Bitter Bite (Elemental Assassin #14)(115)

chocolate?”

I reached down and pulled a large metal thermos out of the black duffel bag

sitting between our seats on the van floor. “Of course I have homemade hot

chocolate. You can’t have a stakeout on a cold winter’s night without it.”

I grabbed a couple of plastic cups out of the duffel bag and handed them to

Phillip, who held them steady while I poured. The rich, heady aroma of the hot

chocolate filled the van, cutting through the icy chill that had crept inside

the vehicle. I breathed in the fumes as I capped the thermos and put it away.

Phillip passed me my cup, and I drew in a couple more steamy breaths before

taking a sip. The dark chocolate coated my tongue with its bittersweet flavor,

softened by the vanilla extract and raspberry puree I had added to the

mixture.

Phillip cradled his hot chocolate like a bum huddled over a trash can fire. He

took a long slurp and sighed again, this time with happiness. “Now, that’s

more like it.”

We both settled back in our seats, watching the mansion and sipping our hot

chocolate.

The folks who’d been hosting the dinner party must have decided to go to bed,

since the recorded carols abruptly cut off, and the holiday lights winked out

one door, window, and plastic snowman at a time, further blackening the

landscape. The drizzle picked up as well, turning into more of a steady rain,

each drop tinking against the windshield. It truly was a night fit for neither

man nor beast, but this had been my favorite kind of environment as an

assassin. The cold, the rain, the darkness always made it that much easier to

get close to your target and then get away after you’d put him down. If I

wanted someone dead, I would have waited for a night just like this one to

strike.

And I was willing to bet that someone might have the same idea about the man

in the mansion.

Phillip tipped his cup at the shadow still pacing back and forth behind the

patio doors. “You really think that he knows something about the Circle?”

I shrugged. “He’s the best lead I have right now—and the only person still

alive who might know anything about them.”

Two weeks ago, I’d been kidnapped and held hostage by Hugh Tucker, a vampire

who claimed he was part of “the Circle,” a secret group that supposedly

pulled the strings on the underworld and everything else in Ashland. That had

certainly come as news to me, since I was supposedly the head of the

underworld these days. But Tucker had claimed that the Circle was a group of

criminals so high and mighty that no one could touch them, especially not a

lowly assassin like me. The vamp had also said that the Circle monitored

everything from behind the scenes—and that they could kill me and my friends

anytime they wanted to.

But the most shocking thing he’d told me was that my mother, Eira Snow, had

supposedly been one of them.

My mother was murdered when I was thirteen, and it was a deep loss that I

still felt to this day. But I’d viewed my mother like any other kid. She was

my mom—nothing more, nothing less. I’d never really thought about who she

was, much less about what kind of person. The good things she did, the bad

things, how she felt about all of them. I didn’t know any of that. But Tucker

had turned my world upside down with his accusations, and I wanted to know how

true they were: I had to know if my mother had been the good person I’d

always assumed she was, or just as rotten, dirty, and depraved as the rest of

this shadowy Circle.

“You know, we could just go knock on his door and ask him about all of this,

” Phillip said.

I snorted. “He wouldn’t tell me anything. Nothing I could trust anyway. He

hates me too much for that.”

Phillip shifted in his seat again. “Well, at least we could get this over

with and go home for the night. That would certainly keep my balls from

turning into ice cubes—”

A pair of headlights popped up in the rearview mirror. I gestured at Phillip,

and we both slouched back down in our seats.

A black SUV cruised down the street, passing us. The vehicle went down to the

end of the block and made a right, disappearing from sight. Phillip started to

sit back up, but I held out my hand, stopping him.

“Wait,” I said. “Let’s see if they come back.”

He rolled his eyes but stayed still. “Why would they come back? It’s

probably just somebody who lives in the neighborhood—”

Headlights popped up in the rearview mirror again and that same SUV cruised by

our position. This time the vehicle turned left at the end of the block.

“Maybe they’re lost,” he said. “All these cookie-cutter Northtown streets

and mansions look alike, especially in the dark.”

I shook my head. “They’re not lost. They’re seeing how quiet and deserted

the area is for whatever they have in mind. They’ll be back. You’ll see.”