I finally moved away from the door, but instead of taking a shower like I should have, I went back downstairs to Fletcher's office.
I turned on the light and looked out over the familiar mess. Papers, books, folders, and pens covered the battered desk in the back of the room, and more of the same could be found on the shelves of the bookcases against the walls and on top of the filing cabinets that squatted on either side of the door.
The sight of the old man's clutter brought a ghost of a smile to my face. I just hadn't felt like cleaning it, or the rest of the house, up yet. I didn't know when I would. Sometimes Fletcher's murder and the knowledge that he was gone still hurt as much as if it had all happened just yesterday. Having his things around comforted me - or at least tricked me into believing that part of him was still here with me.
But it was late, and I was tired, so I put my sentiment aside and got busy. It took me about twenty minutes of digging through the cabinets before I found what I was looking for: the file on Benedict Dubois's murder.
Even though he hadn't killed Dubois, Fletcher, being Fletcher, had compiled all the information he could get his hands on about the murder and had organized it in meticulous detail. Besides doing recon on the people he assassinated, the old man was always digging into someone, always keeping track of who was moving up in the underworld and who was getting offed. There was probably more information on more murders in this room than in storage at police headquarters. Fletcher had claimed that his obsessive chronicling was a way to stay ahead of our enemies, but I just thought he liked knowing where all the bodies were buried in Ashland - a trait Finn had inherited from him.
Tonight, though, I just hoped the file told me more about Salina and what she might be up to. I took the folder over to the desk, flipped on a light there, sat down in Fletcher's creaky chair, and started reading.
According to Fletcher's notes, Benedict Dubois's murder had been the talk of Ashland for months - if it could be considered a simple murder. Fletcher had chronicled the series of events that had led to his death, all the skirmishes and problems Benedict had had with Mab, all the things that had prompted him to plot against her, but I skipped ahead to the night it had all gone down. Even then, there were pages of information to go through, covering everything from the blueprints of the mansion to exactly where Dubois had died. Given Fletcher's attention to detail, there was even a guest list of everyone who'd been there that night.
I put the list aside to give to Finn to see what connections he might be able to make between the guests back then and what Salina might be up to now. For all I knew, she was working with someone on the list besides McAllister.
Finally, I got to Fletcher's recap of that fateful night. Benedict, an Ice elemental, had thrown an elegant dinner party at his mansion. Just before the soup course, he'd tried to take out Mab by stabbing her in the back with a silverstone knife - only he'd failed. Naturally, the Fire elemental had made an example out of him for his foolishness.
The more I read, the more I remembered that night, until it seemed like every line, every word, caused another image to pop into my mind.
Then I got to the photos.
Fletcher had somehow gotten his hands on police images of Dubois's body. You couldn't even tell that the ashy, smoking thing in the photos had once been a man. It just looked like a collection of blackened bones strung together, topped by a skull baring charred teeth.
I'd seen similar pictures before. Hell, I'd witnessed such things myself when Mab murdered my mother and older sister. My stomach twisted, and the phantom stench of seared skin filled my nose, making me gag, as if Benedict Dubois's corpse were freshly burned and still smoldering at my feet.
I forced myself to flip past the photos and keep reading, but there wasn't anything else to discover. After she tortured and murdered Dubois, Mab hadn't had any more problems for a good long while.
I slid the pictures back in the file, closed it, and put a crystal paperweight shaped like my spider rune on top of the folder. The information might be a window into the past, but it didn't tell me what had really happened with Kincaid and Salina or, more important, what she was doing back in Ashland. So I turned off the light and went back upstairs.
I went through the motions of getting ready for bed - taking a shower, towel-drying my hair, putting on some shorts and an old T-shirt.
Even though I hadn't killed anyone tonight, I was still exhausted from everything I'd learned about Owen, Salina, Kincaid, and their convoluted history. I was so tired I thought I might fall asleep immediately, but as soon as I closed my eyes, the dreams started, the way they always did. Except they weren't dreams so much as glimpses of my past, memories of all the bad things I'd seen and done. I'd been having the dreams ever since Fletcher's murder last year, and I had no idea when they might stop, if ever. I supposed these particular images were triggered by reading through the Dubois file. . . .
No one was supposed to die tonight.
It was supposed to be a simple assignment, one that Fletcher, the assassin known as the Tin Man, could do in his sleep. Slip onto the estate of Benedict Dubois during a dinner party and gather intel on Peter Delov, an Ashland drug lord. See who Delov spoke to, who he snubbed, how close his guards stayed to him. All in preparation for a hit that was to take place later on.
I moved through the halls of the Dubois mansion, calmly, quickly heading toward my destination. As usual, I wore dark clothes, although I'd been forced to don a white tuxedo vest and a matching bow tie over my black shirt, pants, and shoes. The pale fabric felt like a bull's-eye on my chest, and the fact that I was carrying an empty tray instead of one of the knives Fletcher was teaching me to use made me feel even more vulnerable. Still, the vest and the tray were an effective part of my disguise, that of a simple waiter.
Tonight, instead of skulking around in the shadows, I boldly strode down the corridor, passing one giant guard after another and nodding to them all in turn. A few eyed me with obvious curiosity, probably wondering exactly how I'd gotten this job, since at fifteen I was a bit younger than the other workers. But no one stopped or questioned me. Finally, I reached the entrance to the kitchen and showed the guard there my tray. He politely opened the door for me, and I stepped inside.
The kitchen was a madhouse. Several chefs were busy chopping, cutting, peeling, boiling, steaming, and sauteing everything from potatoes to pasta to peaches, and my nose itched from the red pepper, cinnamon, and other spices in the air. The chefs called out orders to each other and the dozens of waiters who were busy moving through the cramped aisles, grabbing trays of champagne and hors d'oeuvres before scurrying back out to the party to serve up the delicacies.
"Soup's up!" one of the chefs called out.
I handed my empty tray off to one of the dishwashers, got a clean one filled with white china bowls, and headed toward the back of the kitchen to the chef who'd spoken. The overhead lights brought out the silver threads in his walnut-colored hair, while the heat from the ovens and burners had made his cheeks even ruddier than usual.
I put the tray down on the counter next to his elbow and watched while the chef ladled a scrumptious-smelling, gourmet broccolini soup into the bowls.
"Anything interesting?" Fletcher murmured as he used some freshly grated Parmesan cheese and sourdough croutons to garnish each bowl of soup.
"Not really," I replied. "Just Delov moving through the crowd, eating, drinking, and greeting his business associates. The usual. Although Delov looks to be in the market for a new mistress. He's barely glanced at the woman he brought along tonight. Instead, he's been fawning all over one of the women who came with Beauregard Benson. "
"Benson won't like that, but I doubt it will stop Delov," Fletcher said. "See if you can find out who she is. Might prove useful later on. "
I nodded, pleased he was trusting me with such an assignment. Fletcher often hired himself out for events like these as a way to surreptitiously study potential targets. Usually, he worked as a waiter, but tonight he'd been needed in the kitchen to cook, so the old man had brought me along to be his eyes and ears at the party, which was being held on the lawn outside. It was something he was doing more and more of these days, now that I was two years into my training with him.
Fletcher said that soon I'd be ready to start doing solo scouting jobs. Serving food and drinks to the puffed-up power players of Ashland wasn't exactly the most thrilling way to spend my nights, but Fletcher said that blending in with a crowd and getting close to my targets was a necessary skill to learn. That it would prepare me for more violent, bloodier things later on. I wasn't quite sure I believed that, but the old man had been right about so many things so far that I wasn't going to argue with him. Besides, the waiter money was decent enough, and I almost always got to take home a bag or two of leftovers.