When we had a good idea of how many people were going to be attending the party, Silvio took over, since he’d gotten his hands on the most useful things of all—blueprints of the newly remodeled Monroe mansion, along with the guard rotations.

Jo-Jo cleared off one of the tables, and Silvio unrolled the blueprints with a slight flourish, then bowed his head to me and stepped back so we could all crowd around them.

Finn pouted. “I’ve been trying to get my hands on this info ever since Gin fake-died. How did you manage it?”

“A good assistant never reveals his sources.” Silvio gave him a small, satisfied smile. “Perhaps people just like me more than they do you.”

Finn glared at the vampire, but Silvio kept smiling. He liked needling Finn. Couldn’t blame him for that. It was certainly one of my favorite sports, so much so that I thought it should be an official national pastime.

“Madeline doesn’t have as many guards as I thought she would,” Xavier rumbled, running his finger down a list of names. “Looks like about three dozen total, split three ways—guarding the perimeter, roaming through the mansion, and then at the party itself.”

“Yeah, but you’re forgetting that she has Emery as the head of them,” Bria pointed out. “She’s worth at least three giants just by herself.”

“Heh,” Sophia rasped, cracking her knuckles. “She’s not so tough.”

We all looked at each other, but nobody argued with the Goth dwarf.

After we’d reviewed the guard rotations and the blueprints, we moved on to the next phase—weapons.

Finn got Xavier to help him carry several large, heavy duffel bags into the salon. A gleeful grin spread across my foster brother’s face, as though he were opening up presents on Christmas morning, instead of unzipping bags full of guns, silencers, and ammunition.

“Where did you get all these on such short notice?” Phillip asked, hefting a revolver in his hand.

“Why, they were a gift from Madeline,” Finn drawled. “The only good thing she’s ever done for us.”

“They were the weapons she was going to buy from Harley Grimes to outfit her guards,” Owen added. “The ones we intercepted when Sophia and Jo-Jo killed him that night at Gin’s.”

“They were just gathering dust and cobwebs in that tunnel under Dad’s house, so I figured that we might as well bring these babies out of storage and give them a spin.” Finn struck a pose with a particularly large rifle. “What do you think? Is gunmetal gray my color?”

We all groaned.

While Finn continued to show off with the weapons, Silvio drifted over and handed me a small sheet of paper.

“What’s this?” I asked.

He frowned. “I’m not quite sure, but I thought you should see it, since it’s part of the work that Madeline ordered done on the mansion. Most of the renovations were fairly standard stuff. New paint, new ceilings, new floors. But this is different.”

“How so?”

He tapped the paper. “From what I can tell, it’s a single suite of rooms that she’s had remodeled. A bedroom, a bathroom, and some sort of living room.”

“What’s so unusual about that?”

“This suite is on the bottom floor of the mansion, tucked away in one of the back corners, well away from the rest of the construction.” Silvio hesitated. “It almost seems like she’s been fixing up a place for someone to stay.”

A chill ran through me at his words. “Madeline is going to have a houseguest?”

“That’s my speculation.”

“Who?”

Silvio shrugged. “Unfortunately, that’s something I haven’t been able to find out.”

He didn’t say anything else, but he could see the concern on my face. We were going to have enough problems dealing with Madeline, Emery, and their giant guards. We didn’t need to worry about anyone unexpected popping up to throw a wrench in our plans.

“If it helps, the remodeling was only finished this morning,” he said. “Madeline’s guest probably hasn’t arrived yet and might not until after the party.”

He was trying to reassure me, but it didn’t work. Silvio touched my shoulder, then moved back over to talk to Jo-Jo.

I kept staring at the paper in my hand, not really seeing all the lines, squiggles, and other marks. I wasn’t an Air elemental, so I never got glimpses of the future like Jo-Jo did. But for some reason, I felt more concerned about Madeline’s mysterious houseguest than I did about anything else.

*  *  *

While my friends talked among themselves, I roused myself out of my worry and stepped back so that I was in the doorway of the salon, my gaze sweeping over the interior. The blueprints, the names scribbled on the dry-erase board, the duffel bags full of guns and ammo, even the old copies of the Ashland Municipal Codex that were stacked around Rosco’s basket.

As I looked at first one thing, then another, I thought and thought and thought about things, my mind whirring a hundred miles an hour. Trying to picture how it would all go down. Trying to see if there were any holes in or problems with my plan that I hadn’t accounted for. Trying to anticipate how Madeline and the underworld bosses might react when they realized that I was still alive.

Trying to figure out if I was dooming myself and my friends to a short, pain-filled night that would end with all our deaths.

But this was how it had to be. I was only going to get one shot at Madeline, and this was it. So I thought about Fletcher and what he might have done in my place. I thought that the old man would have approved of my plan and all the lessons I’d learned that night so long ago when we were trapped in those metal barrels. The ones that I’d largely forgotten about until Madeline had so cruelly reminded me of them.

The others realized that I was staring at them, and they quieted down and looked back at me.

“Well,” I said, grinning wide, “I think we’re ready to give Madeline and the rest of the Ashland underworld a night that they will never, ever forget. Here’s what we’re going to do.”

23

The next evening, I got ready for the most important party of my life.

Or at least, what might be left of it.

According to what Jo-Jo had learned, Madeline was going to be wearing some fancy, haute couture gown to her shindig, but I dressed the way I always did—to kill.