He leaned against the door frame, a mug of chicory coffee in his hand. Finn drank the stuff at all hours of the night and day, but the caffeine seemed to have little effect on him. Or perhaps he’d just become immune to it. Fletcher Lane had drunk the same kind of coffee.

I breathed in again, this time tasting the caffeine fumes in the air. The warm, comforting scent always reminded me of the old man. I wished Fletcher had been here tonight, to talk to me about the attack and seeing Bria again. I wished a lot of things about the old man that were never going to come to pass.

Heavy, plodding footsteps sounded, and another person entered the salon. Sophia Deveraux, Jo-Jo’s younger sister. Where Jo-Jo was all sweet pink sunshine, Sophia was the heart of darkness—as in Goth. Sophia wore her usual black jeans and shit-kicker boots. Her T-shirt was actually a girly pink tonight, although images of decapitated doll heads dotted the light fabric. A black leather collar studded with plastic pink hearts ringed Sophia’s neck. A bright pink gloss covered her lips, but her cropped hair was as black as black could be. It stood out in stark contrast to her pale skin.

Sophia was an inch or so taller than Jo-Jo and had a much more muscular figure than her big sister did. At a hundred and thirteen, the younger Deveraux sister was in her prime, instead of firmly entrenched in middle age like Jo-Jo was. Sophia plopped down in the chair to my left and nodded at me. I nodded back.

And then the three of them stared at me. Finn, Jo-Jo, Sophia. Hell, even Rosco turned his head back in my direction. All of them looking steadily at me, expectation shining in their eyes. Oh, fuck. They actually expected me to talk about what had happened tonight. To share my feelings. I sighed again. I’d much rather have hacked and slashed my way through a platoon of Mab Monroe’s giants than explain how I was dealing with my emotions.

But they were my family, for better or worse. They deserved to know what had happened tonight—and how it could affect them tomorrow.

“All right,” I said. “Here’s the short version.”

I recapped the events of the evening, starting with Jonah McAllister and Elliot Slater bracing me, Slater beating me, and Mab Monroe stepping in and leading her goons off into the dark night. And then there was the biggie—my unexpected meeting with Bria, my long-lost younger sister.

“So Bria’s a detective? Working in Ashland?” Jo-Jo asked. “Why didn’t we know this before?”

“Because she’s a new transfer, only started a week ago,” Finn said, taking another sip of his chicory coffee. “I did some checking while you were healing Gin.”

In addition to (mis)handling other people’s money, Finn was also something of an information trader. If you wanted dirt on someone, Finnegan Lane could get it for you—in a hurry.