Jennifer Estep - Spider's Bite

A three-story plantation house resplendent with rows of white columns perched at the top of a grassy knoll, a diamond queen on her emerald throne. Three steps led up to the wraparound porch, partially obscured by a trellis covered with curled kudzu vines and bare rose bushes. A lone bulb burned on the porch, making the shadows around the house seem a little less sinister.

I helped Finn out of the car and up the steps to the porch. A flimsy screen door fronted a heavier wooden one. I pulled the screen open, then reached forward and banged the knocker against the interior door. The knocker was shaped like a puffy cloud — Jo-Jo’s personal Air elemental rune.

A dog barked once somewhere inside the house. Rosco, Jo-Jo’s fat, lazy basset hound. Heavy, familiar footsteps sounded, and I could smell her Chantilly perfume even out here. The door opened, and a woman stuck her face outside.

“What do y’all want this late?”

Even though it was close to midnight, Jolene “Jo-Jo” Deveraux looked like she was ready to go to Sunday church. A flowered dress covered her stocky, muscular figure, and a string of pearls hung from her short neck. Her feet were bare, although flirty pink polish covered her stubby toenails. The color matched her lipstick and eye shadow. Jo-Jo’s bleached blond-white hair was coiffed into its usual, helmetlike tower of ever-tightening curls, although her black roots were starting to show. At an even five feet, she was tall for a dwarf, and her hair only added to her height. But I still had a good seven inches on her.

“Hey, Jo-Jo.” I dragged Finn forward into the light. “It’s Gin. My boy here could use some help.”

The dwarf’s eyes were almost colorless, except for the pinprick of black at their center. Her pale gaze flicked over Finn’s battered face, and the blood spatters that coated both of us like strips of wet wallpaper. The crow’s feet and laugh lines that grooved her middle-aged face deepened with worry.

“Hell’s bells and panther trails,” Jo-Jo drawled in a voice as light and sweet as apricot syrup. “Come in, come in. Take him in the back. You know where.”

I half-dragged Finn inside and through a long, narrow hallway that opened up into a large room that took up the back half of the house. It looked like your typical southern beauty salon. Padded swivel chairs. Old-fashioned hair dryers. A couple of counters covered with hairspray, nail polish, scissors, rollers, and gap-toothed combs. Pictures of models with hairstyles twenty years old covered the walls, while beauty and fashion magazines stood six inches deep on every available surface. A door to one side led to a room filled with tanning beds.

Jo-Jo Deveraux made her living as what she called a “drama mama,” using her Air elemental magic on the beauty pageant, debutante ball, and society circuits in Ashland and beyond. If it could be purified, plucked, smoothed, tweezed, waxed, cut, curled, dyed, tanned, or exfoliated, Jo-Jo did it in her beauty shop. Air magic was great for smoothing out unwanted wrinkles and lifting someone’s breasts back to the way they had looked five years and two kids ago.

Only a few select friends knew about the dwarf’s side business as a healer. But Jo-Jo and Fletcher went way back, and I’d made generous use of her services over the years.

I hauled Finn over to one of the cherry-red chairs, put him down, and plopped myself in the next seat over. Jo-Jo scuttled in behind us. She went over to one of the sinks that lined the wall and washed her hands. Rosco, the basset hound who’d howled earlier, sat in his usual spot in a wicker basket by the door. The hound looked up at me, snuffled once, then dropped his brown and black head down on top of his tubby stomach. The only time Rosco moved out of his basket was when there was food involved.

Jo-Jo pulled a free-standing chair over to Finn. She clicked on a bright halogen light and angled it so that it spotlighted his beaten face. “What the hell happened, Finn? When I saw you earlier tonight, you were smooching some sweet young thing at the opera house.”

Jo-Jo Deveraux was a social butterfly of the highest order. Nothing she loved better than curling her hair, putting on a nice dress, some nicer shoes, and going out to a party, ball, or benefit. And she got invited to every single one. You knew a lot of people when you were two hundred fifty-seven and counting.

Finn winced. “Unfortunately, we got interrupted.”

Jo-Jo opened her mouth to ask another question, but I cut her off.

“Fletcher’s dead.” Somehow I forced out the words, even though they burned my throat like acid.

Jo-Jo’s pale gaze shifted to me. A shadow passed over her face, but she didn’t seem overly surprised. In addition to being a healer, Jo-Jo also had a bit of precognition. Most Air elementals did, given the fact they could listen and tap into vibrations and emotions in the air. Or perhaps the dwarf just realized we wouldn’t have come here at this time of night if something bad hadn’t happened. “Fletcher’s dead? How?”

For the second time I told my story. Opera house. River. Fletcher dead on the floor of the Pork Pit.

“I’m so sorry, Gin, Finn,” Jo-Jo said in a soft voice. “Fletcher was a hell of a man. Sophia and I loved him, just as much as you two did.”

“Yes, he was,” I replied. “And I know you did.”

Each one of us fell silent, overwhelmed by thoughts and memories of the old man. We didn’t speak for a long while. I was grateful for the silence.

Jo-Jo examined Finn’s face another minute before she went to work. She held her hand in front of his face, her palm not quite touching his bloody, bruised flesh. The dwarf’s eyes began to glow an opaque, buttermilk white, as though thick clouds drifted through her gaze. A similar glow coated her palm. Power crackled through the room, and I shifted in my chair. Air was an opposing element of Stone, and I always felt unsettled whenever so much of that sort of magic was being used. It just seemed wrong. Then again, my Stone and Ice magic would feel the same way to Jo-Jo or any other Air or Fire elemental.

Finn closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the chair, as though he were getting a facial. In a way, he was. Jo-Jo passed her palm over his face, forcing oxygen into his open wounds, making it circulate under his skin, using the molecules to heal and meld everything back together. It was like watching a time-lapse photo. The puffy swelling on Finn’s face reduced. The purple bruises ringing his eyes faded. The cut on his forehead and the ones on his fat lips zipped up.

It took Jo-Jo a few minutes to fix all the damage, and when she finally dropped her palm, Finn looked like his usual, carefree self, right down to the devilish glint in his green eyes. I couldn’t help but think of Fletcher, and how differently another elemental had used her Air magic on him. To flail and bruise and peel his flesh away one slow inch at a time.

Jo-Jo nodded, pleased with her work. “Now strip. And let’s get a look at the rest of you.”

Finn grinned. “Why, darling, I thought you’d never ask.”

Finn was all too happy to ditch the remains of his bloody, ruined tuxedo. Underneath, he wore a pair of navy blue boxers made out of high-end silk dotted here and there with white sailboats. Preppy. The boxers hung low on Finn’s hips, bringing out the ruddy tones in his skin. His chest was broad and solid, and a generous dash of brown, curly hair led down below the waistband of the fabric. But ugly bruises marred his figure. The fist-shaped marks painted his body in pansy purples and garden greens.

Still, most women would have found Finn extremely sexy and highly fuckable, especially when you added the boyish charm of his face to the rest of the toned, slick package. But I’d seen it and done it all before, during my younger, more foolish years.