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Once again, the feel of the dwarf's Air elemental magic gusted through the room, and the needles started pricking me once more, now centered in my shoulder. But this time, the pain wasn't as intense and didn't last nearly as long. Two more thunks sounded as Jo-Jo used her power to fish the bullets out of my body.
"Good as new," Jo-Jo pronounced a few minutes later.
I didn't feel as good as new. Being healed, even by an Air elemental, took a toll on your body, as you suddenly went from knocking on death's door to being in one piece again. The mind needed some time to play catch-up and realize what was going on. As close as I'd come to dying tonight, I could sleep for the next eight hours and still wake up feeling tired. In fact, I could have drifted off right now, but I forced myself to keep my eyes open.
"Thanks," I murmured.
Despite Jo-Jo's ministrations, my words still slurred a bit, probably from the blood loss.
"You're welcome, darling," Jo-Jo said. "But where's Finn? Why isn't he with you? Why didn't he bring you in?"
"He didn't go with me," I mumbled.
Jo-Jo frowned. "Why not?"
It took some effort, but I raised my head up to look at her. "Because he didn't know that I was going after Mab tonight, and I didn't want him there while I did. I didn't want him there in case things went bad, which they did. "
Jo-Jo and Sophia both stilled. They exchanged a glance over my head before the both of them looked back at me again.
"You went after Mab?" Jo-Jo asked in a soft voice.
"Alone?" Sophia rasped.
The scene replayed itself in my mind. My finger squeezing the trigger. The bolt leaving my crossbow on its perfect path toward Mab's black eye. The giant getting in the way at the last possible second.
"I tried," I muttered, my heart twisting with shame at the memory of my failure. "But one of her giant bodyguards took the bolt meant for her instead. So I missed her. I missed her. "
In a tired voice, I told the dwarven sisters everything that had happened tonight. As I finished the story, hot tears scalded my eyes.
"I had her too-dead to rights. She was right there in front of me. All I had to do was pull the trigger, and it would have all been over. No more Mab hunting the Spider, no more threats against Bria, no more danger for the people that I love. And I missed. Can you believe that? Me, Gin Blanco, the Spider, supposedly the best assassin around, or at least the best semiretired assassin around, and I missed her. I fucking missed her. "
Jo-Jo put her hand on my arm. "It's okay, Gin. Everything's going to be okay. You'll see. "
The dwarf's voice dropped to a low murmur, and once again her eyes took on a faint, milky white glow, as if she wasn't even really looking at me. In addition to her healing magic, Jo-Jo also had a bit of precognition. Most Air elementals did. They could listen to and interpret all the emotions and feelings in the atmosphere the same way that I could hear the ones that had sunk into the stone around me. But where my magic told me of things that had happened in the past, Air elementals got glimpses of things that might be flashes of possible futures. Just another way in which our two elements, our two magics, were the opposite of each other.
But if Jo-Jo said that everything was going to be okay, I believed her. The dwarf had been right about too many things before for me to doubt her now. Her whispered words brought me some much-needed comfort. So much so that I let go of my anger at myself-let go of my shame and my miserable sense of failure. I wanted to ask Jo-Jo about her cryptic words, but I just didn't have the strength left for that. Not tonight. My eyes drifted shut, and I felt myself falling into the darkness once more.
"Wake her?" Sophia rasped in a concerned voice.
"No," Jo-Jo said. "Gin needs her rest now. "
Jo-Jo's hand slid through my hair, untangling the snarled brown locks one by one. I might have only imagined it, but I thought that the dwarf leaned down and put her lips close to my ear.
"Don't worry, darling," Jo-Jo murmured. "You'll get another shot at Mab. Sooner than you think. "
Comforted, I breathed in. The sweet smell of her perfume was the last thing that I remembered before the world went black.
Chapter 6
I woke up the next morning in one of the guest bedrooms on the second floor of Jo-Jo's house. For a moment, I just lay there in my warm, soft cocoon, staring up at the swirls of blue and white in the cloud-covered fresco that decorated the ceiling. Then I started replaying the events of last night in my mind-again.
Missing Mab. Running through the forest. Stabbing giants left and right. Facing down Gentry and the girl. Stumbling through the snow and driving over here to the salon. Not the best or most successful night that I'd ever had as the Spider, but I supposed it had turned out all right in the end.
Because I should have been dead.
Everything that could have gone wrong had. At the very least, I should have bled out from that gunshot wound in my thigh. Maybe I would have, if I hadn't tied that tourniquet around my leg and used my Ice magic to numb it.
But what really bothered me were my emotions. I'd been melancholy last night, moody, and frustrated that I hadn't managed to kill Mab. Jo-Jo might have healed my body, but the dwarf hadn't eased my anguish. Even now, the melancholy, the frustration, the sense of failure, gnawed at me, bothersome termites burrowing deeper and deeper into my black heart, chipping away at the coldness there.
