Page 11 of A Shade Too Far
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The doorto Tatiana’s chartered plane was already closing when I reached the airstrip. I yelled at the men wheeling the staircase away, furiously waving my arms and limping as fast as I could.
My boss’s face appeared in the window, replaced by the female flight attendant, who saw me and nodded.
One of the men on the ground brought the stairs back. The door opened once more and the flight attendant instructed me to be seated for takeoff.
I claimed the farthest chair from Emmett, who was snoring like a congested bagpipe. Private jets were a wonderful thing, with roomy leather seats and a lounge area at the back with a sofa and television, but they were still metal tubes held in the air by the power of faith. Oh sure, and physics, but I was an arts grad with a healthy respect for gravity and the hard fall.
It meant that for all that I adored traveling, planes were a nightmare requiring Ativan. I popped one under my tongue, feeling it dissolve into that familiar mush.
The engines rumbled to life, the plane sped down the runway, and I clutched my armrest, keeping my mind as blank as possible. My stomach lurched into the soles of my feet when the wheels lifted off, so I focused on the tropical paradise, the plane circling the island once to get on the correct flight path. If I ignored the knocked-over chairs, the bloody mat with the sheet covering Torres’s corpse, and the guards huddled in tight knots around stranded guests, it was lovely.
The second the “fasten seat belt” sign clicked off, I grabbed a change of clothes and hit the bathroom. After knocking back some Tylenol, I peeled off the uniform, recoiling at my own stench, then sat on the closed toilet lid in my underwear to wipe myself down and assess the damage.
My calves were bruised from Naveen’s attack, and my body ached like I’d spent up close and personal time with a washing machine—inside it bouncing around, versus leaning against it for the vibrations. Accidentally. Like before I’d bought batteries for my vibrator Lady Catnip. Listen, beggars couldn’t be choosers.
I scrubbed at a smear of dirt on my uninjured knee. The mission was a success, but any exhilaration got swallowed by the hollow chasm in my chest. Zev would get his gloves and I’d get my ward, but Naveen’s accusations about my lack of loyalty played on a loop in my head. I was willingly handing an atrocious demon artifact over to a vampire and two men had been killed, Santiago and the young man with his poisoned needles.
I blinked away the memory of the fireball engulfing him and the resignation on his face, unsure of whether the greater tragedy was how callously people died in the magic world or their acceptance of that fact. I didn’t want to become inured to either.
Abraham Lincoln famously said that a house divided against itself cannot stand. But what happened when I was the house? Should I have prioritized Torres’s life, a man I didn’t know and who was, let’s face it, a criminal, over my own daughter’s? Should I have given Naveen the gloves to destroy because that served a greater good, but faced the vampire’s wrath, once more putting my family and myself in danger?
If I’d been able to destroy that dybbuk, I’d have gained points with Laurent to mitigate his reaction when he learned about the gloves, but once again it came down to the good of the many over the few. Were my loyalties allowed to be first and foremost to me and mine, or did I have a responsibility to humanity at large, even when it put the ones I loved in harm’s way?
It was easy to have a strong moral code when it was never truly tested.
Worse, even my personal loyalties were in conflict with each other. Laurent would have plenty to say about working for Zev. The vamp hated the wolf shifter and vice versa. Emmett and I were under confidentiality agreements, but Laurent would find out. He always did.
But I’d been hired to do a job and had to respect my employer as well, regardless of what that entailed for Laurent and me. I flicked a clump of grass off of my ankle.
I was a house of cards on the brink of collapse, and I wasn’t sure how to shore up the trusses for a more stable foundation.
I tossed the damp paper towel in the trash and got dressed, careful to move the domino into my change of clothes. The tile that I’d won in the Kefitzat Haderech had become a good luck charm for me.
Unfortunately, there was yet another problem worrying me, namely that Santiago’s death didn’t make sense. Even if there was a dead host somewhere on his island, that free-range dybbuk hadn’t been trying to possess Torres, it had intended to kill him. Was this a terrifying possibility that even Laurent didn’t know about?
Standing up, I splashed water on my face and shook out my ponytail, raking my fingers through my hair to comb it before facing my reflection, searching for some clue on how to move forward. No beacon of justice or light of goodness shone forth from my brown eyes, though the bags under them smudged purple with exhaustion really made them pop.
And now that poor lady was enthralled and would spend the next week battling the dybbuk for possession of her body, knowing her inevitable fate.
Unless I found her. Me, a middle-aged woman with a zit burrowing up on her chin like a demented groundhog, a left shoulder that kept clicking, and dried pee in her underwear.
When I reclaimed my shadow magic a few weeks ago, it was meant to be the start of a brilliant new chapter in my life. One titled “Yaas, Queen!” The voice in my head right now was less Beyoncé and more Billy Crystal mocking Edward G. Robinson proclaiming, “Where’s your Moses now, eh?” Thank you, Saturday Night Live.
Okay. I’d do what I did best: collect facts, using them to make smart choices, which would bring my loyalties into alignment and strengthen that house of cards. I’d be objective and not allow my feelings for those close to me to color my course of action.
I raised a fist. “Royalty, bitches,” I said weakly.
Tatiana patted the leather seat next to her when I returned to the main cabin. Her dress sat on the floor, having retained its shape like she’d molted it off. She wore red leggings to match her oversize red glasses and a black smock minidress with a giant bow under the bosom. Put that outfit on me and I’d look like a psycho child from a horror movie, but she rocked every ensemble I’d ever seen her in.
Royalty, bitches.
“Your friend is dead,” I said softly, ready to hand over the tissue I’d taken from the box in the bathroom.
Tatiana pursed her lips. “Men like Santiago Torres don’t have friends.”
“You knew him for years. You must feel something.”
