Page 108 of A Shade Too Far
We cruised along on a cloud of adrenaline and good spirits, reminding me of the year Jude talked me into doing the Polar Bear Swim. We’d waited on the beach with our fellow insane participants, my dread growing. But then someone started chanting and jumping up and down and soon we all crested on this artificial high, our blood pumping, and the dread dulled under us raring to go.
That’s what this moment felt like. Tapping my fingers on the wheel and singing the chorus, I hoped that when all of this was over, I felt as alive as I had after the swim, the cold an invigorating shock.
Pulling into the parking garage, we took the elevator to the basement. The second the doors closed, our energy changed, pulled tight and sharp. For all I clung to my previous buoyancy, I couldn’t help seeing an image of playing cards washed up on the shore, too damaged to ever be rebuilt into a house again.
I’d resolved to take a life to save one. I could justify it all I liked: Frances was a killer, she’d murder Tatiana, she was after the gloves so her dybbuk could inflict terrible harm on humanity, but right now, none of that mattered.
She was too close to a cautionary tale about what could happen to me if my magic became corrupt. There’d be no vindication in snuffing out her life and I wasn’t sure how I’d cope with the aftermath.
I stood up straight.
I’d do it anyway.
Once we were in the foyer, Tatiana depressed the switch hook on the broken payphone twice and the wall swung away.
Stripped of Vikram’s commanding presence and with all the tables and chairs pushed to the edges of the room, the silent speakeasy felt naked. The sconce lights and chandeliers were dark, the place lit with the harsh glare of house lights hidden among the tin ceiling tiles.
It was also empty save for Frances Rothstein, garbed in a cocktail dress with a poufy skirt that would have looked at home in a 1950s Hollywood gathering, her dark red hair falling Veronica Lake–style over one eye. She was younger than I expected, somewhere in her thirties, but that was still more than three decades of sharing her body with a dybbuk familiar. What kind of toll had that taken on her, both mentally and physically?
Frances and Tatiana assessed each other’s outfits with approval. “I own one of your paintings,” Frances said.
“Really?” Tatiana sounded as unruffled as the Banim Shovavim, simply two women making small talk at a fancy dress party. “Which one?”
“Alice Wishes.”
I didn’t know that piece, but Tatiana’s eyebrows rose. “I heard it had been destroyed.”
“It was. Your ’70s-era pieces were a lurid mess of color and misplaced nostalgia. I look forward to owning more.”
Tatiana’s lips tightened and a large floral arrangement on the bar withered, brown petals cascading to the floor.
Code red!
Frances’s dybbuk stepped out of her body.
Emmett shoved Tatiana behind him, talking her down.
I wasn’t even conscious of summoning my scythe, but the reverberations shivered through me when I slammed the weapon into Frances’s shadow. Even though I hadn’t expected to kill the dybbuk, I hoped to slow Frances down for a moment. Disorient her.
She simply laughed. “Nice try.”
The dybbuk slithered back inside her.
I shook out my arm. We didn’t have the gloves, and the others hadn’t arrived, meaning it was on me to protect Tatiana.
With my only option: killing Frances.
The urge to rip my outfit off and scour myself of the blood color that I was draped in was so strong that I clenched my fists, certain the material burned my skin.
Footsteps grew closer; the men had arrived. Something heady rushed through me. Being here was a result of some hard-won battles but the chips were down and all of us were together.
“Did you bring the gloves?” Frances asked.
Before I could reply in the negative and cross the line that there was no coming back from, Naveen’s voice cut across the room.
“Right here.” He held them aloft.
I did a double take. Say what? That wasn’t part of the plan.
