Page 46 of A Shade Too Far
Yoshi’s dark eyes darted around the room, and he smirked. “Only five? You’re getting soft in your old age.”
Zev pressed a hand to his chest with an expression of mock horror and Yoshi laughed.
I gaped at the two of them, which only made Yoshi laugh harder.
“I’ll see you later,” he told Zev and left.
“What’s with the vial?” I said, glancing at the unconscious vamp on the ground. “Are those smelling salts?”
The lackey’s fingers twitched, so he wasn’t in body bag territory yet, but it was rather optimistic that smelling salts would wake the guy up.
“Do you know why Jude named the golem Emmett?” Shoving the vial in a pocket, Zev grabbed a clean towel off another chair.
I tilted my head, following the clench of his glutes, tempted to bust out a quarter and see how high it’d bounce off those puppies. “She named her attempts alphabetically like hurricanes and the first four tries didn’t take?”
“To bring a golem to life, the Hebrew word for truth, “emet,” must be etched upon their body.” He wiped himself down with the same careful attention he gave everything.
Forcing my mind out of the gutter, I scrunched up my face, teasing out a half-buried memory. “The Golem of Prague. He had it on his forehead and when they needed to stop him, they erased one of the letters in the word, turning truth to death. But Emmett doesn’t have that word on him.”
“He does,” Zev said, “just not on his forehead.”
I grimaced, picturing tramp stamps—or worse. Note to self: never ever ask to see it.
The vampire held up the vial. “You want answers to Tatiana’s plight? This is the easy way of getting them. Have the golem drink it and for roughly two minutes, his divination magic will tap into the collective unconscious of all known things.”
I eyed it warily. “Why would you give this to me? You could have used it on Emmett yourself when he worked for you.”
“I only recently chanced upon this potion and I’m giving it to you for obvious reasons.”
“Uh-huh. What’s the catch?”
“This liquid suppresses his Ohrist magic, bringing his Banim Shovavim powers into focus.” Emmett’s divination talents came from Banim Shovavim necromancer magic, and it was believed that some of the dead could see the future.
I shrugged. “Jude could unsuppress them and balance Emmett back out.”
“You misunderstand,” Zev said. “Should this potion quash the golem’s Ohrist power for good, he could not be reanimated. He’d be using it at the peril of his Ohrist magic.”
“You said this suppresses his Ohrist magic, not kills it entirely.”
“In theory, that’s how it should work. Practice is another matter entirely. This is, after all magic, not rocket science.”
“So, he could end up a giant paperweight? Out of the question.”
“Who is worth more to you, Ms. Feldman? Sentient clay who could finally fulfill the purpose he was created for, or Tatiana, the woman who affords you protection?”
I would never pick and choose between my friends. That’s not how I operated. I crossed my arms. “It’s not an either-or situation. I want a different option.”
His eyes darkened for a moment, and I braced myself for one of his violent outbursts, but he rattled off an address. “Go see the Wise Brothers.”
“In Los Angeles?” I read back the address I’d hurriedly typed into my phone to make sure it was correct. “Who are these guys?”
“They run a bookstore.”
“You could have given me that option first.”
“And I didn’t because the golem was the easy way.” He slung the towel over his shoulder.
“Will this visit cost me my soul or something?”
