26
Eventually, Owen and I broke apart. I opened the door, and we went out into the kitchen.
A butcher-block table with several stools stood in the middle of the room, while appliances done in soft pastel shades ringed the walls. Fat, puffy clouds—Jo-Jo’s rune and the symbol for her Air magic—covered almost everything in the kitchen, from the oven mitts piled next to the stove to a set of plates stacked in the sink to the fresco that stretched across the ceiling. Jo-Jo and Eva sat at the table drinking pineapple juice, while Finn was over at the counter, brewing himself a fresh pot of chicory coffee.
“Where are the others?” I asked.
“Bria had to get to the police station,” Jo-Jo replied. “She said she’d call and check in with you later. Phillip left too. Said he had some things to do on that riverboat of his. Cooper went with him to keep him company—although he’s going to call me later on today.”
I arched an eyebrow. “Do I sense a little romance in the air?”
“I just want to make sure that he’s all healed up properly,” Jo-Jo said, blushing again. “Besides, he’s a true Southern gentleman. It’s hard to find one of those these days.”
I knew that Jo-Jo wouldn’t have let Cooper leave if she hadn’t completely healed him already, but I didn’t tease her anymore. Instead, I nodded and headed over to the cabinets. My fight with Salina and worry over Owen had taken a lot out of me, and I was in the mood for some comfort food. So I grabbed all the fixings for a classic Southern breakfast—biscuits and gravy.
Flour, fresh buttermilk, and just a pinch of sugar and salt went into my biscuit dough, while I put a cast-iron pan into the oven to heat the shortening I’d coated it with. Once the shortening was melted, I cut the biscuit dough into rounds, coated both sides with the liquefied shortening, arranged them in the pan, and then slid the whole thing into the oven to bake. I also fried up some salty country ham, using the grease and drippings that were left in the pan, along with some evaporated milk and a generous dash of black pepper, to make my gravy.
Thirty minutes later, I slid the hot biscuits onto a plate and ladled the gravy into one of Jo-Jo’s cloud-shaped serving bowls. We all gathered around the table and dug into my greasy feast. Yeah, it wasn’t exactly health food, but the biscuits were light and fluffy and made a perfect base for the flavorful gravy.
“So,” Finn drawled when everyone had finished eating, “what did the two of you decide to do about sweet, sweet Salina?”
Owen looked at me, then at everyone else in turn. “Gin and I are going to talk to her and try to convince her to get some help.”
Eva’s fork slipped from her fingers and clattered onto her plate. Her eyes snapped up to mine, and she gave me a sharp, angry look. I could see the accusation in her pretty face. She thought I’d betrayed her, that I was going back on my promise to kill Salina. She just didn’t realize that I was only delaying the water elemental’s death, nothing more.
My promise to Eva. Trying to understand Owen’s feelings. Salina and her deadly magic. In a way, I had just as much of a noose around my neck as Kincaid had that night on the Delta Queen. A noose that was slowly tightening as a final battle with Salina became more and more inevitable—and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. If I didn’t kill Salina, it was only a matter of time before she hurt someone else. And if I did take her out, it would impact my relationship with Owen—maybe even end it.
Eva, Owen, and Salina had all given me enough rope. All that remained to be seen now was when I was going to hang myself with it.
“I’ve got to get to class,” Eva muttered, pushing her plate away. “Thanks for the juice, Jo-Jo.”
“Anytime, darling.”
Eva got to her feet and stomped out of the kitchen. A few seconds later, I heard the front door slam shut.
Owen sighed. “Sorry about that. I’ll go talk to her.”
My lover hurried out of the kitchen, leaving me, Finn, and Jo-Jo sitting at the table. My foster brother glared at me with the same fierce expression Eva had.
“You can’t be serious, Gin. Salina tried to kill you, and you’re going to go talk to her? In case you’ve forgotten, you’re the Spider. You don’t talk to people—you kill them. I’ll ask you the same thing I did Owen. Are you out of your mind?”
“No, I’m not out of my mind. Owen asked me for this,” I said. “He wants to give Salina one more chance, and I’m going to respect his wishes. He would do the same for me. Hell, he did do the same for me with Donovan.”
Finn shook his head. “No, it’s not the same thing. Not at all. Donovan just had a stick up his ass about you being an assassin. Salina likes to use her water magic to torture people. They are two very, very different things.”
I could argue with him until I was blue in the face, and Finnegan Lane would still out-talk me, especially in this case, when we both knew he was right. So I decided to switch tactics.
“Forget about killing Salina for a second. I need you to look into something else for me,” I said. “Cooper said that someone had stolen several fountains off his property. Fountains that had been commissioned a few months ago by a guy named Henley.”
Finn’s eyes narrowed. “One of Salina’s husbands was named Henley. Her last husband, as a matter of fact. The one she killed a few months ago.”
I nodded. “So I’m guessing she got him to order the fountains so Cooper wouldn’t realize they were really for her. He wouldn’t have made them otherwise. Then, instead of paying for them, she got her giant bodyguards to steal them, possibly out of spite and so she could thumb her nose at Cooper. But that’s still a lot of trouble to go to. I think there’s something else going on. I want to know what’s so important about those fountains.”
“I’m on it,” Finn said, pulling his cell phone out of the pocket of his suit jacket and hitting some numbers.
While he reached out to his contacts, I gathered up the remains of our breakfast. I scraped a few leftovers into Rosco’s bowl, then put the dirty dishes into the sink. Jo-Jo brought her plate over to the counter, and she got out some towels to dry the dishes as I washed them.
“I know you’re worried about Salina,” Jo-Jo said. “And Owen too.”
I shrugged. “I only see this ending one way—with me killing Salina, or Salina killing me. She’s not going to get treatment, or whatever Owen thinks. Roslyn told me that Salina was cruel even before her father died, and I think she full-on snapped the night Mab murdered him.”
I told Jo-Jo about Fletcher’s files and how they had triggered my dreams, my memories, of that night.
When I finished, she nodded and stared at me with her clear, almost colorless eyes. “That would be more than enough to scar anyone for life. Deep down, I think Owen realizes that Salina, or at least the girl he remembers her being, is gone. But he cared for her once, and he doesn’t want to see her dead, even if he knows she’s brought it on herself.”
“I know, and it’s one of the things I love about him . . . even though I have a feeling it’s going to tear us apart in the end. Kincaid asked me to kill Salina, and Eva begged me to. I promised her, so that she wouldn’t go after Salina herself. Now I don’t know what to do.”
“It’ll be all right, darling,” Jo-Jo murmured, reaching over to pat my hand. “You’ll see. Everything will work out the way it’s supposed to.”
Faint, milky white clouds wisped through the dwarf’s eyes, and I got the sense that she wasn’t seeing me anymore. Jo-Jo had a bit of precognition. Most Air elementals did, since the wind whispered to them of all the things that might be, all the actions people might take, those events that might come to pass whether folks wanted them to or not. I wondered what Jo-Jo saw when she looked into Owen’s future, but I didn’t dare ask. I didn’t want her to tell me I wasn’t a part of it.