Page 77 of Throwing Shade
I cleared my throat and disengaged the child locks.
With his bleary eyes and curls falling into his face, he looked like a little kid. I smiled at the image of a smaller, curly-haired version of him grubby and happy, tramping through the woods, catching frogs and climbing trees.
“That bastard compelled me.” His voice was raspy, his accent thicker, but the hate was crystal-clear. “You know the dybbuk’s HQ?”
“Why?” I said, unlatching my seatbelt and twisting around to face him. “So you can storm the castle without me?”
“I want to go in now before they get a heads-up, and you look like the walking dead.”
“You’re one to talk. You are literally covered in blood. You have eaten undead people. And let’s take a moment here to recognize that I’m the one who got the address. The Kemp substation off Highway One. You’re welcome.”
Laurent shrugged. “I got it too.”
“From who? The vamp whose face you’d Hannibal Lecter’d or the one with his rib sticking out of his eye? Besides, there’s no way you’re some ball of energy, post shift, post compulsion, and post fighting off five vamps.” I shook a finger at him. “Don’t be an idiot.”
“Six. Heh.” He laughed, reliving the good times. “And I’m fine.”
“Yeah?” I jabbed his shoulder and he winced. “The blood on you isn’t all vamp. If you go, I go.”
“You gonna take me on, Mitzi?”
I refused to smile at his diminutive of my name, even if it was cute. “Miri. And yeah. I killed a vampire tonight. You’re not half as scary, Huff ’n’ Puff.”
“You didn’t kill Zev.”
“I didn’t mean Zev.”
His eyes narrowed and he pursed his lips. “We might be up against more than magic with these Ohrists. Some could have guns.”
I scraped at a small stain on the hem of my sweater, trying not to think about what had caused it. “I can cloak us so we walk in, grab Jude, and leave. The only one who’s been able to sense me under my magic was Zev, and this dybbuk isn’t as powerful as he is, right?”
Laurent closed his eyes with a sigh. He was silent so long that I leaned over to wake him up when he spoke. “Okay, but we can’t stay here until I’ve fixed things. It’s not safe.”
“Did you invite a vampire into your house?” I crossed my fingers that he’d answer in the affirmative because at least then my house would be off-limits.
He opened his eyes to roll them at me. “No, but I screwed myself over with that demon illusion on my door. It was a loophole that allowed the vamps to walk right in.”
I nodded in relief. “How many did they send?”
“Two,” he said.
“Did they compel you to go with them?”
“They tried but they weren’t skilled enough.” He gave me an address and settled back against the seat, the slash of a streetlight illuminating his fatigued expression. “They were stronger than me,” he said grudgingly.
I headed east to the Capitol Hill area of Burnaby, about ten minutes away. “Where are we going?”
“A friend’s house.”
“You have friends?” I gasped in an exaggerated fashion.
He slid the blanket off his head and settled it around his shoulders. “The ones I haven’t eaten because they pissed me off.”
“So this is your only one?”
“Ha. Ha.”
The house I pulled up to was a lovely Arts and Crafts bungalow with low-pitched eaves, a welcoming front porch, and narrow stained-glass windows on either side of the front door.
