By a Thread

19

I frowned and sat up in bed. “Jo-Jo? What are you doing here?”

Jolene “Jo-Jo” Deveraux put her beauty magazine down on the nightstand beside her elbow. “Why, patching you up, of course.”

I shook my head. “But I don’t understand. Why aren’t you home in Ashland at your salon?”

Jo-Jo owned one of the busiest beauty salons in the city. She jokingly referred to herself as a drama mama because she made a very, very good living gussying up women of all shapes, sizes, and ages for everything from beauty pageants to weddings to fancy dinners with their rich husbands.

One of the reasons Jo-Jo’s salon was so popular was that she used her Air elemental magic to augment the more standard waxing, plucking, teasing, curling, perming, dyeing, tanning, and other beauty treatments she offered. Letting an Air elemental blast your skin with a pure oxygen facial was a great way to keep Father Time at bay, although some people took it too far, getting so many facials that their skin took on a tight, slick, sandblasted look. Jonah McAllister was infamous for having a face that was smoother than a twenty-year-old’s, despite being in his sixties with a thick coif of silver hair.

My thoughts darkened at the thought of the smug, smarmy lawyer and how he’d managed to fuck me over from hundreds of miles away. I was going to have to do something about McAllister when I got back to Ashland—something bloody, violent, and permanent. Despite the fact that I’d killed Mab, McAllister was still determined to be the death of me. Last night the lawyer had almost succeeded in taking me down by proxy by siccing Dekes on me. Oh, yes. McAllister was definitely on my to-do list now.

“Correction, I was in Ashland,” Jo-Jo said, answering my question. “But Finn called me and Sophia early yesterday morning talking about some sort of trouble you’d run into down here and how you were probably going to need my services before it all was said and done.”

So Finn had phoned Jo-Jo even before he and Owen had left Ashland. Well, that explained why the dwarf was here. I didn’t mind Finn calling in reinforcements, though. I’d needed them.

“So Sophia and I loaded up the convertible, dropped Rosco off with Eva and Violet, and came on down,” Jo-Jo added. “Eva’s staying with Violet at Warren’s house, and the girls were more than happy to watch Rosco for a few days.”

Rosco was Jo-Jo’s tubby basset hound and quite possibly the laziest dog on the planet. He wouldn’t even get out of his wicker basket in the corner of the salon unless there was food in the offing or a chance of getting his fat tummy rubbed. No doubt Eva Grayson and her best friend, Violet Fox, would spoil the dog even more than Jo-Jo already did.

“Once Rosco was taken care of, Sophia and I drove down lickety-split, since I had a feeling that you’d need me,” Jo-Jo continued.

In addition to being able to heal others, Jo-Jo also had a bit of precognition. Her Air magic let her hear all the whispers on the wind, all the possibilities and hints of things that might come to pass, just like my Stone magic muttered to me of all the things that had already come to be, all the ways and all the places that people had hurt the others around them.

“Good thing too, since you showed up this morning looking like death warmed over. But I took care of that.”

The dwarf reached over and patted my hand. Along with dolling up the folks who came into her salon, Jo-Jo also happened to be one of the best healers around. I’d lost count of the number of times she’d patched me up when I’d shown up at her house late at night, covered with blood and bruises from my latest job as the Spider.

The needles that I’d sensed when I’d been weaving in and out of consciousness hadn’t been Dekes at all—the pricking sensation had been Jo-Jo using her magic on me. The dwarf could tap into and control all the natural gases in the air the way that I could the stone around me. That’s how Air elementals healed others—by grabbing hold of the oxygen in the atmosphere and forcing it to circulate through wounds, cleaning out the cuts and scrapes, and making the molecules mend together all the rips, tears, and holes in someone’s skin—in my skin.

I reached up and touched my right shoulder; my collarbone was completely mended, the broken bones fused together and in their appropriate places once more. I’d expected nothing less, but still, something felt slightly off, like I wasn’t completely healed, although I knew that Jo-Jo wouldn’t have stopped using her Air magic on me until I was fully well again.

Thinking about the dwarf’s magic made me reach for my own power, and it was then that I realized what was wrong with me, what was missing—my magic.

I was always aware of my Ice and Stone magic, of the elemental power flowing through my veins, the way that a giant or dwarf would subconsciously sense their own inherent strength or humans would their fingers and toes. But now, that hidden force wasn’t there anymore. It was like a piece of my heart had been cut out and all that was left was an empty, aching chasm inside my chest. In a way, I felt as cold, numb, and dead inside as I had in the library last night after Dekes had shot me with that tranquilizer dart.

“It’s gone,” I whispered, looking at Jo-Jo. “My magic’s gone.”

The dwarf shook her head. “Not gone, darling. Not entirely. Your gas tank’s just running a little low right now. That’s what happens when a vampire sucks so much blood out of you. Reach for your power, really concentrate, and you’ll see what I mean.”

I did as she said. It took a moment, but I realized Jo-Jo was right. My magic was still there, that cool power deep down in the very center of my being—but there was just barely any of it to work with. I reached for my power. A few silvery sparks of magic flickered in my hand, centered over the spider rune scar in my palm, but that was it. There was no bright glow, no cold crystals, and no other indication that I had any kind of real elemental power at all. I grabbed my magic again, and the same thing happened. After a moment, I let go of my power completely. I didn’t want to waste what little I had left.

“A vampire sucking out someone’s magic is one of the few things that even I can’t heal,” Jo-Jo said. “I’m sorry, Gin. I wish I could fix it for you like I did everything else.”

I shrugged, struggling not to let her see just how upset I was, how hollow and empty I felt without my magic. “You did the best you could. It’s not your fault. Believe me, I’m plenty grateful for everything you did heal.”

I hesitated. “But how long will it take? For my magic to come back? Will it even . . . come back?”

Jo-Jo reached over and clasped my hand. “Of course it will come back. No matter what, your magic is a part of you, Gin. It comes from you, not anyone else. Never doubt that.”

Her words made some of the tightness in my chest ease.

“As for exactly when it will come back . . .” This time, Jo-Jo shrugged. “It’s hard to say. It will probably take a few days, at the very least.”

My stomach clenched. “That long?”

Jo-Jo nodded. “You’re a strong elemental, Gin, with a lot of raw power, but Dekes took almost everything you had last night. Your blood, your magic, and almost your life. Your neck was the worse mess that I’ve seen a vampire make in a long time.”

My fingers eased over to my neck, but the skin there was smooth and unbroken, and I knew there wouldn’t be any marks of Dekes’s vicious attack on me—not on the outside, anyway. But the vamp had hurt me more than I would have liked to admit, making me feel something that I didn’t often experience—fear.

The image of him rose up in my mind, his eyes glowing with my Ice and Stone magic, my blood smeared all over his lips, his fangs gleaming like crimson-coated daggers in his mouth. Phantom pain lanced through my neck, and my whole body tightened, as if the vamp were here and getting ready to sink his teeth into me again.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Jo-Jo asked in a soft voice.

Despite how tightly I held on to my emotions, the dwarf could always sense when I was struggling with something—that’s how well she knew me.

I shifted on the bed. “The bastard gnawed on my neck like a dog chewing a bone. He hurt me, Jo-Jo. More than I thought he would, more than I thought he could. I didn’t think there was anyone as powerful as Mab, but Dekes showed me just how wrong I was last night. I stupidly thought I could go in and take care of him as easily as I did his men at the hotel, but he almost killed me instead. Hell, he would have killed me if I hadn’t managed to play dead. It was just dumb luck on my part that I got away from him.”

“Your fight with Mab was a long time coming,” Jo-Jo said, her clear eyes locking with my gray ones. “You’ve focused so much energy on her these past few months that you’ve turned a blind eye to everything else. The fact is that there are people out there who are just as dangerous as Mab ever was, some of them with magic, and some of them without. The Fire elemental dying at your hands doesn’t change that.”

“So what do I do about it?” I asked, feeling just as lost as if I were still plodding through the dark marsh.

Jo-Jo smiled and patted my hand. “You do what you always do, darling. You keep going and fighting and struggling—and then you take the bastard down any way you can.”

The dwarf got up and started moving around the room, humming under her breath as she gathered up some clean towels and clothes so I could take a shower and wash the rest of the stink of the long night off me. I sat there on the bed and watched her work, turning over her words in my mind.

Jo-Jo was right. I’d been so focused on Mab that I’d forgotten that someone didn’t have to be an elemental to be dangerous—and that a vampire could kill me as easily as anyone else could. Whether I liked it or not, Dekes had almost done the deed so many others had tried to do and failed. But even worse, the vampire had scared me. I’d accepted that Mab would probably get the best of me, but I hadn’t thought Dekes would be such a threat, that he could come so close to killing me. The vampire had proved to me just how wrong I’d been. Sure, I’d had something of a deadline, given Callie’s situation, but I’d been stupid, arrogant, and sloppy even to waltz into his mansion without more information, especially about what kind of elemental magic he did or didn’t have, and I’d almost paid the ultimate price for my foolishness.

But if there was one thing I was good at, it was learning from my mistakes. Yes, Dekes had gotten the best of me last night, but I was still alive, still breathing, which meant I still had another chance to take the vamp down.

Jo-Jo might have healed my wounds from Dekes’s gruesome bites, but the horror that I’d endured at the vampire’s hands had still scarred me. The vicious brutality of his attack had left its own grooves and nicks on my black heart, right alongside the ones that Mab, LaFleur, Elliot Slater, and so many others had before.

But I’d repaid those marks in spades to the people who’d caused them—and I was going to do the same thing to Dekes very, very soon.

I got out of bed, took a shower, and put on some clean clothes. I still felt a little tired, the way I always did whenever Jo-Jo used her Air magic to bring me back from the brink of death. It would take my mind a few hours to play catch-up and realize that my body was whole and well once more. Normally, I would have gone back to bed for a few more hours, but I couldn’t rest today.

Not while Callie was still in danger. Not while Vanessa and her sister were still being held hostage at the vampire’s mansion. Not while Randall Dekes was still breathing. I’d rest after the vamp was dead.

It was going to be sooner than he’d ever fucking dreamed.

It was noon now, and the others were waiting in the downstairs living room, staring out at the ocean without really seeing the waves or the bright, sunny beauty of the day. They all jumped to their feet when I came into the room, and Owen immediately wrapped his arms around me, holding me tight. I buried my face in his neck and breathed in, letting his scent fill my nose.

“I was so worried about you,” he whispered.

“I know. I’m sorry.”

I didn’t tell him that something like this wouldn’t happen again because we both knew it would. Like it or not, violence was a part of my life. It had been ever since I was thirteen, and it wouldn’t stop now just because Mab was dead. But I was the Spider, and Fletcher had trained me to face whatever the world threw my way. He’d made me strong enough to do it time and time again, to take my licks and come back even tougher and more determined than before. I wasn’t about to disappoint the old man now, even if he was dead and gone.

I pulled back, stood on my tiptoes, and gently kissed Owen. He returned my kiss, drew back, and rested his forehead against mine—just holding me like I was holding him. I closed my eyes and concentrated on the feel of his body against mine, letting his warmth spill into the cold, dark places in my heart and mute the horrors I’d faced last night. And then I sighed with relief, with love, with everything I felt for him but always had so much trouble putting into words.

“I know,” he whispered again. “Me too.”

I could have spent the rest of the day in Owen’s strong, comforting embrace, but as tempting as that was, it wouldn’t solve the problem of how to kill Dekes. Like it or not, it was time for me to put on my game face again. So I opened my eyes and pressed another kiss to Owen’s lips before slipping out of his arms and heading into the kitchen.

I pulled open the refrigerator door and eyed all the vittles inside that we’d brought home from the grocery store yesterday, before moving over and doing the same thing to the cabinets. Once I’d taken stock of everything, I started grabbing the items I wanted. Buttermilk, flour, cornmeal, chicken, olive oil, shortening, salad fixings, and more soon crowded onto the kitchen counters.

“You’re not seriously going to cook now, are you?” Bria asked, eyeing the boxes and bottles that I’d lined up in neat rows. “Shouldn’t you still be resting?”

“I think I’ve rested enough,” I said. “Besides, I’m starving. Being drained by a vamp will do that to a girl.”

My sister didn’t smile at my gallows humor, but she did step into the kitchen and start rifling through the drawers, looking for dishes, glasses, silverware, and more. Finn, Owen, Sophia, and Jo-Jo settled themselves around the long, square table in the dining room that branched off the kitchen.

I washed my hands and got to work. First I added a generous dash of salt and black pepper to the flour that I’d poured into a small, shallow dish. Then I cleaned and soaked the chicken in a bowl full of buttermilk before dredging it in the flour mixture. A few seconds later, the first piece sizzled when I put it in the skillet full of olive oil that I’d heated on the stove. More pieces joined that first one, until the smell of meat filled the kitchen. Once I got all the chicken in the skillet, I took the rest of the buttermilk that was left in the carton and mixed it with the remaining cornmeal, forming a thick, creamy batter, while a black cast-iron skillet went into the preheated oven so that the shortening I’d coated it with would melt.

Cooking was one of my passions in life, and it never failed to make me feel better, even if I’d almost had my neck chewed off by a vamp last night. The familiar motions of mixing and stirring soothed me, as did the aromatic smells of the hot oil and spicy seasonings in the air. By the time I slid a pan of cornbread into the oven to bake, I was starting to feel like my old self.

While I got started on a spring spinach salad, I told the others what had happened at Dekes’s mansion. How the vamp had known who I was thanks to McAllister and how Dekes had used Vanessa and Victoria as hostages against me and drugged me into submission. How I’d pretended to be dead and had found my way through the marsh over here to the other side of the island. The only things I skimmed over were the brutal details of the vamp’s attack on me and that he’d almost torn my throat open in order to get every drop of magic he could out of my blood.

“So he’s using the two women against each other,” Finn said. “Vanessa can’t leave or fight back because Dekes has Victoria as leverage.”

“And he’s draining the blood and their magic out of them again and again,” I said. “That’s probably why I didn’t sense Vanessa’s magic, because Dekes had recently fed off her. And Victoria was in really bad shape: thin, unconscious, and anemic. It won’t be long before Dekes kills her. Then he’ll do the same thing to Vanessa because he won’t have her sister to keep her in line anymore. After that, he’ll find some more elemental women, bring them to his mansion, and do the same thing to them. He’s one sick bastard.”

“Sick,” Sophia rasped.

The sound of the Goth dwarf’s hoarse, broken voice reminded me that I wasn’t the only one here who’d been tortured. Many years ago, Sophia had been kidnapped by a man named Harley Grimes and had been forced to submit to all the unspeakable things Grimes had done to her, including making her breathe in elemental Fire, which had destroyed her vocal cords. Jo-Jo could have easily healed Sophia and made her voice whole once more, but the Goth dwarf had refused her sister’s offer. I supposed Sophia felt the same way about her ruined vocal cords as I did about my spider rune scars. They were both reminders of what we’d gone through—of what we’d survived.

I looked at Sophia and saw the sadness that always glittered in her black eyes. My suffering at the hands of Dekes had been nothing to what she’d endured with Grimes. Somehow, the dwarf had found the strength to survive all the horrors Grimes had inflicted on her. She was one of the strongest people I knew, and she made me want to be just as tough as she was. I was going to be, I vowed. Because I’d be damned if I left Blue Marsh while Dekes was still alive.

“So what happened on your end?” I asked, turning the pieces of chicken over in the skillet so that the other sides could brown.

Finn shrugged. “We could all tell that Dekes’s giants were getting a little too interested in us, especially after you left with the man himself. So I suggested to Bria and Owen that we make good our getaway. We slipped away from the pool, but two of the giants followed us. They chased us into another wing of the mansion, well away from the press conference.”

“Did you have any trouble with them?” I asked.

“Not after I blasted the first one’s brains out of his skull with the help of my new silencer,” Finn said in a not-so-modest voice.

My foster brother might be a slick, polished investment banker, but he also could shoot the wings off a fly with any gun he picked up. Finn was even better with firearms than I was, and he always had one or two tucked away on his body somewhere, just like I did my knives.

I thought of my knives lying on the mantel in Dekes’s library. That was something else the vampire was going to pay for—taking away my weapons.

“As you can imagine, the other guy got a little upset that his buddy’s blood was all over his face,” Finn continued. “Which gave Owen enough time to pick up a nearby candlestick and do his thing with it.”

“It was solid silverstone,” Owen said. “A couple of good whacks across the back of the head, and the second giant went down.”

Not too long ago, I’d seen Owen take on a group of giants using a blacksmith’s hammer, so I knew just how skilled a fighter he was. He could wield heavy, blunt weapons just as easily as I could knives.

“It was a thing of beauty, wasn’t it, Owen?” Finn asked.

The two men exchanged a high five across the table. Bria rolled her eyes and shook her head at their antics.

“And while the boys were congratulating themselves on their awesomeness,” Bria said, “I grabbed another candlestick and took care of a third giant who’d snuck up behind them and was about to squeeze Finn’s head between his hands like it was an oversize lemon.”

Finn draped his arm over my sister’s shoulders and pulled her close. “Something that I will be forever grateful for, cupcake.”

“If you don’t stop calling me cupcake, I’ll hit you with the candlestick next time,” Bria groused, but she couldn’t hide the smile on her face.

“Anyway,” Owen said. “We came back here to the beach house to wait for you.”

“But I didn’t show up.”

Owen’s eyes met mine. “No, you didn’t show up.”

Nobody said anything, but I could see just how concerned the others had been about me. Just thinking about what Dekes had done to me last night made their faces tighten with worry—even Bria’s.

Owen cleared his throat. “So we got some more guns and some more weapons, and we went back out to Dekes’s mansion. But everything seemed normal there. None of the guards looked worried, and there was nothing to indicate that anything out of the ordinary had happened. It didn’t even look like there was much of a fuss being made over the giants we’d killed earlier. We didn’t know what to think, and we were about to storm the mansion when Finn got a call from Sophia, saying you’d come here to the house after all. We got back as quickly as we could.”

I knew what had happened after that. Jo-Jo had healed me, and the others had tried to get some sleep while they waited for me to wake up.

By the time we all got caught up, the food was ready. Buttermilk fried chicken, hot, crusty cornbread, a baby spinach salad with diced tomatoes, shredded cheddar cheese, red onion, and crispy bacon crumbles, a roasted veggie medley of red potatoes, carrots, and zucchini. I even used the limes in a basket on the counter to make a tart, tangy limeade.

We fell silent as we ate, and I relished every single bite, enjoying the play of sweet and salty, hot and sour, on my tongue. I hadn’t been kidding when I’d said I was starving, and I ate more than everyone else combined. But no matter how much I ate, it didn’t quite fill in the hollow ache I felt deep down inside, in the place where my magic would normally be. Still, I stuffed myself, knowing I’d need the energy for the long night ahead—because Dekes wasn’t living to see another sunrise.

Not when he had two women under his thumb and could kill them at any time. At first, I’d only wanted to protect Callie from the vamp, but Vanessa and Victoria needed my help as well. And after what had happened last night, things were personal between me and Dekes, and there was only one way they were going to end—with the vampire dead at my feet.

We’d just finished eating when a sharp rap sounded on the front door.

A second later, we were all in motion. Finn and Bria pulled guns out from against the smalls of their backs and took up positions close to the front door, while Owen and Sophia slipped into the rear of the house to see if there was anyone waiting to come in from that direction. Jo-Jo stood against a wall out of Finn’s and Bria’s lines of fire, her Air magic making her eyes glow a faint, milky white, ready to either attack or heal with her power. I grabbed a knife out of the butcher’s block in the kitchen and stood at an angle behind the front door.

The rap sounded again, a little harder this time. Whoever was outside knew we were in here and wasn’t going to take no for an answer. Worst mistake they’d ever made, even if they didn’t know it yet.

Finn looked at me and raised his eyebrows in a silent question. I nodded back, telling him I was ready. Finn put his gun down by his leg and opened the door, ready to smile and send whoever was outside on their merry way if they’d knocked on our door by mistake—or raise up his weapon and blast them if it wasn’t a mistake. And if Finn didn’t finish the job, I’d step up with my knife and make sure that they got the point.

But instead of Dekes or his goons, Donovan stood outside on the porch. The detective glared at Finn a second before shoving his way into the beach house.

Finn shook his head. “Stand down!” he called out so that Sophia and Owen would hear him in the back of the house.

“Where the hell is Gin?” Donovan muttered, moving deeper into the hallway inside the front door. “I know she’s here, since this is the address where Bria told Callie you all were staying at. I need to talk to Gin—right now.”

I stepped out from behind the door. “Right here, Detective. Is there something I can help you with?”

Donovan whirled around in surprise. His eyes fell to the knife that I clutched in my hand, and his face hardened that much more.

“You’re not as clever as you think you are,” the detective said in a harsh voice. “You never are.”

“What do you mean by that?” I asked.

“It means that Randall Dekes is still alive and well.”

I shrugged. “So? If I remember correctly, you didn’t want me to kill the vamp in the first place.”

“I didn’t then, but things have changed.”

My eyes narrowed at his cold, angry, frustrated tone. “What happened?”

Donovan sighed and ran a hand through his black hair. “The bastard came to my house and took Callie.”