I blinked at the information on the page. “Five hundred dollars? For a tube of lipstick?”
“Like I said, a little too steep for my tastes, especially since you can still get the exact same color in the regular packaging for fifteen bucks a pop.” She shrugged. “But we both know that there are a lot of folks out there with more money than common sense, especially in this town.”
“So who would sell something like this? Where would you get it in Ashland?”
“Well, given the price, it’s not the sort of thing that you can get just anywhere,” Jo-Jo said. “The only place I know of that has been selling it is the Posh boutique in Northtown.”
“How do you know that?”
“Several of the women who work at the boutique get their hair done here. One of them came in earlier this week, bragging about how she’d gotten her latest sugar daddy to buy her a tube of it.”
I nodded. “Thanks for your help.”
“You’re quite welcome.” She tilted her head to the side, looking at me. “So what are you going to do now?”
“Call Finn. He knows some of the folks who work at Posh. He should be able to get a list of everyone who’s bought a tube of this lipstick in the last six months. After that, we’ll see if anyone’s name jumps out at us.”
Jo-Jo nodded. She reached out and put the cap back on the lipstick, but she didn’t give it to me. Instead, she started turning the gold tube around and around in her hands, and the pins-and-needles sensation of her Air magic gusted through the kitchen, pricking my skin with its sharp, sudden intensity. My spider rune scars itched and burned at the uncomfortable sensation of her magic, which was the complete opposite of my own Ice and Stone power.
In an instant, her eyes took on a bright, intense, milky-white glow. She might be staring at the lipstick, but she wasn’t really seeing it anymore. She raised her eerie gaze to mine.
“Be careful, darling,” Jo-Jo murmured. “I’m seeing storm clouds ahead for you. Some very dark, nasty ones. Swirling around and around, trying to consume you, trying to drown out all your light . . .”
In addition to healing people and smoothing out wrinkles with her Air magic, Jo-Jo’s power also gave her glimpses of the future. I waited for her to elaborate, to be more specific, but she didn’t say anything else. After a minute, the prickly feel of her Air magic vanished, and her eyes returned to their normal clear color.
Jo-Jo shook her head and finally held the lipstick out to me. “I’m sorry. I wish that I could tell you more, Gin.”
“That’s okay. Nothing else about this has been easy. Why should the future be any different?” I asked, not really joking.
I took the lipstick and held it up, staring at the smooth, shiny surface. The bright, glimmering gold was about as far away from Jo-Jo’s dire prediction as you could get, but I knew better than to doubt her.
“Storm clouds, huh?” I murmured. “Funny, but I don’t think that there are any other kinds of clouds in my life these days.”
18
I left Jo-Jo’s salon, went outside, and got into my car. I put the tube into the cup holder and texted Finn, asking him to get a list of everyone who’d bought a gold tube of Heartbreaker lipstick from the Posh boutique in the last six months. He hit me back a minute later, saying that he was on it.
I also texted Silvio, asking him to check and see if any other stores in Ashland sold the lipstick, just to cover all the bases. He too texted me back a minute later, saying that he would look into it, and he even sent me a little smiley face, telling me that he was happy to help. My assistant really did like this sort of thing. Then again, it wasn’t the strangest thing I’d ever asked him to do. And it certainly wasn’t the most dangerous.
I cranked the engine, steered down Jo-Jo’s driveway, and left her subdivision behind. I’d just pulled out onto the main road when the car’s sound system chirped with a new call. I hit a button on the steering wheel to answer it.
“Hello?”
For a few seconds, there was silence. Then a series of loud crashes and bangs sounded, along with several muffled shouts and the distinctive tinkle-tinkle of breaking glass. I glanced at the screen on my dashboard to see who was calling.
Ryan Colson.
I’d told Ryan to call if anything suspicious happened, but the noises coming out of the phone were downright violent. Someone had broken into Jade’s house.
I floored the gas pedal, speeding toward her place. I thought about ending the call to dial Bria and tell her what was going on, but I wanted to stay on the line and hear what was happening.
Nothing—absolutely nothing.
After that first initial blast of sound, the noises stopped completely, and I didn’t hear so much as a whisper of conversation in the background. Whatever was happening at Jade’s house, it was now taking place away from the phone.
Either that, or Jade and Ryan were already dead.
I tightened my grip on the steering wheel, driving as fast as I dared on the curvy mountain roads. Still, it took me ten long minutes to reach the subdivision where Jade’s house was, and my phone stayed silent the whole time. I made the appropriate turn and cruised into the neighborhood.
The first thing I noticed was the black SUV parked about fifty feet away from Jade’s house.
The car itself wasn’t unusual, but it was sitting down at the curb, instead of pulled up in someone’s driveway. It was also parked the wrong way on the street, pointing out toward the subdivision exit, as though someone thought he might need to leave in a hurry and didn’t want to waste precious time turning the vehicle around.
As much as I wanted to zoom up the driveway, leap out of my car, and bust into Jade’s house, I forced myself to drive at a normal speed, just in case anyone was watching the street from inside the house. Sure enough, one of the curtains twitched, as though someone had pushed it aside just enough to peer through the crack in the fabric. On my passenger’s seat, my phone was as quiet as before, although I could hear a faint hum through the car’s sound system, telling me that the line was still open.
I reached the end of the street and made a right, as though I were going somewhere deeper in the subdivision. Really, all I wanted was to get out of sight of Jade’s house. Since it was the middle of the day, the neighborhood was empty, with most folks at work and school. I steered my car up a driveway and parked in front of the first home I came to.
I picked up my phone, listening, but everything was as quiet as before. A fist of fear squeezed my heart tight. If there had been noise—yells, shouts, screams—I would have at least known that Jade and Ryan were still alive. The silence told me nothing.