Page 104 of A Shade Too Far
Sadie shook her head, looking appalled. “No way. I’ll deal.”
“You sure? Because it’s no trouble,” I teased her, but she was in a tough and lonely position. Maybe Jude knew some kids that Sadie could meet.
Her phone buzzed with a text.
“Caleb just got off the bus. Go away.” She gestured to my car.
I scraped some goo off my arm with my nail and held it up. “You don’t want him to see me like this?”
“Mother! I’ll go to therapy. I’ll be nice. Now leave.”
I kissed her head. “There. That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
“I’m moving out with my sister,” she grumbled.
Grinning, I got in my car and drove off, but my smile soon died because I wasn’t sure where I was headed. How long did my employer hold grudges? Pulling over, I called Tatiana.
When she heard my voice on the phone, she grunted and handed it to Emmett, making a big production about how she’d been clear about not speaking to certain people before the meeting. Then she told Emmett to ask me if I’d tracked down the Banim Shovavim yet.
We were having the teen girl “I’m not talking to you, but I’m talking to you” talk? Bring it. I was much closer to adolescence than Tatiana was, and I had a teenager of my own. I knew these games all too well.
“Tell her that I sort of tracked the woman down,” I said. “We have her name but not her location. Frances Rothstein.”
“You tell her,” Emmett said.
“I would if she was speaking to me.”
Groaning, he relayed the message.
Tatiana’s sniff of disapproval was worth a thousand words.
“We’ll find her. You’re not going to die.”
“I’m not afraid of death,” Tatiana said. Either Emmett had me on speaker or she’d wrested the cell away from him.
She’d been upset when she was first cursed and even Emmett had noticed a change in her behavior, resulting in him entertaining and distracting her. I’d assumed that because Tatiana was old, she must fear death, but she sounded peevish enough to be telling the truth. My first assumption had been wrong. I considered who she was and what she valued.
When I hit forty, I’d felt invisible and sidelined, but here was Tatiana still at the top of her game and celebrated globally as an artist. She kept mentioning her art, usually as part of a passive-aggressive comment, but just as I’d failed to recognize the importance of Laurent’s shifter side, I hadn’t fully comprehended what her painting meant to her.
Tatiana’s fears weren’t about dying.
“You’re not finished living,” I said.
“No kidding. I’m supposed to fly to New York soon and show my new pieces to my agent.”
“Then ask Zev for the gloves.”
“It’s not his place to save me. It’s your job and I suggest you do it,” she said coolly and hung up.
Emmett texted me immediately after. She asked. The vamp was a no go.
I tapped the phone against my thigh, staring out the car window. If Tatiana was willing to eat crow and make herself look bad in front of Zev to try to get the gloves back, she was truly desperate, however unaffected she pretended to be.
Between Naveen, Laurent, and me, we had this. Anything else wasn’t an option, but damn, did I wish there was. We were going into a worst-case scenario of Tatiana’s life versus Frances’s.
I tossed Laurent’s clothes in my car. His keys, wallet, and phone were in his jeans, so the right thing to do would be to return them. If he’d shifted back to human, then we could discuss our plan for tomorrow since Naveen’s phone went to voice mail. The Brit must have been busy with the aftermath of Chester’s death.
However, driving to Hotel Terminus could wait a bit. I was gross, sticky, hungry, and had to pee, so I stopped quickly at home to address my needs. Even with Naveen’s people standing guard, it wasn’t an appealing prospect.
