Jo-Jo gave him a soft smile. "You did just fine with Sophia and me. You'll get the hang of it. Practicing on Gin will be good for you."
cooper grinned back at her, and his solid chest puffed up at her praise.
Well, I didn't know how I felt about being a test dummy for cooper's Air magic, but Jo-Jo was obviously still too weak to heal me, and I didn't have any other options right now. Not if I wanted to be a hundred percent when Grimes, Hazel, and what was left of their miscreants came knocking on my door. In a day, maybe two tops, Grimes would find the bodies of the three men he'd sent to search for me along the river, and he'd realize that I'd survived after all. He'd want his revenge for me having the audacity to escape his evil clutches, not to mention all the death and destruction that I'd inflicted on his men and his camp. Grimes might have destroyed Jo-Jo's salon, but I'd paid him back in spades with what I'd done to his mountain hideaway. He wouldn't be able to let that stand, not if he wanted to hold on to the men he had left.
Besides, I'd seen the look of anticipation in his eyes on the cliff. He would want his revenge, but more than that, he would want to break me like he had all the other poor women and men that he'd kidnapped, tortured, and murdered. Grimes wanted to hear me scream and cry and beg for mercy. And the second that I did, he'd lose interest in me and toss me aside to Hazel and his men, just like he had with all the others. That's why he was still so obsessed with Sophia all these years later, because he simply couldn't fathom how anyone could be stronger than he was.
Well, let the bastard come. I was going to enjoy showing him exactly how wrong he was before I killed him.
"Gin?" cooper asked, cutting into my dark, murderous musings. "Are you ready?"
"Yeah, I'm ready."
Warren got up, and I sat down in his chair. cooper scooted his recliner close to mine, then reached out and took my hand. His fingers felt rough and callused, although his skin was pleasantly warm, as though the heat from all the fires in his forge had soaked into his body over the years. A moment later, his eyes began to glow a bright, familiar copper, and the prickly feel of his Air magic gusted through the den.
cooper wasn't nearly as skilled in his magic as Jo-Jo was, not in this way, at least, so it took him far longer to heal me than it would have taken her, and it hurt a whole lot worse. Jo-Jo's magic had always felt like needles poking into my skin, uncomfortable but bearable. But cooper's Air magic was much rougher and far more intense, as though my own knives were stabbing into my body, sawing through my muscles, and then haphazardly pinning everything back together again.
Still, I clamped my jaw down, ground my teeth together, and hoped that he wouldn't notice how I kept wiping my free, sweaty hand on my ruined jeans and digging my fingernails into the spider-rune scar in my palm to try to take my mind off the fresh, clumsy pain raging through my body. cooper was doing me a favor, so I couldn't complain. And I wouldn't, because that would hurt his feelings. Besides, I'd been through worse - much worse.
Ten minutes later, cooper let go of his Air magic and dropped my hand. The copper glow was snuffed out of his eyes, and he sagged back against his recliner, causing the chair to creak weakly once more.
"There," he said, sounding as tired as I felt. "I reckon that's the best that I can do for right now."
I slumped down in my chair too and took stock of my body. The gunshot wound in my shoulder was completely healed, along with the burns on my arms, back, and legs, since those were the areas where cooper had focused most of his magic. cuts and scrapes still dotted my body, along with the rainbow clusters of bruises, but all of the open wounds had closed up, and the worst of the midnight blues and putrid purples had faded out to healing greens and not-so-sickly yellows. I wasn't in the best shape of my life, but cooper had managed to put me back together again.
He looked at me with anxious eyes, so I pushed away my exhaustion, got up, and stretched this way and that, like a cat waking up from a long, satisfying nap. My muscles ached in protest, but I ignored the twinges of discomfort. It was worth it to see cooper's face crinkle up and beam with pride.
"Well, thanks, cooper," I drawled. "I feel just fine and dandy now. If you've got any magic left, you might want to go outside and check on Owen. Some of Grimes's men got hold of him and beat him up pretty good."
cooper nodded, got to his feet, and hurried outside, his exhaustion seemingly gone.
Warren looked at Jo-Jo, then Sophia, then me. Without a word, he got up and followed cooper, shutting the door behind the two of them. A minute later, another gust of cooper's Air magic rippled through the room, although it felt much fainter, given the distance and the door between us.
I sank back into my chair, trying once again not to let my exhaustion show, and faced the Deveraux sisters. They both looked at me with somber eyes. Rosco continued to nap on their feet.
"Tell us what happened," Jo-Jo finally said in a soft voice.
I drew in a breath and started my story with the fight in the salon. I quickly moved on to my trip with Owen and Warren up the mountain, our rescue of Sophia from the pit, and my stand at the top of the ridge against Grimes, Hazel, and their men. After that, all that was left to tell was my run through the woods, my swan dive off the cliff, my ride through the rapids, and finally, Owen finding me and fishing me out of the river.
I tried to spare them the worst of it, glossing over a lot of the details, keeping my voice upbeat, and trying to make it seem more like a grand adventure than a brutal fight for my life. I didn't mention all of the sick, twisted things that Grimes had said to me about Sophia, the photos that he had of her, or how his house had been an eerie replica of Jo-Jo's inside and out. Of course, Sophia knew some of it, since she'd been in the house too, but I figured that those were her secrets to tell, not mine.
"I'm sorry, darling," Jo-Jo said, tears streaking down her cheeks like tiny rivers of crystal when I finally finished my story. "So very sorry that you had to go through all of that because of us."
I shrugged. Fighting for my life against evil psychopaths with personal vendettas wasn't anything new.
In fact, it had become rather routine over the past few months. Mundane, even. Grimes's attack had just cut a little closer to home than some of the other ones.
"I wish that Fletcher had killed that bastard all those years ago," Jo-Jo said in a grim voice. "I wish that I had killed him all those years ago."
Sophia squeezed her hand, but the motion didn't comfort Jo-Jo. If anything, it made even more tears well up in her eyes, spill down her face, and drip onto her dress. She let out a small, squeaky hiccup and pressed her fist against her mouth, as though that would hold back her grief.