I drew in a ragged breath and had to spit out another mouthful of warm, slick, coppery blood before it choked me. No, not a dream. A dream wouldn’t hurt this much.

Bria, my baby sister, the one I’d thought was dead for the past seventeen years, the one I’d thought I’d inadvertently killed with my Ice and Stone magic, was here, crouching right in front of me. And all I could do was just stare at her.

Bria’s blue eyes met mine. She frowned, as though puzzled by the wonderment in my gaze. “Ma’am, I understand you have a friend on the way. Personally, I’d suggest you wait for the paramedics to get here. You’ve got some serious, nasty injuries. You need to be stabilized before you go anywhere.”

I kept staring at her. A pressure gathered in my chest, an icy fist squeezing my heart so tight and hard I thought it would explode right then and there. Shatter into a million icicles that would impale what was left of my body. An odd, cold wetness ran down my face. Tears this time, instead of blood. Big, fat, salty tears.

Crying. I was crying. I hadn’t expected to cry when I saw Bria again. Hadn’t expected to feel this icy tightness, this cavernous ache, this intense longing that made me want to scream and wail and weep all at the same time.

“Ma’am?” Bria asked again. “Can you hear me?”

I snapped out of my daze. Now was not the time to be thunderstruck. Now was the time to think, to piece the facts together. Bria was here in Ashland. A detective working for the po-po. I was in no position to talk to her tonight, in no position to do anything but gawk at her. But underneath the blood and bruises, I was still Gin Blanco. Restaurant owner. Stone and Ice elemental. Former assassin. And all-around badass. I could track down my sister easily enough when I was well. When I’d had some time to process her sudden reappearance in my life—and figure out what I was going to do about it.

I wet my split lips to say something, anything, to her. Anything to keep her right where she was—

“Gin! Gin!”

A male voice shouted my name. A moment later, Finnegan Lane stepped underneath the yellow crime scene tape and hurried over to me. Finn wore his usual uniform of a perfectly fitted, impeccable suit. A navy one today, with a powder blue shirt underneath. Even in the semidarkness, the light color further brightened his green eyes, which always reminded me of the smooth, polished glass of a soda pop bottle. His walnut-colored hair just curled over the collar of his suit jacket in an artful array of thick, sexy locks.