Page 117 of Throwing Shade
I straightened up with a huff. “Fine. I will.”
She grabbed the pillow and stuffed it under her head.
“I will be back tonight to take you home.” I rolled my hips in circles, hoping my spine would loosen up already.
Jude rolled onto her back, staring up at the elevator car’s ceiling. “You know the funny thing about all this? I was so certain that I was going into it with my eyes open, and that so long as I didn’t break my contract with the vampires, I wouldn’t get hurt. Excitement with minimal risk—other than possibly being consumed by a blindspot because I used my magic.”
“You wanted to touch the sky,” I murmured.
“I didn’t stop to consider what it would be like for Emmett or that the necromancer…” She shook her head with a sigh and held up her injured hand. “I never saw this coming.”
The trouble with trying to touch the sky was that you eventually fell to earth, and gravity was a hard-assed bitch. The summer before my best friend moved away, we were horsing around on her trampoline as usual, and she ran inside for a minute, but I decided to keep doing flips. I’d done them a million times, what did it matter if she was around to spot me or not?
It all happened so fast that I didn’t have time to worry. One second I was tumbling in mid-air, the next, I’d landed funny, the air violently knocked from my lungs, unable to move. I was positive that I’d broken my neck. I lay there, trying to breathe, staring up at the sky that was still so blue and clear.
The sun’s warmth didn’t penetrate the blanket of pain in my chest and neck, and time spun out into a meaningless eternity. Eventually, I felt well enough to get up and keep jumping, but I never did flips again. Physically I was fine, but my sense of invulnerability had cracked.
I never told anyone. Maybe that’s why it had never healed, but it didn’t have to be that way for Jude.
“That’s part of why I came over here,” I said, reversing the direction of my hip movements. “Do you want to make a statement to the cops? I could get Eli to take it for you once you’re back home. Leave out all talk of golems and say this was a straight-up kidnapping.”
“I’ve already spoken to the Lonestars.” Jude rested her hands on her stomach.
“They can’t touch Diane. She’s a Sapien.”
“Who kidnapped an Ohrist and tried to force me to use magic. She poses a risk to us and they needed to know that.”
“She did it because her son was turned into a vampire.”
“That was his choice.”
“Are you fucking kidding me? He’s undead, Jude. He didn’t drop out of school to smoke weed and play video games.”
She shrugged.
I smacked the wall. “God damn it. I kept Zev from getting his hands on this woman so she could face proper justice on a kidnapping charge, but if the Lonestars get her—”
“They’ll do what’s necessary to ensure she never does this again and no word of magic gets out. That’s how it works.”
“It doesn’t have to be.”
Jude’s answering look was filled with pity. “Of course it does. If you leave out all mention of magic, there is no case. No motive. Nothing. This is the compact we all agree to in exchange for magic.”
“She didn’t know that.”
Jude adjusted her handcuffs, massaging the skin. “She wanted to make a golem to go after vampires. I’m betting she had at least an inkling of how this might go down.”
“Sure, with regard to the vamps, not the Lonestars. Take me, I’m magic and I didn’t agree to shit.”
“Your parents should have taught you otherwise.”
I picked up the bakery box, my jaw set. “I’m going to take that as the dybbuk talking.”
“I love you, Mir, but you’re being naive. Magic isn’t Narnia. Different isn’t good. Were Saps to know of our existence, they’d hunt us.”
“Like Ohrists hunted Banim Shovavim?”
Jude flinched. “Yeah. So you of all people should understand why this is the way it has to be.”
“Then I don’t want to be part of it.”
“You really think you can go back now?”
“I stopped once.”
“Because your mom and dad were killed. You were a kid and you were scared. You won’t stop now. It’s who you are.” Jude faced the wall. “I’m tired.”
Summarily dismissed, I walked out and dropped the bakery box on the coffee table. Emmett was playing Solitaire and Laurent was nowhere to be seen.
“Tell Laurent the last bar is his,” I said, and left.
