"Tell her to get ready. Finn and I are bringing over someone who needs her help. Badly. We'll be there in a few minutes. "
Sophia hung up without another word. I did the same.
Finn drove out of the parking lot. He took great care to steer his car around the dwarf 's smushed body.
"You could just run over him," I said. "He's already dead, and it's not like you haven't done it before. "
"Yeah, but I don't want bloody bits of dwarf stuck in my wheels for the next two weeks. " Finn sniffed. "This is an Aston Martin, Gin. You don't run over dead bodies in an Aston Martin. "
"Tell that to James Bond. "
Finn shot me a dirty look as he pulled out onto the street.
It took Finn about twenty minutes to drive over to Jo-Jo's house. Jolene "Jo-Jo" Deveraux was Sophia's big sister - a two-hundred-fifty-seven-year-old dwarf and Air elemental of significant power, wealth, status, and social connections.
Given all that, Jo-Jo made her home in a ritzy subdivision by the name of Tara Heights. Within a few miles, we left the downtown grit and grime behind and entered an elegant area of carefully landscaped trees and spacious homes fronted by cobblestone sidewalks and yards big enough for the pros to play football in.
Finn eventually steered the car onto a street marked Magnolia Lane, and a few seconds later, Jo-Jo's house came into view - a three-story, plantation-style home straight out of Gone With the Wind. The sprawling, white structure perched at the top of a grassy knoll and featured a series of tall, round columns that supported the rest of the building the way a high-backed chair might prop up an old lady.
Finn parked the car and helped me drag the still-unconscious Violet Fox out of the backseat, up three steps, and onto the porch that wrapped around the spacious home. Thick, ropy tendrils of ivy and kudzu covered a trellis attached to the porch, along with the bare brown thorns of several rose bushes. A lone bulb burned on the porch. Out in the sloping yard, the cold, drizzling rain picked up, making the air smell of metal, dead leaves, and wet earth.
I let Finn take Violet's weight so I could pull open the screen door that fronted a heavier wooden one. Then I picked up the knocker and banged it on the interior door.
The knocker was shaped like a thick, puffy cloud - Jo-Jo's personal Air elemental rune.
I'd barely set the cloud rune back against the wood when the door wrenched open, and a woman stuck her head outside. Jo-Jo Deveraux looked like she'd planned on staying in for the evening. A short-sleeved, striped pink housecoat covered her stocky, muscular figure, while her bleached blond-white hair was done up in pink sponge curlers. Some sort of blue mud mask covered her face, and a pedicure pad held her toes out wide. She must have just painted her toenails, because the bright pink polish gleamed like it was still wet.
"About time you got here," the middle-aged dwarf said. "I've been pacing back and forth in front of the door for five minutes now. "
"Why? Weren't there any parties or dinners on the society circuit tonight?" I asked, taking in the housecoat and curlers.
"Oh, there was a party or two," Jo-Jo drawled in a voice sweeter than clover honey. "But these old bones ain't as young as they used to be. Rain makes 'em ache. Besides, even I need a night off from the bullshit circuit every once in a while. "
"Ahem. "
Finn cleared his throat, his way of telling me to get down to business and that he was tired of propping up Violet Fox. Jo-Jo's pale gaze cut to the girl. Except for the pinprick of black at their center, the dwarf 's eyes were almost colorless, like two cloudy pieces of quartz.
"Hell's bells and panther trails," Jo-Jo said in a soft tone. "What happened to her?"
"She got on the wrong end of a dwarf 's fist - twice," I said, shouldering part of Violet's weight again. "Think you can fix her?"
Jo-Jo studied the girl a moment more, then nodded.
"Darling, I can fix anything short of death. But this one ain't going to be pretty. "
Chapter Nine
Jo-Jo stepped aside so Finn and I could drag the unconscious Violet Fox into the house. The sweet smell of Jo-Jo's Chantilly perfume ticked my nose as we walked through a narrow hallway. A hundred f
eet later, the skinny corridor opened up into an enormous room that took up the back half of the house.
Padded chairs. Hair dryers. Counters crammed full of hairspray, nail polish, makeup, scissors, rollers, curling irons. A long mirror that ran down one wall. Towering stacks of beauty magazines. Photos of various hairstyles taped up everywhere. All that and more could be found in Jo-Jo's beauty salon, the place where the Air elemental used her magic as a self-proclaimed drama mama - someone who catered to the endless vanity of Southern women.
Debutantes, pageant contestants, bored trophy wives.
Jo-Jo served them all in a variety of ways. Perms, cuts, dye jobs, waxes, manicures, pedicures. If it had anything at all to do with beauty or making a woman's hair twice as big, tall, and hard as her head, Jo-Jo did it in her salon.
And then some. Air elemental magic was also terrific for fixing unwanted frown lines or putting someone's boobs back up to where they'd been ten years ago - temporarily, at least.