Unwanted (Elemental Assassin) by Jennifer Estep Read Free Book Online Page A

dry blueberry pound cake. I didn’t feel like eating, and it all tasted like ash, just like Gin’s hearty barbecue lunch earlier, but I needed to stay alert and keep my strength up for what was coming tonight.
    After I polished off my coffee, I was too restless to sit in the shop, so I got into my car and drove back to Blue Ridge Cemetery. The workers had finished putting Peter’s casket into the ground, and all that remained were the red and white roses strewn across the cold earth. Soon they too would wither and die.
    The thought depressed me, but I stayed by Peter’s grave for several minutes, silently paying my respects again and thinking about what I was going to do tonight. My plan was simple, really: make sure that Bart the Butcher got the message to leave Isabelle alone for good.
    By any means necessary.
    Once I’d finished at Peter’s grave, I went over to another one—my dad’s.
    Fletcher Lane flowed across the tombstone, along with the dates of his birth and death. It was a plain, simple marker, far smaller than some of the massive angels, spires, and ornate slabs of stone that rose up from many other graves. The only thing that was remarkable about it was that Gin’s tombstone was right next to it, featuring her spider rune, along with the date of her supposed death earlier this year. The thought of how Gin had suckered Madeline Monroe into thinking she was dead brought a ghost of a smile to my face, but it quickly faded, and I focused on Dad’s tombstone again.
    A small jar of barbecue sauce perched on top of the marker, telling me that Gin had been here recently, whispering her secrets to Dad and any other ghost who would listen. I reached out, swiped the glass container off the stone, and slid it into my coat pocket. She always brought a jar of sauce and left it for the old man, and I always took it, just to make her think that Dad was getting her presents in the great beyond. It was a silly tradition on my part, but I thought the illusion made Gin feel just a little bit better, like Dad wasn’t completely lost to her. That made me smile too, but the expression quickly slipped from my face again.
    My gaze went past Dad’s tombstone and up the hill to where Deirdre was buried. For years, her casket had been empty, although Dad had let everyone, including me, think that she was dead and resting in peace up there. He’d even brought me to the cemetery a few times when I was a kid to put flowers on her grave, never once letting on that she wasn’t actually in there.
    Well, she was definitely buried there now, thanks to me.
    I’d put three bullets in my mother to save Gin, including a kill shot right through her ice-cold heart. After the coroner had released Deirdre’s body, Gin had asked if I’d wanted to have a service for her, but I’d said no. At that point, I’d just wanted my mother to be dead and buried for real—forever. I just wanted to be done with Deirdre fucking Shaw and all the lies she’d told, once and for all.
    Easier said than done.
    I pushed away my turbulent thoughts, crouched down, and focused on Dad’s tombstone again.
    “Well,” I said, “I’m sure you know everything that’s happened. How much I fucked up. Everyone else certainly does.”
    Of course, Dad didn’t answer me. But for the first time in days, no one was hovering around, no Gin pushing food at me or Bria giving me sympathetic looks. No one was trying to make sure that I was okay, and I felt I could breathe just a little bit easier than before. Or maybe that was just because no one was around to glare at me with accusing, tear-filled eyes, letting me know that I was the cause of all their pain, misery, and heartache.
    “I know you’re disappointed in me,” I said, plucking a blade of brown grass out of the ground and twirling it around in my hand. “That I didn’t take Gin’s warning— your warning—about Deirdre to heart. That I didn’t listen to Gin when she told me about that letter you’d left