Page 104 of Throwing Shade
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I sped through the darkness,my mind going almost as fast as the car, super attuned to every little motion Jude made. It was early Thursday morning and the dybbuk would kill her and take over her body at some point between Friday and Saturday sunsets.
Laurent believed I could save enthralleds, but how? Who would I ask, and where the hell could I stash Jude in the meantime? Even if I hadn’t abandoned Laurent, I couldn’t lock my friend up in his hotel elevator. Sadly, I couldn’t let her remain free either.
I pulled into a convenience store. “Back in a sec.”
Jude gnawed on her thumbnail, staring numbly out the window.
My resolve to question her about being enthralled lasted until I returned to find her in the same position, her face pale. I pulled a bottle of Gatorade out of the bag and cracked the cap with a sharp snap. Seeing my wisecracking friend beaten down like this killed me, but a dull voice in my head chanted that she’d brought this on herself. The desire to rail at her for her stupidity in going down this road burned its way up my sternum and I shoved the bottle at her.
“Here. Sip it slowly,” I said brusquely. “If you drink too fast, you’ll get sick.” I placed the bag on the floor at her feet. “There’s also water in there.”
She took the bottle though her stare remained vacant.
I headed for the highway, hoping a destination would come to me, and darting glances at Jude every few seconds.
“Drink some already,” I said.
She nodded absently, but had some of the Gatorade.
I played out variations of possible conversations until we were crossing the Knight Street Bridge back into Vancouver and I had an opening statement that was reasonable, rather than accusatory. “Sadie was waiting for you to play your Scrabble word. I’m guessing your kidnapper took your phone or you would have sent me cryptic clues like help and golem,” I said. “You know, like the one you sacrificed a Banim Shovavim to make, the one named Emmett?”
So much for my good intentions.
Jude turned stricken eyes to me. “How do you know about him? You’re just a Sapien.”
I white-knuckled the steering wheel. The Ohrist superiority complex at its finest. Any hope that Jude had been coerced by Zev and, thus, not responsible for the Banim Shovavim’s death, vanished. “You think a Sapien could have saved you?”
Jude spat out a sliver of nail. “Have you been keeping secrets, Feldman?” She’d injected a cruel note into her voice. “How naughty. I wouldn’t have thought you capable. You do love to share.”
A muscle ticked in my jaw.
“Aw, kitten,” Jude said. “Did I hurt your feelings?”
This was the dybbuk talking, not the friend who’d sat on my sunny back porch a couple weeks ago, the two of us crying with laughter watching a comedy skit on my laptop about a woman trying to take a nude selfie. Or the aunt who later that night helped Sadie paint flames onto a pair of old roller boots that Jude had unearthed for her. Though how much of that person was even real?
I was bone tired, and her jibe lodged under my skin like a splinter. I didn’t want gratitude for saving her, but I hadn’t expected viciousness.
“What’s your magic?” Jude twirled a curl around her finger. “Wait. Let me guess. Healer. Always fixing people.”
Nav’s disdain had stung, but seeing as I’d known him for all of five minutes, I’d shrugged it off. Seeing that smirk on my best friend, however, I itched to slap it off her face.
Checking over my shoulder for oncoming traffic, I merged into the turnoff lane for East Vancouver, timing my answer to our car passing under a streetlamp. I deployed Delilah, who jumped onto the dashboard, her hands on Jude’s shoulders pressing her back against the seat.
Jude yelped, one arm thrown up over her face.
“Guess again,” I said, recalling my magic.
The silence stretched and thickened.
“Don’t go speechless on me now,” I said.
“Sorry. That wasn’t me. It was…” She shook her head with a helpless shrug. “Dybbuk.”
I waited for the rush of relief that I wouldn’t have to tell her or a welling of compassion for her situation, but my chest tightened and tightened until suddenly it was like a dam broke inside me.
“Tell me, Judith, was it worth it to kill that Banim Shovavim? Did you feel powerful, kitten?” I sneered. “That’s your thing, right? Power?” I pushed my hair off my shoulder, hating myself for this vitriol, but I couldn’t stop the toxicity spewing out of me. I was scared that if I did, it would eat me up from inside. “Except you're a successful woman who’s living life on her own terms, so explain to me how creating Emmett was a good idea?”
