Page 25 of A Shade Too Far
“He won’t part with them. I don’t know why they’re so important, but he’s been searching for them for years.” She covered the burn with her sleeve and shrugged. “But I guess you could inquire.”
I ducked my head, biting down on my lip to hide my smile at this major concession, and added asking Zev about the gloves to my to-do list. “What’s the deal with the curse?”
She blew on her tea. “Uttering a Pulsa diNura became all the rage in the ’90s after some nutjob threatened Prime Minister Rabin with it two weeks before his assassination in Tel Aviv.”
“Does everyone who’s been cursed die the same way as Santiago?”
“No, people die in different ways, but most don’t die at all. It’s a scare tactic.”
“It’s a warning that you’ve had a hit placed on you.”
“And most of the time it never goes beyond that.” She fixed me with a stern look over the top of her frames, which had slid down her nose. “Not for Ohrists at least. Sapiens are another matter. Anyone can shoot them and then blame it on a curse.”
“I hate to break it to you, but Ohrists aren’t bulletproof either.”
She sighed. “I keep forgetting how much you don’t know. This may come as a shock, but we would never go after another magic user with something as common as a gun.”
I fell back in my chair, a hand to my heart. “Ohrists? Arrogant? You don’t say.”
“Regardless.” She pushed her glasses up. “There aren’t many magic users powerful enough to take out people like me. The first time I got one of these letters I was terrified. Now, what am I going to do? Beat my breast and wail?” She ran a hand under her skinny boobs. “My handfuls have already shrunk to peanuts. Like I want to make it worse?”
She was back to her usual acerbic manner.
I sighed, but it was what it was. I handed the letter back and she folded it and put it in the pocket of her voluminous robe. “Whoever did this,” I said, “got past all of Santiago’s security, both magic and hi-tech, as well as made mincemeat of his powers.”
Tatiana sighed, putting her glasses on her head so she could rub her eyes. Enveloped in that cloud of fabric, her thin frame looked frailer than usual. “I know.”
I followed up with the question that I couldn’t put off anymore. “Be honest. Is this my fault somehow? You took the job because that would get me the ward.”
“I took the job because Zev paid me handsomely. Stop giving me these altruistic motives.” She drank some more tea. “Besides, if anyone is to blame, it’s Naveen.”
My eyes widened. “That doesn’t make sense. If he was going to put a death curse on someone, it would be me.”
“I meant that he ratted us out to Lolo and with all the kvetching that one did, I have a headache like you wouldn’t believe.” She massaged her temple with a fingertip. “From what I gathered from my nephew’s initial yelling, because he was speaking quickly and my French isn’t what it used to be, Naveen had been working his way into a position of trust with Santiago for a while in order to get on his security team and get his hands on those gloves.”
“There’s trust and then there’s trust,” I said. “It’s one thing to be hired as a guard, but Naveen knew his way through the booby-trapped rooms to the vault.”
Tatiana sipped her drink, clearly intending to tell this story her way and not give me the pertinent facts up front like I’d prefer. “He’s a crafty young man with a purpose. It doesn’t surprise me that he figured it out.”
A fat bumblebee flew between the dainty pink and purple fuchsias on the shrub next to us.
Smiling at its drunken lurching, I picked a fallen flower off the grass and twirled it between my fingers. “How was Naveen planning to get past the heartbeat alarm? He didn’t know there’d be a golem handy on the exact day that the crowds from the fight would provide cover for him to steal the gloves.”
“I’m afraid that’s exactly what happened. Everyone attending the fight was thoroughly vetted and when Naveen saw my name on the guest list, he got suspicious about why I’d go back after all these years.” Tatiana girlishly tucked her leg underneath her.
My anger at all the annoying people in my life, and yes, that included Naveen, subsided under the peace and calm out here. Two chickadees sang merrily to each other from nearby trees while a dragonfly flitted between tiny tomato plants crawling up some lattice and a garden bed filled with tiger lilies in full bloom. It took off in a hurry when a sprinkler on an automatic timer turned on, water droplets jetting through the air like tiny rainbow prisms.
“Apparently Naveen has been after these gloves for some time.” Tatiana settled the mug on the armrest. “He knows his competitors for them and, upon seeing my name, added me to their ranks.”
I brushed the flower against my cheek. “He also knows Emmett. That’s on me.”
There was a small splash from the pond, one of the goldfish briefly surfacing at the edge of a clump of rushes.
“No harm done,” Tatiana said. “Naveen didn’t get the gloves. But neither did someone else.”
“But—”
Tatiana held up a hand. “Had you screwed up our mission, I would have put a death curse on you myself.”
