Page 39 of Throwing Shade
“Minou is an unusual name,” I said.
He arched an eyebrow in question.
“I heard you call her that when I first got here.”
“That means kitty in French. This is Boo.” He put the gray kitten in his lap. “I didn’t name her. Quit stalling.”
“I’m not.” I felt Rupert’s pulse, which was strong and steady. “But I have no clue what to do.”
“Then Rupert will die.”
I straightened Rupert’s glasses. Did he have a wife who laughingly pointed out that the glasses were on his head when he went through his house looking for them? Did he have a child who’d drawn him as an owl in bright crayon? Would Rupert spend his last days mired in regret or angry at all the milestones he’d miss? “That’s not fair.”
“Life isn’t fair,” Laurent said in a harsh voice. “If you can innately sense dybbuks while in the enthrallment stage, then you have the ability to do something about them. You can save people before it’s too late.”
Rupert’s shadow hadn’t turned sickly and crimson yet, the way that Alex’s had, but my instincts said that the shadow was key.
Rupert blinked, his eyes woozy, and tried to get up, rattling the chains. “Oh,” he said in a small voice.
Laurent squeezed his shoulder. “We’ll fix this.”
“I got a promotion, that’s why.” Rupert’s lower lip trembled. “I mean, I’d been so careful my whole life, and what were the odds that the one time…” He drew his knees into his chest. “Pretty good, I guess.”
I didn’t fully understand what Rupert was talking about, but he was aware of his condition, and his quiet resignation broke my heart. “Let me try something.”
He glanced up at me, his face alight. “Yes. Okay.”
I stroked my chin. I hadn’t been able to catch hold of Laurent’s wolf shadow, but I had with Alex once the dybbuk had taken over his body.
Was that because Alex’s human essence was dead by that point and my magic was rooted in the ability to manipulate death and darkness?
If that was true, then what did it mean when a dybbuk had enthralled someone, introducing an element of death, but that person still lived?
I placed my hand on top of Rupert’s shadow, which looked completely normal. It was trickier to catch hold of it, but after a couple of attempts, I succeeded, and crumpled it in my fist like a balled-up napkin. Once again, darkness oozed through my fingers, but it was only lukewarm to the touch. The dybbuk’s cry of rage and need pounded in my head, albeit at a lesser volume.
I fumbled it, but stayed the course, swallowing against the nausea that speared through me. “You good?”
Rupert’s lips were pinched tight, but he nodded.
Laurent leaned forward, rapt, the kitten forgotten. When was the last time anyone had looked at me with that glint of fascination? I’d held a lot of identities in my adult life: wife, mother, librarian, friend. And while I’d gotten varying degrees of respect and, yes, love for them, how long had it been since someone was excited about me for my own sake versus what I could do for them?
How long was it since I’d seen myself that way?
I was Banim Shovavim. I’d sensed there was something wrong with Rupert and seen Alex’s sickly shadow. The solution was in me somewhere, hard-wired into the very DNA of my magic. I closed my eyes, taking a few steady breaths. Just pull it out of him. How difficult could it be?
I yanked hard on the shadow.
