I grimaced again at the thought, but then I nodded.
“You’re right. It’s not pretty, but I think it will work.”
We moved back over to Jo-Jo, picked up her again, and shuffled forward until she was in the hallway. Then we put her down on the sheet of Ice. The cold crystals seared the bottoms of my bare feet, but I didn’t care. All that mattered was saving Jo-Jo. Bria and I leaned down, each of us grabbing one of Jo-Jo’s legs.
Then we pulled her across the Ice.
Bria had been right. With the slick surface, we were able to move farther and faster than if we’d still been trying to carry Jo-Jo. Rosco trotted along beside us, his black toenails digging into the Ice for traction.
We were still careful, though, trying not to jostle her any more than necessary. I hated doing this to Jo- Jo, dragging her along like she was just another body that I needed to dispose of, but we didn’t have a choice, not if we wanted to get her to cooper before it was too late.
Jo-Jo didn’t utter a sound the whole time, although I knew how much pain she had to be in, not only from her wounds but also at the thought of what Grimes would do to Sophia. Instead, she fixed her gaze on the ceiling. The clouds that had been painted up there matched the white mist that filled her eyes.
But what made my stomach clench were the scarlet smears left behind on the Ice, like long, thin talons trying to tear into the crystals. I couldn’t tell if the stains were from all of the blood that covered Jo-Jo’s clothes or if her wounds had started bleeding again. It didn’t much matter, since I couldn’t do a damn thing about it either way.
Not one damn
Jo-Jo wasn’t going to die, I vowed. I wasn’t going to
When we reached the end of the hallway, Bria bent down and sent another wave of Ice crystals rolling out in front of her, coating the front porch.
We had managed to tug Jo-Jo out onto the porch and started to pick her up again to carry her down the stairs when a car pulled up the driveway and stopped in front of the house. I tensed, thinking that maybe Grimes and Hazel had come back for their men, after all, or maybe even for Bria and me. But after a moment, I recognized the silver Audi and realized who it belonged to.
A woman opened the driver’s-side door, got out, and stepped around the car. Like Bria and me, she was dressed down, in a black T-shirt, khaki shorts, and black strappy sandals, but the simple clothes only seemed to enhance the generous swell of her breasts, her toned legs, and all of the lush, lovely curves in between. She pushed her sunglasses up onto her head to hold back her black hair. The bright morning sun brought out the rich color of her toffee skin and eyes, further enhancing her beauty.
Roslyn Phillips gave us a happy wave and headed toward the porch, somehow not noticing the two dead men lying in the grass off to her left.
“What are y’all doing out here?” she called out. “I thought that y’all would be back in the salon where it was cool—”
What she did finally notice was the blood on Bria and me and the fact that Jo-Jo was lying on the porch between us. The smile slipped off her face, her eyes widened, and her mouth dropped open in surprise and growing horror.
“Gin?” Roslyn asked in a hesitant voice.
“Open your car door!” I yelled at her. “Now!”
Roslyn didn’t ask any questions as she hurried around the car, yanked open the back passenger door, and pulled out the basket of vegetables that had been sitting there.
Tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and more tumbled out of the container and rolled across the driveway. Once that was done, she ran over to the porch. Bria and I started to lean forward to grab Jo-Jo’s shoulders and ankles again, but Roslyn waved us away.
“Don’t worry,” Roslyn said. “I’ve got her.”
She crouched down and scooped up Jo-Jo like the dwarf didn’t weigh any more than a small child. It was bizarre, seeing svelte Roslyn holding stocky Jo-Jo in her arms, but it wasn’t entirely unexpected. Roslyn wasn’t an elemental, not like Bria and I were, but she was something that was even better in this situation: a vampire.
My eyes narrowed. “You’ve been drinking Xavier’s 2 blood.”
Like all vampires, Roslyn had to drink blood to live, but she got more than just vitamins and nutrients from it. Depending on whose blood she was chugging down, a vampire could absorb everything from an elemental’s Fire magic to a dwarf’s toughness from a frosty glass of O-negative. Even regular old human blood was enough to give most vamps enhanced senses and above-average strength. Since Xavier, Roslyn’s significant other, was a giant, it only made sense that she was strong enough to pick up Jo-Jo.
Roslyn nodded. “Xavier says that my drinking his blood makes him feel better about me working at the club so late. He figures that if I have his strength, or at least a portion of it, then it’s the next-best thing to him being there on nights when he’s out working the police beat with Bria.”
“Remind me to thank him for that,” I murmured.
Roslyn quickly carried Jo-Jo over to her car and ma— neuvered her into the backseat, while Bria raced back inside the house. I climbed in beside Jo-Jo, and Rosco squeezed into the footwell, covering my bare feet with his warm, plump body. A few seconds later, Bria reappeared and slid into the front passenger seat, her arms full of towels.
“Where to?” Roslyn asked as she jumped into the driver’s seat.
“Cooper Stills’s place,” I said. “Start heading north. I’ll give you directions as we go along.”
“You got it.”
I took Jo-Jo’s bloody hand in mine as Roslyn threw the car into gear, backed up, turned around, and zoomed down the long driveway.
Chapter Six
While we raced toward cooper’s place, Bria passed me the towels that she’d grabbed from the salon. I used the cloth to keep steady pressure on Jo-Jo’s wounds, which had started bleeding again, despite the healing ointment that I’d slathered on them.
“Who did this?” Roslyn asked, smoothly zooming her car around a sharp curve. “And why?”
Bria shook her head. “I don’t know. We were in the salon, eating and talking, when these guys burst into the house. It looked like they’d followed Sophia there.
They took her and shot Jo-Jo. Gin and I killed some of the men in the salon . . .” She looked over her shoulder at me.
“And I took out two more outside the house,” I said, finishing the story. “But they still managed to get away with Sophia.”
Roslyn eyed me in the rearview mirror. “Gin?”
“His name is Harley Grimes,” I snarled. “And he’s a fucking dead man.”
I didn’t say anything else, but Roslyn and Bria exchanged a glance. They had heard the vengeance in my voice, and they knew exactly what it meant.
At the sound of Grimes’s name, Jo-Jo let out a low moan and weakly thrashed against me. I put a bloody hand on her forehead and smoothed back a few strands of her hair, trying to calm her down. Despite the violence that she’d suffered, her white-blond curls were still as perfect and springy as ever. So was her makeup, except for the drops of blood on her face.
“Shh,” I said. “It’s okay. Don’t try to talk. We’re on our way to cooper’s right now. He’ll be able to heal you.”
At least, that was my hope. The only thing I’d ever heard of cooper doing with his magic was using it to help him build weapons, sculptures, and fountains in his blacksmith’s forge. But he had Air magic, and he was Jo-Jo’s best chance of making it through this alive.
