Page 59 of A Shade Too Far
And if I was responsible, even inadvertently? I braced a hand against the bricks, seeking their warmth. Could he even survive having Banim Shovavim magic without his own Ohrist powers to anchor them?
I sat down next to him. “I swear I didn’t know this would happen. Emmett went into the Kefitzat Haderech without any…” I bit my lip. Pyotr had made a comment about Laurent not being a pet because he had a heartbeat. Had that saved Emmett from hitting the KH’s radar? “I’m sorry,” I said.
Laurent leaned forward, his hands draped limply over his knees.
“The great French poet Jacques Prévert once met a blind beggar.” The man standing in the doorway to the bookstore had a slight stoop, his thinning hair carefully brushed to one side, and his chest no longer as broad as when he’d bought his yellow suit with the wide lapels, yet his hazel eyes twinkled. “In front of him, the beggar had placed a sign reading ‘Blind man without a pension.’ But when he confessed that people weren’t giving him money, Prévert flipped the sign over and wrote a new one.”
Poet. Beggar. Blind. I quickly assembled a list in my head in case this story was our first test.
Laurent hadn’t moved but he held himself with the stillness of a deadly predator, his hard eyes assessing.
“A few days later,” the man continued, “the poet stopped by and asked how things were going. The beggar exclaimed that his cup had been filled with coins every day and asked what he’d done. Prévert replied that he’d changed the sign. It now said—
“Le printemps arrive mais je ne le verrai pas.” Laurent made it sound like “Fuck you.”
Now was probably not the time for me to make a crack about the wolf being book learned.
The man made a snarky face but translated from my benefit. “‘Spring is coming but I won’t see it.’”
“Your point?” Laurent barely looked at the man.
“If you’re going to loiter pathetically outside my store, at least get a catchy campaign, kid.”
I scrambled to my feet. “Are you Mr. Wise?”
“One of them.”
“We were sent here to see you. We have questions.”
“Questions?” A Black man exited behind the first proprietor. His neat mustache was as silver as the hair visible around the edges of his white fedora, and his lightweight blue suit matched the cane that he rested his gnarled hands on. “What luck. We have answers.”
“Not so fast, Hiram,” the first man said and jerked his chin at me. “Who sent you?”
Hiram rolled his eyes. “Stop being so suspicious, Ephraim. You grew up in Beverly Hills, not a fascist dictatorship.”
Laurent still hadn’t stood up—or shown any ability to shift, though his hostility was in fine form—but I smiled at Hiram and Ephraim.
I liked these two eccentrics. “Zev BatKian told us to come see you, but we’re not working for him. We’re actually working for—”
“Ourselves,” my partner said.
Hiram prodded Laurent’s foot with his cane. “Didn’t anyone teach you manners? Stand in the presence of your elders.”
I bent down to help my partner, but he knocked my hand away.
For a moment no one moved, and I gave a strangled laugh, half expecting Laurent to bust out Westley’s speech in The Princess Bride when he’s on the bed after a day of being mostly dead, and we’re not sure if he can stand up or not on his own, but like Westley, Laurent pushed to his feet steadily enough.
The Wise Brothers exchanged amused looks, which I was grateful for because they missed the momentary tightening of my friend’s features.
“This way,” Ephraim said.
I shot Laurent a thumbs-up. Things were back on track, and we could hash out what had happened in the Kefitzat Haderech after we learned more about the dybbuk-possessed woman.
“I told you to trust me,” I said and sailed confidently into the bookstore.
