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but that young, though. Eighteen, maybe nineteen. She probably didn’t mean she wasn’t working for someone else. Maybe thought she was twenty pounds too heavy, but the extra someone who wanted to hire the mysterious Tin Man. weight rounded her face and filled out her chest. Someone looking for revenge. or maybe even the cops. Square black glasses gave her a slightly brainy air. Her Didn’t much matter who. If the girl breathed wrong, she sandy blond hair was cropped short, and the rain outside was going to die where she stood.
    had turned it into a mound of frizz. Her dark brown eyes Violet chewed her lower lip. For a moment, I thought and pecan-colored skin whispered of some Hispanic or she might ask me about Fletcher again. But after a momaybe even Native American heritage. The Cherokee still ment, her shoulders drooped in defeat.
    inhabited the mountains around Ashland, and more His“Doesn’t matter,” she said in a tired voice. “He couldn’t panic folks came to the city every summer to pick strawberhave helped me anyway. Sorry to bother you.”
    ries, tomatoes, and other crops. once the picking season She turned to go. I glanced at Finn, who shrugged. He was over, lots of the migrants stayed and put down roots. didn’t know what to make of it either. Sophia grunted I continued my examination. She wore jeans faded and turned back to her celery.
    from wear, not design, and a heavy black turtleneck
    “He couldn’t have helped you with what?” I called out. sweater that made her eyes seem darker than they were. Curiosity. Something the old man had instilled in Scuffed sneakers, a heavy jacket, some silver hoops in her me over the years. Fletcher Lane had always wanted to ears. Nothing on her cost more than fifty bucks. Which know everything about everyone, and he’d taught me to didn’t inspire confidence about her even being able to afbe the same way. Now it was the one emotion that always ford an assassin like the Tin Man.
    seemed to get the best of me, no matter how hard I tried The words Tin Man had also gotten the others’ atto squash it. tention. Finn peered at the girl over the top of the finanThe girl, Violet, turned to look at me. “oh, um, well, cial section. Sophia looked up from the celery she’d been it’s sort of personal—”
    chopping for her macaroni salad.
    That’s all she got out before someone started shooting
    “Tin Man?” I asked. “That’s a funny name.”
    at us.
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    Sophia stood by the back counter and kept chopping celery. She didn’t even look up at the crack of the gunshot. Bullets didn’t worry her. Dwarves were even tougher 5
    than giants, and Sophia could take a couple bullets in the back. They’d catch her in hard muscles long before they hit anything vital. Elemental magic was just about the only thing that could quickly penetrate a dwarf’s thick skin. And even the majority of that would only make her angry, instead of doing any real damage.
    Smack!
    Smack! Smack!
    Three more bullets slammed into the front of the restaurant. I looked up, trying to judge where the shots were coming from, but the angle from the floor was all wrong. A bullet smacked into one of the storefront windows. I could see the storefront windows, but not who or what The sharp, sudden burst of sound caught the girl’s atlay beyond them. tention. Her head snapped toward the front of the restauMy eyes flicked to the projectiles. A large caliber, probrant. “What was that—”
    ably a fifty, from the looks of them. And whoever was That was all the Violet got out before I darted around shooting knew what he was doing. Despite their size, the the counter and threw myself on top of her, forcing her bullets formed a small, circular cluster about the size of to the floor.
    my fist. Kill shots, all of them.
    “oof!”
    The four metal missiles had cracked and caught in We hit the ground hard. I knocked the wind out of the the