If you don’t know Gin “the Spider” Blanco, you don’t know dangerous female heroines.Irony 101—The Spider herself snared in someone else’s web…
Another week, another few clues trickling in about the Circle, the mysterious group that supposedly runs the city’s underworld. Gathering intel on my hidden enemies is a painstaking process, but a more immediate mystery has popped up on my radar: a missing girl.
My search for the girl begins on the mean streets of Ashland, but with all the killers and crooks in this city, I’m not holding out much hope that she’s still alive.
A series of clues leads me down an increasingly dark, dangerous path, and I realize that the missing girl is really just the first thread in this web of evil. As an assassin, I’m used to facing down the worst of the worst, but nothing prepares me for this new, terrifying enemy—one who strikes from the shadows and is determined to make me the next victim.
Excerpt
Finn was probably right, but the guard was only about thirty feet from me now, so I couldn’t risk responding. Instead, I slid back a little deeper into the shadows, pressing myself up against the side of the cottage. My body touched the wall, and I reached out with my elemental magic, listening to the gray stone that made up the structure.
Dark, malicious whispers echoed back to me, punctuated by high, shrill, screaming notes of fear and agony as the stone continually muttered about all the blood and violence it had witnessed over the years—and all the people who had died inside the cottage. The mutters didn’t surprise me, given where I was, but their deep, harsh intensity made me frown. I wouldn’t have thought that the caretaker’s cottage would have been this affected by the man in the mansion, given its distance from the main structure.
Then again, anything was possible when dealing with the Circle.
I shut the stone’s mutters out of my mind and focused on the guard, who’d finally reached the cottage. Like most dwarves, he was short and stocky, with bulging biceps that threatened to pop through the sleeves of his suit jacket. Your typical muscle, except for the thin, scraggly wisps of black hair that lined his upper lip. Someone was trying to grow a mustache with little success.
The guard stopped about ten feet away from me, raised his head, and glanced at the front of the house, making sure that the door and the windows were shut. He even tilted his head to the side, listening to the whistle of the winter wind as it made the tree branches above the cottage scrape together like dry, brittle bones.
I tightened my grip on my knife, feeling the symbol stamped into the hilt pressing into the larger, matching scar embedded in my palm, both of them a circle surrounded by eight thin rays—a spider rune, the symbol for patience.
Something that the guard had little of, since five seconds later, he turned his attention back to his phone and started his slow, ambling walk again, one that took him right by my hiding spot. I could easily have reached out of the shadows, sunk my hand into the dwarf’s hair, yanked his head back, and cut his throat. He would have been dead before he’d even realized what was happening. But I couldn’t kill him—or anyone else here—tonight.
Unfortunately.
Finn was probably right, but the guard was only about thirty feet from me now, so I couldn’t risk responding. Instead, I slid back a little deeper into the shadows, pressing myself up against the side of the cottage. My body touched the wall, and I reached out with my elemental magic, listening to the gray stone that made up the structure.
Dark, malicious whispers echoed back to me, punctuated by high, shrill, screaming notes of fear and agony as the stone continually muttered about all the blood and violence it had witnessed over the years—and all the people who had died inside the cottage. The mutters didn’t surprise me, given where I was, but their deep, harsh intensity made me frown. I wouldn’t have thought that the caretaker’s cottage would have been this affected by the man in the mansion, given its distance from the main structure.
Then again, anything was possible when dealing with the Circle.
I shut the stone’s mutters out of my mind and focused on the guard, who’d finally reached the cottage. Like most dwarves, he was short and stocky, with bulging biceps that threatened to pop through the sleeves of his suit jacket. Your typical muscle, except for the thin, scraggly wisps of black hair that lined his upper lip. Someone was trying to grow a mustache with little success.
The guard stopped about ten feet away from me, raised his head, and glanced at the front of the house, making sure that the door and the windows were shut. He even tilted his head to the side, listening to the whistle of the winter wind as it made the tree branches above the cottage scrape together like dry, brittle bones.
I tightened my grip on my knife, feeling the symbol stamped into the hilt pressing into the larger, matching scar embedded in my palm, both of them a circle surrounded by eight thin rays—a spider rune, the symbol for patience.
Something that the guard had little of, since five seconds later, he turned his attention back to his phone and started his slow, ambling walk again, one that took him right by my hiding spot. I could easily have reached out of the shadows, sunk my hand into the dwarf’s hair, yanked his head back, and cut his throat. He would have been dead before he’d even realized what was happening. But I couldn’t kill him—or anyone else here—tonight.
Unfortunately.
Author Bio
Jennifer Estep is a New York Times, USA Today, and international bestselling author prowling the streets of her imagination in search of her next fantasy idea.
Jennifer writes the Elemental Assassin urban fantasy series. Snared, book #16, will be released on April 25.
Jennifer also writes the Mythos Academy young adult urban fantasy series. She is also the author of the Black Blade young adult urban fantasy series and the Bigtime paranormal romance series.
For more information on Jennifer and her books, visit www.jenniferestep.com or follow Jennifer on Facebook, Goodreads, and Twitter.
Giveaway
I'm a huge fan of the series and own a number of the books (I also own the complete Frost series). Gin is who I want to be when I grow up (I'm 69 yrs old).
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