Widow's Web (Elemental Assassin) by Jennifer Estep Read Free Book Online Page A

lights,” Sophia rasped beside me.
    “Yes,” I murmured. “The lights on the riverboat are certainly pretty.”
    I just wondered what darkness waited for me on board.
    I’d asked Finn to find out everything he could about Kincaid and what was going down on his riverboat tonight. My foster brother had an impressive network of spies, snitches, and folks who owed him favors in Ashland and beyond, and Finn loved digging up dirt on people more than a gardener enjoyed planting his prize roses.
    Still, despite all his sources, Finn hadn’t been able to find out much. Kincaid had appeared on the underworld scene as a teenager, doing whatever dirty job he was asked to and ruthlessly working his way up through the ranks of various criminal organizations until he’d struck out on his own. Today, he controlled the market for all the gambling operations—legal and otherwise—in Ashland.
    Kincaid was rumored to be as dangerous as they came, despite the fact that he wasn’t an elemental. Then again, you didn’t need elemental magic to kill—just an intensedesire to make someone quit breathing and the will to make it a reality. Kincaid wouldn’t have gotten where he was and stayed there all these years without having both of those in spades.
    Good thing I did, too. I’d be more than ready for whatever trap the casino boss had in store for me tonight.
    “Well,” I said to Sophia, “let’s go make some barbecue.”

    Sophia and I spent the next fifteen minutes unloading our supplies from her classic convertible and the Cadillac Escalade I’d borrowed from Finn’s fleet of cars. Together, the Goth dwarf and I carried everything we needed up the gangplank and on board the riverboat . . .
    And right into the middle of a frat party.
    Guys and girls in their late teens and early twenties filled the riverboat’s third deck, which formed an open U shape that jutted out past all the other decks and curved into the bow of the boat. Everyone had on flip-flops and sandals, along with the tightest T-shirts and the shortest shorts they could get away with. A banner hanging down from the fourth deck read Charity Rocks! Give ’Til It Hurts!
    That was the other strange thing about tonight. I’d expected Kincaid to be throwing some fancy gala, but instead here was a fund-raiser for an animal shelter being put on by some sororities and fraternities at Ashland Community College. Well, perhaps fund-raiser was too generous a term. Kegger with a cause would have been more appropriate, given the students who had brought along their own beer and were already stumbling aroundlike the boat was actually moving instead of being secured to the dock.
    Games had been set up on deck, everything from poker to roulette to craps. A twenty-dollar cover charge got you on board the riverboat, all the food you could eat, and a stack of chips. They didn’t have any monetary value tonight, but if you won enough chips playing the games, you could redeem them for prizes. Raffles of donated items were also being held, and screams of delight rippled through the crowd every time someone won something, rising above the loud, constant, ringing ching-ching-ching of the slot machines.
    The kids who weren’t drinking or gambling were amusing themselves by hooking up, as though standing by the railing meant that no one could see them sticking their tongues down each other’s throats or would notice all the wandering hands disappearing beneath skimpy outfits.
    It all looked so real, so legit, so damn convincing, that I would have almost believed this was a bona fide catering job—except for the fact Kincaid had personally come into the Pork Pit to hire me. Men like him didn’t do things like that—that’s what underlings were for. The casino boss was definitely up to something; I just didn’t know what it was yet.
    “Gin! There you are!”
    Speak of the devil. Kincaid pushed through a door that led into the riverboat’s interior and headed in my direction. From my