“Good boy,” I murmured and rubbed one of his long, floppy ears between my blood-spattered fingers.

Rosco grunted out a huff of pleasure and collapsed in a brown and black furry heap next to the chair. Walking the thirty feet across the room to me had plumb tuckered him out. I smiled and rubbed the hound dog’s other ear.

“About time you came out of it,” a feminine voice drawled off to my left.

A pair of bare feet strolled into view next to Rosco’s inert form. Bright fuchsia nail polish covered her toes. Only one person I knew still padded around without socks in early December. I looked up to find Jo-Jo Deveraux looming over me. Well, as much as a dwarf who topped out at five feet could loom. Then again, Jo-Jo was rather tall for a dwarf.

Although she was two hundred fifty-seven and counting, Jo-Jo didn’t look a day over one ninety-nine. She always reminded me of a Southern magnolia, aging ever so gracefully. Tonight the dwarf wore a long, fuzzy, pink flannel robe, topped off with a string of gravel-size pearls. Jo-Jo never went anywhere without her pearls. To her, they were the ultimate symbol that she was a true Southern lady. Even though it was getting late, Jo-Jo’s bleached-blond-white hair still stood tall, teased, and proud in its usual helmet of curls, and her eye makeup looked as fresh as if she’d just applied it. Gloss covered her pursed lips. Strawberry, from the smell of it.

Most people would have thought Jo-Jo was just another aging debutante, still trying to be the belle of the ball and clinging to her youth despite the laugh lines around her mouth and eyes. They would have been wrong.

Everybody knew Jo-Jo Deveraux was an Air elemental who used her beauty salon and magic to help folks stave off the ravages of time on their faces, breasts, legs, and asses. Pure oxygen facials could do wonders for even the most stubborn crows’ feet. But few people knew the dwarf was also the best healer in Ashland, capable of curing everything short of death. Even then, you had a better chance of Jo-Jo finding some way to bring you back to life than with anyone else.

Jo-Jo Deveraux had been fast friends with my mentor, Fletcher Lane. When I’d started doing the assassinating instead of the old man, Jo-Jo had transferred her healing services over to me. Of course, I always paid for her time, expertise, and magic, but the dwarf was family to me now. So was her younger sister, Sophia, who was a cook down at the Pork Pit, the barbecue restaurant Fletcher had left me upon his death. Sophia was also rather handy at disposing of the many bodies I left in my wake.

“How are you feeling?” Jo-Jo asked in her low, easy voice that oozed like warm honey.

“Like I got beaten by a giant.”