Finnegan Lane was one of the best investment bankers in Ashland, and he’d made a lot of people in this room a lot of money. We wouldn’t take more than three steps before Finn would wave at someone he knew or a woman would sidle up and plant a coy, perfumed kiss on his cheek. Finally, after the fifth time that happened, I motioned at Finn that I was going on without him. He absently waved his hand at me and turned back to his apparently riveting conversation about tax shelters with a wizened dwarf wearing a dozen ropes of black pearls.

While Finn held court, I moved off into the crowd. I wandered from one display to the next, ignoring the awed whispers about my being the Spider and disappointed mutters about why I wasn’t dead yet. Instead, I concentrated on all of the things Mab had collected over the years. Most of the items were exactly what I’d expected: pricey paintings, large sculptures, small, detailed carvings, even a few silk wall tapestries. Nothing too exciting or interesting. In fact, I was rather disappointed by the whole thing. Given how cruel and vicious Mab had been, I’d expected there to be something noteworthy on display, maybe a gun she’d used to kneecap someone, a knife she’d chopped off an enemy’s fingers with, a bit of rope she’d wrapped around someone’s throat and choked them into compliance with.

But I should have known that Mab wouldn’t have had anything like that. She’d preferred using her Fire magic to hurt, torture, burn, and kill people. She hadn’t needed anything else. No props, no weapons, no help from her giant guards. Just the mention of her name had been enough to inspire abject terror—and rightly so.

“What, exactly, are you doing here?” a low voice snapped.

I turned to find Jonah McAllister standing behind me, his fingers clenched around a champagne glass and his mouth pinched down with as much surprise and displeasure as his tight features would allow him to show.

“Why, hello, Jonah,” I drawled. “Lovely to see you again too.”

His cold brown eyes flicked up and down my body, carefully studying my gown as if he expected to find bloodstains on the expensive fabric. Maybe later. Like Finn had said, the night was still young.

“I told the guards to keep the riffraff out, but apparently, they didn’t understand the meaning of the word,” he said in a haughty, condescending tone.