Page 34 of A Shade Too Far
He didn’t stop sulking, but he did grumpily take a seat.
“Can I help with anything?” I asked.
“There’s nothing to help with,” she said. “We’re just having a cuppa.”
I snorted. She’d already unearthed a giant chocolate bar that she’d broken into pieces on a plate in front of me before nudging a fruit bowl overflowing with grapes and plums closer.
“Let’s get this over with.” Naveen tilted his chair back, one foot resting on another chair for balance and a lock of platinum blond hair falling into his face. “What do you want?”
“Were you complicit in Torres’s death?” Laurent said.
The chair thunked to the ground and Naveen’s expression darkened. “Get out.”
Daya placed teaspoons and a dainty sugar bowl on the homey table that easily sat eight people, then boffed her brother across the top of his head.
Laurent held his ground. “It’s a reasonable question.”
“You did want the gloves pretty badly,” I said. “If Santiago had stood in the way of you getting them, would you have hurt him? Or worse?”
“First of all,” Naveen said, “I didn’t get the gloves. And second? If I didn’t kill you?” He leaned forward, speaking in a voice that was saccharine sweet. “I certainly wouldn’t have killed him.”
Laurent hooked a foot around Naveen’s chair and jerked it closer. “Ah, but mon ami, you’d only have had Torres’s security to contend with if you’d hurt him.” The smile he gave his friend was feral.
Daya narrowed her eyes at Laurent and me, but the kettle whistled, and she walked over to the stove to deal with it.
Good, because I had enough to worry about without any matchmaking tendencies. Naveen already didn’t like me; I had no desire to become his personal Yoko Ono. Though, in my opinion, Yoko didn’t even break up The Beatles. John wouldn’t have left if he didn’t want to, but she got scapegoated for the fallout. Typical.
“Stop it, both of you.” I jabbed a finger between them. “We need your help, Naveen, because whoever put the Pulsa diNura on Santiago, put it on Tatiana.”
“Bloody hell, mate,” Naveen said, shoving Laurent’s chair with his foot. Oy vey. The two of them were like seven-year-old boys. It wouldn’t surprise me if one of them noogied the other. “You could have led with that.”
“You could have helped me because I’m your friend.”
I rolled my eyes at Laurent’s use of the words I’d thrown at him earlier and reached for a piece of chocolate at the exact same moment as the shifter. Our hands brushed and I motioned for him to go ahead, Canadian politeness hardwired into my DNA.
He took the piece but placed it in my hand. “I know the dangers of standing between you and chocolate.” His fingers lingered on mine for a second longer than necessary, but he wasn’t gazing into my eyes. He was getting another piece for himself.
Okay, then. I murmured “Thanks” and returned to the topic. “Did you find any other corpse? Was a host killed, releasing the dybbuk that took Santiago out?”
“No,” Naveen said. “You’re positive it was a dybbuk?”
“One hundred percent,” I said.
Laurent filled him in on our working theory that the host was alive and well, her Ohrist magic causing this unwelcome twist to allow the dybbuk to leave her body.
“At the fight you thought she was enthralled,” Naveen said.
“That still might be the case,” I admitted. “But possessed or enthralled, there was no other host for the dybbuk to inhabit and they don’t float free. This explanation is cleaner.”
“Actually?” Naveen propped an elbow on the back of the chair. “The explanation that’s cleanest is that my boss was killed, and an innocent woman enthralled, because a BS controlled the dybbuk.”
I added sugar to my mug in anticipation of the tea so I’d have something to focus on, forcing myself to keep my tone polite for Daya’s sake. “I’d prefer if you call us Banim Shovavim.”
“Nav, apologize,” his sister said.
“It’s what you do, right?” Naveen’s cold brown eyes bored into mine. “Death and darkness and all that? I mean, you did let the man die.”
A hot funnel churned under my skin, and I let go of my teacup because I was rattling it on the saucer. “While I didn’t save Santiago, even if Banim Shovavim could control dybbuks—if I could—I wouldn’t.”
