The older dwarf made her living as what she called a "drama mama," using her elemental magic on all the southern debutantes, trophy wives, and grand old dames who frequented her popular salon. Cuts, perms, dyeing, waxing, exfoliating. If it had something to do with changing or improving someone's appearance, then the dwarf was an expert on it. And if you really wanted your skin to glow for that special occasion, then you came to Jo-Jo's for one of her signature Air elemental facials.
Cherry red salon chairs, beauty magazines stacked three feet high in places, buckets of makeup, every conceivable shade of pink nail polish. All that and more fought for space in the salon, cluttered together in a cozy way.
Rosco, Jo-Jo's beloved basset hound, snoozed in his wicker basket in the corner. His brown and black ears twitched once, but he didn't wake up at the sound of us entering the salon. Not surprising. If there wasn't food involved or a chance to be petted in the offing, then Rosco wasn't much interested in things.
I peered at the familiar furnishings, but everything seemed like it had a thick fog wrapped over it. Still, the blurry sight of the salon and Rosco comforted me, no matter how much my brain was distorting them right now.
"Put her in the chair," Jo-Jo instructed her sister. "Quickly now. You can see how much blood she's lost."
"A little more than usual," I murmured as Sophia hefted me into position. "Girl got in a lucky shot on me. My own fault, really, for not remembering that she was even there to start with."
"Babbling."
This time, Sophia Deveraux was the one who spoke, in a raspy, broken voice that sounded like she'd spent her entire life smoking cigars, chasing them down with barrels of mountain moonshine, then chugging antifreeze just for kicks. Of course, I knew that she didn't actually do any of those things. Sophia didn't talk much, given her grinding tone, and I'd always wondered what traumatic thing had happened to her to so completely ruin her voice. But I'd never asked. It couldn't be anything good, not with the quiet, bone-deep sorrow that radiated off the dwarf at times. Still, I made the effort to roll my head to the side to look at her.
At a hundred and thirteen, Sophia was still in the prime of her life, unlike Jo-Jo, who was firmly entrenched in middle age. And that wasn't the only difference between the two dwarven sisters. Jo-Jo was a southern lady through and through with her pearls and pink dresses, whereas Sophia had a fondness for Goth gear.
Tonight, Sophia wore a black terrycloth robe covered with smiling skeletons. Her hair was a short black stain that brushed up against the absolute paleness of her face, which was even more ashen tonight since her lips were free of the crimson or even black lipstick she sometimes wore. At five feet one, Sophia was tall for a dwarf and had a good inch on Jo-Jo. Sophia was also much stronger than her middle-aged sister, and the black fabric of her robe did little to hide her thick, sturdy body.
Jo-Jo, who'd stepped over to the sink to wash her hands, jerked her chin at her sister. "Get a good grip and hold her down. She's lost a lot of blood, so this is going to hurt."
Sophia nodded, moved forward, and put her hands on my shoulders, securing me to the salon chair. The dwarf's grip was so strong, so firm, that it felt as if my entire upper body had been clamped down with a silverstone vise.
"Sorry, Gin," Sophia rasped.
I would have shrugged my shoulders, telling her that it was okay, but my body wouldn't move. Nothing ever did after Sophia got hold of it.
Jo-Jo finished washing her hands, then dragged a free-standing halogen light over to me, angling it down so that it illuminated my body. The dwarf picked up a pair of scissors from a stack of beauty magazines and cut open my cargo pants and other layers, exposing the ugly gunshot wound in my thigh. Despite the makeshift tourniquet that I'd applied, blood still trickled out of the hole in a steady stream.
Jo-Jo tilted her head and studied the wound. Then she pulled another chair over to me, sat down in it, and raised her hand. A buttermilk white glow coated the dwarf's palm, and the same light filled her colorless eyes, as though clouds were drifting through her pale gaze. Her Air magic filled the room, as the dwarf fully embraced her elemental power.
The sudden influx of magic caused the spider rune scars in my palms to itch and burn, just like they always did whenever I was exposed to so much of another elemental's power. That's because the scars were made out of silverstone, a special metal that was highly prized for its ability to absorb all forms of elemental magic.
Although the silverstone had long since hardened in my flesh, it always seemed to me like the metal in my hands actually hungered for magic, as if the silverstone were some sort of parasite inside me just waiting for the chance to soak up all the power it could possibly hold-and then some. Having the metal in my hands was what had made it so difficult for me to use my Ice magic. For years, the silverstone had absorbed my power even as I brought it to bear, since Ice and Fire elementals almost always released their magic through their hands. It was only during a recent fight to the death with another Stone elemental that I'd been able to tap into enough of my Ice magic to blast through the blockage. Now, the silverstone scars held my Ice power instead of preventing me from using it.
A few weeks ago, the feel of Jo-Jo's warm, healing Air magic, which was so different from my own cool Ice and Stone power, would have made me grind my teeth together. The dwarf's magic just felt wrong to me, like a pair of shoes that were too tight.
But ever since I'd used my Ice magic to numb my body when I was fighting LaFleur, the feel of the dwarf's magic hadn't bothered me quite as much. Oh, it still annoyed me, still made that primal little voice in the back of my head mutter, but I didn't snarl at the sensation anymore. At least, not as often. Or maybe that was because I knew that Jo-Jo was healing me, not hurting me with her magic like so many others had done over the years.
Jo-Jo leaned forward so that her palm was an inch above the black, bloody hole in my leg. Something hot sizzled to life on the surface of my thigh, the first prick of what morphed into a thousand needles stabbing deeper and deeper into my skin until it felt like my whole leg was on fire.
The sensation was just Jo-Jo using her magic. Air elementals healed people by tapping into all the natural gases in the atmosphere, especially oxygen, and making them circulate through wounds. The dwarf was using her Air power, using the oxygen, to push the bullet out of my thigh, repair all of my broken blood vessels, and pull the ragged edges of my skin back together.
And it hurt like hell.
Even though Jo-Jo was healing me, her magic was still the opposite of mine. Two elements always complemented each other-like Air and Fire-and two elements always opposed each other-like Fire and Ice. The dwarf's Air magic was the opposite of my Ice and Stone magic, and her using that kind of power just felt wrong to me, the same way that my magic would seem strange to any other Air or Fire elemental.
Even if I'd wanted to move, to squirm away from the dwarf, her elemental power, and the hot, invisible, healing needles stabbing me, I couldn't have-not with Sophia's hands clamped down on my shoulders.
So I gave myself over to Jo-Jo's magic, drifting in and out of consciousness while the dwarf worked on me. Sometime later, something thunked into a metal pan-the bullet that Sydney had put into me. A few minutes after that, the needles of pain started dying down in my leg before disappearing. I sighed, my body going limp in the salon chair. Jo-Jo's magic might not bother me as much as it had before, but I was still glad when she stopped using it.
"Leg's done." Jo-Jo's voice seemed distant and far away, even though I knew that she was still right there leaning over me. "Let's get that silverstone vest off her and look at those wounds in her shoulder now."
"Uh-huh." Sophia grunted her agreement.
Hands moved me around, unzipping my silverstone vest and stripping it off me. The snip-snip-snip of scissors sounded again, as Jo-Jo cut through more of my gray layers, and the warm air in the salon swirled against my bare skin.
"Not nearly as bad as the leg wound," the dwarf murmured. "These didn't hit anything too important, at least."
Once again, the feel of the dwarf's Air elemental magic gusted through the room, and the needles started pricking me once more, now centered in my shoulder. But this time, the pain wasn't as intense and didn't last nearly as long. Two more thunks sounded as Jo-Jo used her power to fish the bullets out of my body.
"Good as new," Jo-Jo pronounced a few minutes later.
I didn't feel as good as new. Being healed, even by an Air elemental, took a toll on your body, as you suddenly went from knocking on death's door to being in one piece again. The mind needed some time to play catch-up and realize what was going on. As close as I'd come to dying tonight, I could sleep for the next eight hours and still wake up feeling tired. In fact, I could have drifted off right now, but I forced myself to keep my eyes open.
"Thanks," I murmured.
Despite Jo-Jo's ministrations, my words still slurred a bit, probably from the blood loss.
"You're welcome, darling," Jo-Jo said. "But where's Finn? Why isn't he with you? Why didn't he bring you in?"
"He didn't go with me," I mumbled.
Jo-Jo frowned. "Why not?"
It took some effort, but I raised my head up to look at her. "Because he didn't know that I was going after Mab tonight, and I didn't want him there while I did. I didn't want him there in case things went bad, which they did."
Jo-Jo and Sophia both stilled. They exchanged a glance over my head before the both of them looked back at me again.
"You went after Mab?" Jo-Jo asked in a soft voice.
"Alone?" Sophia rasped.
The scene replayed itself in my mind. My finger squeezing the trigger. The bolt leaving my crossbow on its perfect path toward Mab's black eye. The giant getting in the way at the last possible second.
"I tried," I muttered, my heart twisting with shame at the memory of my failure. "But one of her giant bodyguards took the bolt meant for her instead. So I missed her. I missed her."
In a tired voice, I told the dwarven sisters everything that had happened tonight. As I finished the story, hot tears scalded my eyes.
"I had her too-dead to rights. She was right there in front of me. All I had to do was pull the trigger, and it would have all been over. No more Mab hunting the Spider, no more threats against Bria, no more danger for the people that I love. And I missed. Can you believe that? Me, Gin Blanco, the Spider, supposedly the best assassin around, or at least the best semiretired assassin around, and I missed her. I fucking missed her."
Jo-Jo put her hand on my arm. "It's okay, Gin. Everything's going to be okay. You'll see."
The dwarf's voice dropped to a low murmur, and once again her eyes took on a faint, milky white glow, as if she wasn't even really looking at me. In addition to her healing magic, Jo-Jo also had a bit of precognition. Most Air elementals did. They could listen to and interpret all the emotions and feelings in the atmosphere the same way that I could hear the ones that had sunk into the stone around me. But where my magic told me of things that had happened in the past, Air elementals got glimpses of things that might be flashes of possible futures. Just another way in which our two elements, our two magics, were the opposite of each other.
But if Jo-Jo said that everything was going to be okay, I believed her. The dwarf had been right about too many things before for me to doubt her now. Her whispered words brought me some much-needed comfort. So much so that I let go of my anger at myself-let go of my shame and my miserable sense of failure. I wanted to ask Jo-Jo about her cryptic words, but I just didn't have the strength left for that. Not tonight. My eyes drifted shut, and I felt myself falling into the darkness once more.
"Wake her?" Sophia rasped in a concerned voice.
"No," Jo-Jo said. "Gin needs her rest now."
Jo-Jo's hand slid through my hair, untangling the snarled brown locks one by one. I might have only imagined it, but I thought that the dwarf leaned down and put her lips close to my ear.
"Don't worry, darling," Jo-Jo murmured. "You'll get another shot at Mab. Sooner than you think."
Comforted, I breathed in. The sweet smell of her perfume was the last thing that I remembered before the world went black.
Chapter 6
I woke up the next morning in one of the guest bedrooms on the second floor of Jo-Jo's house. For a moment, I just lay there in my warm, soft cocoon, staring up at the swirls of blue and white in the cloud-covered fresco that decorated the ceiling. Then I started replaying the events of last night in my mind-again.
Missing Mab. Running through the forest. Stabbing giants left and right. Facing down Gentry and the girl. Stumbling through the snow and driving over here to the salon. Not the best or most successful night that I'd ever had as the Spider, but I supposed it had turned out all right in the end.
Because I should have been dead.
Everything that could have gone wrong had. At the very least, I should have bled out from that gunshot wound in my thigh. Maybe I would have, if I hadn't tied that tourniquet around my leg and used my Ice magic to numb it.
But what really bothered me were my emotions. I'd been melancholy last night, moody, and frustrated that I hadn't managed to kill Mab. Jo-Jo might have healed my body, but the dwarf hadn't eased my anguish. Even now, the melancholy, the frustration, the sense of failure, gnawed at me, bothersome termites burrowing deeper and deeper into my black heart, chipping away at the coldness there.
I forced my thoughts away from my epic failure. After all, this was another day, as Scarlett O'Hara would say, and here I was, still alive, still breathing, and still determined to do what needed to be done. Jo-Jo had patched me up, made me whole and healthy once more, which meant that I still had a chance to kill Mab-
