Heart of Venom Page 6

  Still, as I stared down at Jo-Jo, I couldn’t help but think back to another place, another time, and another woman lying so very still . . .

  The dwarf was totally weird.

  That was the thought that kept running through my mind as Sophia closed down the Pork Pit for the night. Fletcher had left me in his restaurant an hour ago, saying that he had some business to take care of.

  In other words, he had to go kill someone.

  That’s what Fletcher did as the assassin the Tin Man, and that’s what he was going to teach me how to do too. I hadn’t been staying with Fletcher long, just a couple of months, but he’d already showed me lots of ways to defend myself. He said that I was making good progress, mastering the basics. I didn’t really think it was all that difficult. All you had to do was hit your enemy hard and long enough, and he’d eventually go down. All Fletcher was really teaching me to do was to find those weak spots and exploit them to the fullest.

  I was disappointed that he’d had a job, especially since he’d promised me that he’d start showing me how to fight with weapons soon, including knives. That was what I was most interested in, since Fletcher used silverstone knives on most of his jobs, and I wanted to be just like him. I had been hoping that this was finally the night, but it hadn’t turned out that way.

  So here I was, sitting behind the counter, my schoolbooks spread out in front of me, even though I’d already finished my homework, watching Sophia mop the floor. The last customer had left thirty minutes ago, and Sophia had pulled out a radio that Fletcher kept in a slot under the cash register and flipped it on. The radio was tuned to some oldies station, and she swiveled her hips in time to the snappy, upbeat music as she pushed the wet mop across the faded blue and pink pig tracks on the floor and then underneath the matching vinyl booths in front of the windows.

  Sophia was dressed completely in black, from her boots to her jeans to her long-sleeved T-shirt. Even her lipstick was black. The only bit of color on her was the grinning white pirate skull in the middle of her shirt, which featured crimson flames shooting out of its eye sockets.

  Someone took the whole Goth look a little too seriously, if you asked me. Oh, yeah. She was totally weird.

  “So,” I said when the song ended and some boring commercials came on. “What do you and Jo-Jo like to do at night for fun? Cook? Watch TV? Play board games?”

  Since Fletcher was out on a job, I was going home with Sophia and spending the night at Jo-Jo’s house.

  Sophia let out a soft snort at my question. I rolled my eyes. Okay, okay, so the dwarves were probably a little old for board games, but I was just trying to make conversation. It wasn’t like I knew a lot about them, especially not Sophia. Sure, she worked at the Pork Pit, but she never seemed to pay much attention to me, except to pick me up and move me out of her way whenever I got between her and the stoves. Literally, Sophia would put her hands under my armpits, hoist me up into the air, carry me around the counter, and plop me down on a stool, like I was some dumb kid who didn’t know any better than to touch a hot stove or put my hand in the french fryer when the grease inside it was bubbling away. Whatever. I was thirteen, not a complete idiot.

  “You don’t talk much, do you?” I asked.

  Sophia looked at me out of the corner of her eye, but she didn’t even deign to answer me with so much as a grunt this time. She kept right on mopping as if I hadn’t said a word.

  I huffed, letting her know how much she annoyed me, but I gave up trying to talk to her. Instead, I cracked open the book of fairy tales that Fletcher had given me and started reading.

  Twenty minutes later, I had finished the first two stories. Why did giants and witches always get such a raw deal? They were just defending themselves from bratty kids who wanted to steal their stuff and eat their property. If someone tried to swipe my golden goose or nosh on a piece of my gingerbread house, well, I’d unleash some of my wicked new self-defense moves on them and show them what was what. And so would everyone else in Ashland. Nobody took kindly to thieves in this city, especially not the folks over in Southtown.

  Thinking about gingerbread houses made my stomach rumble, so I slid off my stool and went over to the cake stand sitting in the middle of the counter. I’d helped Fletcher make some sugar cookies earlier. There were only five left, and I knew that he wouldn’t mind me eating them.

  I lifted the glass top, set it aside, and grabbed one of the cookies. The sugary, buttery concoction melted on my tongue, bringing with it the sharp, sweet tang of the almond extract that added extra flavor to the dough. I sighed with contentment and reached for another one—

  The bell over the front door chimed, signaling that we had a customer. I quickly chewed and swallowed the rest of my cookie, then wiped the crumbs off my hands, ready to tell the person that the restaurant was closed for the night.

  But there was no need, since Jo-Jo stepped inside.

  The dwarf was wearing a long pink coat, and her pearls peeked out from underneath the collar. Gloves the same cotton-candy color as her coat covered her hands, and a matching, fuzzy hat perched on top of her head, hiding most of her white-blond curls from sight.

  At the sound of the door chime, Sophia came out of the bathroom, which she’d been cleaning. “Problem?” she rasped.

  Jo-Jo shook her head. “I’ve got to go get Finn. The boy’s at some party over in Southtown. Apparently, he decided to flirt with the girlfriend of the guy who brought him, and now he doesn’t have a ride home.”

  Sophia snorted. Me too. With Finn, there was almost always some girl involved.

  “Anyway, I thought I’d stop and see if you needed anything before I headed in that direction.”

  Sophia shook her head. Jo-Jo turned her clear gaze to me.

  “What about you, Gin?” she asked. “I’ve got to swing by the grocery store on the way home. How about I get you some of that spearmint hard candy that you like so much, since you’ll be spending the night with us?”

  “Sure,” I said in a soft, hesitant voice. “If it’s not too much trouble.”

  “No trouble at all, darling.”

  Jo-Jo smiled at me, causing the laugh lines around her mouth to deepen and making her face look that much warmer and more inviting. I found myself grinning back at her. Jo-Jo was one of those folks you couldn’t help but like.

  Sophia, not so much. Especially since she was frowning at me—again. She probably didn’t like Jo-Jo bringing me a treat. Then again, Sophia didn’t seem to like anything about me.

  Well, the feeling was definitely mutual.

  “Actually, before I forget, Finn said that he left his coat in the back of the restaurant,” Jo-Jo said. “He asked me to bring it to him. Gin, can you go get it for me, please?”

  “Sure.”

  I pushed through the double doors and went into the back. It took me longer to find the coat than it should have, but then again, I didn’t know why it was in one of the walk-in freezers to start with. Maybe Finn had been in there making out with one of the college-age waitresses. You’d think those girls were old enough to know better, but they all giggled whenever they saw Finn. I didn’t know why.

  I grabbed his coat, which was cold and crusted with ice, and headed toward the front of the restaurant—

  “You don’t approve of what Fletcher is doing with Gin,” I heard Jo-Jo say.

  I froze, my hand against one of the double doors. One good push, and it would swing wide open, and I could step into the storefront with the sisters. But instead, I found myself leaving it shut and peering through the small round window set into the top.

  Jo-Jo and Sophia stood in the middle of the restaurant in the same position as before. Even though I knew that I didn’t have to hide from the dwarves, I remained perfectly still. An old habit from living on the streets and trying to make myself as invisible as possible to all of the big, bad people out there.

  “Why don’t you like the thought of him training her?” Jo-Jo asked, even though Sophia hadn’
t answered her first question yet. “He just wants to teach her how to defend herself. The way he taught you.”

  Silence.

  “Too young,” Sophia finally said in her eerie, broken voice. “Too innocent. Too soft.”

  Soft? Too soft? I seethed. I wasn’t soft. Not anymore. Not since my family had been murdered, and especially not since I’d been living on the streets. I’d seen things, done things, that couldn’t be unseen or undone. Like eating garbage on a regular basis, scrounging through Dumpsters for enough newspapers to stay warm at night, and running away from the vampire pimps so they wouldn’t try to force me to be one of their girls. So if there was one thing that I was not, it was soft.

  “Well, I guess we’ll see,” Jo-Jo said. “Now, where is Gin with Finn’s jacket—”

  “Right here,” I said, finally pushing through the doors to the other side.

  I handed Jo-Jo the coat.

  “Thank you, darling. I’ll see you two at home.” Jo-Jo winked at me, then left.

  I turned to Sophia, but she’d already disappeared back into the bathroom to finish cleaning. Of course she had. Anything would be better than having to talk to me.

  I had started to go back over to the counter and eat another cookie when the bell over the door chimed again. Jo-Jo must have forgotten something.

  But it wasn’t Jo-Jo. Instead, a skinny blond kid whose height suggested he was about my age hurried into the restaurant and ducked down behind one of the booths. He stayed like that for a few seconds before slowly rising, peering over the table, and staring through the windows and out into the street.

  “Can I, uh, help you?” I asked.

  He whirled around at the sound of my voice, and that’s when I saw all the blood on him. His face looked like someone had taken a hammer to it. Every part of it from his chin to his cheeks to his forehead was bruised and puffy. Both of his lips were split open and dripping blood all over the floor that Sophia had just mopped. A pair of glasses clung to his nose, although the frames were bent out of shape, probably by whoever’s fist had plowed into his face so many times. But perhaps worst of all, several red, angry burns dotted his neck, as though someone had lit a whole pack of cigarettes and then stubbed them out one by one on his skin there. More cigarette burns marred his thin arms, but those looked older, since they had already scarred over.

  Sophia had heard the bell too and stepped into the storefront. She saw the kid and frowned. “Sorry. Closed—”

  The kid whipped his head in her direction. Sophia blinked, as surprised by his battered face as I had been.

  “Please don’t kick me out!” he said, scrambling to his feet. “You gotta help me! They’re after me!”

  “Who?” she asked.

  “Two giants,” the kid said, his blue eyes wide and frightened behind his glasses. “All I did was pick their pockets while they were smoking in the alley. I swear. And only because I needed some money for food. They only had, like, twenty bucks on them, but one of the giants chased and grabbed me anyway. He would have put my eyes out with his stupid cigarettes, if I hadn’t kneed him in the balls and taken off. He didn’t care about the money. Not really. He just wanted to hurt me. You know? They both did. Please, please, just let me hide in here a few minutes.”

  Sophia stared at the kid, taking in his bruised face, the blood dribbling down his chin, and the old tattered clothes that covered his body. Her gaze lingered on the burns on his neck. Her lips flattened out into a hard, thin line, and a spark of anger burned in her black eyes.

  “Okay,” she rasped.

  He blinked. “Okay?”

  She nodded. “You’re safe here.”

  She reached out and gently put a hand on the kid’s scrawny shoulder. He was so thin that his collarbone jutted up against the top of his ratty T-shirt. The kid flinched at Sophia’s touch, and her mouth turned down, as though she was suddenly sad for some reason.

  “Gin, get a cloth. Clean up.”

  I knew that it was for the kid, to wash the blood off his face, but I eyed the dwarf, wondering at the sudden change in her. I’d never seen Sophia go from being so gruff to so angry to so sad before, all in the matter of a minute.

  But I went into the back, got a clean dishrag, and wet it with warm water. By the time I returned, Sophia had sat the kid down at one of the tables and had put the rest of the sugar cookies on a plate for him to eat, and he was gulping them down as fast as he could. Annoyance spurted through me, but he looked like he could use the calories more than I could, so I shrugged it off. Besides, I knew exactly what it felt like to be that hungry.

  I handed Sophia the rag, and she managed to get the kid to stop eating cookies long enough for her to start wiping off his face. Once again, I stared at Sophia, amazed at how tender she was being and the care she took in dealing with him. She certainly wasn’t that gentle with me whenever she picked me up and moved me out of her way. Then again, I didn’t look like I’d just had my face run through the bottom of a blender either.

  “More,” she said a minute later, holding the rag out to me.

  The kid used the lull to stuff another cookie into his mouth.

  I rolled my eyes at her command, but I took the dirty rag, went into the back, exchanged it for a new, clean one, and soaked it with warm water. I had started to push through the double doors to step back out into the storefront when the bell over the front door chimed—and two giants burst into the restaurant.

  “There he is!” one of the men screamed, stabbing his finger at the boy. “You dirty little thief!”

  Sophia surged up onto her feet, stepping in front of the kid and trying to protect him, but the first giant was in a rage, and he rammed right into her, driving her all the way across the restaurant and back up against the counter.

  I gasped, my hand strangling the warm rag that I was still holding.

  The boy let out a frightened squeak. He got up to run, but the second giant snatched him by the back of his neck and drove a fist into his ribs. The boy dropped like a stone to the floor.

  Sophia let out a bellow of rage at the sight. She snapped first one fist, then the other, up into the giant’s chin, driving him back. And she didn’t stop there. She threw punch after punch at the giant, driving her fists, fingers, and even her elbows into his chest, throat, and groin.

  My mouth fell open a little more at her quick, brutal, efficient assault. I knew that Sophia was strong—she was a dwarf, after all—but I had no idea that she was such a total badass too. I wondered if this was a result of the training that Jo-Jo said that Fletcher had given her.

  Sophia threw another punch at the giant, but this time, he managed to catch her hand in his. He squeezed her fingers, and I heard her bones pop from the brutal pressure. Sophia grunted with pain, and the giant slammed his fist into her face. She staggered back, her legs going out from under her and her head snapping against the counter. She too fell to the floor, unconscious.

  The giant loomed over her, but when a minute passed and she didn’t stir, he glanced over his shoulder at his buddy.

  “What do we do now, Mason?” he asked.

  The giant who’d hit the boy, Mason, grinned back at him. “I say we see how much is in the cash register, grab everything we can from the back of the restaurant, and then dump their bodies outside on our way out the back door. What do you say, Zeke?”

  The other giant returned his friend’s evil grin with one of his own. “Sounds like a plan to me.”

  Mason grabbed the kid’s leg and dragged him over to where Sophia lay, while Zeke went around the counter and started messing with the cash register.

  I held my position behind the door and tried to think how I could stop them.

  Because I was going to stop them.

  Sure, Sophia might not be my favorite person, but she was Jo-Jo’s sister, and Jo-Jo dearly loved her. Besides, I couldn’t let the men kill her, much less a kid they’d already beaten and tortured, without trying to stop them. That would go against everything that Flet
cher was teaching me about how to protect myself and especially the people that I cared about.

  Through the door window, I risked another glance into the storefront, but the men were still busy with the cash register. My gaze kept going back to their massive fists. There was no way that I was a match for their strength. No, I needed a weapon if I had any chance of taking them down—I needed a knife.

  I turned away from the door and ran back toward the storage room where Fletcher kept the extra vegetable knives, wondering if I could really do it, if I could really save Sophia, or if I’d end up being beaten to death along with her and the kid—

  A soft thunk snapped me out of my memories.

  One second, I was running through the restaurant on that night so long ago. The next, I was back in Cooper’s kitchen, the stench of Jo-Jo’s blood saturating the air like the foulest sort of perfume.

  Cooper reached down and picked up something small and metal off the table. He held it up so we could all see the bloody bullet that he’d fished out of Jo-Jo’s chest.

  “One down,” he murmured, setting it back down on the table. “One to go.”

  A few minutes later, another thunk sounded as Cooper used his magic to pull the second bullet out of Jo-Jo.

  “Now comes the hard part,” he muttered.

  Cooper reached for even more of his Air magic, so much of it that a strong, steady breeze gusted through the kitchen, whipping up the sketches that he’d shoved onto the floor and whirling them around and around like a tornado. Cooper let go of Jo-Jo’s hand and held his palm up over her chest, right above the two bullet holes, his hand and fingers glowing a rich, warm bronze.

  Slowly, very, very slowly, he started moving his hand back and forth over the wounds. And slowly, very, very slowly, the ugly black holes in Jo-Jo’s skin started to pucker up and draw in on themselves. Several minutes later, her injuries had sealed up completely.

  If Jo-Jo had been healing someone, his or her skin would have smoothed out, as though that person had never been shot in the first place. But the marks on Jo-Jo’s chest remained red and puffy, like two large, angry blisters on her skin. Cooper strained and strained with his magic, causing more and more Air currents to whip through the kitchen, but he couldn’t get the wounds to fade out. Maybe he couldn’t figure out how to do it, or maybe that level of finesse was simply beyond him.