Heart of Venom

couldn’t complain. And I wouldn’t, because that would hurt his feelings. Besides, I’d been through worse—much worse.

Ten minutes later, cooper let go of his Air magic and dropped my hand. The copper glow was snuffed out of his eyes, and he sagged back against his recliner, causing the chair to creak weakly once more.

“There,” he said, sounding as tired as I felt. “I reckon that’s the best that I can do for right now.”

I slumped down in my chair too and took stock of

my body. The gunshot wound in my shoulder was completely healed, along with the burns on my arms, back, and legs, since those were the areas where cooper had focused most of his magic. cuts and scrapes still dotted my body, along with the rainbow clusters of bruises, but all of the open wounds had closed up, and the worst of

the midnight blues and putrid purples had faded out to healing greens and not-so-sickly yellows. I wasn’t in the best shape of my life, but cooper had managed to put me back together again.

He looked at me with anxious eyes, so I pushed away my exhaustion, got up, and stretched this way and that, like a cat waking up from a long, satisfying nap. My muscles ached in protest, but I ignored the twinges of discomfort. It was worth it to see cooper’s face crinkle up and beam with pride.

“Well, thanks, cooper,” I drawled. “I feel just fine and dandy now. If you’ve got any magic left, you might want to go outside and check on Owen. Some of Grimes’s men got hold of him and beat him up pretty good.”

cooper nodded, got to his feet, and hurried outside, his exhaustion seemingly gone.

Warren looked at Jo-Jo, then Sophia, then me. Without a word, he got up and followed cooper, shutting the door behind the two of them. A minute later, another gust of cooper’s Air magic rippled through the room, although it felt much fainter, given the distance and the door between us.

I sank back into my chair, trying once again not to let my exhaustion show, and faced the Deveraux sisters. They both looked at me with somber eyes. Rosco continued to nap on their feet.

“Tell us what happened,” Jo-Jo finally said in a soft voice.

I drew in a breath and started my story with the fight in the salon. I quickly moved on to my trip with Owen and Warren up the mountain, our rescue of Sophia from

the pit, and my stand at the top of the ridge against Grimes, Hazel, and their men. After that, all that was left to tell was my run through the woods, my swan dive off the cliff, my ride through the rapids, and finally, Owen finding me and fishing me out of the river.

I tried to spare them the worst of it, glossing over a lot of the details, keeping my voice upbeat, and trying to make it seem more like a grand adventure than a brutal fight for my life. I didn’t mention all of the sick, twisted things that Grimes had said to me about Sophia, the photos that he had of her, or how his house had been an eerie replica of Jo-Jo’s inside and out. Of course, Sophia knew some of it, since she’d been in the house too, but I figured that those were her secrets to tell, not mine.

“I’m sorry, darling,” Jo-Jo said, tears streaking down her cheeks like tiny rivers of crystal when I finally finished my story. “So very sorry that you had to go through all of that because of us.”

I shrugged. Fighting for my life against evil psychopaths with personal vendettas wasn’t anything new.

In fact, it had become rather routine over the past few months. Mundane, even. Grimes’s attack had just cut a little closer to home than some of the other ones.

“I wish that Fletcher had killed that bastard all those years ago,” Jo-Jo said in a grim voice. “I wish that I had killed him all those years ago.”

Sophia squeezed her hand, but the motion didn’t comfort Jo-Jo. If anything, it made even more tears well up in her eyes, spill down her face, and drip onto her dress. She let out a small, squeaky hiccup and pressed her fist against her mouth, as though that would hold back her grief.

In all the years I’d known her, I could count on one hand the number of times that I’d seen Jo-Jo cry, and most of those had been before, during, and after Fletcher’s funeral. My heart ached for her, but I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to say or how to comfort her in the face of her tears, her trembling body, and the worry swimming in her clear eyes.

“Don’t think about it right now,” I said. “Sophia and I both made it back, and we’re all safe now. Once cooper gets the hang of his magic, he can finish healing you, and then we’ll all be back to—”

I bit down on my lip, choking on my own words. I had started to say normal, but that wasn’t the right thing to say, because we wouldn’t be back to that for a long time, if ever. I’d never been one to sugarcoat things, but right now, I wanted to ease Jo-Jo’s mind more than anything else. If I could have reached inside her, scooped out her hurt, and shoveled it into my own heart, I would have— and Sophia’s too.

“It’s not over,” Jo-Jo said, finally wiping away her tears.

“Not by a long shot.”

“No,” I replied. “It’s not.”

“He’s never going to stop,” Jo-Jo said. “Not now. Not after you got Sophia away from him again. Not after you’ve embarrassed him. He’ll have to come after you to save face with his men and Hazel too. But more than that, he’ll want to come after you. He’ll want to teach you a lesson.”

“I know,” I said. “I know that he’ll come after me, that he’ll come after all of us.”

“Now what?” Sophia asked, her voice even harsher

than before and full of worry.

I leaned forward and looked at Sophia, then Jo-Jo, letting them see the determination in my wintry gray eyes— and the cold, cold promise of death.

“We let him come to us,” I said. “And then we kill him.”

Chapter Twenty-seven

cooper finished healing Owen, and we all moved on to the things that we needed to do next. Finn and Phillip left to go see what they could dig up on Grimes from their various underworld contacts and to find out if anyone had heard a whisper of what had happened on the mountain. Bria headed to the police station to do the same.

Roslyn went with her, so she could fill Xavier in on everything that had happened. Sophia helped Jo-Jo to one of the upstairs bedrooms, so they could both get some rest.

Rosco finally woke up and followed them, his toenails clicking against the floor, and cooper went to his own room to rest himself.

Meanwhile, I took a long, hot shower, slathered some more of Jo-Jo’s healing salve onto my lingering wounds, and changed into a pair of shorts and a T-shirt that Bria had left at cooper’s for me. I headed back downstairs to find Owen in the den, staring through the glass door into the backyard. He too had showered and changed and looked as handsome as ever in a black T-shirt and khaki shorts.

He turned at the sound of my bare feet softly slapping against the floor. “You look more like your old self.”

“So do you.”

He nodded. “I was waiting for you to finish in the shower so I could tell you that I’m heading over to country Daze with Warren and Eva. They’re waiting in the truck for me. Warren wants to check on Violet and make sure that he’s there in case any of Grimes’s men come into the store for supplies.”

I nodded. “Just be careful.”

“We will.”

He hesitated, then gestured at a case on the coffee table that I hadn’t noticed before. The top of the case was open, revealing a layer of black foam and my five silverstone knives gleaming inside. The ones that Owen had made for me, the ones that contained my magic, the ones that I’d given to him on the ridge.

The ones that I never thought I’d see again.