Page 99 of Bent Out of Shade
“Because I passed. Cute,” I said in a flat voice. “And if I fail?”
“You get weeded.” At my look of utter confusion, she continued. “Weeding is when—”
I held up a hand. “I know what it is, but it’s one thing to judge a book on variables like condition, accuracy, and whether it gets checked out to keep it in circulation. I’m a person and I’m not in your library’s circulation, so how exactly would that apply to me?”
Nora rolled onto the insides of her feet, her gaze on the linoleum floor. “For the purposes of the test, you’re a source of knowledge, same as a book. If what’s inside you isn’t relevant to the collection…”
“I get recycled?”
Nora removed the whistling kettle from the stove. “In a manner of speaking. Black or herbal?”
I’d bypassed tannins to a straight-up slug of whiskey mood. “That’s preposterous.”
Nora shrugged. “Library rules. You want to go ahead with it?”
I very much did not.
“Decaf Earl Grey might be best right now.” Nora placed a mug in front of me, the string from the tea bag hanging over the rim. “Milk, sugar?”
“Milk,” I murmured.
Vincenzo might already be destroyed, and with Sabrina’s fiancé removed from the equation, that left the Lonestars. If Sabrina didn’t wake up, would Ryann blame me? Too bad. It would have been worse to let the dybbuk gain control of Sabrina’s body. I clinked my ring against the mug. Assuming Ryann didn’t blame anyone, that still left Sabrina unconscious. Would she be sent to Deadman’s Island? Would they just kill her?
Even if neither outcome transpired, I couldn’t leave Sabrina like that indefinitely.
But I couldn’t be weeded either.
