Elemental Assassin [9] Heart of Venom by Jennifer Estep

and tossed onto the passenger seat of Roslyn’s car, I left Jo-Jo’s salon and drove over to Fletcher’s house, my house now. I zoomed up the driveway, making the tires spit out gravel in every direction, crested the ridge, and parked.
    The ramshackle structure looked a bit odd, since it featured a mishmash of white clapboard, brown brick, and gray stone, all topped off by a tin roof. But to me, it was simply home. To the right of the house, the yard stretched out before abruptly dropping off into a series of jagged cliffs. To the left, the woods formed a solid line of green, gray, and brown.
    I got out of the car and headed for the front porch.
    Normally, I took a moment to reach out with my magic and listen to the stones around me, in case anyone had decided to lie in wait to ambush the Spider at home. But today I didn’t even bother. If someone was out there, then today was the unluckiest day of his life, because the idiot would be my warm-up for Harley Grimes.
    But as I opened the heavy black granite front door shot through with thick veins of silverstone, nothing seemed out of the ordinary in the chirping of the birds in the trees or the rustle of the rabbits in the underbrush. Good. I didn’t want anything else to slow me down and keep me from reaching Sophia as quickly as possible.
    I stepped inside, shut the door behind me, and headed straight for Fletcher’s office. I hated delaying even a second, but I needed more information before I went after Grimes, and this was the one place I was sure I could get it.
    A large maple tree shaded this part of the house, and even with the day’s sun, Fletcher’s office was dark enough that I had to turn the lights on to see what I was doing.
    The room was a mess, with papers, pens, and folders stacked everywhere, from the desk in the back to the bookcases standing against the walls to the file cabinets that squatted on either side of the door. But there had been a method to Fletcher’s madness, and I’d slowly been figuring out his system.
    In fact, I’d been spending more and more time in his office over the past few weeks, trying to track down the mysterious M. M. Monroe, the long-lost relative that
    Mab’s will had listed as heir to all of her earthly possessions. I hadn’t had any luck so far, but going through the files had finally nudged me into straightening up the old man’s office. At least a little bit. I left most of his things where Fletcher had kept them, though. In a way, it made me feel like he was still there, still guiding me, even though he’d been dead since last fall. 
    I hadn’t run across any information about Grimes, Hazel, and their men, but there had to be  something  there.
    Fletcher and Grimes had almost killed each other over Sophia, and the old man had made Grimes stay away on his mountain ever since then. Still, Fletcher had liked to keep tabs on everyone who was up to no good in Ashland, and there was no way that he wouldn’t have tracked Grimes through the years, especially if he thought that
    Grimes might be a threat to the Deveraux sisters again someday.
    I started with the file cabinets beside the door, flipping through all of the folders inside. No file on Grimes.
    I moved over to the bookcases, rifling through the items on every shelf. No file. I went over to the desk, sorting through all the papers on the battered surface and then all the ones in the various drawers. Still no file.
    Frustrated, I slammed the last drawer on the desk shut, then swiveled Fletcher’s chair back and forth, making the wheels go  screech-screech-screech . I studied every part of the office, wondering if there was anything that I’d missed, any possible place that Fletcher might have stashed some information on Grimes that I’d overlooked.
    And that’s when I noticed the sticker on one of the bookcases.
    It was a small sticker, stuck on the bottom right corner of the case, a few feet away from the desk. Odd that Fletcher