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Maybe I could catch them before they got out of the subdivision - "Gin!"
I pulled up short and whirled around. Bria stood on the front porch, covered with blood.
"It's Jo-Jo!" she screamed again. "Get in here! Quick!"
I looked over my shoulder. By this point, the van was gone. I couldn't catch Grimes and Hazel, and I couldn't save Sophia.
I couldn't save her.
"Gin!" Bria yelled again.
My heart burned with rage and guilt and shame, but there was nothing I could do about that right now. So I sucked in another breath, grabbed my knives from where they had fallen on the driveway, and ran back toward the house.
Once Bria realized that I was headed in her direction, she darted back inside. Dread tied my stomach into tight, aching knots, and I forced myself to move even faster. I leaped up onto the porch, raced down the hallway, and burst into the salon. Bria was already crouched down by
Jo-Jo's side. Rosco was there too, his furry head resting in the dwarf's lap. He must have come back inside while I'd been chasing after Sophia. He let out a low, plaintive whine when he saw me, begging me to help the mistress he loved so much.
Jo-Jo was in the same spot as before, slumped against the wall, her head lolling to one side, her clear eyes open, blood all over her chest.
Fear, guilt, and grief roared to life inside my chest, bubbling up like lava about to erupt from a volcano. My knives slipped from my numb fingers and clattered to the floor. I bent over double from the cruel, searing pain, from the thought that Jo-Jo was gone, dead, murdered - that I'd failed her just like I had failed Fletcher when I hadn't been able to save him from being tortured to death inside the Pork Pit.
Then Jo-Jo slowly turned her head in my direction and looked up at me, her eyes bright and cloudy with pain, confusion, and fear - for her sister.
"Sophia . . . " Jo-Jo whispered, her voice faint and weak.
"Grimes . . . "
Relief surged through me, so sharp, cold, and bittersweet that it took my breath away. My knees buckled, and I stumbled down onto the floor beside her.
"Don't you worry about that right now," I finally said in a rough, ragged tone. "Just try to relax. "
I peered at Jo-Jo's wounds, and my relief vanished, replaced once more by that hot, churning wad of fear, guilt, and grief. Grimes had shot her twice, and he'd made both bullets count. Two ugly holes marred her flesh, close to her heart. Each one a kill shot. The only reason Jo-Jo was still alive was that she was a dwarf, and her dense muscles had kept the bullets from tearing into her heart. But she was losing blood with every shallow breath that she drew in, and it wouldn't be long u
ntil she ran out of it entirely.
Bria picked up a towel she'd grabbed from somewhere and pressed it against Jo-Jo's wounds, trying to stem the blood loss. I got back up onto my feet, stepped over the dead men, and started rummaging through all of the pink plastic tubs on the counter, knocking bottles of shampoo, tubes of lipstick, and bags of pink sponge curlers off the surface in my hurried, desperate frenzy to find something that would help Jo-Jo. Finally, my fingers closed over a small metal tin, with a puffy cloud rune painted on the top in white and outlined in a deep, vibrant blue.
I popped the lid off the tin and dropped down beside Jo-Jo again. "Here," I told Bria. "This will help. "
She pulled the towel away from the wounds, picked up Rosco, and moved him out of the way. I grabbed one of my knives from the floor and used it to cut open Jo-Jo's dress so I could have better access to her injuries. Then I dipped my bloody fingers into the tin, which was full of a clear ointment that had a soft, soothing vanilla scent.
I leaned forward and carefully smeared the substance all over Jo-Jo's chest, trying not to cause her any more pain than was absolutely necessary, but she still winced with every brush of my fingers against her skin.
Not only could Air elementals heal folks with their magic, but they could also imbue things like lotions, liquids, and creams with their power, as Jo-Jo had done to this tin of ointment. Now I was hoping that she'd put enough of her healing magic into the clear salve to help save her.
I held my breath as the ointment slowly soaked into her skin. It didn't pull the black, ragged edges of the gunshot holes back together, but it did slow and then finally stop the blood loss - for now. Jo-Jo's injuries were deep and serious, and it wouldn't be long before the Air magic in the ointment faded away and the wounds started to bleed once more, and that was if one of the bullets didn't continue its journey on into her heart in the meantime.
Once again, that hot, agonizing fear that I was going to lose her rose in me, but I ruthlessly squashed it, focusing on what we needed to do next to save her.
"We've got to get her to a healer, to another Air elemental," I said. "Right now. "
"But who?" Bria asked.
Rosco eased back over to Jo-Jo's side and whined again, as if he was asking the same question.
Who indeed? Air elementals weren't all that rare, but they didn't exactly grow on trees either. Not to mention the fact that not every Air elemental used his or her power to heal. Some, like Sophia, used it to destroy, to rip apart skin and bones and sandblast molecules into nothingness.
My heart clenched again at the thought of Sophia and what she could be experiencing at Grimes's hands right now, but I pushed those sick, guilty feelings away. First, I had to save Jo-Jo. Then I could go after Sophia and rain down all of my cold, cold wrath on Harley Grimes for what he'd done to the Deveraux sisters.
