Page 126 of Throwing Shade
“Jude isn’t breathing!” Emmett screamed.
I scooped up the shadow scythe and cleaved the dybbuk in half. Leaching of all color, the spirit imploded in on itself and vanished out of existence. The second I’d dropped my magic, I spared Laurent a single glance, gauging the extent of his injuries. “You good?”
He nodded, still on his knees, his hands braced on his thighs.
I sprinted back to the elevator.
Jude lay on the ground, motionless, her eyes closed. She didn’t cast a shadow.
“Don’t you dare die on me.” Shoving Emmett out of the way, I crouched down beside Jude and began CPR compressions.
Emmett started singing this lullaby that sounded sweet until I recognized it as a slowed down version of The Ramones’ “I Wanna Be Sedated.”
I shot him a What the hell are you doing? look between breathing into Jude’s mouth and pumping her chest.
“It’s what she sang to me when I was first woke up,” he said. “We karaoke it together.”
The healing power of punk music was no weirder than anything else at this point. I motioned for him to carry on.
The harder I forced air into her lungs, and the more forceful my compressions, the limper she became.
I sat back on my thighs, my shoulders slumped, and gave a final lame chest compression.
Jude was gone.
Emmet’s final “ba ba bas” in the song were a mournful dirge.
I swiped a hand over my wet eyes. Why had I gotten so mad at her earlier? What a fool I’d been to waste our last precious hours together.
“Now you’re just copping a feel,” Jude said in a hoarse voice. She smacked my hand still resting on her chest away.
“Yes!” Emmett high-fived her.
I fell onto my ass with a shuddery exhale. “Holy crap. I thought you were dead.”
“No, but…” She flicked her uninjured fingers at her pillow, and nothing happened. “No magic.”
Was that the caveat Max had been about to explain? That saving the enthralled came at a cost?
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“I’m alive.” She sat up unsteadily and hugged me. “I’ll deal with the rest.”
Emmett scooted closer to Jude on his ass and she patted his thigh.
Laurent hobbled into the elevator, keeping his weight off his injured ankle. “Told you you could do it.” He tossed me the keys to unlock Jude’s cuffs.
“Impressive how you skipped the praise and went straight to know-it-all.”
The cuffs fell to the ground and Jude rubbed her wrists.
“I’d hate to give you unrealistic expectations,” Laurent said.
I pressed my lips together so I didn’t verbally skewer him for being sharp enough to trade barbs with and for waking me up to feel incredibly alive, when the reality was I’d probably rarely ever get to use my magic or ever see him again. It wasn’t fair to take that out on him.
Jude stood up. “I want to go home.”
“Want me to drive you?” I said.
