Juma

by Madhuri Pavamani

  And then my new self, that darker being, that woman just as wrapped up in Dutch but in another way altogether, a much more dangerous way, deadly and determined, that part of me whispered the words I already knew: I left because I had to.

  Because just as Dutch had an agenda when he parted ways with me—Don’t touch me, Juma—so, too, did I and no matter how much I wanted all of him all of the time, my agenda didn’t involve lying around all day with him touching and sucking and fucking.

  My agenda . . .

  “Juma.”

  I stopped in my tracks as the low familiar hiss played along my senses, setting my skin afire once again despite the fact she and I were long past doing anything to make the other feel good. I cocked my head to the side and waited for whatever tongue-lashing Death felt the need to dish out in an effort to wrest some of her power back from me and remind both of us who was in control I served her she was my Mistress.

  “Mistress.”

  My voice remained cold hard devoid of life, hardly my usual timbre, but after the choices she left at my feet—Dutch or my ma—I hardly found her worthy of my usual anything. As Dutch would say, fuck her.

  “Your blade is covered in blood”—she walked a circle around me, her breath warm on my neck as her hands rested on my hips—“which has me wondering what you’ve been up to.”

  “My job, of course,” I replied as I stepped out of her orbit and turned to face her. She was all creamy brown skin and full red lips and a chic pageboy haircut, but I knew her cracks and crevices. She could change her hair a million times, wear the most beautiful clothes, paint her lips the deepest shade of lust, but the shit seeped through. And all of it stank.

  Death raked her eyes over my body, studying me in seconds the way it would take another many lifetimes over and I allowed it because I didn’t want her to see me flinch because I didn’t want her thinking she had the upper hand on anything having to do with me. She lost that right when my ma died and she proved she considered me nothing more than another one of her playthings a body to be manipulated a woman who mattered little.

  “Funny,” she muttered, and there was nothing funny about her tone, “I don’t ever recall blood-splattered machetes being part of the Poocha uniform.”

  “Funny,” I repeated as I withdrew my blade and wiped it down with a cloth, “I don’t ever recall being given a uniform when I signed up for this job. Or do they not come in kid sizes?”

  Anger flashed in her eyes while mine remained defiant and daring—because like I said, fuck her. She moved for me and I knew she was going to do it before she knew she was going to do it and I knew how she was going to do it so I countered and blocked and before Death could figure out what happened, I had her pinned to the wall with my blade at her neck.

  “What a shame,” I joked as she watched me, “to think, I just cleaned my blade.”

  “Back off and behave, Juma.” She pushed me away and I let her. “You know you cannot kill me, I am Death.”

  I watched her try to appear larger than life like someone I should fear like my Mistress but I wasn’t impressed. There was nothing she could do to make me tremble in her presence no way she could top her performance better the manipulative destructive bullshit of her existence than what she had done to me my entire life.

  I was her best and biggest fuck-you, her most prominent shout to the world that this is what I do and this is the horrible way I do it, her most wicked sorcery and double-talk on display. Everything about her and me and us was a lie, from the very moment she came to my tiny bedside and whispered low and seductive in my ear to her standing in that apartment with Dutch and revealing her most horrific strategy and to every moment in between.

  Lies.

  All of it.

  So yeah, the days of me revering her fearing her loving her disappeared that dark night full of her teasing laughter and Dutch’s cutting words and my bewildered inability to comprehend any of it. But I got it now, fuck yeah I got it now.

  “Oh, I know I cannot kill you, Mistress.” I laughed low and made sure there was no joy in the sound. “But I can slice and dice you, rip your body to shreds with my own hands, tear out your innards and leave you a bloody mess in the middle of this hallway, waiting for Marina to sweep in and help you, push everything back inside, and make you whole again.”

  “That is assuming I have innards, Juma.” She walked past me and hissed but I could tell I hit a nerve and I reached for her because even though she appeared to be finished with me, I was just getting started. She froze at my touch but did not turn to face me and that was fine, I didn’t need to see her face I already had her imprinted on my soul.

  “Do you take me for such a fool, Mistress?” I asked, my question rhetorical and she knew it and so she remained silent. “Did you honestly think all those hours you left me alone as a child to wander these endless halls and rooms and tunnels that lead all around the world everywhere anywhere all at once that my curiosity would not be piqued, I would not seek information details magic? That I wouldn’t discover those whispery beings with no arms and no legs and barely any faces but voices like angels? The beautiful Rouxs with their history of song and their black magic?”

  “The Rouxs are none of your concern, Juma,” she growled, and I knew she was livid.

  “Why is that, Mistress?” I leaned my weight on one hip, cocked my head to the side, and asked, my voice casual and certain to further infuriate her. “I’m guessing it’s because you don’t like anyone knowing how you were made because then that person might know how to harness your power, learn your weaknesses, fuck with your vulnerabilities. Or even better, the Rouxs might take a liking to that person, enjoy having them come around here and there, stay for a spell, pay them some attention and little by little, those practitioners of all kinds of crazy shit might start passing along some of that crazy shit, sharing their secrets, exposing your secrets.

  “Because not for nothing,” I continued despite her growing ire, “the Rouxs are totally badass, like scary, like what the fuck. Which is funny because I always thought of you that way but now I know you’re just the pawn, they’re the real motherfuckers behind the scenes, pulling the strings, deciding who lives and who dies, who gets to cross back, who is worthy. Shit, they even decide Death. Without them, you’d be nothing. You are nothing.”

  “How dare you?” She spun around on me, her face an irate and almost-terrified mask of frustration with me with her with our station in this fucked-up game of lives.

  “How dare I?” I shot back, my voice raised my ire piqued, for I tolerated, even forgave her duplicity all these years because I loved her and worse, I believed her. I trusted she would never lie to me, that I above all else, somehow mattered. “How dare you? I was a child but I was nobody’s fool. Shame on you for judging me so.”

  “No one has ever considered you foolish, my love, especially me,” she replied as she paused and composed herself and as quickly as her temper flared so, too, did she recover and regain her placid mask of apparent ennui, but I knew better. I knew her like very few, perhaps only Marina had more insight, and I could see her wheels spinning behind the bored eyes and downturned mouth. She furiously moved to gain footing against me to counter my attack and perhaps launch one of her own. She needed the upper hand at all times and when she couldn’t have it, she resorted to all kinds of fuckery to obtain it.

  I gave her a moment to plot and plan, toying with her ego and insatiable need to always be right. I let her believe that for maybe a few seconds of our new existence—the one where I didn’t give a fuck and she gave all of them—she had me flummoxed confused thrown off balance.

  But only a few.

  “You have always judged me so, thinking me two steps behind you and your shenanigans, patting me on the head like a good puppy, kissing my throat and eating my pussy to quell my curiosity, and for years I allowed this because despite my better selves, I loved you and wanted you to love me, too. Little did I know you are incapable of loving anyone but yourse
lf—I learned that lesson far too late in this game. Thankfully, I was never fool enough to let my love for you kill my curiosity.”

  And here I swear she blanched and swallowed and shifted because she did not like the tone of my voice or the suggestion of my words.

  “All those years, all that time alone, what do you think I did? Of course I learned the ways of the Rouxs, their magic, and what they’d done to you, how they made you.”

  I grinned because I had her.

  “You know nothing of them or me,” she insisted.

  “Oh, my dark Mistress, there you are so very wrong. I know enough to know that yes, I cannot kill you”—I stepped close, placed my hands on her hips, and leaned into her, my lips at her ear—“but I can gut you like the pig you are, and make no mistake, I know how to do it and make it hurt.”

  I then caught her off guard and kissed her full on her mouth, forcing my tongue past her pursed lips, demanding a deeper more intimate gesture than she wished to give, but I didn’t care. How many times had she taken whatever she wanted from me? I didn’t want to kiss her anyway, I wanted to make her feel uncomfortable ill-at-ease violated, which the woman in me detested but the monster in me loved.

  Because for real, fuck her.

  I released her face and squeezed her tits as she pulled away from me and wiped her mouth, her eyes full of rage and fire and I was certain this would be our reckoning, the moment we crashed into each other with such force and violence that only one of us would survive the collision and I had every intention of being the last woman standing. I expected her attack, I longed for it needed it craved it, for there had to occur some sort of balancing between the two of us after so many years of so much love, it was inevitable the vitriol needed to spew.

  But she seemed to want none of that and rather than charge at me as she had done so often in our tumultuous sometimes violent relationship, this time she stilled and quieted and seemed to make herself smaller in my presence. I don’t know if it was purposeful, I don’t even know if it was actual, but the fact remained where she would have typically roared with the fire of a thousand lions, she instead appeared diminished and almost exhausted.

  “I do not care for you one bit since you’ve crossed paths with that Mr. Mathew,” she whisper-hissed, even her voice seeming smaller.

  “Don’t you dare blame any of this on Dutch,” I replied, my fury simmering right under my skin at the mention of his name. “This is years of us. Our shit. Not Dutch or The Gate—this is all me and you.”

  “You were easier to control before he entered the picture.” She continued her infuriating line of thought, making best efforts to get under my skin and doing a stellar job of it.

  “I was.” I smiled and gathered myself, calling my brighter angels forth to instill patience and serenity in the face of her bullshit. “But this right here, you getting your panties in a wad every time we cross paths, this is so much more fun.”

  “Enough!” she bellowed and her voice shook the halls and moved through me like a force of nature.

  “Or what, Mistress?” I challenged her. “You going to kill your best Poocha your favorite your beloved?”

  And here her eyes widened upon digesting my words and she laughed and it sounded deep and sincere and genuine. She wiped her eyes and touched my cheek.

  “Oh sweetheart, that would make things so easy, killing you. I have plans for you, Miss Juma”—she imitated my accent—“and they most definitely do not involve ending any of your lives.”

  Death didn’t wait for my response or my questions or my snark, she simply turned on her heel and walked away. She could have disappeared into thin air had she wanted to but what she wanted was for me to watch her leave.

  I rolled my eyes, hardly interested in her theatrics, and turned to look for my ma—the only reason I was here in the first place—when Death called from the darkness.

  “And, Juma, the next time you want to try to gut me like the pig I am, you better go for it because if I get my hands on you, no matter how much I love you or what plans I have for your future, the world of hurt I’ll bring down on your pretty head will be like nothing you ever fathomed.”

  With those words she meant to instill fear in my heart fill me with dread make me weak with regret but what she failed to understand was the part of me—the tenderhearted woman the lover the life-giver—died that night in my apartment when I learned the falsehoods upon which the foundation of my being existed. She destroyed so much of my faith in her and myself and everything I believed in and when that wasn’t enough, she destroyed my love.

  It was the last time I feared anything.

  Least of all her words.

  I continued down the hall, heading toward my war room. When I reached the door I stood still for a second, took a deep breath, and exhaled. On the other side of the door waited my team and my ma, all of them eager to learn our next steps in reuniting her with my da. Mimi and Rufus Landry were my greatest weaknesses and the only real power Death could hold over me. Death knew this and so did I. Where that left us, only time would tell.

  In the meantime, I had a job to do. So I pulled on my big-girl panties, plastered a smile on my face, and pushed open the door. I caught Ma’s eye right away and she rose when I stepped into the room. Mimi looked so tired but she emanated a distinct excitement and I knew it was time, she was ready. Kobe looked up from a small table in the back where he was working, surrounded by other Alighters, and nodded.

  Crossing time.

  “Okay, gorgeous people,” I announced as I twined my fingers through my ma’s and kissed her cheek, “let’s get Mimi and Rufus back together before the night ends.”

  25: DUTCH

  “Dutch, could you just listen to me?”

  I smoked and drank and paced my cavernous room in Kash’s Italian home. The picture windows overlooking the town square provided a perfect view of cafe life down below, had I been in the mood to play voyeur. But I wasn’t. At all. I just wanted to get out of there.

  I stubbed out my smoke into the smiling face of the Marlboro Man, swigged a little watered-down Scout, and then got back to it.

  Tossing my shit into my old, beat-up Vuitton duffel, the one item I ever pinched off a Poocha and one I had held onto ever since, I listened as Avery bitched and moaned and did everything in his power to move me more in the direction of his line of thought and not so much in mine.

  “Look, Ave.” I dug out my favorite Cal Berkeley T-shirt from the back of a drawer and added it to the pile on the bed. “If I hadn’t gotten the text from Grant, I wouldn’t be headed to Atlanta, but the fact is I got it and I’m going.”

  “You don’t even know he saw her,” Avery continued his case, “and we have to discuss Veda.”

  “I do know he saw her because it’s Grant and he’s never wrong and it makes perfect sense—it’s Atlanta, her parents live there. And fuck Veda.”

  “Aren’t you going to fold all of that?” Avery pointed at my ever-growing pile of expensive jeans and wrinkled T-shirts. I shot him a look and laughed.

  “No, I’m not.”

  I lit another smoke as movement in the hallway caught my eye. I was at the far end of the east side of the house, the only resident of this wing, because Kash knew I was an asshole and liked to keep me away from the guests, even when the guests were my closest friends. I shushed Avery with a wave of my hand and stepped through the doorway to find that cunt-faced Keeper Suleiman lurking in the shadows like some goddamned spy.

  “What the fuck do you want?”

  Her eyes widened, her nostrils flared, and her olive skin took a pinkish hue around her cheeks. If she was the kind of woman I fucked, I would have guessed her panties were wet and she was ready for whatever I was going to give her. But she was most definitely not the kind of woman I fucked, or wanted to even consider. Ever.

  “I thought maybe we could talk, clear the air a little between the two of us,” she stammered and I envisioned duct-taping her mouth closed so I would never hear tha
t lilting accent again.

  I barked a harsh laugh in her face—this bitch was too much.

  “You want to talk?” I asked, unable to hide the amazement in my voice. “Get the fuck out of here.”

  I waved her off, then changed my mind. That bitch wanted something, but it sure as fuck wasn’t to talk to me.

  “Suleiman, get back here,” I called to her as she walked away.

  She stopped in her tracks and her back tensed, and for a few beats she remained perfectly still, as if contemplating my command, despite the fact I outranked her in every way possible.

  “It wasn’t a suggestion,” I said, and she turned, her face betraying a combination of anger, confusion, and something akin to fear. I relished her discomfort. She approached and I glanced at that beautiful blade she always carried on her hip and wondered if she wanted to draw it across my throat as badly as I wanted to draw mine across hers.

  “Yes, Dutch.” She stopped before me and I considered nine ways I could kill her on the spot.

  I twirled a lock of her long, black hair between my fingers, an intimate gesture but between the two of us, one filled with nothing but disgust and distaste. Her hair was soft and thick and as I rolled it between my thumb and forefinger I recalled honey and lemons and grass and light. And then without warning, I yanked and Sevyn yelped as I fisted her hair and held her close.

  “I don’t know what the fuck you were doing outside my room, listening to Avery and me, invading the privacy of my space with your bullshit, but let me tell you something: Heed Juma’s words. I hardly know you but I know I don’t like you and unlike the rest of this crew, I am not so easily fooled by a prominent name and a pretty face, so it would be in your best interest to maintain a healthy distance from me and mine. The next time I catch you anywhere near me, you conniving bitch, I won’t be so nice.” And here I whipped out my small blade faster than she could possibly imagine and chopped off the rope of her hair wrapped around my fist.

  She gasped and held her head in shock.