Bria took another big bite of the pie and made the same sigh of contentment that Rosco had a minute ago.
"What all did you make besides the pie?" she asked, her eyes going from one covered dish on the table to the next.
"Well, since it's girls only today, I decided to go all out," I replied. "There's the dark chocolate mousse pie you are currently enjoying, along with some chocolate truffles, double-chocolate-chip cookies, and dark-and milk-chocolate-dipped strawberries, kiwis, pineapples, and mangoes."
Bria gave me a wry grin. "I'm sensing a chocolate theme."
I returned her grin with one of my own. "You might say that. But there's some real food too, in case we get tired of dessert. Plus, Roslyn is bringing some fresh veggies from her garden."
Jo-Jo glanced at the clock on the wall, which was shaped like a puffy cloud, her rune and the symbol for her Air magic. "Where is Roslyn?"
Roslyn Phillips, another one of our friends, was also supposed to come to the salon today, along with Sophia
Deveraux, Jo-Jo's younger sister.
Bria waved her fork in the air. "She called me this morning and said that she'd be a little late, that we should go ahead and start without her."
"And you went for the food first. You're picking up some of Finn's bad habits," I teased. "How was your date with him the other night?"
Bria's fiery blush told me everything that I needed to know. "I plead the Fifth," she murmured, and took another bite of pie.
"Well, when you're finished with that, come over here, darling, and tell me what color you want on your nails," Jo-Jo said.
My sister nodded, but her eyes were fixed on the glass cake stand that was filled with the chocolate-dipped fruit.
Bria turned her attention back to the buffet, while Jo-Jo put the cap on the polish she'd used on my nails. She had started to lean over and put the bottle back into a tub with the others when she paused and frowned. She stared at the bottles of nail polish, but her eyes were cloudy and unfocused, as though she wasn't really seeing what she was looking at.
"Jo-Jo?" I asked. "Is something wrong?"
The dwarf used her magic to heal wounds, but her power also gave her a bit of precognition, as it did with most Air elementals. While the stones whispered to me of all the things that people had done in a certain spot, the breeze whistled in Jo-Jo's ear about all the things that folks might do in the future.
Jo-Jo shook her head, making her soft, springy curls bounce around before they settled back into place. The cloudy, vacant look vanished from her eyes, although she put her hand up against her right temple and started massaging a small spot there, as if she suddenly had a head - ache.
"I can't put my finger on it exactly," she said. "I've just . . . I've had a bad feeling these past few days. Actually, it's been more than a few days. More like ever since that mess at Briartop a couple of weeks ago."
I grimaced. Jo-Jo was being kind.
Mess didn't adequately describe what had happened at the Briartop art museum, when a ruthless giant named clementine Barker had decided to use her army of underlings to rob the exhibit of Mab Monroe's loot - and try to murder me to boot.
Of course, I'd killed good ole clem and her gangster family, but my victories had come at a price: Jillian Delancey, the innocent woman who'd died because she'd had the bad, stupid, fatal luck to be wearing the same dress that I was wearing that night, causing one of clementine's men to mistake her for me and shoot her.
Jo-Jo noticed me frowning, and she leaned over and patted my hand. "Don't worry, darling. It's probably nothing. Sometimes I take these spells where it seems like something bad is going to happen at any second. Most of the time, it turns out to be nothing more than a little bit of heartburn." Despite her words, her clear eyes grew cloudy and troubled once again. "I'll just . . . I'll be glad when Sophia's here."
Like Roslyn, Sophia was running a little late that morning, since she'd wanted to get rid of the two dead giants in the cooler. I'd given all the restaurant staff the day off with pay, so both Sophia and I could enjoy our time at the salon, and I'd told Sophia that the giants' bodies could wait another day, or at least until after our salon time, but she had insisted that she was going to dispose of them that morning. Or maybe she was simply being practical.
Odds were that someone else would jump me at the Pork Pit sometime in the next few days, and, well, that cooler could only hold so many bodies. As it was, Finn and I had had to pack the two giants in like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle just so we could close the lid.
Sophia had disposed of dozens of bodies for me and for my mentor, Fletcher Lane, before I'd taken over the assassination business from the old man. She could handle two giants with her eyes blindfolded and one hand tied behind her back. But Jo-Jo looked so worried that
I wrapped my hand around hers and gave it a gentle squeeze, careful not to smear the polish that she'd put on my nails.
"Do you want me to call Sophia and see where she's at?"Jo-Jo shook her head. "No, that's all right. Like I said, it's probably just heartburn. I think I had one too many cups of Finn's chicory coffee this morning. That stuff will knock your teeth plumb out of your mouth, it's so strong."
She gave me a chipper smile, grabbed the plastic tub, put it on her lap, and started sorting through the many bottles of polish. Jo-Jo held up first one pink, then another, trying to find one that she thought Bria might like, but the cheery colors did little to brighten my mood.
Maybe it was the way Jo-Jo's sculpted eyebrows were pinched together in worry, or maybe it was how quickly her smile slipped back into a frown when she thought that I wasn't looking at her anymore. I couldn't see the future like she did, but Jo-Jo had been right about too many things in the past for me to dismiss her dread as nothing more than caffeine overload. If she thought something ominous was gathering on the horizon, then no doubt, the wind was blowing storm clouds in our direction right now.
Despite my unease, the next half hour passed by in a blur of cheery conversation and good food. Jo-Jo opened one of the doors set into the back wall of the salon, and Rosco dutifully heaved himself to his feet and slowly waddled outside to do his doggy business. Bria finally finished her pie and sat down in my spot in the salon chair so Jo-Jo could do her nails while we waited for Roslyn and Sophia to arrive.
I wandered over to the buffet table, piling my plate high and then taking a bite of everything in turn. The fried chicken salad on the mini sourdough rolls. The salty, crunchy, homemade potato chips. And then, of course, the mousse pie, which melted on my tongue bite after sinfully rich, decadent, delicious bite, as though I were eating a light, frothy cloud made of dark, luscious chocolate. I'd gotten up early that morning to put everything together, but it had been worth it. cooking was a passion of mine, a chance for me to show the people I cared about exactly how much I loved them - and a way for me to deal with whatever was bothering me.