My heart sank. I could imagine exactly what the giant had done to the runaway father. “Is he still alive?”
“I think so. But you know Emery. She could have easily killed him just for spite.”
I dropped McAllister. His head cracked against the marble floor, but he shook off his daze enough to flip over onto his belly like the snake he was and start crawling away from me. For once, I let him. I was too busy thinking about Moira.
Xavier and Bria moved toward McAllister, probably to ask him more questions about Moira and her father, but I stalked back across the ballroom until I was standing in front of Madeline.
“You sly Monroes,” I growled to the acid elemental’s still-frozen corpse. “You do delight in fucking with me from beyond the grave, don’t you?”
Madeline didn’t answer, of course, but I could have sworn that I saw the curve of her crimson lips and the gleam of her white teeth through the Ice, almost as if the black widow were laughing at me one final time.
* * *
At my request, Bria and Xavier called the cops to the mansion so we could put our own spin on how everything had gone down here tonight. Instead of leaving the scene of my crime like I had so many times before, I stayed and faced the po-po with my friends.
Most of the officers seemed more shocked at my having actually killed Madeline than anything else, even that I was still alive, but none of them approached me, and none of them dared to arrest me. Even if they’d tried, they couldn’t have so much as touched me, thanks to all those old, antiquated laws I’d found on the books. I’d challenged Madeline to a duel, she’d accepted, and she’d lost. Perfectly legal, and perfectly deadly. For her at least.
I’d thought that the cops might try to take me in for supposedly killing Captain Dobson, but Silvio had already laid the groundwork to get me out of that too. He had a quiet, but rather pointed, discussion with the commanding officer on the scene about the bull pen, how I could identify many of the cops who’d been there that night and, worst of all, sue the department for every dime it had. So all the charges against me were summarily dropped. Silvio even got the commanding officer to promise to issue me a public apology.
As for the other dead bodies, Bria and Xavier claimed that the crowd watching the duel had panicked and that several folks had been trampled to death as a result. It wasn’t plausible, not at all, but none of the surviving underworld bosses were going to speak up and tell the police what had really happened.
Dr. Ryan Colson arrived soon after that, along with several of his assistants. I hadn’t seen the coroner since my visit to his office, but he didn’t seem surprised or upset by my presence here. Colson gave me a respectful nod, which I returned, then went about his business of seeing to the bodies. He would know that they hadn’t died from being trampled, not given all the stab wounds, snapped necks, and bruised throats on them, but I doubted he would make an issue of it.
Eventually, I settled myself on part of the marble staircase that had escaped Madeline’s acid. Owen drifted over and sat down next to me. Together, the two of us watched the cops work.
“Now what?” he asked. “What are you thinking about, Gin?”
I looked around the ballroom. Two hours ago, it had been a beautiful spot, glittering, pristine, and perfect with its diamond chandeliers, creamy orchids, and soft white lights. Now it looked like a bomb had gone off inside the once-elegant space.
I felt the exact same way inside with the revelation that Madeline had a daughter—and that perhaps our family feud wasn’t as finished as I’d thought.
Mab had killed my mother and older sister and had tried to do the same to me and Bria. Because of all that, I’d grown up with one thought on my mind—revenge. I wondered if Moira would be the same way. If she’d grow up with that same obsessive desire, that same driving ambition, that same unending thirst for blood.
My blood.
“Gin?” Owen asked again. “Bria says that there’s nothing more we can do here. Are you ready to go?”
I glanced around the ballroom a final time, at all the blood and the bodies and the still-burning pools of green acid, and me sitting smack-dab in the center of it all. Part of me wondered how I’d ever wound up here, in this time, in this place. A larger part of me wondered what would happen next—what all the consequences of my actions here tonight would be.
But those were questions and worries for another day. Madeline Magda Monroe was finished, and her schemes as dead as she was, and that was all that mattered tonight.
“Yeah, I’m done here.”
Owen got to his feet and held out his hand. I threaded my fingers through his, and he pulled me up. Together, arm in arm, we walked past Madeline’s frozen corpse and out of the ballroom.
30
The next few weeks flew by in a whirlwind of activity.
Several stories popped up in the media about Madeline’s death, Dobson’s too, but given Silvio’s not-so-subtle threats that I could still sue the department, the po-po decided to pretty much sweep everything under the proverbial rug. Par for the course in Ashland.
With Madeline dead, her schemes against my friends all unraveled as well. Roslyn’s liquor distributor backed down, Owen’s business deal finally went through, Eva’s name was cleared and she was reinstated at the community college, Jo-Jo’s salon was declared to be mold-free, and Bria and Xavier got their jobs back on the police force. Even Finn’s lawsuit got dropped for lack of evidence.
But there was still the not-so-small matter of the Pork Pit.
The interior of the restaurant had been a total loss, thanks to the fire, although the brick walls were still intact, along with the pig sign hanging over the front door. By some stroke of luck, the fire hadn’t so much as touched the sign, although I’d hired a crew to clean off all the residue left behind from all the smoke and ash that had boiled out of the restaurant.
After that, another crew came in—this one from Vaughn Construction—to gut what was left of the interior, clear out all the debris, and start again. I’d thought that Charlotte might refuse the job, given our tangled, troubled history, but she accepted it. In fact, she’d come down to the restaurant to personally oversee the construction, along with a few new features that I was adding—including a hidden door in one of the brick walls that would give me a secret way outside, should I ever have need of such a thing again.
Given my luck, I was betting that would happen sooner rather than later.