Heart of Venom

by Jennifer Estep

  I drove even faster than Roslyn had, so it didn’t take me long to reach Jo-Jo’s house. Despite the earlier gunshots and flashes of elemental violence, no police cars sat in the driveway. The house was on higher ground and set back from the road much farther than the others in the subdivision, so you’d really have to look to notice anything out of the ordinary. Besides, gunshots weren’t uncommon in Ashland, not even out here in the ’burbs. When they did erupt, most folks hurried to lock their doors and grab their own weapons, rather than calling the cops, most of whom would take their sweet time responding.

  From a distance, Jo-Jo’s home looked the same as always. A three-story white plantation house perched on top of a hill, a grassy lawn spread out around it like the rippling skirt of an emerald dress. It was only when I got out of the car and walked closer that I could see the damage that Grimes, Hazel, and their men had done.

  The front door, left wide open, had a muddy boot print planted in the middle of it, and a sheet of water from Bria’s melted elemental Ice covered the hallway, soaking my bare toes. A long, splintered piece of wood floated in the water like the plank of a wrecked ship, the part of the doorway that Sophia had pulled off in her desperate attempt to stay with Jo-Jo.

  The inside of the salon wasn’t any better. The men Bria and I had killed lay where they had fallen, blood pooled under their bodies, their sightless eyes fixed on the ceiling. I went through their pockets, rifling through their wallets for clues about Grimes, but all I found were driver’s licenses, credit cards, and a few crumpled bar receipts. Nothing useful. I threw the last wallet aside in disgust.

  But the worst part wasn’t the water or the bodies or the kicked-in door. No, the worst part was the blood that had splattered against one of the walls. Because I knew that it was Jo-Jo’s blood, that I hadn’t been able to protect her from this horror in her own home, that I’d stood by while she’d been shot and Sophia had been kidnapped. If I could have, I would have killed the men all over again for destroying Jo-Jo’s salon. Because it was more than a business—it was a sanctuary. More than once, I’d shown up on Jo-Jo’s front porch late at night, covered with blood and bruises. And every time—every single time—she’d welcomed me with open arms and healed me with no questions asked. More than that, she’d made me feel wanted, protected, loved. I’d always felt safe here—until today.

  Harley Grimes would live just long enough to rue the moment he’d ever decided to come after the Deveraux sisters again.

  My knives were still where I’d left them, two on the floor and three on the buffet table with all the food. The dark chocolate mousse pie, the fried chicken salad sandwiches, the chocolate-dipped fruit. All spoiled now and covered with hungry, humming flies that had invaded the house along with the heat. More sad reminders of how horribly wrong the day had gone.

  I grabbed my knives, sliding one into its usual spot against the small of my back before tucking the others into the pockets of my shorts. I glanced around, wondering if there was something that I’d overlooked, and I spotted a piece of paper on the floor next to Rosco’s basket in the corner. I went over, picked up the paper, and unfolded it.

  An image of Jo-Jo sitting on the steps at the Briartop museum stared back at me.

  I recognized the photo as one that had run in the newspaper a few weeks ago, one of many that the media photographers had snapped after Clementine’s botched heist that night. The rest of the story had been carefully cut away from the photo, along with the other people in it, leaving only the image of Jo-Jo behind. The paper had been folded into a small square, and the edges were soft and worn, as though Grimes had been carrying it around in his pocket for a while.

  This must have been the thing that had finally fully reignited his interest in Sophia, even more so than Fletcher’s death. The reason Jo-Jo had been shot.

  My surprise quickly faded away, but a sick, sick feeling lingered in my stomach. Because Jo-Jo wouldn’t have even been at the museum if not for me, if I hadn’t asked her to come and heal Phillip after Clementine had shot him.

  My fault—it was my fault that Grimes had come after the Deveraux sisters again. I’d put Jo-Jo in the spotlight without even meaning to, and now she and Sophia were paying the terrible price for it.

  My fingers curled around the clipping, crushing the newspaper into a small, round wad. Not for the first time, I cursed Clementine Barker and then Jonah McAllister, who’d hired her in the first place. McAllister couldn’t have possibly realized that this would be one of the consequences of his actions, but I knew that he would enjoy it all the same, should he ever learn of it. There were few things the weaselly lawyer liked better than causing trouble for me and mine.

  I let myself fume about McAllister for a moment before I tossed the wadded-up newspaper clipping aside. My eyes scanned the ruined salon a final time, but there was nothing else to see or do here, so I grabbed my sandals from the corner and slipped them on.

  I’d just started to leave when my cell phone rang.

  It was such a loud, jarring, unexpected sound that I whirled around, a knife in my hand, ready to kill whatever was making that noise. But after realizing that it was only my phone, which I’d left on the buffet table, I let it ring until it went to voice mail. I picked it up and had started to slip it into my pocket when it began ringing again. I had a sneaking suspicion who was calling and that he wouldn’t give up until I answered.

  “What?” I growled into the receiver.

  “Finally!” Finn practically shrieked in my ear. “There you are! I’ve been calling and calling you!”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve been a little busy, in case you haven’t heard.”

  “I got off the phone with Bria a few minutes ago,” Finn said. “Tell me what happened.”

  I quickly filled him in on everything that had happened. While I talked, I left the salon and walked down the hallway, my sandals sloshing through the puddles of water. I stepped out onto the front porch, stopping to shut the door behind me. At least, I tried to. Its hinges had come loose from the frame, and it wouldn’t quite close all the way. Another thing that Grimes had broken—and something else that he was going to pay for.

  When I finished, Finn was silent for a moment. Then he let loose with a very long, very loud, very imaginative string of curses that quickly devolved into a raging manifesto about how Grimes should be brutally tortured, stitched back together, and then tortured again for everything that he’d done to Jo-Jo and Sophia.

  “Well,” I drawled when Finn had finally calmed down enough to let me get a word in edgewise. “I second all that. In fact, I’m getting into the car right now to go make it happen.”

  “I’m up in Cypress Mountain meeting with a client, but I can leave right now and be down there in a few hours,” Finn said. “Then we can go after Sophia together.”

  “There’s no time. I need to get to her as soon as possible. There’s no telling what Grimes will do to her.”

  I didn’t tell him that it might already be too late. Finn knew that as well as I did.

  “You can’t go after Grimes alone,” Finn said. “Who knows how many more men he has on that mountain of his? At the very least, you’ll be outnumbered.”

  “I can, and I’m going to. I don’t care how many fucking men he has. I’ll kill every single one of them if that’s what it takes; you should know that.”

  “I do know that. I also know that you’re upset, but going up there on your own isn’t a smart move,” Finn said. “You know it too, deep down inside. You’re just not thinking clearly right now because you’re so angry.”

  Sophia! Jo-Jo! Sophia! Jo-Jo!

  The sisters’ screams echoed in my head again, and once more all the images, all the terrible memories, of the day overwhelmed me. Sophia stumbling into the salon, telling us to run. Jo-Jo stretching her hand out toward her sister. Sophia hanging on to the doorframe with all her might. The coppery smears of Jo-Jo’s blood on Bria’s sheet of elemental Ice. The agony in her eyes at the thought of Sop
hia in Grimes’s clutches. The cold touch of Jo-Jo’s hand at Cooper’s house.

  Finn was right. I was angry. But I was determined too. And waiting simply wasn’t an option, no matter how dangerous doing this alone was going to be.

  “My thinking is crystal-clear,” I snapped. “Save Sophia. Kill Grimes. It’s pretty cut-and-dried. Save your breath, Finn.”

  “Gin, wait—”

  I hung up on him. The phone started ringing a second later. No doubt, Finn thought that he could talk me out of it. He should have known better.

  10

  With my phone turned off and tossed onto the passenger seat of Roslyn’s car, I left Jo-Jo’s salon and drove over to Fletcher’s house, my house now. I zoomed up the driveway, making the tires spit out gravel in every direction, crested the ridge, and parked.

  The ramshackle structure looked a bit odd, since it featured a mishmash of white clapboard, brown brick, and gray stone, all topped off by a tin roof. But to me, it was simply home. To the right of the house, the yard stretched out before abruptly dropping off into a series of jagged cliffs. To the left, the woods formed a solid line of green, gray, and brown.

  I got out of the car and headed for the front porch. Normally, I took a moment to reach out with my magic and listen to the stones around me, in case anyone had decided to lie in wait to ambush the Spider at home. But today I didn’t even bother. If someone was out there, then today was the unluckiest day of his life, because the idiot would be my warm-up for Harley Grimes.

  But as I opened the heavy black granite front door shot through with thick veins of silverstone, nothing seemed out of the ordinary in the chirping of the birds in the trees or the rustle of the rabbits in the underbrush. Good. I didn’t want anything else to slow me down and keep me from reaching Sophia as quickly as possible.

  I stepped inside, shut the door behind me, and headed straight for Fletcher’s office. I hated delaying even a second, but I needed more information before I went after Grimes, and this was the one place I was sure I could get it.

  A large maple tree shaded this part of the house, and even with the day’s sun, Fletcher’s office was dark enough that I had to turn the lights on to see what I was doing. The room was a mess, with papers, pens, and folders stacked everywhere, from the desk in the back to the bookcases standing against the walls to the file cabinets that squatted on either side of the door. But there had been a method to Fletcher’s madness, and I’d slowly been figuring out his system.

  In fact, I’d been spending more and more time in his office over the past few weeks, trying to track down the mysterious M. M. Monroe, the long-lost relative that Mab’s will had listed as heir to all of her earthly possessions. I hadn’t had any luck so far, but going through the files had finally nudged me into straightening up the old man’s office. At least a little bit. I left most of his things where Fletcher had kept them, though. In a way, it made me feel like he was still here, still guiding me, even though he’d been dead since last fall.

  I hadn’t run across any information about Grimes, Hazel, and their men, but there had to be something here. Fletcher and Grimes had almost killed each other over Sophia, and the old man had made Grimes stay away on his mountain ever since then. Plus, Fletcher had liked to keep tabs on everyone who was up to no good in Ashland, and there was no way that he wouldn’t have tracked Grimes through the years, especially if he thought that Grimes might be a threat to the Deveraux sisters again someday.

  I started with the file cabinets beside the door, flipping through all of the folders inside. No file on Grimes. I moved over to the bookcases, rifling through the items on every shelf. No file. I went over to the desk, sorting through all the papers on the battered surface and then all the ones in the various drawers. Still no file.

  Frustrated, I slammed the last drawer on the desk shut, then swiveled Fletcher’s chair back and forth, making the wheels go screech-screech-screech. I studied every part of the office, wondering if there was anything that I’d missed, any possible place that Fletcher might have stashed some information on Grimes that I’d overlooked.

  And that’s when I noticed the sticker on one of the bookcases.

  It was a small sticker, stuck on the bottom right corner of the case, a few feet away from the desk. Odd that Fletcher would put a sticker on the wood way down there where no one was likely to notice it. But what was odder still was the sticker itself: a couple of white scythes crossed over a red heart, all on a black background. It wasn’t Fletcher’s style at all . . .

  But it was definitely Sophia’s.

  My heart quickening, I got down on my knees and ran my hands all over the bookcase, searching for a secret compartment, but there wasn’t one. The case was just a case, solid wood from top to bottom. Puzzled, I rocked back on my heels, wondering where the file could be, since it wasn’t actually sitting on one of the shelves.

  Then I remembered something that Fletcher had always said: Simpler is better. I let out a laugh, leaned forward, and reached under the bookcase. A second later, my fingers closed around a folder, and I pulled it out into the light. Unlike the manila folders that Fletcher used for everything else, this one was black and simply had Sophia scrawled across the front in silver ink. I sat on the floor, leaned my back against the desk, and opened it.

  Hello, Gin. If you are reading this, then I am dead, but Harley Grimes is not.

  I recognized the old man’s handwriting, and the distinctive flow and cadence of his words made it feel like he was sitting here right beside me, slowly, carefully, quietly reviewing the information with me.

  If Harley Grimes has any sort of heart at all, then it is a heart of venom—cold, cruel, and delighting in the suffering of others. Sophia wasn’t the first girl he took, and she certainly wasn’t the last . . .

  Fletcher went on to detail everything that Jo-Jo had told me. How Grimes had seen Sophia, wanted her, and kidnapped her. How Jo-Jo had reached out to Fletcher and hired him as the Tin Man to rescue Sophia. Fletcher’s journey up Bone Mountain to where Grimes had his camp. The guerrilla tactics that he had used to pick off Grimes’s men one by one. And finally, his last battle with Grimes.

  I had already killed Horace and Henry, Grimes’s older brothers, and wounded Hazel, his younger sister, and I managed to trick Grimes himself into using up all of his Fire magic before I finally confronted him face-to-face.

  We fought. He used his fists. I had my knives. It was a long, hard battle, but I was wearing him down and moving in for the kill when Hazel snuck up behind me and gutshot me with a pistol. I stabbed Grimes in the chest, but he ran away, and I knew that the wound wouldn’t kill him—but that mine would if I didn’t get to Jo-Jo in time.

  So I left. I regret that. I should have stayed and finished the job, even if I would have died up there on the mountain with Grimes. At least then I would have known that Sophia and Jo-Jo were safe from him forever . . .

  Fletcher went on to describe how he and Sophia had helped each other down the mountain and how they’d gotten back to his car and then over to Jo-Jo’s house so she could heal them both. He also detailed some other skirmishes that he’d had with Grimes over the years, but by then, he’d had other things to think about—like me and Mab.

  But the file contained other useful things, including a map of the mountain where Grimes made his home and detailed sketches of the camp itself. Apparently, Fletcher had trekked up there every single year to see what Grimes was up to. His final trip had been in May of last year, several months before his death. That meant that the map and the sketches were more than a year old, but they would have to do. Besides, given the old-fashioned suit that I’d seen him wearing earlier and the fact that Fletcher’s own maps didn’t vary much year to year, Grimes didn’t strike me as the kind to change a lot about his home or his operations.

  Still, as I read through all the information, it almost seemed like there was something missing. Some gap in his narrative, some small piece of information that Fletcher had decided not
to include, for whatever reason. In certain places, it almost seemed as though someone else had to have been with Fletcher and Sophia on the mountain, helping them, for him to be able to do what he did. For the life of me, though, I couldn’t imagine who it would have been or why the old man would have left that person’s involvement out of the file. I couldn’t puzzle it out, so I moved on.

  Finally, I came to the last thing in the file, a letter addressed to me. With shaking hands, I unfolded the single sheet of paper.

  Grimes won’t let Sophia go a second time. And he doesn’t deserve to live after what he’s done to her and so many others over the years. Finish what I started. Kill him, Gin. For Sophia, for Jo-Jo—and for me too.

  Be careful.

  Love,

  Fletcher

  Those were the last words in the file, and I traced my fingers over them. The paper was smooth, but touching it calmed some of my anger and worry and made me feel like Fletcher was watching over me.

  “Consider it done,” I murmured.

  The old man didn’t respond, of course, and the quiet of the house soaked up my whispered words, but I knew that he would have approved of what I was going to do. Like I had told Finn, my plan was simple.

  Save Sophia. Kill Grimes. Stab to death anyone who got in my way.

  * * *

  I showered just long enough to wash the blood off me. Then I geared up for my rescue mission.

  Black hiking boots with reinforced steel toes, dark blue jeans, a tight fitted red tank top under a long-sleeved dark green T-shirt. In a few minutes, I’d transformed myself from spending a summer day at the salon into tackling a dangerous job in the forest as the Spider. Despite the fact that it was ninety degrees outside, I also put on a gray vest lined with silverstone. I’d seen how well-armed and trigger-happy Grimes and his men were, and the magical metal in the vest would stop any bullets that came whistling in my direction, along with absorbing some of Grimes’s and Hazel’s Fire magic, should they get the chance to use it on me.