Jo-Jo stirred and opened her eyes. "cooper?" she rasped.
He bent over so she could see him and clasped her hand in his. "I'm right here, doll. Don't you worry about a thing now."
Jo-Jo nodded, and her eyes slid shut again. cooper stared down at her another moment, then ran a hand through his hair, causing it to stand up as high as if he'd
stuck his finger into a light socket. He let out a breath and went over to the sink to wash his hands. He quickly dried them off, then moved to stand beside Jo-Jo again. cooper hesitated, then picked up her hand once more, smearing her blood right back onto his own clean fingers.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
"I don't . . . I don't know where to start," he admitted.
A hard fist of fear wrapped around my heart. If cooper couldn't heal Jo-Jo, then she was dead . There wasn't time to find another Air elemental to heal her, not given how bad her wounds were and how much blood she'd already lost. But screaming at cooper wouldn't help, so I swallowed my fear and frustration and forced myself to stay calm and focused.
"Have you ever done this before, used your magic to heal?"
cooper shook his head. "Not exactly. I healed a few cuts and bruises for Eva, Owen, and Phillip when they were younger. But nothing . . . nothing like this."
He frowned. "Although . . . it's strange. Jo-Jo and I have been talking about our magic quite a bit lately. I've been telling her how I use my Air magic to help superheat the fire in my forge, making the flames burn as hot as they can for as long as possible so I can get better and quicker results when I'm working with various metals."
"And Jo-Jo?" Bria asked. "What has she told you?"
"Mostly about how she uses her magic to heal," cooper answered. "I had a cut on my hand the other day, and she talked about her power while she used it to fix me right up."
Jo-Jo had said that she felt like something bad had been about to happen for weeks now. I wondered if that sense of dread included a suspicion that she might get hurt, if that was why she'd starting showing cooper how she used her Air magic to heal.
"You can do it, coop," Phillip said in a hearty, cheery voice, clapping him on the back. "I know you can."
He didn't add that cooper simply had to figure out a way to make his magic work if Jo-Jo were to survive. We all knew that.
Some of the worry and uncertainty smoothed out of cooper's lined features at the vote of confidence. He gave Phillip a grateful wink. Then he tightened his grip on Jo-Jo's hand and leaned forward.
"Well," cooper murmured. "Here we go. Ready or not."
His eyes began to glow a bright copper as he reached for his Air magic.
I just hoped it would be enough.
Chapter Seven
Cooper's Air power surged through the kitchen, ruffling my hair and sliding across my bare arms before settling over Jo-Jo.
Even though his magic wasn't directed at me, it still felt like there were dozens of tiny invisible needles stabbing into my skin, and I gritted my teeth to keep from snarling at the uncomfortable sensation. Two elements always complemented each other, like Air and Fire, and two elements always opposed each other, like Fire and Ice. With cooper's Air magic being the antithesis of my own Stone power, it simply felt wrong to me, the way that fingernails screeching down a chalkboard drove some folks plumb crazy. Bria grimaced too. She didn't like the sensation of cooper's Air magic any more than I did.
For the longest time, all I was aware of were the uncomfortable pricks of cooper's magic, the coppery glow of his eyes, and the steady tick-tick-tick of the clock on the wall. One after another, the minutes slipped by, but we were all frozen in place, not daring to move or even speak for fear of breaking cooper's concentration.
I stood right behind the dwarf, while Bria and Roslyn were on the other side of the table next to the sink. Phillip leaned against a cabinet full of mismatched dishes in the corner, his arms crossed over his muscled chest, his jaw clenched so tightly that I could see the muscles standing out in his neck. Rosco lay at Phillip's feet, his blood - smeared head resting on one of Phillip's black leather wing tips.
Still, as I stared down at Jo-Jo, I couldn't help but think back to another place, another time, and another woman lying so very still . . .
The dwarf was totally weird.
That was the thought that kept running through my mind as Sophia closed down the Pork Pit for the night. Fletcher had left me in his restaurant an hour ago, saying that he had some business to take care of.
In other words, he had to go kill someone.
That's what Fletcher did as the assassin the Tin Man, and that's what he was going to teach me how to do too. I hadn't been staying with Fletcher long, just a couple of months, but he'd already showed me lots of ways to defend myself. He said that I was making good progress, mastering the basics. I didn't really think it was all that difficult. All you had to do was hit your enemy hard and long enough, and he'd eventually go down. All Fletcher was really teaching me to do was to find those weak spots and exploit them to the fullest.
I was disappointed that he'd had a job, especially since he'd promised me that he'd start showing me how to fight with weapons soon, including knives. That was what I was most interested in, since Fletcher used silverstone knives on most of his jobs, and I wanted to be just like him. I had been hoping that this was finally the night, but it hadn't turned out that way.
So there I was, sitting behind the counter, my schoolbooks spread out in front of me, even though I'd already finished my homework, watching Sophia mop the floor. The last customer had left thirty minutes before, and Sophia had pulled out a radio that Fletcher kept in a slot under the cash register and flipped it on. The radio was tuned to some oldies station, and she swiveled her hips in time to the snappy, upbeat music as she pushed the wet mop across the faded blue and pink pig tracks on the floor and then underneath the matching vinyl booths in front of the windows.
Sophia was dressed completely in black, from her boots to her jeans to her long-sleeved T-shirt. Even her lipstick was black. The only bit of color on her was the grinning white pi-rate skull in the middle of her shirt, which featured crimson flames shooting out of its eye sockets.
Someone took the whole Goth look a little too seriously, if you asked me. Oh, yeah. She was totally weird.
"So," I said when the song ended and some boring com mercials came on. "What do you and Jo-Jo like to do at night for fun? Cook? Watch TV? Play board games?"
Since Fletcher was out on a job, I was going home with Sophia and spending the night at Jo-Jo's house.