By a Thread (29 page)

“It's gone,” I whispered, looking at Jo-Jo. “My magic's gone.”

The dwarf shook her head. “Not gone, darling. Not entirely. Your gas tank's just running a little low right now. That's what happens when a vampire sucks so much blood out of you. Reach for your power, really concentrate, and you'll see what I mean.”

I did as she said. It took a moment, but I realized
Jo-Jo was right. My magic was still there, that cool power deep down in the very center of my being—but there was just barely any of it to work with. I reached for my power. A few silvery sparks of magic flickered in my hand, centered over the spider rune scar in my palm, but that was it. There was no bright glow, no cold crystals, and no other indication that I had any kind of real elemental power at all. I grabbed my magic again, and the same thing happened. After a moment, I let go of my power completely. I didn't want to waste what little I had left.

“A vampire sucking out someone's magic is one of the few things that even I can't heal,” Jo-Jo said. “I'm sorry, Gin. I wish I could fix it for you like I did everything else.”

I shrugged, struggling not to let her see just how upset I was, how hollow and empty I felt without my magic. “You did the best you could. It's not your fault. Believe me, I'm plenty grateful for everything you did heal.”

I hesitated. “But how long will it take? For my magic to come back? Will it even . . . come back?”

Jo-Jo reached over and clasped my hand. “Of course it will come back. No matter what, your magic is a part of you, Gin. It comes from
you
, not anyone else. Never doubt that.”

Her words made some of the tightness in my chest ease.

“As for exactly when it will come back . . .” This time, Jo-Jo shrugged. “It's hard to say. It will probably take a few days, at the very least.”

My stomach clenched. “That long?”

Jo-Jo nodded. “You're a strong elemental, Gin, with a lot of raw power, but Dekes took almost everything you had last night. Your blood, your
magic, and almost your life. Your neck was the worse mess that I've seen a vampire make in a long time.”

My fingers eased over to my neck, but the skin there was smooth and unbroken, and I knew there wouldn't be any marks of Dekes's vicious attack on me—not on the outside, anyway. But the vamp had hurt me more than I would have liked to admit, making me feel something that I didn't often experience—fear.

The image of him rose up in my mind, his eyes glowing with my Ice and Stone magic, my blood smeared all over his lips, his fangs gleaming like crimson-coated daggers in his mouth. Phantom pain lanced through my neck, and my whole body tightened, as if the vamp were here and getting ready to sink his teeth into me again.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Jo-Jo asked in a soft voice.

Despite how tightly I held on to my emotions, the dwarf could always sense when I was struggling with something—that's how well she knew me.

I shifted on the bed. “The bastard gnawed on my neck like a dog chewing a bone. He hurt me, Jo-Jo. More than I thought he would, more than I thought he
could
. I didn't think there was anyone as powerful as Mab, but Dekes showed me just how wrong I was last night. I stupidly thought I could go in and take care of him as easily as I did his men at the hotel, but he almost killed me instead. Hell, he
would
have killed me if I hadn't managed to play dead. It was just dumb luck on my part that I got away from him.”

“Your fight with Mab was a long time coming,” Jo-Jo said, her clear eyes locking with my gray ones. “You've focused so much energy on
her these past few months that you've turned a blind eye to everything else. The fact is that there are people out there who are just as dangerous as Mab ever was, some of them with magic, and some of them without. The Fire elemental dying at your hands doesn't change that.”

“So what do I do about it?” I asked, feeling just as lost as if I were still plodding through the dark marsh.

Jo-Jo smiled and patted my hand. “You do what you always do, darling. You keep going and fighting and struggling—and then you take the bastard down any way you can.”

The dwarf got up and started moving around the room, humming under her breath as she gathered up some clean towels and clothes so I could take a shower and wash the rest of the stink of the long night off me. I sat there on the bed and watched her work, turning over her words in my mind.

Jo-Jo was right. I'd been so focused on Mab that I'd forgotten that someone didn't have to be an elemental to be dangerous—and that a vampire could kill me as easily as anyone else could. Whether I liked it or not, Dekes had almost done the deed so many others had tried to do and failed. But even worse, the vampire had scared me. I'd accepted that Mab would probably get the best of me, but I hadn't thought Dekes would be such a threat, that he could come so close to killing me. The vampire had proved to me just how wrong I'd been. Sure, I'd had something of a deadline, given Callie's situation, but I'd been stupid, arrogant, and sloppy even to waltz into his mansion without more information, especially about what kind of elemental
magic he did or didn't have, and I'd almost paid the ultimate price for my foolishness.

But if there was one thing I was good at, it was learning from my mistakes. Yes, Dekes had gotten the best of me last night, but I was still alive, still breathing, which meant I still had another chance to take the vamp down.

Jo-Jo might have healed my wounds from Dekes's gruesome bites, but the horror that I'd endured at the vampire's hands had still scarred me. The vicious brutality of his attack had left its own grooves and nicks on my black heart, right alongside the ones that Mab, LaFleur, Elliot Slater, and so many others had before.

But I'd repaid those marks in spades to the people who'd caused them—and I was going to do the same thing to Dekes very, very soon.

I got out of bed, took a shower, and put on some clean clothes. I still felt a little tired, the way I always did whenever Jo-Jo used her Air magic to bring me back from the brink of death. It would take my mind a few hours to play catch-up and realize that my body was whole and well once more. Normally, I would have gone back to bed for a few more hours, but I couldn't rest today.

Not while Callie was still in danger. Not while Vanessa and her sister were still being held hostage at the vampire's mansion. Not while Randall Dekes was still breathing. I'd rest after the vamp was dead.

It was going to be sooner than he'd ever fucking dreamed.

It was noon now, and the others were waiting in the downstairs living room, staring out at the ocean without really seeing the waves
or the bright, sunny beauty of the day. They all jumped to their feet when I came into the room, and Owen immediately wrapped his arms around me, holding me tight. I buried my face in his neck and breathed in, letting his scent fill my nose.

“I was so worried about you,” he whispered.

“I know. I'm sorry.”

I didn't tell him that something like this wouldn't happen again because we both knew it would. Like it or not, violence was a part of my life. It had been ever since I was thirteen, and it wouldn't stop now just because Mab was dead. But I was the Spider, and Fletcher had trained me to face whatever the world threw my way. He'd made me strong enough to do it time and time again, to take my licks and come back even tougher and more determined than before. I wasn't about to disappoint the old man now, even if he was dead and gone.

I pulled back, stood on my tiptoes, and gently kissed Owen. He returned my kiss, drew back, and rested his forehead against mine—just holding me like I was holding him. I closed my eyes and concentrated on the feel of his body against mine, letting his warmth spill into the cold, dark places in my heart and mute the horrors I'd faced last night. And then I sighed with relief, with love, with everything I felt for him but always had so much trouble putting into words.

“I know,” he whispered again. “Me too.”

I could have spent the rest of the day in Owen's strong, comforting embrace, but as tempting as that was, it wouldn't solve the problem of how to kill Dekes. Like it or not, it was time for me to put on my game face again. So I opened my eyes and pressed
another kiss to Owen's lips before slipping out of his arms and heading into the kitchen.

I pulled open the refrigerator door and eyed all the vittles inside that we'd brought home from the grocery store yesterday, before moving over and doing the same thing to the cabinets. Once I'd taken stock of everything, I started grabbing the items I wanted. Buttermilk, flour, cornmeal, chicken, olive oil, shortening, salad fixings, and more soon crowded onto the kitchen counters.

“You're not seriously going to cook now, are you?” Bria asked, eyeing the boxes and bottles that I'd lined up in neat rows. “Shouldn't you still be resting?”

“I think I've rested enough,” I said. “Besides, I'm starving. Being drained by a vamp will do that to a girl.”

My sister didn't smile at my gallows humor, but she did step into the kitchen and start rifling through the drawers, looking for dishes, glasses, silverware, and more. Finn, Owen, Sophia, and Jo-Jo settled themselves around the long, square table in the dining room that branched off the kitchen.

I washed my hands and got to work. First I added a generous dash of salt and black pepper to the flour that I'd poured into a small, shallow dish. Then I cleaned and soaked the chicken in a bowl full of buttermilk before dredging it in the flour mixture. A few seconds later, the first piece sizzled when I put it in the skillet full of olive oil that I'd heated on the stove. More pieces joined that first one, until the smell of meat filled the kitchen. Once I got all the chicken in the skillet, I took the rest of the buttermilk that was left in the carton and mixed it with the remaining cornmeal,
forming a thick, creamy batter, while a black cast-iron skillet went into the preheated oven so that the shortening I'd coated it with would melt.

Cooking was one of my passions in life, and it never failed to make me feel better, even if I'd almost had my neck chewed off by a vamp last night. The familiar motions of mixing and stirring soothed me, as did the aromatic smells of the hot oil and spicy seasonings in the air. By the time I slid a pan of cornbread into the oven to bake, I was starting to feel like my old self.

While I got started on a spring spinach salad, I told the others what had happened at Dekes's mansion. How the vamp had known who I was thanks to McAllister and how Dekes had used Vanessa and Victoria as hostages against me and drugged me into submission. How I'd pretended to be dead and had found my way through the marsh over here to the other side of the island. The only things I skimmed over were the brutal details of the vamp's attack on me and that he'd almost torn my throat open in order to get every drop of magic he could out of my blood.

“So he's using the two women against each other,” Finn said. “Vanessa can't leave or fight back because Dekes has Victoria as leverage.”

“And he's draining the blood and their magic out of them again and again,” I said. “That's probably why I didn't sense Vanessa's magic, because Dekes had recently fed off her. And Victoria was in really bad shape: thin, unconscious, and anemic. It won't be long before Dekes kills her. Then he'll do the same thing to Vanessa because he won't have her sister to keep her in line anymore. After that, he'll find some more elemental women, bring them to his mansion, and do the
same thing to them. He's one sick bastard.”

“Sick,” Sophia rasped.

The sound of the Goth dwarf's hoarse, broken voice reminded me that I wasn't the only one here who'd been tortured. Many years ago, Sophia had been kidnapped by a man named Harley Grimes and had been forced to submit to all the unspeakable things Grimes had done to her, including making her breathe in elemental Fire, which had destroyed her vocal cords. Jo-Jo could have easily healed Sophia and made her voice whole once more, but the Goth dwarf had refused her sister's offer. I supposed Sophia felt the same way about her ruined vocal cords as I did about my spider rune scars. They were both reminders of what we'd gone through—of what we'd survived.

I looked at Sophia and saw the sadness that always glittered in her black eyes. My suffering at the hands of Dekes had been nothing to what she'd endured with Grimes. Somehow, the dwarf had found the strength to survive all the horrors Grimes had inflicted on her. She was one of the strongest people I knew, and she made me want to be just as tough as she was. I was going to be, I vowed. Because I'd be damned if I left Blue Marsh while Dekes was still alive.

“So what happened on your end?” I asked, turning the pieces of chicken over in the skillet so that the other sides could brown.

Finn shrugged. “We could all tell that Dekes's giants were getting a little too interested in us, especially after you left with the man himself. So I suggested to Bria and Owen that we make good our getaway. We slipped away from the pool, but two of the giants followed us. They chased us into another wing
of the mansion, well away from the press conference.”

“Did you have any trouble with them?” I asked.

“Not after I blasted the first one's brains out of his skull with the help of my new silencer,” Finn said in a not-so-modest voice.

My foster brother might be a slick, polished investment banker, but he also could shoot the wings off a fly with any gun he picked up. Finn was even better with firearms than I was, and he always had one or two tucked away on his body somewhere, just like I did my knives.

I thought of my knives lying on the mantel in Dekes's library. That was something else the vampire was going to pay for—taking away my weapons.

“As you can imagine, the other guy got a little upset that his buddy's blood was all over his face,” Finn continued. “Which gave Owen enough time to pick up a nearby candlestick and do his thing with it.”