Spider's Bite

I helped Finn out of the car and up the steps to the porch. A flimsy screen door fronted a heavier wooden one. I pulled the screen open, then reached forward and banged the knocker against the interior door. The knocker was shaped like a puffy cloud-Jo-Jo's personal Air elemental rune.

A dog barked once somewhere inside the house. Rosco, Jo-Jo's fat, lazy basset hound.

Heavy, familiar footsteps sounded, and I could smell her Chantilly perfume even out here. The door opened, and a woman stuck her face outside.

"What do y'all want this late?"

Even though it was close to midnight, Jolene "Jo-Jo" Deveraux looked like she was ready to go to Sunday church. A flowered dress covered her stocky, muscular figure, and a string of pearls hung from her short neck. Her feet were bare, although flirty pink polish covered her stubby toenails. The color matched her lipstick and eye shadow. Jo-Jo's bleached blond-white hair was coiffed into its usual, helmetlike tower of ever-tightening curls, although her black roots were starting to show. At an even five feet, she was tall for a dwarf, and her hair only added to her height. But I still had a good seven inches on her.

"Hey, Jo-Jo." I dragged Finn forward into the light. "It's Gin. My boy here could use some help."

The dwarf's eyes were almost colorless, except for the pinprick of black at their center.

Her pale gaze flicked over Finn's battered face, and the blood spatters that coated both of us like strips of wet wallpaper. The crow's feet and laugh lines that grooved her middle-aged face deepened with worry.

"Hell's bells and panther trails," Jo-Jo drawled in a voice as light and sweet as apricot syrup. "Come in, come in.

Take him in the back. You know where."

I half-dragged Finn inside and through a long, narrow hallway that opened up into a large room that took up the back half of the house. It looked like your typical southern beauty salon. Padded swivel chairs. Old-fashioned hair dryers. A couple of counters covered with hairspray, nail polish, scissors, rollers, and gap-toothed combs.

Pictures of models with hairstyles twenty years old covered the walls, while beauty and fashion magazines stood six inches deep on every available surface. A door to one side led to a room filled with tanning beds.

Jo-Jo Deveraux made her living as what she called a "drama mama," using her Air elemental magic on the beauty pageant, debutante ball, and society circuits in Ashland and beyond. If it could be purified, plucked, smoothed, tweezed, waxed, cut, curled, dyed, tanned, or exfoliated, Jo-Jo did it in her beauty shop. Air magic was great for smoothing out unwanted wrinkles and lifting someone's breasts back to the way they had looked five years and two kids ago.

Only a few select friends knew about the dwarf's side business as a healer. But Jo-Jo and Fletcher went way back, and I'd made generous use of her services over the years.

I hauled Finn over to one of the cherry-red chairs, put him down, and plopped myself in the next seat over. Jo- Jo scuttled in behind us. She went over to one of the sinks that lined the wall and washed her hands. Rosco, the basset hound who'd howled earlier, sat in his usual spot in a wicker basket by the door. The hound looked up at me, snuffled once, then dropped his brown and black head down on top of his tubby stomach. The only time Rosco moved out of his basket was when there was food involved.

Jo-Jo pulled a free-standing chair over to Finn. She clicked on a bright halogen light and angled it so that it spotlighted his beaten face. "What the hell happened, Finn?

When I saw you earlier tonight, you were smooching some sweet young thing at the opera house."

Jo-Jo Deveraux was a social butterfly of the highest order. Nothing she loved better than curling her hair, putting on a nice dress, some nicer shoes, and going out to a party, ball, or benefit. And she got invited to every single one. You knew a lot of people when you were two hundred fifty-seven and counting.

Finn winced. "Unfortunately, we got interrupted."

Jo-Jo opened her mouth to ask another question, but I cut her off.

"Fletcher's dead." Somehow I forced out the words, even though they burned my throat like acid.

Jo-Jo's pale gaze shifted to me. A shadow passed over her face, but she didn't seem overly surprised. In addition to being a healer, Jo-Jo also had a bit of precognition.

Most Air elementals did, given the fact they could listen and tap into vibrations and emotions in the air. Or perhaps the dwarf just realized we wouldn't have come here at this time of night if something bad hadn't happened. "Fletcher's dead? How?" For the second time I told my story. Opera house. River. Fletcher dead on the floor of the Pork Pit.

"I'm so sorry, Gin, Finn," Jo-Jo said in a soft voice. "Fletcher was a hell of a man.

Sophia and I loved him, just as much as you two did."

"Yes, he was," I replied. "And I know you did."

Each one of us fell silent, overwhelmed by thoughts and memories of the old man.

We didn't speak for a long while. I was grateful for the silence.

Jo-Jo examined Finn's face another minute before she went to work. She held her hand in front of his face, her palm not quite touching his bloody, bruised flesh. The dwarf's eyes began to glow an opaque, buttermilk white, as though thick clouds drifted through her gaze. A similar glow coated her palm.

Power crackled through the room, and I shifted in my chair. Air was an opposing element of Stone, and I always felt unsettled whenever so much of that sort of magic was being used. It just seemed wrong. Then again, my Stone and Ice magic would feel the same way to Jo-Jo or any other Air or Fire elemental.

Finn closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the chair, as though he were getting a facial. In a way, he was. Jo-Jo passed her palm over his face, forcing oxygen into his open wounds, making it circulate under his skin, using the molecules to heal and meld everything back together. It was like watching a time-lapse photo. The puffy swelling on Finn's face reduced. The purple bruises ringing his eyes faded. The cut on his forehead and the ones on his fat lips zipped up.

It took Jo-Jo a few minutes to fix all the damage, and when she finally dropped her palm, Finn looked like his usual, carefree self, right down to the devilish glint in his green eyes. I couldn't help but think of Fletcher, and how differently another elemental had used her Air magic on him. To flail and bruise and peel his flesh away one slow inch at a time.

Jo-Jo nodded, pleased with her work. "Now strip. And let's get a look at the rest of you." Finn grinned. "Why, darling, I thought you'd never ask."

Finn was all too happy to ditch the remains of his bloody, ruined tuxedo. Underneath, he wore a pair of navy blue boxers made out of high-end silk dotted here and there with white sailboats. Preppy. The boxers hung low on Finn's hips, bringing out the ruddy tones in his skin. His chest was broad and solid, and a generous dash of brown, curly hair led down below the waistband of the fabric. But ugly bruises marred his figure. The fist- shaped marks painted his body in pansy purples and garden greens.

Still, most women would have found Finn extremely sexy and highly fuckable, especially when you added the boyish charm of his face to the rest of the toned, slick package. But I'd seen it and done it all before, during my younger, more foolish years.

Jo-Jo held her palm out over Finn's chest and started healing the bruises on his torso and whatever damage lay inside his chest.

"You know, there's something wrong when a guy wears more expensive underwear than I do," I murmured. "You're just jealous more people see me in mine than they do you in yours," Finn said. "Still having those boring one-night stands with the young studs down at the community college?"

"Still sleeping with anything that will hold still long enough?" I countered. "Touche." Jo-Jo smiled at our banter, and, for a moment, the darkness of Fletcher's death receded. I half expected him to come through the salon door, a cup of chicory coffee in one hand and a wide grin stretching across his face. But the old man wasn't here.

And he never would be again. We all knew it. We were just dealing with it the only way we knew how. By going on with business as usual. It's what Fletcher would have wanted us to do.

After she finished with Finn, the dwarf turned to me. "Your turn, Gin," she said. I raised an eyebrow. "What makes you think I need healing?"

"Because you're you-too ballsy and stubborn to back down from anyone." Jo-Jo knew me too well. Even as Finn got dressed, I took off the vampire hooker's blood-spattered shirt, leaned back in my chair, and let the Air elemental work her magic. Jo-Jo removed my bandages and put her palm next to my wounded shoulder.

A tingle sizzled to life in the muscle under my skin and spread outward. Then another, then another. Hot, warm, insistent, until my whole shoulder throbbed with them.

I gritted my teeth, trying to ignore the odd sensation that was nothing at all like the cool caress of my Ice and Stone magic. The forced influx of magic also made the spider rune scars on my palms itch and burn, as the silverstone metal reacted to the Air power. Silverstone absorbed all kinds of magic, and many elementals used it to store bits and pieces of their own power, sort of like batteries they could draw on later when they needed a little boost. Even through my scarred skin, the metal hungered for the Air magic being forced into my body.

"You know you could have prevented this," Jo-Jo murmured, her eyes white in her face. "All you had to do was use your Stone magic to harden your skin. Ain't nothing can penetrate your magic."

The image of my mother, Eira, then my older sister, Annabella, disappearing into balls of fire flashed through my mind. For a moment, the air smelled like charred flesh. My stomach clenched.

"You know I don't use my magic like that unless I absolutely have to," I said. "It's okay for small things, but I'm not going to let myself depend on it. Not in my line of work. Because the moment I do is when it fails me. And then I die." Jo-Jo moved her hand to my kidneys, where Brutus had punched me. More tingles spread through my torso. "You're going to have to rely on it one day, Gin. Magic is just as strong as the person wielding it. You're strong. It's not going to let you down because you never let yourself down."

I didn't know if Jo-Jo was speaking in vague generalities or because she'd seen some smoky glimpse of the future. Either way, I wasn't buying it. "That's all well and good-until the person I'm fighting is stronger than me."

Flinging raw power, raw magic, at each other was how elementals fought. Testing their strength against the other person's. Sometimes, the duels took seconds.

Sometimes, hours. But eventually, someone's magic always prevailed, always overpowered the other person's. And when that happened, the unlucky elemental was overwhelmed and fell under the onslaught of the other's power. Suffocated by Air, frozen by Ice, hammered by Stone.

Burned alive by Fire, like my mother and older sister.

I shook my head, banishing the ugly memories. "No thanks. All I need to get the job done is my silverstone knives. Nothing else. Magic is too easy. Makes you take stupid chances, makes you think you're invincible, makes you sloppy. I'll use it when I have to, but I'm not going to depend on it."

I didn't mention the fact I'd already done enough horrid things with my magic to last a lifetime. That I'd killed with it long before Fletcher had taken me in off the streets.

That I'd lashed out with it without thinking, and used my power to crumble the stones of my own house so I could escape from my torturers. That the combination of fires the elemental had started and my magic made the whole structure come tumbling down. That Bria, my younger sister, had died because of what I'd done, been buried alive just like everyone else.

Some of the many reasons I didn't use my power like that now, unless there was no other option. It only reminded me of that darker time, when everything I'd known had been lost in one fiery night.

Jo-Jo finished her work and dropped her hand, but her pale eyes stayed on my face.

"We'll see."

The front door banged open, and heavy footsteps smacked against the hallway floor.

A few seconds later, Sophia Deveraux stepped into the salon.

Sophia was an inch taller than her older sister, and her body was thicker, with an extra layer of hard muscle. Where Jo-Jo was light, Sophia was dark-as in Goth.

Short, straight black hair clung to her head, matching her eye shadow, eyeliner, and lipstick. Her eyes were also a flat black. Instead of a dress, Sophia wore black jeans, black boots, and a black T-shirt embossed with hot-pink skulls. The skulls matched the plastic ones hanging off the spiked, black leather collar that ringed her thick throat. Even though she was a hundred and thirteen, Sophia had the moody adolescent look down pat.

Sophia flopped into one of the salon chairs and examined the pink glitter polish on her nails. Jo-Jo leaned over and patted her sister's hand. Despite their obvious differences, the sisters were close. Living together for more than a hundred years would do that to you. Sophia gave Jo-Jo a half smile, her most animated and pleasant expression.

"Any problems getting rid of the bodies?" I asked.

Sophia's black eyes met my gray ones. "Nuh-uh." The Goth dwarf's version of no.

Like Jo-Jo's healing, I'd also inherited Sophia's expertise when Fletcher retired from the assassin business. I didn't know exactly how Sophia disposed of the bodies I sent her way. What she did with them, where she put them, why she even liked doing that sort of dirty work in the first place. But the Goth dwarf could clean up like nobody's business. Sophia left every site pristine. No blood, no fibers, no hairs, no DNA, or evidence of any sort. The fact she baked the best sourdough bread in Ashland was an added bonus.