“Well,” Finn drawled, coming down the acid-splattered stairs to stand beside me, “I think that went rather well, all things considered.”
Owen hurried over as well, crouching down in front of me, his violet eyes full of concern. “Are you okay, Gin?”
I waited until Jo-Jo had finished with her latest wave of healing magic. “Right as rain, now that Madeline is dead. I just didn’t think that there would be so many other casualties.”
More than a dozen still, crumpled bodies littered the ballroom. The bosses hadn’t been brawling all that long, no more than a few minutes, but they’d gotten their licks in, and they’d made them count. Bria, Xavier, and Sophia were already busy going from body to body to see if anyone was still breathing underneath all that blood. Roslyn walked down the stairs and joined Phillip, who was trailing along behind the others and cataloging the bodies as well, to see which of his competition might have been eliminated.
Owen pushed a bit of loose hair back from my face. His fingers fell away, and I tried not to notice the clump of hair that they dragged along with them. Madeline’s magic had eaten into me a little more deeply than I’d thought, but I wasn’t worried. Jo-Jo could fix the parts of me that were broken, even if she could never touch or heal the scars that would continue to smoke and burn in my heart, just like the pockets of acid on the floor.
“So now what?” Owen asked.
I scanned the ballroom again. Jonah was still out cold next to the terrace doors, but there was one body that I didn’t see among all the others.
“Where’s Emery?” I asked.
Finn shook his head. “Gone. Out one of the doors with the rest of the crowd. I tried to get a bead on her, but there were too many people in the way.”
A cold finger of unease crept up my spine at the news of the giant’s escape. She wouldn’t let this go. Madeline had been her boss, her cousin, her friend, and she’d want revenge. Emery would find some way to make me pay for Madeline’s death. It was as certain as the sun coming up in the morning. But there was nothing I could do about it tonight. Even if the giant had been standing right in front of me, I barely had the energy to blink at the moment, much less take her on.
“Don’t worry, Gin,” Silvio piped up, texting on his phone. “I’m already reaching out to my contacts to track her.”
Finn slapped his hands on his hips. “Your contacts? And what makes you think that your contacts will find her faster than my contacts will?”
Silvio gave him a patronizing look. Finn glowered back at the vampire. I was too tired to even roll my eyes, much less snicker at their rivalry—
“Who are you people?”
Every single one of us froze. Me. Owen. Finn. Silvio. Jo-Jo. Even Bria, Xavier, Sophia, Roslyn, and Phillip on the other side of the ballroom.
Then, with one thought, we all whirled around, fists and weapons raised, looking for the source of that soft, hesitant voice.
A little girl stood at the edge of the dance floor.
She was dressed in soft, pale blue footie pajamas patterned with penguins and clutched an even softer-looking blue rabbit to her chest. Her hair was mussed with sleep, but I could see the auburn highlights glinting in the dark brown strands.
She looked at all of us in turn, not really afraid, but her green eyes were big and curious.
“Who are you?” she asked again. “And where’s my mommy?”
29
All the air left my lungs in a ragged rush. I blinked and blinked and blinked, as if that would change who and what was before me.
But it didn’t.
A little girl. In the Monroe mansion. Staring at me with Madeline’s eyes. Wondering where her mommy was.
I didn’t have to look at the others to know that they were just as shocked and surprised as I was. In all the intel that Finn and Silvio had gathered on Madeline, in all my spying on her, in all my confrontations with her, there had never been so much as a whisper that she had a child. Then again, I’d never known that Mab had had a daughter either. But now here I was, confronted by the next little girl in the Monroe family. I couldn’t help but wonder if she had the same kind of acid magic that her mother did, or perhaps even her grandmother’s Fire power.
Jo-Jo was quicker and kinder than the rest of us. The dwarf got to her feet, plastered a smile on her face, and slowly approached the girl.
“Hi, there, darling,” Jo-Jo crooned in a soft, easy voice. “What’s your name?”
“Moira. Moira Monroe.”
She held out her hand. “Nice to meet you, Moira. I’m Jo-Jo.”
The two of them shook hands, the little girl as serious as she could be. Jo-Jo gestured over her shoulder at the rest of us.
“And these are my friends.”
Moira looked us over, her green gaze moving from one of us to the next, even as my friends shuffled forward and sidled sideways, trying to hide as much of the blood and as many of the bodies as they could from her.
Finally, her eyes met mine. Her tiny face creased in thought, and I realized that she was staring at my spider rune necklace.
“Oh,” she said, her face clearing. “You’re the spider lady, the one that my mommy doesn’t like. What are you doing here? I thought that you were dead.”
I heard her words, even though they all sounded like gibberish at the moment. But I forced myself to get to my feet and slowly walk over to her, not wanting to scare her. It was a good thing Jo-Jo had healed all the burns and blisters on my skin already, or I would have looked like even more of a monster than I already did.
Up close, Moira was as pretty as a picture. She couldn’t have been more than three or four, but I could already tell that she would grow up to look just like Madeline. I imagined that she’d be even more beautiful than her mother had been.
I opened my mouth, but no words came out. I didn’t know what to even think right now, much less say to her. I wet my lips and tried again, but I still couldn’t utter so much as a single sound. My silence must have scared Moira, because she backed away from me. A pale green light began to flicker around her fingers.
And the stuffed rabbit began to smoke and burn in her hands.
Small drops of acid spattered onto the rabbit’s face, melting it in an instant, as Moira looked up at me with round, scared eyes. I sucked in another breath, and I finally managed to plaster a tight, miserable smile on my face. Well, that answered my question about what kind of magic she might have. As for her power level, it was hard to tell since she was still so young, but if she had even half of Madeline’s strength, then she would be an elemental to be reckoned with.