"Not alive," I said. "Not anymore."
Sophia looked at me with a somber expression. But after a moment, she grinned, her smile wider, happier, and brighter than I'd ever remembered it being.
"No," she rasped. "Dead - finally."
Chapter Thirty
We spent the rest of the night cleaning up the mess.
Or, rather, Sophia did.
One by one, she packed the bodies of Grimes, Hazel, and their men into the trunk of her classic convertible.
When that was full, she stuffed the other ones into Roslyn's car, which I was still driving, since it was already such a lost cause. But instead of using her Air magic to sandblast away and dissolve all the blood into nothingness the way she normally would, Sophia left the stains where they were in the yard. The weather would take care of them soon enough. Besides, this wasn't the first blood that had been spilled in front of Fletcher's house, and it certainly wouldn't be the last.
Still, as I watched her work, I thought about what she'd told me at cooper's house, about how being with the bodies in the pit had been the only peace that she'd ever gotten while she'd been Grimes's prisoner. I wondered what she was thinking now that his was one of the bodies that she was disposing of, but I didn't ask. We all had our own demons, and Harley Grimes was one of Sophia's, to deal with in her own way and time. Besides, for once, I rather enjoyed the irony of the situation.
Still, I went over to Sophia, who had a tape measure out, trying to determine how many more bodies she could stuff into the trunk of Roslyn's car. I put my hand on her arm. She stopped measuring and looked up at me.
"Are you sure you want to do this?" I asked in a quiet voice. "I can get rid of the bodies. You shouldn't have to do this anymore. Not for me. I don't want you to do it anymore."
Sophia stared at me, her black eyes thoughtful.
"It's who I am," she rasped. "It's what I do. For Fletcher - and for you too."
"But you shouldn't have to clean up my messes," I protested. "Not when I know what it reminds you of. Not when I know how much it hurts you."
Sophia stabbed her finger at her heart. "My choice. Not yours."
"But - "
She reached up and cupped my cheek with her bloody hand. "No buts. I love you, Gin. And this is how I show it."Then she smiled, and I got a glimpse of the girl she had once been, before Grimes, before the pit, before everything.
"Not soft," Sophia rasped. "Neither one of us. Not anymore. Never again."
I blinked, surprised that she remembered the conversation we'd had in the Pork Pit so long ago after we'd battled those two giants. But she was right. We were definitely not that. Broken, maybe. But not soft.
"Okay?' she rasped, her black eyes searching mine.
"Okay."
I didn't like it, and I would always feel guilty about it, but it was her choice, just as it had always been. Sophia patted my cheek. Then she picked up the last man's body, stuffed it into the trunk of Roslyn's car, and slammed the lid.And that was that.
"Gin!" Finn called out. "come here and look at this!"
Before Sophia had started packing the bodies into the cars, Finn had quickly rifled through all of the dead men's pockets, including Hazel's and Grimes's. When he realized that they didn't have anything terribly interesting on them, Finn had gathered up their car keys and had started going through their vehicles one by one.
Now, he had reached the last car, that of Grimes and Hazel. He stood next to the open trunk, along with Bria.
They both wore grim expressions.
"I thought that you'd want to see this for yourself."
Finn gestured at the open trunk, then stepped to one side.
A couple of foam-lined cases sat inside the space, all with their lids hinged open to reveal the guns grouped inside. Rifles, shotguns, revolvers, even some semiauto - matic weapons. It was quite an assortment. Another case held boxes and boxes of bullets.
"There are more guns and more ammo in the trunks of the other two cars," Finn said, his voice more serious than I'd heard it in a long time.
"So Grimes was going to deliver some guns to someone," I said. "So what? We knew that already. Remember, I told you about the person who was at his house. This is probably that order."
Finn and Bria glanced at each other, and then Bria leaned into the trunk and slowly closed the lid on one of the cases. A small yellow note was stuck to the top of the plastic. A name was scrawled on the paper:
M. M. Monroe.
My mouth dropped open, but no words came out. I blinked and blinked, but the name on the paper didn't change. If anything, it seemed to loom even larger, as though the black letters were some sort of rune that was smoking with elemental Fire and about to explode in my face."We didn't think much of the guns either, until we found that ," Bria said in a flat voice.
"The same note is on all of the cases in all of the cars," Finn added.
Once again, I wondered about the person I'd seen at Grimes's house. I still didn't know if it had been a man or a woman, but now I had a much more pressing concern. Had that been the mysterious M. M. Monroe? Or a hired hand whom M. M. Monroe had sent to deal with Grimes? It could easily be one or the other or some third option that I hadn't even considered yet. I had no way of knowing which one, only that it meant trouble.
I let out a long, loud, vicious curse. For the first and only time, I wished that Harley Grimes was still alive, so I could question him.
But he was dead, along with Hazel and the rest of his men, which meant that there was no one left to give me any information about M. M. Monroe, who he or she was, and what he or she wanted with so many of Grimes's guns.
Finn and Bria watched me stalk back and forth in front of the trunk. Finally, Finn spoke up.
"Well," he drawled. "I guess your plan to draw M.M. back to Ashland worked."
"And I think we know that this person isn't here for anything good," Bria added. "There's only one reason you buy that many guns, at least in Ashland."
"Yeah," I said. "Because you're planning to start your own little criminal enterprise. Or not so little, in this case."
"It looks like M.M. plans to follow in Mab's footsteps after all," Finn said.
I stopped pacing. "Please tell me that there's some way that you can track these guns back to whoever ordered them."
Finn shrugged. "I can try, but it won't be easy. Grimes doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who kept meticulous records."
"Yeah," Bria said. "And the weapons that I've looked at already all conveniently have their serial numbers filed off, so I can't trace them in the system that way."