The three of them looked up at the sight of me standing in the doorway. Vinnie got to his feet and set his daughter back down in the cherry red salon chair. Natasha gave me a tiny smile, then held out her other hand so Jo-Jo could paint the rest of her nails. She seemed to be doing well, all things considered. At least she was safe now and back with her father, where she belonged.
Vinnie came over and stood in front of me. He looked just as tired as I felt, although his seemed to be more of a happy relief than anything else. The Ice elemental hesitated, then held out his hand. I took it, and we shook. His palm felt cool against mine.
"Gin, the Spider, whatever you call yourself, anything you ever need, anything I have, it's yours," Vinnie said in a low voice. "All you have to do is ask."
The bartender didn't owe me a thing for saving his daughter, not one damn thing. Rescuing the little girl from the horrors and death that had awaited her at the train yard had been my pleasure. But even more than that, I thought that Fletcher Lane, my murdered mentor, would have been proud of me for doing it. The old man had had a bit of an altruistic streak, helping people with certain messy problems. Pro f**king bono, as it were. Of course, I hadn't known about Fletcher's side business until after he'd died, but I still thought the old man would have approved of my actions last night.
"Whatever you want," Vinnie said again. "It's yours."
I would have told Vinnie that we were square, but I knew his fatherly pride dictated that he find some way to pay me back. And as much as I was starting to enjoy following in Fletcher's pro bono footsteps, I was never one to turn down a favor.
"I just might hold you to that."
He returned my stare. "I hope you do. I really hope you do."
"Daddy?" Natasha said in a soft voice, interrupting us. "Aren't my nails pretty?"
The little girl held out her hands for us to inspect. Vinnie gave me another smile, then turned, went back to his daughter, and hugged her close once more.
"They're beautiful, honey. Just beautiful," he whispered against her hair.
And they were.
Jo-Jo settled Natasha in the downstairs den with some chocolate chip cookies that I'd baked yesterday at the Pork Pit, a glass of milk, and some old Scooby Doo reruns on one of the cable networks. Vinnie sat on the couch with his daughter, giggling right along with her at the slapstick antics on television.
The rest of us-Jo-Jo, Finn, Owen, and I-retreated to the next room over, the kitchen, which was one of my favorite rooms in the house. A rectangular butcher's block table surrounded by several tall stools took up most of the area, while appliances done in a variety of pastel shades ringed three of the walls. Runelike clouds, Jo-Jo's symbol, could be found everywhere in the room, from the place mats on the table to the dish towels piled next to the sink to the fresco that covered the ceiling.
My eyes went to the cloud-shaped clock on the wall. Just after one in the afternoon, more than twelve hours since I'd taken my swan dive into the Aneirin River. My thoughts turned to all the time I'd lost-and what might have happened while I'd been unconscious.
"What about the Pork Pit?" I asked Jo-Jo.
"Sophia's covering for you," the dwarf replied, bustling around the kitchen, pulling plates, silverware, and more out of the drawers and cabinets.
I nodded. The Goth dwarf knew just as much about running the barbecue restaurant as I did. I only hoped she wouldn't have to work too hard today, prepping all the holiday orders, since I wasn't there to help her.
Jo-Jo reached for an oven mitt and opened the stove door. The mouthwatering smell of fresh-baked lasagna drifted out to me, and I scooted off my stool.
"Here," I said. "Let me help you with that."
Jo-Jo gave me a hard stare with her clear, almost colorless eyes. "You just sit back down right now, darling. I can cook for you today. I was doing it for years before you came along, Gin."
Properly chastised, I sank back onto my stool.
Jo-Jo dished up the lasagna, along with a Caesar salad and some garlic breadsticks. The others had already eaten. Good thing, since I attacked the food with unrestrained gusto, going back for three helpings. Then again, it had been the better part of day since I'd last had a meal.
When I was finished, Jo-Jo cleared everything away. In the den, Natasha had finished her cookies and milk and was now taking a nap. Vinnie snored along with his daughter. Not surprising. He'd been through just as traumatic an ordeal as she had, when he thought he'd lost her.
"So lay it out for me," I said, once everything was squared away. "What happened last night? And what's been going on while I've been out of it?"
Finn took a sip from the mug of chicory coffee that he'd set down on the counter. By my count, that was the third cup he'd had since I'd woken up. "After you ran back into the train yard, I told the kid to stay put and hung around for a few minutes, covering your back. Which was considerably easier to do once you started that fire. It lit up the whole depot like it was the Fourth of July. I popped a couple of the giants and dwarves who were headed your way. I looked for LaFleur and Mab, hoping to take them out too, but I didn't have any angles on them. So I did all the damage that I could, then grabbed the girl and got the hell out of there."
I thought that the goons had been shooting at me last night, but it had really been Finn, picking off a few more of Mab's men, trying to add even more confusion to the scene.
"I got the kid back to my car," Finn continued. "I drove around, trying to figure out where you might be, or how I could help you, but you were already gone, and I had no idea where. At least not until Owen called me. I told him where to start looking for you, while I brought Natasha over here. Jo-Jo patched her up, and Vinnie hasn't let his daughter out of his sight since then."
I looked at my foster brother. "Thank you for that."
Finn shrugged. "You're the one who did all the heavy lifting. I just killed a couple of Mab's men and drove the girl over here."
I nodded.
"As for the aftermath," Finn said. "Well, things have gotten really interesting in the last few hours."
"How so?" Owen asked.
Finn stared at him. "Well, for starters, that little fire that Gin started? It completely gutted the old train depot. Mab won't be building any kind of nightclub there anytime soon."
"It was just a little gasoline," I said. "Surely, it didn't do that much damage."
Finn raised his eyebrows. "A little gasoline mixed with paint and all that other flammable shit that was lying around the depot. You started a four-alarm fire. The whole place went up like kindling, and Mab's men freaked when they couldn't contain it. They had to call the fire department to come out and handle it. Evidently you could see the flames and the smoke a mile away."