I could see why she was so worried. Nice, smart, responsible, dependable girls like Elissa didn’t just vanish for no reason. Something had happened to her—something bad. And in a city as dirty, violent, and corrupt as Ashland, the longer she was missing, the worse it most likely was.

   If she wasn’t already dead.

   Walking down the wrong street at the wrong time of day. Smiling at the wrong person. Carrying a designer purse. Wearing a pretty necklace or sporting a cool leather jacket. Sometimes that was all it took to make you a target, especially in this city. And all too often, death struck in an instant. All it took was one punch, one bullet, one slice of a knife to end someone’s life.

   I didn’t share my dark thoughts with Jade because I knew that they had already occurred to her, no doubt a hundred times since she’d started her frantic search. Silvio’s face remained carefully neutral while he questioned Jade, but I could see the pity in his eyes. He thought that Elissa might already be dead too.

   Finally, Jade had answered all of Silvio’s questions and told us every little detail that she could think of. She hadn’t touched any of her food, except for the iced tea, and she took one more sip of it before setting the glass down, along with her spoon.

   “I know that I don’t have any right to ask you this,” she repeated, looking at me again. “This wasn’t the kind of favor we agreed on. That was all business between us, and my favor should be that way too.”

   “But?”

   “But Stuart Mosley is right. You’re the strongest, toughest, most dangerous person I know,” Jade said in a shaking voice. “If anyone can find Elissa, it’s you, Gin. So please. Please do this for me. If you want money, I will gladly pay you whatever you want. I will do anything to get my sister back. Anything. Just name your price. Anything that I have or that’s in my power to give you, it’s yours. And if I don’t have it, then I will lie and cheat and steal until I do get it for you—as long as it takes.”

   I reached across the table and took her cold, trembling hands in my own. “There’s no need for any of that. I owe you a favor, and I am happy to pay up. Favors or not, business or not, I would have helped you anyway.”

   Jade stared at me, a mixture of relief and gratitude filling her face. She exhaled, and some of the tension left her body, although she curled her fingers into mine and squeezed them tight. “Thank you, Gin. You don’t know how much this means to me.” More tears glimmered in her green eyes before streaking down her cheeks. “Just . . . just find her. Please, please find her.”

   Before it’s too late.

   She didn’t say the words. She didn’t have to. We could all hear the clock ticking, counting down what might be left of Elissa’s life—if it hadn’t stopped already. The faint, hopeful note in Jade’s voice made my stomach clench, but I forced myself to nod at her.

   “I’ll find your sister. I’ll find Elissa. Wherever she is at. I promise you.”

7

   Jade wanted to leave the Pork Pit to continue searching, but I convinced her to sit in the booth and at least pretend to eat some food. While Jade once again moved chili from one side of her bowl to the other, I went over to the swinging double doors and opened one of them. Most of the waitstaff had left, probably to go over to the Cake Walk to get some coffee and doughnuts during their break, but Sophia Deveraux was still in the back.

   The dwarf was standing in front of the metal shelves, doing inventory of the ketchup, sugar, cornmeal, and other foodstuffs, with a clipboard in one hand and a hot-pink pencil in the other. The pencil matched the neon color of the lace spiderwebs that decorated her black ­T-shirt, along with her metal spiderweb earrings. She’d also dusted hot-pink glitter all over her black hair, making the strands shimmer under the lights.

   Sophia checked a final box on her clipboard sheet and turned to me. “What’s wrong?” she rasped in her eerie, broken voice.

   “Jade’s sister is missing, and she wants me to find her.”

   “How long?”

   “Since last night.”

   Understanding and sympathy flashed in her black eyes. “What do you need me to do?”

   “Go home with Jade,” I said. “She shouldn’t be alone right now. Help her call all of Elissa’s friends again, just in case. And keep an eye out too. Jade has her share of enemies, just like all the underworld bosses do. Someone may have grabbed Elissa to get at her. A ransom demand might be coming.”

   Sophia nodded, but disbelief filled her face, and I could tell that she was thinking the same thing I was, that there wouldn’t be any ransom demand because Elissa Daniels was most likely already dead.

   The dwarf had known Fletcher even longer than I had, and I knew that she had absorbed more than a few of the old man’s nuggets of wisdom over the years. Fletcher had always told us to brace ourselves for the absolute worst. That way, anything better was a pleasant surprise. The realistic, if pessimistic, sentiment had helped me through more than one bad situation, and I was hoping that it would help me through this one too.

   Sophia put down her clipboard and pencil and grabbed her long black trench coat from the rack in the corner. She shrugged into the coat, making the sequined silver skull on the back wink at me. I’d always liked Sophia’s Goth style, but right now, the skull seemed more like a portent of doom than anything else.

   I had a bad, bad feeling about all this.

   But I plastered a calm, neutral expression on my face as Sophia followed me into the front of the restaurant and over to the booth where Jade was still sitting. I told Jade that Sophia was going to drive her home and stay with her for a while, just in case Elissa came home or someone called with new information. Jade brightened briefly at my ransom-demand theory, but the more she thought about it—and how unlikely it was—the more her features crumpled back into a pale, worried mask.

   At this point, though, she was too tired and heartsick to argue, so she got to her feet and let Sophia lead her out of the restaurant. The bell over the front door chimed at their passage, ringing out like a low, mournful dirge.