Page 73 of A Shade Too Far
Eli got interested in the fruit salad bowl, pushing food around.
“You have to believe that ultimately, I’m trying to do good in the world,” I said. “If it hadn’t been for me, that murder victim would never have gotten justice. I can make a difference. I want to make a difference. And I hope you both can live with that, but I can’t make that decision for you.” I fished my keys out of my pocket.
“Where are you going?” Sadie said warily.
“To save someone from being possessed by an evil ghost.” Killing dybbuks wasn’t exactly a spectator sport, but if I left my daughter now, her imagination would go into overdrive. My family was Sapien and couldn’t be possessed, plus there was no moral gray zone here. I’d be saving someone. “Want to come? See what I do for yourself?”
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Eli said.
“Think of it as community outreach,” I said. “The police do it all the time.”
“Touché,” he murmured. He was a big fan of community events to forge better relationships with cops and make them less scary to the average citizen. “All right. I’m in.”
Sadie agreed as well, getting ready in record time.
The directions I’d gotten from Emmett led us to a long-term care home in a quiet suburban neighborhood.
A balding man in scrubs paced nervously outside the front doors, glancing over hopefully when we got out of the car. “Are you here about Mrs. Krantz?”
“Yes. I’m Miriam Feldman and these are…” I scratched my head. Sadie wore a T-shirt bearing the logo of the theater camp she worked at and Eli had on shorts and flip-flops. “My associates.”
He barely spared them a glance, hurrying into the facility. “I’m Edgar. Normally, Mrs. Krantz is the sweetest person, but…” He sighed. “You tell me.”
With that, he opened the blue doors leading to the large lounge area.
Two elderly women, one of whom was in a wheelchair, sat at a table, crying. A tired-looking nurse attempted to console them, while a man sitting on the seat of his walker yelled “Cheater!” at the dealer seated with the trio.
The plump woman in a lurid floral shirt and plastic visor from a long-ago cruise collected the ante of pennies and Hershey’s Kisses. “I don’t need to cheat when I’m playing morons!”
The man grabbed the plastic spoon out from his pudding cup and flung chocolate goop at her.
She slammed her hands on the table. “I’m going to kill you.”
“Yikes,” Sadie said.
Two male nurses moved in, and I called out, “Wait! Don’t get close.”
Edgar shook his head. “Not them. They do this a couple times a month. Mrs. Krantz is outside.” He led us to the French doors, which opened to the courtyard.
A sweet-faced woman in a pharmacist’s coat who wouldn’t have been out of place in a kindergarten classroom sat at a table littered with small glass bottles. Several were smashed at her feet, the flagstones stained dark. She was in a standoff with a burly attendant, who held a loaded syringe.
“Damn it,” Edgar muttered. “I told him not to get involved. Roger is a Sap.”
“Put the medication down and no one gets hurt,” Roger said.
The woman’s shadow looked normal, so she wasn’t fully possessed yet.
Mrs. Krantz threw a bottle up, almost missing catching it. Both the attendant and Edgar flinched.
“That medication is in extremely short supply globally right now,” Edgar said quietly. “Several of our residents will die without it.”
Sadie started to say something, but I put my finger to my lips, probing deeper into Mrs. Krantz’s shadow.
Eli watched it all with his cop face on.
I exhaled. Ah, there it was. That faint violent cry inside her. At least this dybbuk was behaving normally.
“Day in, day out,” Mrs. Krantz said, “I feed the sheep pills to make their piteous lives go on a little longer. I’m doing them a courtesy by putting them out of their misery.” She rounded on me. “Who are you?”
