shook my head. You’d think that someone who was part of a ­decades-old criminal conspiracy would have enough common sense to lock the windows of his fancy mansion or at least order his staff to do it for him. But the mansion’s owner thought that he was well protected, anonymous, and untouchable, just like the rest of the Circle.

Well, they weren’t. Not anymore. Not from me.

I pushed aside the dangling white velvet bow, ducked down, and shimmied in through the open window, making sure to close it behind me. Then I turned and looked over the room.

The office was the inner sanctum of Damian Rivera, the first member of the Circle on my hit list. Several generations ago, the ancestors of Maria Rivera, Damian’s mother, had made a fortune in coal before selling off their mines and branching out into other areas. Maria herself had been big into real estate, buying and selling property all over Ashland and renovating crumbling old homes that she decked out with antique furniture and family heirlooms that she got for a song at estate sales.

Damian had definitely inherited his mother’s flair for both decorating and dramatic spaces. The office was enormous, taking up this entire side of the mansion. Dark brown leather chairs and couches filled the decidedly masculine area, along with tables covered with all sorts of expensive knickknacks. Porcelain vases, crystal figurines, wooden carvings, stone statues. All perfectly in place and all perfectly highlighted by the three gold-plated chandeliers hanging from the ceiling.

But the centerpiece of the office was an elaborate bar that took up one entire wall, complete with several red padded barstools lined up in front of it. A wide assortment of liquor bottles perched prettily on the wooden shelves behind the brass-railed bar, along with rows of gleaming glassware. I eyed the bottles, recognizing them all as being well out of my price range but fitting right in with the rest of the luxe furnishings. The air reeked of expensive floral cologne and even more expensive cigar smoke, adding to the feel of a gentlemen’s club. I had to wrinkle my nose to hold back a sneeze.

But I wasn’t here to gawk at the expensive furnishings, so I moved over to the desk in the back of the room near the window that I’d just slithered through. To my disappointment, the golden wood was spotless, as though it had never been touched, much less actually used, and not so much as a pen or a paper clip littered the smooth, shiny surface. Then again, I shouldn’t have been surprised. Damian Rivera didn’t have to do something as common as work. From what I knew of him, his favorite hobbies were drinking, smoking, shopping for antiques, and flitting from one woman to the next. Not necessarily in that order.