Juma

by Madhuri Pavamani

  “At last count, fifty-three.”

  I shot Kash a look full of disbelief. “There is no fucking way.”

  “I witnessed every single one of them,” Kash continued, a smile on his face as if he was proud of Juma’s murderous feats. “For all I know, there could be more. I know another thirteen Keepers are listed as missing. My guess is they are missing permanently, thanks to her and that machete she keeps on her back.”

  And here I couldn’t help but smile.

  That blasted machete. The same one she unsheathed on me so fast I had no time to react. The same one that drew my blood without so much as an apology from her gorgeous lips.

  “Goddammit, Kash,” I ran my hands through my hair and smoked fast and furious, uncertain what to make of his story. “What the fuck? You never thought to stop her?”

  Kash laughed, the sound more like a bark than amusement.

  “Are you kidding me? Do you want me dead, too?” he asked, and I realized he was right. Juma didn’t know him. Had he come out of his hiding place, she would have picked up his chill and killed him on the spot. I pulled him into a hug—an impulsive move on my part—and shocked the shit out of him. But seriously, it hit me right then how close I could have come to getting him killed.

  “Fuck, Kash. Fuck.” I released him and laughed as his expression went from startled to confused. “I’m just so glad you didn’t get close to her. She can sense Keepers.”

  “No worries, chap.” Kash smiled and moved toward the door as if to leave. “I gathered there was something about us that tipped her off—it’s as if she knows about us two beats before we make a move. So I always stayed well out of her range, but never too far away. I couldn’t. I love watching her in action—she is truly a thing of beauty. Whatever madness is fueling her, whatever transpired between the two of you, she is amazing.”

  I ran my hand along her arm, needing to touch her, but also searching for any strum of life, any Juma.

  “Kash,” I called to him before he left me alone with her, “I never asked her to do any of this. Never.”

  “You didn’t have to, Dutch,” he replied with a sad smile. “It’s called love and sometimes it makes you do some crazy shit.”

  18: DUTCH

  Kash left and then it was just Juma and me in that room, her lifeless body on the bed as I stood near her feet and studied her in repose. The windows of the room faced east, large picture things, floor to ceiling, covered in some kind of light, airy material that allowed the morning sunshine to flood the room unhindered, filling the space with golden warmth. In my mind, Italian mornings always felt like this: warm with a hint of coffee in the breeze. Only this one also contained bits of honey and citrus and grass.

  Juma.

  She was all freckles and tits and brown and hips. God, her fucking hips made me think all kinds of dirty shit, her body was that wicked, even when not of this world. I lit a smoke and considered her and that ever-spinning mind of hers and tried to really see her, like Kash saw her, because I needed to know what she was doing. And why she was doing it alone.

  Because I knew she was working alone. That blonde in the street, the one without the head, she had nothing to do with Juma’s agenda. If anything, she was the assignment and Juma tagged along to get her death on.

  “Juma,” I whispered and tugged on her toe, “I know you can hear me somewhere in that thick head of yours. What the fuck were you thinking?”

  I came around to her side of the bed, scooted her over, then crawled in next to her, talking low the entire time. I had to do something, and chatting with her, even in her catatonic state, was better than making those goddamned lists. I pulled her onto my chest, just like the first time she died, and waited.

  For her.

  Because the fact remained, I would always wait for her. I would always be the first thing she saw when she revived. My body would always be there to keep her warm as she walked her path back to life, my voice would always be there to guide her home, my hands would always be there to hold her. Even if apart, I swore to myself then and there to make sure to always always be with her when she returned to this world. Nothing would prevent me from being there the moment she crossed.

  And something told me this would not be the last time she made the journey between life and death. I didn’t know what she was up to, what plans she had concocted on her own when we were apart, but I sensed Juma had every intention to kill or be killed, that there was no middle ground with her. I wouldn’t know the details until she returned and was able to speak again, but I knew the generalities just as easily as I knew where and how she liked being kissed.

  I glanced at my phone.

  10:22 a.m.

  I punched out a text to Kash, asked for some coffee, bourbon, and my smokes, then settled back into the pillow, closed my eyes, and breathed deeply.

  “So some shit’s gone down since you saw me last,” I began, my voice real low, a whisper for her ears only because these were stories for her alone, no one else, just Juma. “Frist got attacked by a Keeper. And I know what you’re going to say—that I mention Frist like you know her when you’ve never heard her name before, mostly because I don’t talk about myself at all and I certainly don’t share the intimate details of my life. And if anything, Frist is intimate as fuck.”

  I paused as if Juma would respond with some shit only she could say that sounded smart and sexy at the same time, so smart and sexy that no matter what she said or did or asked for, I would comply. I acted like that was going to happen, only it wasn’t, mostly because she was still dead as a doornail.

  “Fair enough. You win. I’ll give you my Frist story.

  “First of all—and don’t ever tell her I told you this, it stays between us—her name isn’t Frist. Her name is Penelope Camilla Astrid Carnegie and yes, she’s descended from the good folks who gave us Carnegies Hall and Mellon. She’s got some serious roots in that land of yours and mine, she’s got some serious money buried all over the place, and she’s got some serious issues with the burden of that last name.

  “Hence Frist.

  “She’s never said much about her mother and father except that they were her sun and moon and when they died, so did a little bit of her. She was seventeen. They had flown their private plane to a party on Nantucket but never made it, crashing into the sound, dying on impact. Her brother was twenty-one at the time, in England attending Oxford, and she was about to leave for MIT. They saw each other for the funeral and reading of the will, he returned to the far side of the pond, she left for Cambridge, and they haven’t spoken much since. That was about twelve years ago.

  “At the time, her hair was chestnut brown, its natural hue.”

  A petite woman with birdlike features and a silent gait entered the room, bearing a pot of espresso, a bottle of Scout, and two packs of American Spirits—Kash must have figured I would be here a while. She set down the items well within my reach, nodded in my direction, a slight smile curving her thin lips, then departed as quietly as she entered. I lit a smoke, poured some Scout, and continued.

  “Frist stumbled upon me late one night, drunk out of my mind, with a cut to my gut that damn near killed me. I was trying to hold my insides together while continuing to inebriate my soul. To this day, I don’t know what possessed her to approach me, besides the fact she’s a badass motherfucker, but she did and upon realizing I was damn near chopped in half, she brought me upstairs to her place, put me on her couch, and got to work in her lab. She put together some sort of healing salve and saved my life.

  “And ever since, I’ve called her my pink-haired mad scientist. Currently she’s more lavender than pink, but she’s one of the most brilliant minds I know. She can make anything from nothing, she’s fearless, and she’s deadly. For a while she was selling all kinds of evil shit to the Russians and Iranians. Until she found me. Then she also started selling all kinds of evil shit to me.

  “She knows all of my demons. She has witnessed some of my worst qualities firsthand,
late at night, in the quiet of her apartment or the dark of my loft. I’ve never explained myself and she’s never asked, she’s just accepted that I cannot bear to be touched, that part of loving me is understanding my fucked-up tendencies. To this day, I don’t know why she rescued me that night or why she stuck with me all these years, learning all of my ugly truths and holding all of my dark secrets, but she did. And although I hardly ever tell her because it makes her uncomfortable and because I am horrible at making anyone feel good about themselves, I fucking love her like the family I never had.

  “She’s a total weirdo, but she’s my weirdo.”

  I sipped some Scout and shifted a bit, my legs needing a break from Juma’s weight, my body, so used to being in constant motion, trying to adjust to a morning of stillness. The sun’s rays in the room had shifted since our arrival, moving westerly, warming the space with their golden glow.

  I guessed it was around two in the afternoon when I felt her breath, soft and shallow and rapid, as if she couldn’t quite catch it and breathe deeply.

  “Shhhhh, Juma.” I held her close and whispered, “It’s all right, just relax. Shhhhhh.”

  Based upon her last return, I knew that even once she crossed back, it would take time for her motor skills to resume. Waiting for that was when she was at her most panicked. It was during those moments I wanted her to know I was there and everything was okay and so I kept speaking. As long as I continued telling her stories, even if she couldn’t hear or understand or process what I was saying, she could feel the vibration of my voice and hopefully that would comfort her during her time of transition.

  “Speaking of weirdos, I should tell you now, because I don’t want you hearing it from anyone else, I’ve got a wife. I didn’t choose her, I don’t really know her, and I don’t want her, but according to Khan and Shema, she is mine.”

  I ran my hands up and down Juma’s back, the muscles and curves so familiar, my fingers knowing all the places to touch and soothe and linger, as I considered my arranged marriage. It was The Gate at its most bizarre and manipulative and it was bullshit.

  “Her name is Sevyn Suleiman and of course, she is a Keeper. It is a long-standing practice of The Gate to arrange marriages, especially for those from the more powerful families. I just never expected to be sucked into the bullshit. For some reason I figured I was above it, or beneath it, and they would ignore me and shit would trickle down to some other unlucky motherfucker. But apparently, the Mathews and Suleimans have other plans.”

  “And I couldn’t begin to tell you the details of those plans because I didn’t stick around long enough to learn them, but knowing Khan and Shema, I’m probably already married.”

  As I spoke those words, as they tumbled from my careless lips and entered the space between us, I felt Juma crying.

  19: JUMA

  I raced down the halls of Death like a woman possessed, checked in with Marina so she could tally my life, avoided my ma because sure, it was great she knew my secrets, but she didn’t need their details, and as quickly as I died, I crossed back to the living.

  It happened fast, I moved with speed and force and everything was a blur. Sound sight time spun around one another to create blinding spots of color that felt fuzzy and sharp and all of it was cold. And I swear if you could have watched me you would have thought crossing was a piece of cake and dying was no big thing.

  Like I died all the time.

  Like I knew what I was doing and I made it look easy.

  Like I was a goddamned boss.

  When really I hurtled into life legs akimbo, skirt over my head, and ass on display for all the world to take a peek. I couldn’t put the brakes on it so I just landed wherever however whenever. I hardly knew what I was doing but I damn sure knew where I was headed.

  For him.

  Always him.

  Even when the trajectory and acceleration and kinetic energy of it made my skin feel like I’d spent the afternoon rolling in wet sand, my eyeballs scream with fire, and even my hair hurt. I still did it. Every time. Straight for him.

  And even if I was lost and disoriented throughout my journey, as soon as I crossed back to the living, I knew. Just as I knew the lines on my palm, the freckles along my clavicle, the cut of my breasts, the swell of my hips, so, too, did I know Dutch Mathew. His everything was imprinted on my soul, had been since that first night in the bar when he growled and cursed and almost fucked me. His darkness was all over me. His danger thrummed in my blood. He was a part of me. So when I crossed, the rhythm of his words calmed me right away. My body recognized him without my brain fully grasping the reality of him. His smell, the timbre of his voice, the clipped consonants and slight accent, the hard feel of his chest, the soft touch of his hands.

  Dutch.

  My Dutch.

  The man who cast a cold glance my way and uttered the very words he knew would break my heart. The lover I couldn’t choose but longed for in every crack of my soul. The Keeper to my Poocha, the hunter, the killer, the fiend.

  I’d lost count of how many days had passed since we last touched, but I dreamed of him every night, my hands moving over his body, my eyes reveling in his beauty, my tongue teasing out his sweetness. I cried quiet tears for him and me and everything we would never get to be as the bullshit and idiocy of generations upon generations of machinations and manipulations bore down upon us. I raged and railed against him and his inability to see past the foolishness of his ego and understand the decisions forced upon me him us.

  And I killed.

  I gave into the homicidal fury flowing through my veins, I unleashed it in all its bloody murderous terrific horror. It was wanton in its selection of targets but hardly so in the planning and perpetuation—that was one thousand percent purposeful and premeditated. I knew exactly what I was doing how I was going to do it and when it would happen.

  He and I might have parted ways but my need to bring The Gate to its knees to sit up and take notice to respect my power and rage, that never ceased.

  But now he was here and everything I thought I knew felt understood seemed suddenly not so black and white. Not so easy to explain. Nor to forget.

  Because that was part of it.

  The killing.

  I thought if I shed enough blood in the name of my love and despair and pain then I would be able to forget him misplace his darkness confuse his danger. I thought perhaps he would commingle with the gore and soon all of it would flow together until he became my hand my rage my machete and we were as one. I could be both Dutch and Juma, a black-hearted cold-blooded angel of death and destruction, an unstoppable killing machine fueled by a broken heart and the spirit of her other half the darker half the dangerous one.

  Instead, I was just Juma, a girl who loved a boy with such quiet desperation she sometimes didn’t know what to do with herself, who missed that boy so much her skin hurt when she relived memories of his tender touch his kiss his breath, who would die a million deaths to have him again by her side hear his laughter feel his gaze.

  And he was Dutch, all hollows and planes and full lips and brown skin and such intense dark beauty I feared meeting his eyes to revel in his magic, certain I would become so lost in him I would never find my way back to myself. And I needed to hold on to myself if I wanted to survive.

  Because sure, by some ungodly miracle, Dutch was here by my side, holding me, breathing sweetness into my skin, wrapping me in his unique brand of warmth and love and sex and desire, but that did not mean he would stay. Or that he wanted to stay. Or that he even wanted to be here.

  Everything about that moment of us lying together, his darkness wrapped around my light, was confused and inexplicable. I didn’t know what to make of it of him of us, so I needed to keep Juma in sight, remember her, and not get lost in him—because the possibility existed that once I fully revived, he would leave, and I couldn’t bear to lose him again.

  Because once upon a time, a Keeper and a Poocha made promises to each other that in the bl
ink of an eye were forgotten and new paths were forged. We separated so easily, we could do so again and I wanted to be prepared for that divergence. I didn’t want to be caught off guard like last time because even though I made the break caused the crack created the division, Dutch was the one who departed without ever looking back thinking twice reconsidering me him us.

  So yeah. Me. Juma. I needed to hold on to her. It was a matter of survival and I intended to be the fittest.

  I opened my eyes and rested on Dutch’s chest, letting the golden light of the afternoon seep into my vision and give everything an ethereal hue, dreamlike and heavenly. I loved that color of light, the yellow that warmed you even when the sun itself was too weak to do the same. I breathed deeply, inhaling Dutch’s delicious scent, his masculine hints of bergamot and musk washing over me, pulling forth memories of him from so many nights past.

  And I remembered.

  We made a plan to take down The Gate. Together. Then the plan changed, I made decisions, he reacted, and whatever happened afterward had nothing to do with him and everything to do with me.

  My ma was wrong, I thought to myself as I pushed up on his chest and studied him for the first time in too long. Dutch wouldn’t steal my shine, he loved me too much. But he sure as hell would try to smother my darkness, that I knew for certain.

  “Juma,” he whispered and touched my face, traced his fingers along my throat where the blade had sliced through my thin skin. “Juma.”

  My name on his lips was some sort of mythical succor my soul craved needed yearned for without me understanding. Each syllable kissed by his tongue warmed me in places left cold by his absence, each letter coming together to form the whole sent a shiver up and down my body. I stood on the precipice of him, ready to jump, even though I knew I shouldn’t.

  I kissed his fingers as he traced my lips, his eyes dark and dangerous and just like I loved. He was so fucking beautiful, everything about him affecting me in a most primitive way as my nipples peaked and my pussy dripped and what had seconds earlier been a moment of cold and calculated reflection was now all hot and bothered and hitched breath.