"Yeah," I said. "I guess he was."
The party broke up soon after that. But right before she left, Jo-Jo Deveraux pulled me aside and handed me a thick manila folder.
"Here," she said. "Fletcher wanted you to have this too. It was something he'd been working on for a long time.
What you do with it is completely up to you."
I hefted the folder. It was heavy, with at least an inch of paper stuffed inside it.
"What's this?" "You'll see," the dwarf said. "We'll talk about it later, when you're ready."
I frowned at her mysterious tone, but Jo-Jo smiled at me.
"Now tell me again which hotel you stayed at," the dwarf said. "I want to get me a good look at those cabana boys when I take my vacation in the spring." By the time I said my good-byes it was almost midnight. I left the Pork Pit, but I didn't go straight home. I was retired, not stupid. I walked three blocks, cut through twice as many alleys, and doubled back before I even thought about heading to my building. Before I entered my apartment, I pressed my fingers against the stone that outlined the door. The vibrations were low and steady just like always. No visitors since I'd been gone. Good.
I stepped inside the apartment and flicked on the light. Everything looked the same as I'd left it-including the three rune drawings on the mantel. I wandered over to the pictures. A snowflake, an ivy vine, and a primrose. The symbols for my dead family.
But now one was missing, one I needed to add. I was going to do another drawing, I decided. One of Fletcher, or maybe the Pork Pit. Didn't much matter either way. They were one and the same to me.
Although I wanted to take a shower and fall into bed, I plopped on the sofa and opened the thick envelope Jo-Jo Deveraux had given me. Might as well see what secrets it contained, what Fletcher had been working on before he'd died that merited so much paper. Curiosity. I really needed to learn to control that.
I undid the clasp, pulled out the thick sheaf of paper, and started to read. It was a report written in mannish cursive. Sept. 21, fire reported at 7:13 a.m. Residence fully engulfed in flames on arrival. Multiple casualties feared ...
It took a few seconds for me to realize I wasn't reading about some strange fire. That I'd been there, that I'd felt the flames tongue my skin like an eager, sloppy lover. I looked at the next page. A glossy photo showed the charred remains of a human body, arms outstretched as if begging for help-or mercy. My stomach clenched, but I kept going.
Autopsy results, photos, police reports, newspaper clippings. It was all here.
Everything that had ever been written, photographed, gossiped, and speculated about the fiery murder of my mother and two sisters seventeen years ago.
Fletcher.
The old man had known exactly who I was, why I'd been living on the streets, what had happened to my family. Somehow, I'd let it slip, or he'd put it together himself. It must have taken him years to compile this information. But he had.
And he'd left it with Jo-Jo to give to me.
Why? I wondered. Why? What was the point of this? My mother and older sister, Annabella, were dead. I'd seen them die with my own eyes. Reduced to ash. They weren't coming back. And Bria, my baby sister, had been buried alive, pulverized, by the collapsing rubble of our house. All that had been left of her had been some bloodstains. She was gone too.
So why had Fletcher left me the information? What had the old man expected me to do with it? Track down the Fire elemental who'd killed my family? Take my revenge on the bitch? I'd been blindfolded when she'd been torturing me. I had no idea who she was, much less if she was even still alive. Or had the old man wanted me to do something else entirely with the information?
My hands started shaking, and I threw the papers down on the coffee table before I scattered them everywhere. But I wasn't quite quick enough. A loose sheet of paper and a photo slid out of the stack and landed facedown on the floor. I stared at them.
A second ticked by. Then five, then ten more. A minute later, I was still staring at them.
Finally, I sighed. Fucking, fucking curiosity. The one thing I wish the old man hadn't taught me.
I picked up the paper first. It was blank, except for a solitary name written in Fletcher's handwriting. Mab Monroe. The Fire elemental's name was underlined twice, but that was it. There was nothing else on the paper. Why would the old man have written her name down and stuck it in this file? Was she the elemental who'd killed my family? Did she know who did? Fletcher had always longed to see her die.
Was it because of me? And what she might have done to my family? Or did the old man have some other vendetta against her? Something I'd never known about?
My head pounded, and I rubbed my temple. After a moment, I looked away from the name. I was too shocked to puzzle out the old man's motives tonight, so I set the sheet aside and reached for the photo. It had landed facedown on the floor. I stared at it a few seconds before my hands felt steady enough to pick it up. There was a date on the back written in Fletcher's tight hand. August of this year. Only a few weeks ago. I turned the photo over-
And my heart stopped.
Because the woman smiling out of the picture looked like my mother. Long, blond hair, cornflower blue eyes, rosy skin. But it wasn't my mother. Her nose was a touch too long, her mouth a bit wide, her eyes harder than I remembered. But I still recognized her face, even though I'd only been thirteen the last time I'd seen her and she had just been eight. Seventeen years had passed since then. The terrible night I'd thought she'd died along with our mother and older sister.
My eyes latched on to the necklace she wore. A silverstone pendant rested in the hollow of her throat. A rune, shaped like a primrose. The symbol for beauty. The same rune I had up on my mantel.
"Bria," I whispered. "Bria." My baby sister was alive.