"You're safe now," I said in a soft voice. "He's not going to hurt you anymore."
Violet Fox's face was a mess. Her nose had been pushed halfway across her face, while her jaw reached out in the other direction. Her skin looked like putty that had been stretched to the breaking point over her distorted features.
Blood covered the bottom half of her ruined face like a mask, and thick drops of it slid down her neck, staining her coat. Her glasses had been snapped in two in the middle. The glasses were still hooked around her ears, but the two halves dangled like earrings against her bloody cheeks.
Pain filled her brown eyes, and for a moment, I didn't think she'd heard me. But Violet turned her head and stared at me. She squinted, and recognition flickered in her dull gaze.
"You..." she mumbled.
"Don't try to talk, sweetheart," I said. "We're going to get you patched up, and then you can tell us all about why somebody wants you dead and how you know about the Tin Man. Okay?"
Violet Fox didn't answer me. She'd already passed out.
Finn brought the car over, and we stuffed Violet Fox into the backseat. I took her broken glasses off her face and passed them to Finn for safekeeping. Then I used one of my knives to cut a strip off the bottom of my long-sleeved T-shirt. I wound the cotton around the girl's face to catch the blood oozing out of her broken nose. She didn't stir.
"She's going to bleed all over the backseat," Finn muttered.
"Do you know how much I paid for this car?"
"Too much," I said. "And don't worry about your precious leather seats. I'm sure Sophia can get the blood out."
"You going to call her to get rid of the dwarf 's body?"
Finn asked.
"Of course. Don't want to scare the coeds by leaving Pancake where he is and having them drive over him in the morning."
I grabbed Finn's cell phone again and hit 7 on the speed dial. Three rings later, she picked up.
"Hmph?" Sophia Deveraux let out her usual grunt of a greeting. The dwarf didn't like to strain her vocal cords with things like conversation.
"It's Gin. There's something you might find interesting over in one of the parking lots near Ashland Community College."
"Hmm." Her interested grunt.
I waited a moment to see if she'd say anything.
"Number?" Sophia asked, referring to the number of bodies I wanted her to come dispose of.
The Goth dwarf 's voice came out in a harsh rasp, like she'd spent the last fifty years chain smoking and knocking back jugs of mountain moonshine. I didn't know why Sophia's voice was the way it was, especially since I'd never seen the dwarf light up or drink anything stronger than iced tea. Another mystery I wasn't sure I wanted to solve. Because I had a feeling that there was something real bad in Sophia's past. Some sort of horrific accident, trauma, or even torture. Those were the only things that I could think of that would so completely ruin her vocal cords.
I also wondered why Jo-Jo had never healed her sister.
Maybe she'd wanted to and Sophia wouldn't let her.
Maybe it had just been too late by the time Jo-Jo had reached her. Whatever it was, whatever had happened to the Goth dwarf, I knew that it couldn't be good.
"Only one, but you might have a little trouble scraping him up off the ground," I replied. "There was a very large truck involved. Think you can handle it?"
"Hmph." Sophia's grunt was more guttural this time.
I'd offended her.
"Well, I have faith in you," I replied in a breezy tone.
"Are you at Jo-Jo's?"
"Um-mmm." That was a yes.
"Tell her to get ready. Finn and I are bringing over someone who needs her help. Badly. We'll be there in a few minutes."
Sophia hung up without another word. I did the same.
Finn drove out of the parking lot. He took great care to steer his car around the dwarf 's smushed body.
"You could just run over him," I said. "He's already dead, and it's not like you haven't done it before."
"Yeah, but I don't want bloody bits of dwarf stuck in my wheels for the next two weeks." Finn sniffed. "This is an Aston Martin, Gin. You don't run over dead bodies in an Aston Martin."
"Tell that to James Bond."
Finn shot me a dirty look as he pulled out onto the street.
It took Finn about twenty minutes to drive over to Jo-Jo's house. Jolene "Jo-Jo" Deveraux was Sophia's big sister - a two-hundred-fifty-seven-year-old dwarf and Air elemental of significant power, wealth, status, and social connections.
Given all that, Jo-Jo made her home in a ritzy subdivision by the name of Tara Heights. Within a few miles, we left the downtown grit and grime behind and entered an elegant area of carefully landscaped trees and spacious homes fronted by cobblestone sidewalks and yards big enough for the pros to play football in.
Finn eventually steered the car onto a street marked Magnolia Lane, and a few seconds later, Jo-Jo's house came into view - a three-story, plantation-style home straight out of Gone With the Wind. The sprawling, white structure perched at the top of a grassy knoll and featured a series of tall, round columns that supported the rest of the building the way a high-backed chair might prop up an old lady.
Finn parked the car and helped me drag the still-unconscious Violet Fox out of the backseat, up three steps, and onto the porch that wrapped around the spacious home. Thick, ropy tendrils of ivy and kudzu covered a trellis attached to the porch, along with the bare brown thorns of several rose bushes. A lone bulb burned on the porch. Out in the sloping yard, the cold, drizzling rain picked up, making the air smell of metal, dead leaves, and wet earth.
I let Finn take Violet's weight so I could pull open the screen door that fronted a heavier wooden one. Then I picked up the knocker and banged it on the interior door.
The knocker was shaped like a thick, puffy cloud - Jo-Jo's personal Air elemental rune.
I'd barely set the cloud rune back against the wood when the door wrenched open, and a woman stuck her head outside. Jo-Jo Deveraux looked like she'd planned on staying in for the evening. A short-sleeved, striped pink housecoat covered her stocky, muscular figure, while her bleached blond-white hair was done up in pink sponge curlers. Some sort of blue mud mask covered her face, and a pedicure pad held her toes out wide. She must have just painted her toenails, because the bright pink polish gleamed like it was still wet.
"About time you got here," the middle-aged dwarf said. "I've been pacing back and forth in front of the door for five minutes now."
"Why? Weren't there any parties or dinners on the society circuit tonight?" I asked, taking in the housecoat and curlers.
"Oh, there was a party or two," Jo-Jo drawled in a voice sweeter than clover honey. "But these old bones ain't as young as they used to be. Rain makes 'em ache. Besides, even I need a night off from the bullshit circuit every once in a while."
"Ahem."
Finn cleared his throat, his way of telling me to get down to business and that he was tired of propping up Violet Fox. Jo-Jo's pale gaze cut to the girl. Except for the pinprick of black at their center, the dwarf 's eyes were almost colorless, like two cloudy pieces of quartz.
"Hell's bells and panther trails," Jo-Jo said in a soft tone. "What happened to her?"
"She got on the wrong end of a dwarf 's fist - twice," I said, shouldering part of Violet's weight again. "Think you can fix her?"
Jo-Jo studied the girl a moment more, then nodded.
"Darling, I can fix anything short of death. But this one ain't going to be pretty."
Chapter Nine
Jo-Jo stepped aside so Finn and I could drag the unconscious Violet Fox into the house. The sweet smell of Jo-Jo's Chantilly perfume ticked my nose as we walked through a narrow hallway. A hundred feet later, the skinny corridor opened up into an enormous room that took up the back half of the house.
Padded chairs. Hair dryers. Counters crammed full of hairspray, nail polish, makeup, scissors, rollers, curling irons. A long mirror that ran down one wall. Towering stacks of beauty magazines. Photos of various hairstyles taped up everywhere. All that and more could be found in Jo-Jo's beauty salon, the place where the Air elemental used her magic as a self-proclaimed drama mama - someone who catered to the endless vanity of Southern women.
Debutantes, pageant contestants, bored trophy wives.
Jo-Jo served them all in a variety of ways. Perms, cuts, dye jobs, waxes, manicures, pedicures. If it had anything at all to do with beauty or making a woman's hair twice as big, tall, and hard as her head, Jo-Jo did it in her salon.
And then some. Air elemental magic was also terrific for fixing unwanted frown lines or putting someone's boobs back up to where they'd been ten years ago - temporarily, at least.
Of course, turning back the clock wasn't the only thing Jo-Jo did with her Air magic. The dwarf was also one of the best healers in Ashland. Hell, the whole South. Few people knew about her talents in that particular area, but Fletcher Lane had been one of Jo-Jo's oldest friends, and I'd inherited her, along with Sophia, when I'd taken over his assassin business. One sister to heal me, the other to get rid of the bodies I left behind. A nice arrangement.
Despite the sisters' hefty fees.
"Put her in one of the chairs," Jo-Jo directed before going over to the sink to wash her hands.
Finn and I hauled Violet Fox over to one of the swivel, cherry-red salon chairs. Then Finn grabbed a bottle of nail glue off the counter, pulled Violet's broken glasses out of his jacket pocket, and used the bonding solution to put the two pieces back together. I lifted Violet's purse from around her neck, perched on a stool a few feet away, and started going through it. Wallet, keys, breath mints, loose change, eyedrops, a compact. Nothing unusual or exciting.
A soft whine sounded in the corner. I looked over to see Rosco, Jo-Jo's fat, lazy basset hound, curled up in his wicker basket by the door. The old dog eyed the purse in my hands. His tail thumped once with hope.
"Sorry, dog," I said. "Nothing in here for you."
Rosco huffed in indignation, then dropped his brown-and-black head down on top of his tubby stomach and went back to sleep. His favorite pasttime, other than eating.
Jo-Jo pulled a chair over to Violet, clicked on a light, and gently unwound my T-shirt strips from her face. The damage looked more garish underneath the white fluorescent glow. The swelling had already set in, and Violet's face had puffed up to twice its normal size. Black and green and purple streaked out from her disjointed nose and sliced across her cheeks - what I could see of them underneath the dried blood.
"Hell's bells," the dwarf muttered again. "You said he only hit her twice?"
"Yeah," Finn said, holding the broken glasses together until the glue dried. "But he made them both count."
Jo-Jo shook her head. "Well, let's hope the poor girl remains unconscious for the next little bit. Because putting her face back the way it's supposed to be is going to be just as painful as what he did to her in the first place. No need to traumatize her more than she's already been tonight."
Jo-Jo examined Violet's face another minute before she went to work. She drew in a deep breath and held her hand in front of the girl's ruined features. Her palm hovered just above Violet's skin. A second later, the dwarf 's eyes began to glow an opaque white, as though thick clouds wisped through her bright gaze. A similar buttermilk-colored glow coated her open palm. Jo-Jo brought even more of her power to bear, until I could feel it crackling through the salon like static electricity, just itching to zap me. I scooted my stool back another foot from the dwarf.
Of the four elements, two were opposites, and two were complementary. Fire and Ice didn't go together, but Fire and Air did, just like Stone was the natural companion to Ice. Each element also had various offshoots, like metal for Stone, water for Ice, and electricity for Air, that some folks could tap into. Jo-Jo Deveraux was an Air elemental, which meant her magic was the exact opposite of my cool Stone and Ice power. Being in the presence of someone using so much of an opposing element always made me twitchy and unsettled. Jo-Jo's power just felt wrong to me, as would any Air or Fire elemental's magic.
Just like my Stone and Ice power would seem foreign to them.
But the worst part was the spider rune scars on my palms. As Jo-Jo brought even more of her power to bear, the silverstone metal embedded in my skin began to itch and burn. Silverstone was a very rare metal, with the unusual property of being able to absorb and store all kinds of magic. Many elementals wore runes made out of silverstone and used them to contain bits and pieces of their power that they could use when needed. Sort of like magical batteries. My mother, Eira, had used her snowflake rune that way, although it hadn't saved her in the end.
But silverstone not only absorbed the magic - it hungered for it, as though the metal was hollow and eager, aching even, for elemental power to fill it up and make it whole. I could feel the silverstone's desire for more magic, for more power, even though the skin on my palms had long ago grown over the metal that had been melted into my hands. I curled my fingers around Violet's purse, hoping the imitation leather would shield my hands enough to block the burning sensations in my palms. Didn't work. Never did. So I sat there and watched Jo-Jo.
The dwarf slowly passed her palm over Violet Fox's face. Air elementals made great healers because of their ability to tap into and use all the natural gases in the air - including oxygen. Right now, Jo-Jo was using her magic to force oxygen into Violet's body, making it circulate under the skin of her face, using the air molecules to heal what had been so viciously broken.
