His chest puffed up with pride. “Damn straight.”
But his merriment quickly fled, and his handsome face turned serious again. “I haven’t said this yet, but I’m glad you’re okay, Gin. I know that we haven’t exactly been the best of friends lately, but I don’t know what Dad and I would do without you.”
I leaned over and lightly punched him in the shoulder. “You’re just saying that because you want to get your greedy, grubby hands on more of our money. Without me hanging around, you’d be out of a middleman job and all the sweet, sweet cash that comes along with it.”
“True,” Finn agreed in a happy voice. “But I’d miss you more than the money, Gin. I hope you know that, that you really know that, deep down, where it matters.”
Hot tears stung my eyes, and my throat closed up with emotion. All I could do was nod. Finn slung his arm around my shoulders and hugged me to his chest. We stood like that for one precious moment. Then we both drew back, not quite looking at each other.
“Duty calls,” he quipped. “And so does Roslyn.”
“Go get her, tiger.”
Finn gave me a saucy wink before striding down the hallway and out of sight. I watched him go, so proud of him, so grateful for him.
My brother—and my friend now too.
I shuffled into one of the guest bathrooms, stripped off my ruined dress, and took a long, hot shower to wash away all the blood, grime, and gore of the night.
Too bad I couldn’t slough off Sebastian’s betrayal as easily as I scrubbed the blood off my hands.
I got out of the shower, dried off, and slipped into an old T-shirt and a pair of pajama shorts that were among the stash of clothes I kept at Jo-Jo’s. Then I got comfortable in one of the spare beds. Despite the long, hard night, my mind kept racing as I lay in the dark and went back over every single moment I’d ever spent with Sebastian. Every word he’d said to me, every smile he’d given me, every lie he’d told me.
I didn’t think I’d get much sleep, but I must have been more exhausted than I’d realized, because I quickly fell into the land of dreams, of memories . . .
Even in sleep, though, my mind kept going, churning from one horrible moment of my life to the next. My mother and Annabella disappearing into balls of elemental Fire. The stones of our mansion crashing down all around me. Climbing through the piles of rubble that remained behind, searching for Bria. Finally realizing that she was dead because of me and my magic. My confused, aimless wanderings through the woods that surrounded our house. The moment when I finally stumbled onto a road—a road that would eventually lead me to the Pork Pit and Fletcher, even if I didn’t know it yet . . .
My eyes snapped open. For a moment, I couldn’t quite remember where I was, but the soft summer sunlight slanting in through the window illuminated the cloud-covered fresco on the ceiling. The splashes of blue and white soothed me, and I realized that I was safe at Jo-Jo’s.
I let out a breath and put my hands over my face, as though I could dig my fingers into my skull and pull out all of the memories that haunted me. This was the second time in the last few weeks that I’d flashed back to my past in my dreams. I hoped I wouldn’t make a habit out of reliving my life every time I went to sleep. That would be rather tragic—and tiring.
Still, I thought back over my dreams, my memories, trying to find the reason for them, if there was such a thing. I’d thought that nothing could ever be more horrible than witnessing the murder of my family, but in some ways, the pain Sebastian had inflicted on me had been even worse.
I’d been a kid back then, ambushed and tortured in the middle of the night by a stranger who was older and stronger. There was no way I could have known what was coming.
But Sebastian had wormed his way past all of my defenses, which I’d thought were so strong, clever, and impenetrable. But he’d fooled me as easily as he had everyone else. I’d been lucky to escape the mausoleum with my life, and luckier still to have made it to Finn and Fletcher in time to save them both.
Or was it luck? The only kind of luck that Fletcher had taught me to believe in was bad luck. He said that we made everything else ourselves. I didn’t know about that, though. But I’d survived all the other horrible things that had happened to me, and somehow I had survived Sebastian Vaughn too, despite his best efforts to kill me.
But I wasn’t the only one who’d suffered at his hands. Cesar was dead because of his scheming. And Charlotte would continue to suffer, continue to be abused by her brother, unless I did something about it.
She probably wished that she hadn’t, now that she knew what I’d done to her father, but Charlotte had saved my life last night. If she hadn’t woken me up when she did, Sebastian would have gotten Porter to tie me down to the bed, and the two men would both probably still be torturing me right now. And Finn and Fletcher might be dead too.
I owed Charlotte for that, more than she would ever realize. But I also owed her for being so very wrong about her father, for taking away what was left of her family, just as the Fire elemental had taken my mother and sisters from me all those years ago. That was one of the things I hated the most about this whole situation, how I’d become just like that mysterious killer thanks to Sebastian’s machinations and my own impetuousness.
But I couldn’t change what I’d done. I couldn’t bring Cesar Vaughn back to life. But I could sure as hell make certain that Sebastian died for his sins.
Oh, I knew that killing Sebastian wouldn’t make up for taking Charlotte’s father away from her. It wouldn’t make up for anything I’d done, not one damn thing. Nothing would.
But I still had to try, all the same.
So I threw back the covers and got out of bed.
30
It was after ten, and everyone else was still asleep. It was Sunday, so the salon was closed, and Fletcher and Sophia didn’t have to get up to open the Pork Pit.
It was the perfect time to make brunch for everyone. So I tiptoed downstairs, went into the kitchen, and started rummaging through the cabinets and the refrigerator, pulling out the ingredients for the spread I had in mind.
I whipped flour, sugar, salt, eggs, and milk into a frothy pancake batter, then added some fresh summer blackberries, raspberries, and strawberries that Jo-Jo had left sitting out on the counter. I spooned generous dollops of the creamy berry mixture into a hot skillet that I’d melted a little butter in. While the pancakes cooked, I also crisped up some bacon, put on a pot of chicory coffee, and made fruit smoothies with fresh-squeezed orange juice, vanilla yogurt, and a drizzle of sourwood honey that Jo-Jo had bought at some store called Country Daze, according to the label.