Page 17 of A Shade of Myself
My hypothesis was correct. “You’ve seen this before?”
“No, but history has recorded infrequent cases of it. No one has figured out why it happens, but most things in life can be solved by rebooting them so I figured”—he shrugged—“might as well.”
“You rebooted it.” I gaped at him. “And that worked?”
“Yeah.” Laurent cracked the Gatorade and held it out to me.
“No, thank you,” I said evenly. The two of us still needed to discuss how we intended to proceed—as friends, friends plus benefits, or what—but standing in a tourist-thronged crowd when I was starving wasn’t the place to do it. I did, however, have to satisfy my curiosity about one thing. “Why did Tatiana say you weren’t back?”
“Because I wasn’t. She called me after she spoke with you and asked that I get my friend Cam to do me a favor.”
“Who’s Cam?”
Laurent looked around to make sure we weren’t overheard, and still lowered his voice. “You know the woman who mentored me?”
I nodded and switched legs for what would hopefully be my final stretch. Laurent had had a mentor who taught him how to use Banim Shovavim magic as an Ohrist. She’d also taught him everything he knew about killing dybbuks.
“Cameron’s her kid.”
“Okay, but how did this favor get you here? You can’t use the Kefitzat Haderech and Banim Shovavim can’t transport without it.”
“Cam’s Ohrist. Uses light to travel. It’s a rare ability but it gets you from one place to another in the blink of an eye. Something with photons and light particles traveling superfast. One minute I was at my parents’ apartment, the next Cam showed up and got us to the mountain. From there I shifted and found you.”
I grabbed the armrest of the bench for support because I was more wobbly standing on this foot. “I’m surprised Tatiana hasn’t recruited him.”
Laurent’s brows drew together.
“Cameron,” I clarified. “Seems like a prize catch for Team Tatiana.”
“Thanks for the kind words, and believe me, she tried.” A blonde in her early thirties with a light sheen of sweat on her face and a runner’s wiry body draped her arms over Laurent’s neck from behind, resting her head on his shoulder. “I didn’t want to be tied down.” The woman grinned, her expression radiant. She struck me as the kind of person who enjoyed life to the fullest. “You must be Miriam. I’m Cam. Isn’t the Grind the best? What a great hike.”
My foot hit the ground and I came out of my stretch in the most ungainly way. “There’s nothing like it.”
“Thirty-eight minutes.” Cam held up her hand for Laurent to high-five, and when he didn’t, lifted his hand and slapped hers against him.
He rolled his eyes, but his lips quirked.
I lunged around the bench like this was a normal cool-down routine for me after climbing a mountain.
There was a lot to unpack here: that Laurent had not used a single gendered pronoun when describing Cam, that she had climbed the trail in just over half an hour, or that the shifter with personal boundary issues sat there letting her hug him.
No, wait. Now he was letting her help herself to his fries. The ones that I’d been denied. A drop of sweat fell into my eye and I blinked it out rapidly, my face scrunched up.
Laurent swore at Cam in French, and she chuckled, keeping a death clamp on the container.
My legs screamed in pain but I couldn’t stop my lunges because I’d been possessed by the Energizer Bunny from Hell in my compulsion to show how fit I was.
“Mad respect,” Cam said. “After that hike, I just want to flake out and stuff my face.”
“I can go for hours.” My eyes were blurry with tears because my left leg had seized up and I was stuck in the lunge.
“Do you need help?” Laurent said.
“Nope.” I twisted my torso from one side to the other as though this was all part of my plan. Welp, it had been a good life. And hey, in several hours when I still couldn’t move, I could watch the sunset from this lovely vantage point and enjoy nightfall all by myself on an empty mountain, until at some point in the wee hours, I fell over and died, finally to be eaten by bears. Maybe they’d even commission a statue of me: The Overzealous Hiker, bronze.
“Want some?” Cam held the fries out to me.
Not if my life depended on it. I wouldn’t give Laurent the satisfaction.
