Elemental Assassin 02 - Web of Lies

good.
    “of course. Don’t want to scare the coeds by leaving
    “only one, but you might have a little trouble scrapPancake where he is and having them drive over him in ing him up off the ground,” I replied. “There was a very the morning.”
    large truck involved. Think you can handle it?”
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    100 JENNIFER ESTEP
    Web of Lies 101
    “Hmph.” Sophia’s grunt was more guttural this time. Finn eventually steered the car onto a street marked I’d offended her.
    Magnolia Lane, and a few seconds later, Jo-Jo’s house came
    “Well, I have faith in you,” I replied in a breezy tone. into view—a three-story, plantation-style home straight
    “Are you at Jo-Jo’s?”
    out of Gone With the Wind. The sprawling, white structure
    “Um-mmm.” That was a yes .
    perched at the top of a grassy knoll and featured a series of
    “Tell her to get ready. Finn and I are bringing over tall, round columns that supported the rest of the building someone who needs her help. Badly. We’ll be there in a the way a high-backed chair might prop up an old lady. few minutes.”
    Finn parked the car and helped me drag the still-unSophia hung up without another word. I did the same. conscious Violet Fox out of the backseat, up three steps, Finn drove out of the parking lot. He took great care and onto the porch that wrapped around the spacious to steer his car around the dwarf’s smushed body. home. Thick, ropy tendrils of ivy and kudzu covered a “You could just run over him,” I said. “He’s already trellis attached to the porch, along with the bare brown dead, and it’s not like you haven’t done it before.”
    thorns of several rose bushes. A lone bulb burned on the
    “Yeah, but I don’t want bloody bits of dwarf stuck in porch. out in the sloping yard, the cold, drizzling rain my wheels for the next two weeks.” Finn sniffed. “This is picked up, making the air smell of metal, dead leaves, and an Aston Martin, Gin. You don’t run over dead bodies in wet earth.
    an Aston Martin.”
    I let Finn take Violet’s weight so I could pull open the
    “Tell that to James Bond.”
    screen door that fronted a heavier wooden one. Then I Finn shot me a dirty look as he pulled out onto the picked up the knocker and banged it on the interior door. street.
    The knocker was shaped like a thick, puffy cloud—Jo-Jo’s personal Air elemental rune.
    It took Finn about twenty minutes to drive over to Jo-Jo’s I’d barely set the cloud rune back against the wood house. Jolene “Jo-Jo” Deveraux was Sophia’s big sister—a when the door wrenched open, and a woman stuck her two-hundred-fifty-seven-year-old dwarf and Air elemenhead outside. Jo-Jo Deveraux looked like she’d planned on tal of significant power, wealth, status, and social constaying in for the evening. A short-sleeved, striped pink nections. Given all that, Jo-Jo made her home in a ritzy housecoat covered her stocky, muscular figure, while her subdivision by the name of Tara Heights. Within a few bleached blond-white hair was done up in pink sponge miles, we left the downtown grit and grime behind and curlers. Some sort of blue mud mask covered her face, entered an elegant area of carefully landscaped trees and and a pedicure pad held her toes out wide. She must have spacious homes fronted by cobblestone sidewalks and just painted her toenails, because the bright pink polish yards big enough for the pros to play football in. gleamed like it was still wet.
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    “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 9
    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 Jo-Jo stepped aside so Finn and I could drag the unconpinprick of black at their center, the dwarf’s eyes were scious Violet Fox into the house. The sweet smell of Jo-Jo’s almost