Page 58 of A Shade Too Far
A single desolate cry tore from the wolf’s throat, but before it had even died away, Laurent’s muzzle bashed backward into the rest of his furry face. In the moment of impact, his human features exploded outward, tears streaming from his eyes.
He huddled amid his discarded fur taking labored breaths, his clothes torn and blood drying in crusty trails on his skin.
Pyotr jumped off the stone slab, his arms full of socks, and hesitantly sniffed Laurent. “Is Banim Shovavim.”
I sat back on my calves, my head bowed, taking deep breaths to calm my racing heart down. Twice I swallowed against the bile that surged up my throat, because I’d never seen anything so violent or painful. I reached out to place my hand on Laurent’s chest, but he was shaking, and I pulled away, terrified of adding to his pain with even a simple caress.
“See? No more Ohrist.” I made sure to sound unconcerned. “He’s unsullied.”
Not for long. Unlike Emmett, where magic was a one-shot-and-done deal, Laurent was not an inanimate object. He was human with the ability to tap into the ohr, and while I may have suspended his powers, they’d be back.
We had to get out of here before then.
The skeleton jabbed its hand from its eyes to mine and disappeared, while the neon sign face got a thoughtful look. It didn’t comment—and the green door appeared—which was all I cared about.
I tugged on Laurent’s arm. “Get up, we’ve got to go.”
His eyes were glassy, his pupils enormous, and his body had the consistency of gluey spaghetti. He tried to obey but his legs kept buckling.
The gargoyle, as usual, refused to get involved, leaving me sweating and cursing as I got my shoulder under Laurent’s arm and hoisted him to his feet.
Laurent was mumbling in French, half-delirious. The vial or this place or both were doing a number on him.
“At least get the door,” I ordered Pyotr.
He hesitated, then did the bare minimum, holding it open for me and tucking a couple of socks into the collar of my shirt as we left.
The smart thing would be to visualize a door back to Hotel Terminus so Laurent could recuperate, but there was no time to waste. Even if the Wise Brothers handed over the name and address of the woman, and no one else was involved in this fiasco, how long would it take to find her?
The clock was ticking down.
I lightly slapped Laurent’s cheek, hauling him forward. “Stay with me, Huff ’n’ Puff.”
It would have been easier to drag an anchor through the cave. Laurent stumbled over every dip and bump, while I muttered “Come on” repeatedly like a mantra, the Los Angeles address firmly fixed in my head.
An orange door shimmered into existence less than twenty feet away. With the knowledge that Laurent’s Ohrist magic could roar back into life at any second and doom us, I pushed past the burn in my lungs and the sharp pain from where I’d pulled something in my lower back getting him upright and hauled us through the door into the searing sunshine.
We crashed onto the sidewalk in front of a sign reading “Wise Brothers’ Lair of Lore and Learning.” The bookstore occupied the ground floor of an older three-story apartment building, its cedar shingles painted a faded purple.
I took a moment to recover, breathing deeply with one hand on my belly and grateful that I’d brought the vial along, even if Laurent was still rambling from the divination sauce. Leaving him propped up against the outside wall, I peered in the window and my librarian side recoiled.
Books were piled three-quarters of the way up the glass with absolutely no rhyme or reason to their grouping. The ones stacked at eye level in front of me consisted of a biography of Burt Reynolds with a sun-bleached and broken spine, a leather-bound copy of The Velveteen Rabbit with gold-leaf printing, and Daddy-O’s Guide to the BBQ Good Life. Cracks snaked between the uneven books like ant trails, affording a glimpse into an equally crowded and haphazard interior.
And yet, I inhaled, imagining the scent of old glue and parchment mixed with dust motes floating in the air, all subtly amplified by the warm sun blanketing the inside. It was the smell of the small library where I hung out as a kid, or those upper floors of the university libraries rarely breached by students, where I spent many an hour.
Laurent flexed his hands, staring at his fingers, his eyebrows pinched together. “I can’t shift.” His voice reminded me of a wolf’s pained howl. He grabbed my calf and I flinched. “Tell me you can fix this,” he said. “Please.”
The last time he’d touched me there, the tension that had crackled between us was ripe with promise, not despair. It seemed like an impossibly long time ago.
I rubbed my hand over my aching stomach. “It will wear off soon.”
Laurent was an Ohrist. His magic would come back.
There were no pedestrians to complain about us blocking the sidewalk and we didn’t rate a second glance from any of the passing motorists. In this town, Laurent might be an extra in a zombie film, blood and all.
He rested his head against the wall, his hand curled around my leg as if for support, seizing on my assurance with a shining face. “Yes. This is only temporary.” He licked his lips in cautious hope, then locked wide green eyes on me. “I’ll be back in no time.”
I nodded but drew my eyebrows together. He hadn’t said “back to normal.” Or that his magic would be back. He’d be back. I’d wondered more than once how tied Laurent was to his ability to kill dybbuks in his wolf form. Whether it was a calling or a curse. I still wasn’t sure, but where I’d be devastated if I lost my magic, Laurent sounded desperate.
