The two of them moved over to the sink. I slipped back into my chair next to Owen, my eyes going to the clock on the wall. High noon already. The hours were ticking down until my meeting with Mab at dusk.
Everyone saw me staring at the clock, and I forced myself to smile.
"Don't look so glum, folks," I quipped. "My funeral isn't officially for six more hours yet."
"What are you going to do, Gin?" Violet asked me, her dark eyes wide behind her black glasses. "About Mab and the meeting tonight?"
I shrugged. "There's nothing to do but go through with things and meet her. I imagine that once I trade myself for Bria, Mab will get on with the business of killing me."
The Fire elemental murdering both Bria and me was far more likely, but I didn't voice that troublesome thought.
"Mab isn't going to kill you-not if we can help it," Owen rumbled, putting his hand on top of mine and squeezing it tight.
I frowned at him. "And what is that supposed to mean?"
Owen looked at the others, then back at me. "It means that while you were cooking breakfast, we had a powwow upstairs. We're all in agreement, Gin. You're not going to meet Mab by yourself. We're going with you-all of us."
I was just-stunned. Simply stunned that my friends would want to do such a thing, that they would even consider it. Trying to help me bring down Mab was just crazy on their part. Foolish. Insane. Stupid. Dangerous. Worry tightened my chest. So very, very dangerous.
"You-you can't do that," I protested. "This is between me and Mab. It always has been."
"This is about family, darling," Jo-Jo said in a firm voice. "You're a part of us, a part of all of us, and we aren't losing you without a fight, even if we do have to take on Mab and every single one of her giants."
The others nodded their heads and murmured their agreement. All I could do was just stare at them.
Xavier with his massive frame. Beautiful, perfect Roslyn. Crotchedy, cranky Warren. Soft, pink Jo-Jo. Eva and Violet, who were both still so young, still so innocent. Sophia, who had been through more horrors than probably any of us really knew. Finn, with his bright green eyes that always reminded me so much of his father's. And finally Owen, full of that strength and quiet inner confidence that had drawn me to him in the first place.
Eyes hard, mouths set, faces tight. They all radiated the same stubborn determination, as immovable, implacable, and eternal as the mountains themselves. Emotion tightened my throat at their belief in me, that I could actually pull this off, that I could actually kill Mab and save Bria at the same time-even though I knew better deep down inside.
"You don't have to do this," I said in a rough, thick voice. "You all know the risks. Mab won't let me slip through her fingers this time. She'll have an army of men with her to make sure that doesn't happen. Not just her giants, but the bounty hunters too. Folks like Gentry and Sydney. Dangerous people."
"And you're going to have an army of folks with you," Xavier rumbled. "You've helped us all too much for us to abandon you now, Gin. You know that. We all know that. You've put your life on the line for each one of us. Now it's our turn."
One by one, the others all nodded their heads again, as if we were talking about having a spring picnic instead of going up against the deadliest woman in Ashland and all of her men. Didn't they know that all of us taking on Mab was much more dangerous than just me facing the firing squad by myself? If one of them went down in the fight, the others would rush to help that fallen friend. Mab's men would take advantage of their distraction, and then they'd all be lost.
I didn't want to accept their help. It was just too risky. One slip, one mistake, one tiny, minuscule miscalculation, and my friends could all wind up dead. Or worse, Mab could get her hands on them and torture them first before she killed them, just as she was probably doing to Bria right now. I didn't want that. I'd never wanted that. I couldn't f**king bear that.
But no one ducked from my searching gaze. No one's eyes slid away from mine. No one wavered or showed any kind of doubt.
I sighed. "I'm not going to change your minds, am I?"
They all shook their heads.
No, I didn't want to accept my friends' help, didn't want to put them in any more danger than they were already in. But I also knew that having them with me was the only way that Bria might survive this thing. I needed someone there to make sure she made it to safety while I took on Mab. It made me sick, weighing my sister's life against everyone else's, using my friends this way, dragging them all down into the muck with me. But the truth was that I needed all the help I could get right now-and so did Bria.
"All right," I said in a quiet voice. "All right. Since I can't hog-tie all of you-at least not all of you at once-tell me what you're thinking."
A grin creased Finn's handsome face. "I thought you'd never ask."
Finn put his coffee mug down long enough to go upstairs. He came back a minute later with what looked like five reams of paper clutched to his chest. Finn dumped everything onto the kitchen table. Sheets of papers swirled up into the air like snowflakes before settling back onto the table. Photos, maps, old blueprints.
"What is all this?" I asked. "And how many trees did you kill printing it all out?"
"This," Finn said, sweeping his hand out over the mess on the table, "is every scrap of information that I was able to get my hands on concerning your childhood home. Or, at least what's left of it, anyway. Maps, police and aerial photographs, deeds, everything."
With his massive network of spies and other shady sources, as well as his own computer skills, Finn had the uncanny ability to dig up dirt on the saintliest soul. So I imagined that compiling all the info on my old childhood home hadn't been too much of a stretch for him. Still, the effort touched me because I knew that he was trying to give me the tools I needed to survive my confrontation with Mab. It was something his father, Fletcher, would have done, if the old man had still been alive.
"Actually," Finn said, "it wasn't too hard to get the info, since, well, I sort of own the land now."
My head snapped up. "What? What do you mean you own the land now?"
Finn winced. "Well, Dad left you quite a bit of money, his house, and the Pork Pit in his last will and testament."
"And..."
"And he left me everything else, including all his other real estate holdings. Rental properties, safe houses, and the land where your childhood home was. According to the tax records I found, he bought the land six months after your family was murdered."