Tucker stopped, but rage glinted in his eyes, and his hands curled into fists, his knuckles as white as the snow covering the terrace.
Clyde stared down at the three giants we’d killed. “What a bloody mess. You two justhadto make trouble, didn’t you?”
“Says the man holding a gun on me,” I snarked back.
“Shut up,” he snapped.
Clyde spun me around and hooked his arm around my neck, using me as a human shield, even as he kept his gun pressed up against my side.
“You stay right there, Hugh,” he warned. “And don’t eventhinkabout trying to follow us, or I’ll shoot Lorelei in the gut. That’s a really painful way to die, and you don’t want that, right?”
Tucker growled again, and the sound reverberated in my ears, joining that strange, delicious hum that was vibrating through the rest of my body.
“Don’t worry about me,” I called out. “I can take care of myself. I’ve been doing it for a long time now.”
Tucker’s gaze flicked to the giant I’d killed. “I never doubted you, Ms. Parker. I was just trying to do the gentlemanly thing and spare you from Clyde’s less-than-honorable intentions.”
“And they say that chivalry is dead,” I drawled. “How very kind of you, Mr. Tucker.”
Another one of those small smiles curved his lips, making him look even more handsome, despite the blood coating his mouth, chin, and neck.
“Shut up,” Clyde snarled again, and started dragging me backward. “No one is interested in your not-so-witty banter.”
Tucker’s eyes narrowed in thought. He was clearly calculating whether he could kill Clyde before Clyde shot me. But I didn’t need Hugh Tucker to rescue me. I was more than capable of saving myself.
Clyde kept dragging me backward, and I turned my head to the side so I could see where we were going. A few feet later, he had to stop and navigate around one of the firepits. He hesitated, then stepped to his left, moving over to the stone railing that lined the edge of the terrace. Perfect.
I reached out and ran my hand over the top of the railing, curling my fingers and gathering up the snow lying there. The chunks of snow weren’t nearly as big, hard, and solid as the icicles I’d cracked off the roof earlier, but they would do the job. Just about anything would if you were creative enough with it.
And I was very, very creative with my magic.
Clyde wasn’t an elemental, so he didn’t sense my Ice power, and he didn’t seem to notice my hand dragging through the snow or the cold crystals sticking to my fingers like glue. Tucker wasn’t an elemental either, but his eyes narrowed a little more, and he tilted his head to the side, watching me. He knew I was up to something. He just didn’t know what it was yet.
Clyde reached the stairs in the center of the terrace. He dropped his arm from around my neck and turned me around about halfway, so that I was standing more beside him than in front of him.
Clyde jabbed his gun into my side again, as if I needed a reminder that it was there. “We’re going down the stairs. Don’t try anything funny, or I’ll shoot you right here and now and go get the diamonds myself.”
“Oh, I wouldn’tdreamof trying anything funny,” I drawled.
Suspicion filled his face, but I held up my right hand, as though I was meekly surrendering and giving in to all the awful things he wanted to do to me.
Tucker stepped forward, as though he was going to charge at Clyde after all.
The crime boss predictably looked in that direction. “I told you to stay put, you back-stabbing traitor—”
The second he glanced away from me, I brought up my left hand, which was filled with snow, and smashed the icy wad of it into Clyde’s face, right over his nose and mouth.
And then I glued it there.
I might not be the strongest elemental around, might not have half the magic that Gin Blanco and all the other powerhouses did, but you didn’t have to be strong to kill someone with magic, just smart. And if there was one small, positive thing that had come out of dealing with my father and my brother, it was that they—and especially my mother—had made me smart and, perhaps more important, sneaky, determined, and ruthless.
So I shoved the snow as far up Clyde’s nose as it would go and coated his mouth with what was left. Then I sent out another blast of magic. Instead of falling harmlessly away from his face, the snow stuck to his skin, the tiny flakes driven deep into his flesh by my cold, focused power.
Clyde made a choking sound, and he raised his free hand, trying to claw the snow off his nose and mouth. He managed to chip away a few chunks, ripping out his skin along with them, and blood welled up all around the snow, looking like a garish ring of red lipstick on his face.
Clyde kept clawing and clawing at the snow, desperately trying to tear it off so he could suck some air down into his lungs. He might have had a mix of giant and dwarven blood, might have been incredibly strong, but he still needed to breathe. Something he couldn’t do right now, thanks to my little trick.
Desperation filled Clyde’s eyes, but he still had enough wits left to point his gun at me again. I reached for my metal magic to wrench it out of his hand—
