Free Elemental Assassin [9] Heart of Venom by Jennifer Estep

a whole pack of cigarettes and then stubbed them out one by one on his skin there. More cigarette burns marred his thin arms, but those looked older, since they had already scarred over.
    Sophia had heard the bell too and stepped into the storefront. She saw the kid and frowned. “Sorry. Closed—”
    The kid whipped his head in her direction. Sophia blinked, as surprised by his battered face as I had been.
    “Please don’t kick me out!” he said, scrambling to his feet.
    “You gotta help me! They’re after me!”
    “Who?” she asked.
    “Two giants,” the kid said, his blue eyes wide and frightened behind his glasses. “All I did was pick their pockets while  they were smoking in the alley. I swear. And only because
    I needed some money for food. They only had, like, twenty  bucks on them, but one of the giants chased and grabbed  me anyway. He would have put my eyes out with his stupid  cigarettes, if I hadn’t kneed him in the balls and taken off.
    He didn’t care about the money. Not really. He just wanted  to hurt me. You know? They both did. Please, please, just let  me hide in here a few minutes.”
    Sophia stared at the kid, taking in his bruised face, the  blood dribbling down his chin, and the old tattered clothes  that covered his body. Her gaze lingered on the burns on his  neck. Her lips flattened out into a hard, thin line, and a  spark of anger burned in her black eyes.
    “Okay,” she rasped.
    He blinked. “Okay?”
    She nodded. “You’re safe here.”
    She reached out and gently put a hand on the kid’s  scrawny shoulder. He was so thin that his collarbone jutted  up against the top of his ratty T-shirt. The kid flinched at
    Sophia’s touch, and her mouth turned down, as though she  were suddenly sad for some reason.
    “Gin, get a cloth. Clean up.”
    I knew that it was for the kid, to wash the blood off his  face, but I eyed the dwarf, wondering at the sudden change  in her. I’d never seen Sophia go from being so gruff to so  angry to so sad before, all in the matter of a minute.
    But I went into the back, got a clean dish rag, and wet  it with warm water. By the time I returned, Sophia had sat  the kid down at one of the tables and had put the rest of the  sugar cookies on a plate for him to eat, and he was gulping them down as fast as he could. Annoyance spurted through  me, but he looked like he could use the calories more than I  could, so I shrugged it off. Besides, I knew exactly what it felt  like to be that hungry.
    I handed Sophia the rag, and she managed to get the kid  to stop eating cookies long enough for her to start wiping off  his face. Once again, I stared at Sophia, amazed at how  tender she was being and the care she took in dealing with  him. She certainly wasn’t that gentle with me whenever she  picked me up and moved me out of her way. Then again, I  didn’t look like I’d just had my face run through the bottom  of a blender either.
    “More,” she said a minute later, holding the dirty rag to me.
    The kid used the lull to stuff another cookie into his mouth.
    I rolled my eyes at her command, but I took the dirty rag,  went into the back, exchanged it for a new, clean one, and  soaked it with warm water. I had started to push through  the double doors to step back out into the storefront when the  bell over the front door chimed—and two giants burst into  the restaurant.
    “There he is!” one of the men screamed, stabbing his finger  at the boy. “You dirty little thief!”
    Sophia surged up onto her feet, stepping in front of the kid  and trying to protect him, but the first giant was in a rage,  and he rammed right into her, driving her all the way across  the restaurant and back up against the counter.
    I gasped, my hand strangling the warm rag that I was still holding.
    The boy let out a frightened squeak. He got up to run, but  the second giant snatched him by the back of his neck and drove  a fist into