Page 111 of Throwing Shade
Laurent hopped up next to me. “Did you square things with BatKian?”
“As much as one can.” I started a long note on my phone, working on a Sapien-friendly story that Jude could give to Eli.
Laurent placed his hand over mine. His calluses rasped my skin, but his touch sent a comforting warmth through me. “Do you ever stop?”
The two of us had gone through a number of high adrenaline situations together in a short period of time, but it would be foolish to mistake that shared experience for something else. I pulled my hand away. “Are you kidding? My life is an endless run of things to check off and none of this has lightened my load. Doesn’t matter though. It’s all fine.” I resumed typing. “I want things the way I want them and that means that people I love are safe and life is running smoothly.”
“Safety is a fool’s illusion,” he said in a gruff voice.
I deleted a nonsensical autocorrect. “Then why do you bother helping people? Why were you so insistent that I figure out how to remove the dybbuk from Rupert if not to keep him safe?”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t worth trying, just that you can’t write down ‘find a happy ending to this mess’ like it’s any other task.”
“Being an optimist is not the same as being an idiot,” I scoffed, to take away the sting of his scorn. “I’d rather not share your cynical outlook when my friend’s life is on the line, thanks so much.”
“No, you’re not a cynic. You’re a thrill junkie.”
I put my phone down and planted a hand on my hip. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“How many years had it been since you used your magic, and then one taste of it again and you were running headlong off a cliff?” He crossed his arms.
“I didn’t have a choice,” I said. “Jude was taken.”
“How convenient.”
“Nothing about this has been convenient. Trust me.” It would be easier to brush his comments off. The world was so much kinder to women of a certain age if we smiled and played nicely.
What had nice ever gotten me? A lifetime of hiding and fear and denying a vital part of myself. I wasn’t doing this for the rush, but because my friend’s life was on the line. If women were slotted into caretaker roles, then who was Laurent to condemn me for doing whatever I had do to take care of Jude? Men got to live on that adrenaline curl where facing one’s own mortality heightened the sensation of living, and they were hailed as heroes, but how dare I experience that for myself?
Something dark rushed through my veins, heady and powerful.
“What if I am enjoying myself?” I said. “I’m not reckless. The opposite in fact. I’m taking great pains to be responsible and make sure that when all this is over, me and everyone important to me is still standing, unlike the way you approach life.”
“Do explain,” he said with a tight jaw. “I live for your pearls of wisdom.”
Truth masking secrets. I white-knuckled the phone. It was more like people fooling themselves: Zev that he still possessed some degree of humanity, Jude that her choices were about being a powerful woman when they’d been about ego, Laurent about being in control.
“You didn’t simply wound those vampires the other night,” I said, “you didn’t even just kill them. You eviscerated them. And with Rupert when he first showed up at Hotel Terminus? You can say you were testing a theory to see if you could get that dybbuk out, but I saw you.” I punctuated the air with angry jabs, my cheeks flushed. “You want to talk about running off a cliff? You strap on dynamite before you launch yourself and I can’t tell if it’s because that’s the only way you feel alive or because you want to die. Either way, I’m nothing like you.”
His anger crashed over me like waves on a stormy sea, and then he went still, all his energy sucked inward. Even when he’d been lying on the ground after Jude’s attack, his presence had been palpable. This was such a total withdrawal that there might as well have been a chasm between us.
I shivered, the air noticeably cooler.
Laurent slid off the car. “Let me know if you figure out how to save Jude.”
“Yup.” I returned my gaze to my phone so I didn’t have to watch him leave.
