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I stood there and thought about the oldhiiven, if not forgotten

Fletcher sain "Now that you’ve conquered your fear, you’re ready for the next step But that’s a talk that can wait for another day Right now, I’ain

The old man held out his arms I hesitated, then stepped into his warm embrace

My eyes fluttered open For a moment, I was back there in the woods, safe in the old hostly warmth of his embrace faded all too quickly, the way the best dreae ceiling abovewhere I was, since the ones in Fletcher’s house were all white It took me several seconds to realize I was back in the beach house in Blue Marsh I vaguely re on the back door, but what happened after that was just a blur of color, light, and noise

A faint fluttering sound caught ht without thinking I winced and tensed up, waiting for the pain of Dekes’s bites to shoot through ony ofsensations didn’t come A second later, I realized why

A dwarf sat besidejust as polished and put together as the cover ed in a series of perfect curls on top of her head, and her makeup looked just as soft, fresh, and pretty as if she’d applied it a o She wore a pale pink sundress that looked like it was her Sunday best, and a string of pearls dangled froh hot-pink polish glea her because she looked up froazine Her eyes were clear - colorless, really - except for the pinpricks of black in the centers of her irises A sh lines to crease in the corners of her eyes and ," Jo-Jo said

Chapter 19

I frowned and sat up in bed "Jo-Jo? What are you doing here?"

Jolene "Jo-Jo" Deveraux put her beauty htstand beside her elbow "Why, patching you up, of course"

I shook my head "But I don’t understand Why aren’t you home in Ashland at your salon?"

Jo-Jo owned one of the busiest beauty salons in the city She jokingly referred to herself as a dra up wo fros to fancy dinners with their rich husbands

One of the reasons Jo-Jo’s salon was so popular was that she used her Air ele, teasing, curling, per, and other beauty treat an Air elereat way to keep Father Ti so ht, slick, sandblasted look Jonah McAllister was infa a face that was s in his sixties with a thick coif of silver hair

My thoughts darkened at the thought of the sed to fuckto have to do soot back to Ashland - so bloody, violent, and permanent Despite the fact that I’d killed Mab, McAllister was still deterht the lawyer had al Dekes on me Oh, yes McAllister was definitely on my to-do list now

"Correction, I was in Ashland," Jo-Jo said, answering my question "But Finn calledabout some sort of trouble you’d run into down here and how you were probably going to need my services before it all was said and done"

So Finn had phoned Jo-Jo even before he and Owen had left Ashland Well, that explained why the das here I didn’t h I’d needed them

"So Sophia and I loaded up the convertible, dropped Rosco off with Eva and Violet, and ca with Violet at Warren’s house, and the girls were more than happy to watch Rosco for a few days"

Rosco was Jo-Jo’s tubby basset hound and quite possibly the laziest dog on the planet He wouldn’t even get out of his wicker basket in the corner of the salon unless there was food in the offing or a chance of getting his fat tummy rubbed No doubt Eva Grayson and her best friend, Violet Fox, would spoil the dog even more than Jo-Jo already did

"Once Rosco was taken care of, Sophia and I drove down lickety-split, since I had a feeling that you’d needable to heal others, Jo-Jo also had a bit of precognition Her Air ic let her hear all the whispers on the wind, all the possibilities and hints of things that ic s that had already come to be, all the ways and all the places that people had hurt the others around the like death warmed over But I took care of that"

The dwarf reached over and pattedup the folks who came into her salon, Jo-Jo also happened to be one of the best healers around I’d lost count of the number of times she’d patched ht, covered with blood and bruises from my latest job as the Spider

The needles that I’d sensed when I’d been weaving in and out of consciousness hadn’t been Dekes at all - the pricking sensation had been Jo-Jo using her ic on ases in the air the way that I could the stone aroundhold of the oxygen in the at out the cuts and scrapes, and ether all the rips, tears, and holes in someone’s skin - in ht shoulder; my collarbone was coether and in their appropriate places oncefelt slightly off, like I wasn’t coh I knew that Jo-Jo wouldn’t have stopped using her Airabout the dwarf’s ic made me reach forwith ic