“Not enough to matter.”
He nodded. “Good.”
My eyes cut to Xavier. “Nice driving. The vamp never knew what hit him.”
The giant dug his hands into his pants pockets and grinned at me. “What can I say? I’m a closet NASCAR fan at heart.”
I grinned back at him and shook my head before turning to Finn. “Well, the party’s over now. I was beginning to think that you weren’t coming, since I called you more than twenty minutes ago.”
“Sorry, Gin,” Finn said in an apologetic tone. “I would have been here sooner, but Roslyn decided that she wanted to tag along to see what was happening with Vinnie. And then Xavier saw us leaving Northern Aggression and offered to drive.”
I looked over at the vampire and the giant. “You didn’t have to do that, Roslyn, Xavier. Neither one of you. This is my fight with Mab. Not yours. Do yourselves a favor and don’t get involved. I already know that it’s going to end badly for me. Call me crazy, but I’d rather not see you two end up as collateral damage.”
Roslyn stepped forward, her eyes hard behind her silver glasses, her mouth a thin, determined line in her face. “That’s where you’re wrong, Gin. It’s our fight now too. It has been ever since that first day Elliot Slater came into my club and started stalking me.”
A few weeks ago, the giant had gone to Northern Aggression to question Roslyn about how one of her heart-and-arrow rune necklaces had ended up around the neck of a fake hooker who’d killed one of Mab’s flunkies. The fake hooker had been me, of course, and I’d used the necklace to sneak into one of Mab’s parties so I could take out Tobias Dawson, the greedy mine owner who’d been threatening Violet Fox and her grandfather.
But the Fire elemental didn’t believe that I’d died in a mine collapse along with Dawson, so she’d sent Slater to lean on Roslyn. The vampire hadn’t cracked, hadn’t given me up, but she’d been exposed to something much worse — Slater’s creepy fascination with her.
Once again, my heart ached for everything that had been done to Roslyn, for all the pain and anguish and fear that she had suffered because of me. But being sorry didn’t change the past. All I could do now was keep going until either Mab or I was dead. Maybe if I was lucky, things would end there, and I’d at least get to take the Fire elemental out with me when I kicked off to hell. And I’d have the satisfaction of knowing that everyone else I was leaving behind, everyone that I cared about, was safe from Mab — forever.
“Gin?” Roslyn asked in a soft voice, cutting into my thoughts.
I just nodded my head, accepting her help and Xavier’s, at least for this night. Even though I didn’t deserve it. “Thanks for stopping by. Now, let’s go see if Vinnie is still alive.”
I sent Finn over to the tree to make sure that the vampire was dead, while Xavier, Roslyn, and I walked back to the playground. I went first to the giant who was still sprawled on the merry-go-round. He’d bled out from his cut throat, and his body was already starting to cool, given the chill in the December air. My next stop was the giant who was buried under the remains of the swing set. He was unconscious but surprisingly still alive. I must not have wounded him as badly as I’d thought. Didn’t much matter, since I pulled his head out from underneath the chains and cut his throat to finish the job.
Roslyn stood by the sandbox, looking down at Vinnie. Disgust, horror, and sympathy filled her beautiful face, and she held her hand over her mouth like she was seconds away from vomiting. She probably was. It wasn’t hard to see that Roslyn was remembering her own brutal beating at the hands of Elliot Slater. Xavier had already stepped inside the sandbox and was kneeling by the Ice elemental, who had his eyes closed and was lying on his side, curled into a loose ball.
Vinnie Volga was a mess. The giants’ beating had been bad enough, but the vampire had only compounded the damage during their scuffle. Starting with his face and going down his body, there wasn’t much left of Vinnie that wasn’t covered with blood, blackening bruises, and crusty sand.
I looked at Xavier and raised my eyebrows.
“Still alive,” Xavier said, answering my silent question. “What do you want to do with him, Gin?”
Earlier tonight, my plan had been to take Vinnie somewhere quiet and find out exactly why he’d betrayed Roslyn, why he was working for Mab, and what he might know about my real identity as the Spider. And I’d planned on getting the information any way that I had to. Just as the giants had done, truth be told. Except I would have used my knives instead of my fists.
But that was before I knew what kind of leverage Mab had on Vinnie — his daughter, Natasha — and the Fire elemental’s horrible plans for the little girl. That was before I’d seen the rage, helplessness, and anguish in Vinnie’s eyes as he listened to the vampire brag about how he was going to rape Natasha. That was before Vinnie had used the last of his Ice magic, risen up, and tried to take the vampire down with him. He’d tried to spare his daughter one horror, at least.
Besides, I could always kill him later, should the need arise.
“Put him in the car,” I said. “Let’s get Vinnie to Jo-Jo’s before he dies.”
While Xavier and the others loaded the unconscious Vinnie into the back of the SUV, I retrieved my dropped knife, then crouched down in the middle of the sandbox. I hadn’t planned on killing anyone but the bartender tonight, but I wasn’t going to miss this chance to let Mab know exactly who had taken out her men — again. It was easy enough for me to use my silverstone knife to draw my spider rune in a patch of blood-soaked sand. A couple of passes with my blade and it was done.
My eyes studied the symbol that I’d carved. A small circle surrounded by eight thin rays. It wasn’t a flashy rune by any stretch of the imagination, certainly not like Mab’s gold and ruby sunburst necklace. But the spider rune was the symbol for patience — something that I hoped the Fire elemental was running short on these days. Because impatience made you sloppy, and sloppy got you dead. The second she made a mistake was the second I’d make my move.
“We’re ready, Gin!” Finn called out from the window of Xavier’s SUV. “Let’s go!”
I got back to my feet, wincing at the pain in my hip, and limped over to the waiting vehicle.
It took Xavier about twenty minutes to drive from the Northtown park out into the surrounding suburbs. The giant steered his black SUV with its now-crumpled front fender into a subdivision bearing the name Tara Heights before turning onto a street marked Magnolia Lane. I didn’t have to give him directions. Xavier knew the way. We all did.
A minute later, Xavier drove up a long driveway before stopping in front of a three-story, plantation-style house perched on top of a grassy hill. The rows of white columns on the front of the house gleamed despite the late hour, and the cobblestones that made up the driveway seemed as pale as bleach in the darkness.
The four of us got out of the car. Xavier reached into the back and slung Vinnie over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, before we all walked up the three steps leading to a wide, wraparound porch. Green, glossy kudzu vines curled around a trellis that partially obscured the porch. So did a thick cluster of rose bushes, although their branches were bare for the winter, except for the long, curved, black thorns that glittered like polished jet.
I opened the screen door. A knocker shaped like a fat, puffy cloud rested on the heavier, interior wooden door. The cloud was Jo-Jo’s personal rune, denoting her as an Air elemental.
I’d just reached for the knocker when footsteps scuffled inside, the door opened, and Jo-Jo Deveraux stuck her head outside.
“I thought I heard someone out here,” the dwarf said in her voice that was as light and sweet as syrup.