“Xavier, you have our thanks,” Finn murmured to the giant. “I’ll take good care of you the next time I’m at Northern Aggression. Promise.”
Xavier nodded. “No problem. I helped you with your situation tonight, you can help me with mine tomorrow.”
The two men exchanged a long look that was just a little too meaningful for my liking. What was that about? What kind of problem did Xavier have that he couldn’t take care of himself? That he needed Finn’s help with? The giant didn’t strike me as the kind to hide money from the IRS, which was one of Finn’s specialties. But I was in too much pain to puzzle it out tonight.
Finn nodded and carried me toward the yellow crime scene tape. Xavier lifted up the flimsy barrier for him, and we left the bloody, frosty grass of the quad behind.
“It’s okay, Gin,” Finn whispered in my ear. “I’m taking you to Jo-Jo’s. She’ll heal you up, and then we can figure out what to do about Bria being in Ashland. You can relax now. Everything’s going to be okay.”
Even though it felt like my own bones were stabbing me, I turned my neck, looked over Finn’s shoulder, and stared at Bria. She was still busy berating the security guard, so she didn’t see my pained gaze. My eyes landed on the primrose rune she wore around her neck. The blue and red lights made the silverstone metal gleam like a small moon in the semidarkness.
I never thought I’d see that rune again — much less my baby sister. But seventeen years later, seventeen years after the brutal, fiery murder of our mother and older sister, Bria was back in my life. The tightness in my chest swelled up again, stronger, colder, and harder than before.
The delicate primrose was the last thing I remembered seeing before the world went black.
3
I felt like I was on fire — from the inside out.
Hot needles stabbed up and down my body in a slow, relentless, agonizing path. My raw face, my broken jaw, my cracked ribs. The needles swept over everything, like I was some sort of warped voodoo doll come to life. The hot tingles made everything hurt even worse than it had before.
I whimpered and thrashed, trying to get away from the horrible, burning sensation.
“Hold her still, Sophia,” a voice commanded. “Or her nose is going to look like something from a Halloween shop. You too, Finn.”
A pair of iron hands tightened around my shoulders, immobilizing me. A larger but lighter set of hands clamped around my ankles.
“Hmph,” someone grunted.
For some reason, it sounded like she was saying go ahead.
The burning continued a moment longer, then abruptly ceased. The sour stench of my own sweat filled my nose, and I panted with relief. A gentle hand smoothed back my damp, bloody hair, then cupped my cheek.
“Go to sleep now, darling.” This time the voice was low, warm, sweet, soothing. “Just sleep, Gin.”
So I did.
The next time I woke up, I was stretched out in an oversize salon chair that had been laid back like a recliner. Much better than lying on the cold grass of the college quad — or on a steel slab at the morgue.
My eyes drifted over the white and blue, cloudlike fresco painted on the high ceiling. Familiar as always. I knew where I was, of course. Jolene “Jo-Jo” Deveraux’s beauty salon. This wasn’t the first time I’d woken up in one of the cherry red chairs staring up at the cloud painting after being healed. I didn’t think it would be the last time either.
Something rough and wet and warm scraped against my right hand. I craned my neck to one side. Rosco, Jo-Jo’s pudgy basset hound, had dragged his fat, lazy ass out of his wicker basket in the corner long enough to come over and lick my hand.
“Good boy,” I murmured and rubbed one of his long, floppy ears between my blood-spattered fingers.
Rosco grunted out a huff of pleasure and collapsed in a brown and black furry heap next to the chair. Walking the thirty feet across the room to me had plumb tuckered him out. I smiled and rubbed the hound dog’s other ear.
“About time you came out of it,” a feminine voice drawled off to my left.
A pair of bare feet strolled into view next to Rosco’s inert form. Bright fuchsia nail polish covered her toes. Only one person I knew still padded around without socks in early December. I looked up to find Jo-Jo Deveraux looming over me. Well, as much as a dwarf who topped out at five feet could loom. Then again, Jo-Jo was rather tall for a dwarf.
Although she was two hundred fifty-seven and counting, Jo-Jo didn’t look a day over one ninety-nine. She always reminded me of a Southern magnolia, aging ever so gracefully. Tonight the dwarf wore a long, fuzzy, pink flannel robe, topped off with a string of gravel-size pearls. Jo-Jo never went anywhere without her pearls. To her, they were the ultimate symbol that she was a true Southern lady. Even though it was getting late, Jo-Jo’s bleached-blond-white hair still stood tall, teased, and proud in its usual helmet of curls, and her eye makeup looked as fresh as if she’d just applied it. Gloss covered her pursed lips. Strawberry, from the smell of it.
Most people would have thought Jo-Jo was just another aging debutante, still trying to be the belle of the ball and clinging to her youth despite the laugh lines around her mouth and eyes. They would have been wrong.
Everybody knew Jo-Jo Deveraux was an Air elemental who used her beauty salon and magic to help folks stave off the ravages of time on their faces, breasts, legs, and asses. Pure oxygen facials could do wonders for even the most stubborn crows’ feet. But few people knew the dwarf was also the best healer in Ashland, capable of curing everything short of death. Even then, you had a better chance of Jo-Jo finding some way to bring you back to life than with anyone else.
Jo-Jo Deveraux had been fast friends with my mentor, Fletcher Lane. When I’d started doing the assassinating instead of the old man, Jo-Jo had transferred her healing services over to me. Of course, I always paid for her time, expertise, and magic, but the dwarf was family to me now. So was her younger sister, Sophia, who was a cook down at the Pork Pit, the barbecue restaurant Fletcher had left me upon his death. Sophia was also rather handy at disposing of the many bodies I left in my wake.
“How are you feeling?” Jo-Jo asked in her low, easy voice that oozed like warm honey.
“Like I got beaten by a giant.”
Concern flashed in her pale gaze. Except for the pinprick of black at their center, the dwarf’s eyes were almost colorless, like two cloudy pieces of quartz set into her middle-aged face.
“Sit me up, please,” I asked.
Jo-Jo nodded. She moved behind me and hit a lever on the chair. The back tilted up, moving me into an upright, seated position. I shifted around, wiggling my fingers, toes, and jaw. I felt tired, but that was to be expected. The body could handle only so much trauma, and going from being well to being severely injured to being well again in the space of a few hours always left me feeling drained and lethargic. It took my brain a while to catch up to the fact that I was still breathing and not six feet under like I should have been.
Dried blood still covered my clothes and hands, but everything else was in pain-free, working order once more. I sniffed. Jo-Jo had even fixed my drippy nose and purged the flu from my system. Humpty-Dumpty had been put back together again. Despite all of Mab Monroe’s men.
My eyes scanned over the salon, which took up the back half of Jo-Jo’s massive, antebellum house. It looked the same as it always did. Lots of padded swivel chairs. Several old-fashioned hair dryers. Counters cluttered with hairspray, scissors, pink sponge rollers, nail polish, makeup, and gap-toothed combs. Pictures and posters of models with various hairstyles taped to the walls. Piles and piles of beauty and fashion magazines everywhere. I drew in a breath. The air smelled the same too — chemicals mixed with coconut oil from the tanning beds in the next room.