"And then what are you going to do?" Finn asked.
"You kill Jake, and Jonah will come down on you like a ton of bricks. Hell, he might even get Mab Monroe involved at that point."
A few weeks ago, someone had set me up to be killed as part of a larger power play against Mab Monroe, to try to wrest control of Ashland away from her. I'd gotten caught in the middle, which meant I was already more involved with the Fire elemental than I'd ever wanted to be.
I thought of that piece of paper in the file Fletcher had compiled about my family's murder, the one with Mab's name on it. Maybe I'd always been involved with the Fire elemental - I just hadn't known it. "I'll deal with Jake McAllister when he makes his move."
Finn opened his mouth again, but I held up my hand to cut him off.
"Enough talk," I said. "We have other people to deal with today, remember? Warren T. Fox. So let's go get Violet and see what Grandpa has to say for himself."
Finn and I left Sophia to clean up the remaining mess and headed over to Jo-Jo's to pick up Violet Fox. Finn had called ahead to say we were on our way, and the two of them waited on the front porch for us. Both sat in rocking chairs that creaked and cracked with every pass back and forth. Jo-Jo had dragged Rosco's basket outside, and the fat, lazy basset hound sat at the dwarf 's feet, snoozing in a patch of sunlight that sliced across the porch slats.
Sophia must have lent Violet some of her clothes, because the girl was dressed in a pair of black jeans and a matching T-shirt with an enormous set of red lips on it. Despite Violet's full figure, the clothes sagged off her frame. Sophia Deveraux had quite a bit more muscle on her than Violet did.
Jo-Jo wore one of her many pink flowered dresses and a string of pearls that were each as big as a giant's tooth.
Her bleached white-blond hair was arranged into its typical helmet of curls, and perfect makeup covered her face.
As usual, the dwarf 's feet were bare, despite the November chill in the air. Jo-Jo hated wearing socks. Said they made her feet hurt.
Finn and I stepped up onto the porch. Violet stood up, but Jo-Jo kept rocking in her chair.
"Sleep well?" I asked.
"As well as could be expected, I suppose. But Jo-Jo re- ally made me feel at home." Violet gave her hostess a shy smile.
"Jo-Jo's good at that. We should get going."
"Say hello to Warren for me," Jo-Jo told Violet. "Tell him I'll be up that way for some more honey real soon."
Violet nodded. "Thank you. For everything."
Jo-Jo smiled at her. "No problem. Come on back sometime, and we'll work on your hair, darling."
Violet frowned, and her hand crept up to her frizzy blond locks. "What's wrong with my hair?"
Jo-Jo speared her with a hard look. "Nothing a hot-oil treatment and some deep conditioning can't take care of."
Violet's confused frown deepened, but I grabbed her arm and pulled her off the porch before she could think too hard about her split ends. Finn followed us, and we walked out to his car. Since we were going to be tooling up into the mountains today, Finn had decided to drive his oh-so-rugged Cadillac Escalade instead of his Aston Martin.
Violet stopped in front of the SUV and looked at us.
"What about my car? Did you guys drive it somewhere last night?"
Finn and I exchanged a look. Driving Violet Fox's car to a safer location had been the last thing on my mind.
"We had to leave it in the parking lot," I said. "We were more concerned with getting you patched up than what to do with your car."
Violet's face paled. "You mean - you mean you left it there in that Southtown parking lot? All night?"
Her concern was more than warranted. Leaving a car in that neighborhood was just begging for trouble. By now, the vehicle had probably been stripped of everything but the cigarette lighter. Hell, somebody had probably taken that too. Barracudas couldn't pick a corpse any cleaner than the white trash and gangbangers in Southtown.
"It might be okay," Finn replied in a hopeful tone. "It's just a Honda. Several years old at that. It's not like I left my Aston Martin down there."
He shuddered at the thought. Violet chewed her lower lip.
"You have insurance, don't you?" I asked.
Violet nodded.
"Then you can worry about your car later. Right now we need to go see your grandfather. You still want us to help the two of you, right?"
Violet nodded again. "Of course. Like I said, the Tin Man was my only hope. Now you're my only hope."
Only hope? How very Star Wars. I grimaced. But I didn't tell Violet Fox how misplaced her trust in me was, how misguided, how laughable, even. That I only brought death to people, not hope. That I was doing this rare, pro bono good deed out of my own f**king insatiable curiosity more than anything else.
"Come on," I said, opening the door on the SUV.
"Let's go."
Finn steered out of Jo-Jo's subdivision and headed north. Following Violet Fox's directions, we left the suburbs behind and drove through the heart of Northtown, where the rich, richer, and richest lived. People didn't have mansions in Northtown - they had estates. If not for the driveways, iron gates, and tasteful brick walls that could be seen from the streets, you might have thought the area was deserted.
Because nobody with real wealth, magic, or power was gauche enough to let their home be seen from the road.
We drove on, still heading north. The terrain became rockier, more rugged, as the rolling hills of the lowlands gave way to knobby ridges and pine-covered mountains.
Houses began to appear on the side of the road, although they were far less grand than the hidden McMansions that populated the Northtown estates. The road narrowed from four lanes to two and twisted back on itself in a series of switchbacks that would give most folks nausea.
Instead of sleek sedans and chrome-covered SUVs, we began to pass dump- and coal trucks on the road.
After about thirty minutes of driving, Violet pointed out the windshield. "That's it, just up ahead at the crossroads."
Finn slowed, turned into a gravel lot, and parked. I peered out the window at the structure before us. The two-story clapboard building might have been a home or perhaps a hunting cabin, once upon a time. Although it was obviously old, the building sported a fresh coat of white paint, with the shutters trimmed in a pale green.
Smaller, matching outbuildings squatted next to the main structure, connected to it by short, covered walkways.
Wooden steps led up to a front porch that was even wider than Jo-Jo's. The porch ran the length of all three buildings. Rocking chairs lined either side of the front door, along with barrels topped with checkerboards. The tin sign mounted above the main entrance gleamed like a new nickel in the sun. Country Daze, it read in green paint that matched the shutters. The roofs of all three buildings were also tin, the kind that made a slow, steady rain sound like a classical sonata.