His mocking words cut me to the core, but I kept my face cold.

“You were so easy to play.” He sneered. “So ripe for the taking. So very desperate for attention. It wasn’t even a challenge. All it took was a few soft words, a few sweet looks, a few teary confessions, and you were eating right out of my hand. Some assassin you are, Gin. Tell me, do you get this emotionally involved with the families of all your victims? Or was I a special case?”

I didn’t answer him, but I couldn’t help but grind my teeth.

“Oh, ho!” Sebastian crowed. “Just me. Well, I suppose I should be flattered. But really, I think that it’s just sad. That you’re sad—sad and pathetic. Little girl lost, so desperate for someone to love her that she believes any lie she’s told.”

My hand tightened around my knife. “I’m sad and pathetic? Please. I’m not the one who hired an assassin to kill my own father. I’m not the one who didn’t have the balls to do it myself. I’d say that makes you sad and pathetic, Sebastian. No, scratch that. It just makes you weak.”

His eyes glittered, and a muscle twitched in his jaw. I’d struck a nerve, so I decided to press my advantage. Besides, Sebastian had hurt me with his words, and I wanted to do the same to him.

“Totally, utterly weak.” I sneered. “I’m not the one cowering behind a teenage girl instead of facing my enemy head-on.”

Sebastian jerked his hand off Charlotte’s shoulder, as if he’d never even thought about how that made him look, using her as a shield.

I stared at Porter. “You really should find yourself another boss. Someone who has a set. Someone who’s not afraid to do his own dirty work.”

Porter shifted on his feet, and the guilty look on his face told me that he’d thought the same thing more than once. Too bad he hadn’t left before now—because he was going to die right alongside his boss.

Sebastian whipped around. He noticed the giant’s chagrined look too, and his face tightened with rage.

“See?” I taunted. “Even your own man thinks you’re weak. He has no respect for you, and neither do I. Neither will anyone else. You’ll never be half the man that your father was, and we all know it. Soon so will everybody else.”

Red rage mottled Sebastian’s face, his hands clenched into fists, and he took a menacing step forward, as though he wanted to show me how wrong I was by throttling me himself.

That was exactly what I wanted. For him to forget the fact that I had a knife in my hand and rush at me so I could stab him to death right here, right now.

But Sebastian controlled his rage. He stopped, his lips curling with disgust.

“You didn’t think I was half a man when you were screaming out my name in bed last night.” His voice took on a smug, superior tone.

“You weren’t the only one who’s been faking things,” I shot right back. “No wonder you have to drug women to get them into bed, considering what a lousy lay you are. Watching paint dry would have been more titillating—and fulfilling. It would have lasted longer too.”

More and more rage flooded Sebastian’s face, while his left eye twitched with fury. His lips drew back from his perfect white teeth, making him seem exactly like the sick, rabid animal he was.

“Porter,” Sebastian said through his clenched teeth. “I’ve changed my mind. Put her out of my misery. Shoot that bitch where she stands.”

The giant didn’t hesitate. He raised his gun and pulled the trigger.

Crack! Crack! Crack!

The three bullets thunked into my chest, and I collapsed in a heap on the floor. The giant’s aim was true, and the bullets would have gone straight into my heart if I hadn’t been wearing my silverstone vest.

Charlotte screamed and screamed. I opened my eyes a crack just in time to see Sebastian shove her away. She slammed up against one of the side bookcases, bounced off, and fell to her knees. I hated that he had hurt her again, but she was out of the line of fire now, and I wouldn’t have to worry about her getting in the way of what I was going to do next.

“Stop your sniveling,” Sebastian ordered her, then turned back to Porter. “Empty the rest of your clip into her, and make sure that she’s dead this time. I don’t want any more mistakes.”

My fingers tightened around my knife, but I lay there on the rug and waited for Porter to lean down and take hold of my shoulder. But to my surprise and consternation, the giant stopped a few feet away from me, and I realized that he wasn’t going to roll me over onto my back so he could pump some more lead into my chest. He was going to do the smart thing and put a couple of bullets into my head from a distance.

Still, I waited—waited until I heard Porter suck in a breath, and the shadow of his arm on the floor started to move as he raised his gun . . .

Then I lashed out, whipped my knife up and around, and drove the blade into the giant’s foot. Porter screamed and tried to readjust his aim, but I ripped my knife out and swiped it at him again, making him jump back out of the way of the sharp blade.

Crack! Crack! Crack!

The bullets thunked into the Persian rugs beside me, but I didn’t give him a chance to fire again. I scrambled to my feet and threw myself forward. Porter managed to block my arm, keeping me from driving my knife into his chest, so I lashed out with my heavy boot and stomped it down on his instep, the one I’d skewered with my knife.

The giant howled with pain and hopped away. His foot caught on a table leg, and his head cracked into one of the bookcases, rattling the stone models on the shelves. He dropped his gun and pitched forward, his hands going to the top of the table that he’d tripped over to try to steady himself. That gave me all the time I needed to dart forward and bury my knife in the side of his neck before ripping it out just as brutally. Porter screamed again and arched back, but the wound I’d given him was a fatal one, and a few seconds later, he slumped over the table, then toppled over onto the floor, dead.

I tightened my grip on my knife and headed for Sebastian, who was still standing in front of his father’s desk.

Instead of backing away, he gave an airy, almost nonchalant wave of his hand, as though he weren’t concerned at all by the fact that Porter was dead. I wondered what he thought he was doing, as if I was going to stop at a simple wave of his hand when I was five seconds away from finally killing him—

The bricks in the fireplace exploded in my face.

One second, I was heading toward Sebastian with every intention of driving my knife through his heart. The next, I was being slammed by bricks from all sides.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump-thump-thump.

The bricks rattled me this way and that, like I was the silver piece in a pinball machine. And it didn’t stop after the bricks flew at me from the fireplace, thudded off my body, and fell to the colorful carpets.

No, Sebastian waved his hand, and more bricks erupted out of the fireplace, hitting me and making me scream. I’d always wondered what it would be liked to be Stoned to death, especially in an elemental duel, and now I was finding out. Not to mention the fact that the sharp, broken edges of the bricks sliced through my clothes and into my skin, making blood pour out of a dozen shallow cuts.

Through it all, I could hear Sebastian laughing—laughing at how he was slowly going to kill me. My hand tightened on my knife. Fuck that.

The mass of swirling bricks stopped, although Sebastian waved his hand again, gearing up for another attack. Charlotte pressed herself up against one of the bookcases along the wall, sobs escaping from her lips. She knew that if she moved, Sebastian could easily turn his wrath on her.

I waited until Sebastian’s attention flickered from me to the bricks that he was controlling, and then I threw my knife at him.

Being bludgeoned by bricks had wreaked havoc with my balance and equilibrium, so the blade didn’t sink into his throat like I wanted it to, but the knife slammed into his shoulder, making him stagger back and hiss with pain. More important, it made him lose his grip on his magic for a few precious seconds. Sebastian stared down in disbelief at the knife sticking out of his shoulder. He hesitated, then lifted his hand and yanked the blade free. He stared at his own blood on the blade, his eyes wide, as if he’d never seen such a sight before.

“You bitch!” he screamed, throwing the knife in my direction. “You’re going to pay for that!”

I didn’t pay any attention to his tirade. I was already ducking the blade, moving forward, grabbing Charlotte’s arm, and pulling her away from the bookcase and away from her murderous psychopath of a brother.

I took hold of Charlotte’s hand, and together, we sprinted out of the library.

32

Sebastian’s screams of rage chased after us, but I shut his loud, thunderous bellows out of my mind and concentrated on getting Charlotte as far away from him as I could. We ran down the hallway, and then I pulled her through a living room and out the other side. When I was sure that Sebastian wouldn’t catch up with us for at least a few minutes, I stopped in the middle of the hallway.

Charlotte gasped for breath, and she wasn’t the only one. All the bricks flying into my body had hurt, and I had at least one cracked rib, despite the protective silverstone shell of my vest. If not for it, though, my rib might have broken and punctured one of my lungs. Then I would have wheezed to death on the library floor.

Charlotte stood beside me, her trembling body pressed against mine, small sobs escaping her throat, tears streaking down her face like a waterfall of terror. I grabbed her head in my hands and forced her to look at me, trying to snap her out of her fear and panic and get her to focus. After a moment, her empty eyes cleared a bit, and she looked back at me.

“Is there someone here you can trust? A maid, a gardener, somebody, anybody?”

She nodded. “There’s . . . a driver,” she said in between sobs. “My driver . . . Xavier. I . . . like him.”

“Then you go downstairs, find Xavier, tell him to warn the rest of the staff, and get him to take you away from here,” I said, letting go of her. “Before Sebastian kills us all. He won’t stop now until I’m dead, and I don’t want you or anyone else getting hurt.”

Charlotte grabbed my hand in a tight, desperate grip, as though she didn’t want to leave my side. I gently untangled her fingers from mine and gave her a small push.

“Go,” I said. “Go on. Right now. And don’t look back no matter what—”

Stone spewed from the wall beside me.

I gave Charlotte another push, this one more forceful. “Go! Run! Now!”

She gave me one final terrified look, her eyes going wide at whatever she saw behind me. Then she turned and ran down the hallway as fast as she could.

Sebastian’s laughter floated toward me. “Running won’t save her—or you, Gin.”

I slowly turned around. Sebastian stood in the middle of the hallway, his hands held down and out by his sides, the amber flecks in his dark eyes glinting as he reached for more of his magic. The granite that comprised the walls slowly began to ripple, as though the entire hallway were made out of water instead of stone. The power Sebastian had—his control over it—took my breath away. He was quite possibly the strongest elemental I’d ever encountered, on par with the Fire elemental who’d murdered my family.

And now he was going to kill me.

I’d never been in an elemental duel before, and I had no desire to engage in one now, not when I knew how much stronger Sebastian was in his magic than I was. But I didn’t let Sebastian see my fear and uncertainty. I didn’t let him see the wheels of my mind churning and churning as I palmed a second knife and tried to figure out some way to get close enough to ram the blade into his heart.

Sebastian cocked his head to the side and let out another low laugh. “Still hoping to kill me with a knife? Pitiful, Gin. Truly pitiful.”

Apparently, my poker face wasn’t quite as good as I thought. Something to work on—if I lived through this.

I shrugged. “It’s what I do. In fact, killing people seems to be what I do best. I didn’t have any problems with your father. I don’t anticipate too many more with you.”

“My father was a fool!” Sebastian shouted. “Always playing the part of the good, upstanding citizen. He deserved exactly what he got.”

I shook my head. “No, he didn’t deserve it. Because he was trying to protect everyone from you. Dollars to doughnuts, he was going to turn you in for killing and hurting all those people. That’s why he had Coolidge investigating what happened.”

He let out a low, guttural snarl.

“Do you know how crazy you look right now, Sebastian? Better not let Mab see you like this. She might decide to kill you herself. She doesn’t like complications, remember? And you are a hot mess if ever I saw one.”

He laughed again. “Please.” He sneered. “I’ll put that Fire elemental bitch in her place soon enough. Just like I’m going to do with you—right now.”

Sebastian threw his hands out wide. With one thought, the granite ripped free from the walls and zoomed in my direction.

And all I could do was stand there and let it hit me.

There was no time to move or duck out of the way. Even if I’d managed to crouch down behind a table or some other piece of furniture, it would have only been a temporary respite, since the entire hallway from floor to walls to ceiling was made out of stone. Still, I hunkered down, protecting my head as best I could.

I could have used my own Stone magic to harden my skin, but I decided not to. I’d used my Ice power in front of him a few times, mostly to make cubes for whatever we’d been drinking at the time, but I’d never told Sebastian about my Stone magic. Maybe there was still a chance—however small—that I could surprise him with it and use it to get the upper hand. Besides, I didn’t think that he’d kill me right away. No, he wanted to play with me first.