“Finn!” I yelled. “It’s clear! Get in here!”
Footsteps thumped through the back of the house, and Finn burst into the hallway, his gun clutched in his hand. He took one look at his dad and disappeared. He returned a few seconds later with some towels he’d grabbed from the kitchen. He tossed them at me, then vanished again.
“What happened?” I asked, using my knife to cut the towels into long, thin strips that I could use for a bandage.
Fletcher shrugged, then hissed with the pain that flooded his body at the motion. “I heard a car pull up outside about ten minutes ago. I went to the window to look and see who it was, and I realized that it was three giants with guns. They didn’t look happy, so I headed toward the kitchen to grab one of my guns from under the sink. I would have made it too, if not for that damn door. Did it stick for them? Oh, hell no. They kicked it in like it was made of matchsticks. That settles it. I’m putting in that black granite door, with extra silverstone.”
Finn reappeared, this time carrying a small metal tin. A white cloud outlined in vivid blue was painted on top. Finn popped off the top of the tin with his thumb, then dropped to his knees beside me in the hallway. He dipped his hands into the tin, which contained a clear salve infused with Jo-Jo’s healing Air elemental magic. The soft, soothing scent of vanilla wafted over to me as Finn spread a thick layer of the ointment on the bullet hole in Fletcher’s shoulder.
Fletcher sighed as the salve started soaking into his skin. The ointment wasn’t as good as Jo-Jo healing him herself, but the magic in it would lessen his pain—and, more important, his blood loss—until we could get him to her.
When Finn had smeared salve all over the wound, I handed him the shredded towels, and he wrapped the strips of fabric around Fletcher’s entire shoulder, further slowing the blood loss.
Fletcher hissed with pain again. I knew that he was hurting, but the wound had to be bandaged, and he would have been doing the same thing if it had been me lying there instead of him.
It should have been me—I wished it had been me.
I took his hand, trying to give him something else to focus on and comfort him however I could. He crushed his fingers against mine, but I didn’t utter a sound. He could squeeze as hard as he needed to, and I wouldn’t complain.
By the time Finn tied off the towels, sweat had beaded on Fletcher’s face, his skin was pale underneath the blood and bruises, and his eyes were fluttering shut.
“We need to get him to Jo-Jo’s,” I said.
Finn nodded. He knew the signs of shock as well as I did. “On three. One, two, three!”
We each put an arm under the old man’s shoulders and lifted him to his feet. Fletcher groaned, but his body went slack, and I knew that he’d passed out. That was probably for the best right now.
Together, Finn and I dragged the old man away from the dead giant and out of the house.
28
Finn and I managed to half carry, half drag Fletcher down the porch steps, across the yard, and over to Finn’s Aston Martin. I sat in the backseat with Fletcher while Finn drove.
The bumping and thumping of the car down the rocky driveway roused Fletcher out of his faint. He slumped against the leather seat, his eyes flickering open and shut, almost like the shutter on a camera. I didn’t want him to waste his energy trying to talk, so I held his bloody hand in mine as Finn steered the car out into the suburbs. Every streetlight we passed illuminated the old man’s bruised, battered face, and the coppery stench of his blood filled the car like an overpowering cologne. He was hurt because of Sebastian, because of me.
Once again, I cursed my own stupidity, my own foolishness, my own . . . sloppiness. That was the best word I could think of to describe my colossal f**kup. Sebastian had played me like a fiddle, and I’d been so eager to let him that I hadn’t given a thought to anything else. I’d been so arrogant, so impatient, so certain that I needed to kill Cesar for what I thought he was doing to Charlotte that I’d tuned out Fletcher, Finn, and my own small whispers of doubt. Now Fletcher was paying the price for my mistakes.
I was an assassin. I was the Spider. I should have known better, I should have been more cautious, I should have realized that something wasn’t right the second Sebastian started flirting with me at Dawson’s mansion. But I’d believed in my own burgeoning reputation, and I’d let it go to my head. Fletcher had warned me against such things, but I’d done them all the same.
What a sad, stupid, foolish child I was.
Twenty minutes later, Finn turned into a subdivision, then steered the car up the hill to a grand, old, three-story white plantation house, which gleamed like a ghost in the moonlight. Finn stopped the car, and the two of us hauled Fletcher over to the house, up the steps, and onto the front porch.
Finn opened the screen door and used the cloud-shaped rune knocker to rap on the interior door, while I supported Fletcher’s weight. The old man never made a sound, although I could hear how strained and raspy his breathing was, as though one of his lungs had partially collapsed. Each slow, shuddered breath was like a knife in my own heart. Because I’d done this to Fletcher. Oh, I wasn’t the one who’d broken into his house, beaten him, or put a bullet in his shoulder, but my hands were stained with his blood all the same.
Just like they were stained with Cesar Vaughn’s blood.
Familiar footsteps sounded, the front door creaked open, and Jo-Jo stuck her head outside. Since it was creeping up on three in the morning, she had been in bed, judging from the pale pink housecoat she wore and the pink sponge curlers that ringed her head like a plastic helmet. Jo-Jo looked from Finn to Fletcher to me, her clear eyes sharpening as the last dregs of sleep left her.
She opened the door without a word, then turned and headed to the back of the house. Finn put his arm under Fletcher’s shoulder again, and the three of us followed her.
Instead of the sitting room that one might expect, the back half of the house doubled as a beauty salon. Cherry-red chairs sat in a row close to the back wall, while tubs of makeup, shampoo, conditioner, and other beauty products could be found on a counter that ran along the far left wall. Glossy magazines with smiling models were stacked on the end tables next to each one of the salon chairs and the hair dryers. The air smelled faintly of all the chemicals that Jo-Jo used to curl and dye her customers’ hair, along with the sharp tang of nail polish.
Finn and I helped Fletcher over to one of the salon chairs, and he groaned as he sank down onto the seat. More footsteps sounded, much heavier than Jo-Jo’s light tread, and Sophia appeared in the doorway, wearing a fuzzy black terry-cloth robe covered with bright pink skulls.