I’d been sitting on the front stairs for two hours, consumed six cups of coffee and two bagels, and worked myself into one righteous fury by the time Rohan rolled up.
A smoke-infused haze covered the sky, the sun a bright orange ball from forest fires burning hundreds of kilometers away. The air was heavy and stagnant with no hint of a breeze coming off the water through the trees.
He got out of the car, saw me, and flashed me his rock fuck grin. “You won’t believe what I found. Women’s clothing and a fairly recent photo of Ferdinand with some lady. I don’t know who she was to him but I’ll find out. It’s a great lead.”
“Don’t patronize me.” I spoke in a low voice, my eyes locked on his. “And don’t lie to me. Ever.”
“How did I lie?” He sat down next to me. “I checked out Ferdinand’s place.”
“Red-eye flights aren’t that red-eye. You didn’t charter a jet in the middle of the night. You kept it, didn’t you?” My hands tightened on my coffee mug, now cold and empty.
“I called them to arrange it when you went to deliver the painting.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
He twisted his Rasha ring around. “I was going to, but I was waiting for you to come home, and then the oshk happened and…” He leaned back on his elbows against the stairs. “I didn’t want to worry you.”
“I wouldn’t have stopped you.”
“No? You were locked onto me last night so tight that I couldn’t even turn over. You’d have asked me to wait and I would have.” He looked away. “I didn’t want to.”
“Better to ask for forgiveness than permission, huh?” I’d lived that way, but I’d never figured Ro would pull that on me. Never figured he’d strip the connective threads that bound us with his manipulations. Funny how fast “doing better and doing this together” flew out the window when it didn’t fit with Ro’s wants. I crushed the remnants of my bagel into a pulpy mess and tossed it onto the grass. “If I ask you to wait, then convince me otherwise. Don’t sneak around.” I jabbed a finger into his chest. “You know who sneaks around, Ro? Addicts.”
And addictions never ended well.
“Here comes the melodrama.” He stomped up the stairs.
“Better than the death wish.”
“Oh, okay. You fight the oshk and you take down the Brotherhood. I’ll just sit here enveloped in bubble wrap and you tell me when it’s safe to move.”
I jumped to my feet. “I have a better idea. How about you pull your head out of your ass and examine your behavior? You’re spiraling. Acting on emotion, not logic. Great way to get yourself killed.”
“Spare me the bullshit. You want this blown open more than I do.”
“I thought I did.” I clenched the coffee cup, stifling the urge to chuck it at him. “But you’re getting obsessed. Running full tilt on everything. You need to slow down. You were the one who said we were in this together.”
“We are,” he growled.
“Then keep your promise. And don’t break us.”
16
Naomi and Christina’s dingy lobby had been renovated since the last time I’d been here, the new flashy disco tiles in varying shades of sea green a dazzling pop upon entry. The faded red carpet in the hallways had been ripped out and replaced with hardwood which brightened things up, but the plaster was still cracked in the far corner and the ill-fitting stairwell door still stuck.
Amazing how easy it was to make something look surface shiny. Kind of like the smile I’d perfected on the drive over.
I knocked on their door, balancing a cardboard tray with coffee cups and a large brown paper bag. Christina opened the apartment door and I held up the bag. “I brought bagels with lox and cream cheese.”
“From Siegel’s?”
“Where else.”
She grinned, taking the bag from me and calling out for Naomi to join us. I braced myself but other than the turtleneck sweater Naomi wore that was out of place on this beautiful June day, there was no sign of what she’d suffered. Externally, at least.
“I got you chicken noodle soup because I wasn’t sure you were eating solids after the surgery.” I handed Naomi the take-out container and plastic spoon, half-expecting her to throw it back at me. Definitely expecting her to say something cutting.
“Thank you,” she said in a raspy voice, her throat still healing. She took it and curled up on the corner of the sofa.
I grabbed my own sandwich and sat down, making bright chatter with Christina about all the beach traffic on my drive over. The conversation progressed to a restaurant we’d both heard good things about and on to the mind-numbing topic of our recent weather. If we discussed house prices, we’d have run through the greatest hits of Vancouverite small talk.
Even though Christina was keeping up her end of the conversation, she kept shooting glances at Naomi like she was waiting for her to tell me something.
I pushed my mostly uneaten sandwich away, wondering if I should make my excuses and leave.
“I’m quitting the firm.” Naomi put the soup on the table, pulled a worn fleece blanket off the back of the sofa, and laid it across her legs.
I did a double take a Naomi’s words. “Why? You sounded so glad about making associate soon.”
“She was happy about what her parents would think,” Christina said. “She’s going to put herself first for a change and go traveling. Rock climb in Copper Canyon and slackline in the Moab Desert.”
“I’ll go back to law eventually, but not in the corporate world. The attack…” Naomi fiddled with the spoon. “It put a lot of things into perspective. Made me realize it was time to go for things I didn’t think I deserved.”
Christina smiled at Naomi and took her hand.
“Oh. Oh.” I said. “Good for you two. I’m sorry for being kind of a bitch to you all those years, Naomi, and I can’t really discuss it but I wasn’t lying when I said I was in the security business. I promise you that we’re going to get those responsible for the Sweet Tooth.”
“I’m sorry, too,” she said.
“Now that we’re all friends,” Christina said.
“Weellll,” Naomi and I said in unison and laughed.
Christina glared at us. “Shut up or I’ll hurt you both.”
“Vicious. Good luck with that,” I said to Naomi.
She shot Christina a heated look. “I like her feisty.”
I covered my ears. “Nope.”
Christina kicked her foot out at me. “I think we should all go out sometime soon. You can bring hot stuff that you’re dating.”
“I’d like that.” Something good was coming out of the Sweet Tooth tragedy after all. I needed, no, I wanted more friends in my life. It was an unexpected victory. Our lunch relaxed into a much more upbeat affair after that, though I couldn’t stay long. With firm promises to get together soon, we said our goodbyes and I headed for the hospital.
Along with visiting Naomi and Christina, seeing Dr. Gelman out of isolation and surrounded by flowers and get well cards went a long way to brightening my shitty morning.
“You can’t portal.” Dr. Gelman took a bite of the fruit compote on her tray and made a face.
“Out of everything I’ve told you, that’s the part you’re most interested in?”
“One thing at a time. Portalling is elimination magic.”
“Which Rasha have.”
“Not that type of elimination magic. You eliminate demon life, not the spaces between two points.” She pointed her knife at me. “Don’t be obstreperous.”
“I’m not difficult.”
She hid a smile like she hadn’t expected me to understand. That Word of the Day app was brilliant.
“Ari shadow transports,” I said.
She poked through the rest of her food. “That definitely shouldn’t be possible.”
“It is if I’m a witch and Ari got some kind of echo of some of my ability.”
“Figured that out all by yourself, did you?” She pursed he
r lips. “It’s our fault, really, for not seeing the obvious. There wouldn’t be a female Rasha. That’s redundant.”
“You agree?”
“Yes. I pronounce you witch.” She tapped my shoulder with an imaginary wand. “Welcome to the club.”
I still wasn’t convinced I wanted to be a member. “No badge? No cake?”
“Here. Mazel tov.” Gelman pushed the corner of her tray with the bland white cake square close to me.
“Pass, thanks. The sticking point in all this is that my magic is pink, not red.”
“That’s because you’re a mess.” She wiped her mouth and threw her napkin on the tray, covering the food.
“No. I used to be a mess. A hot one even, but I’m only lukewarm now.”
“That too, but I was referring to this twin business. Seems it affected you as much as it did Ari.” She picked at her fruit salad, eating around the maraschino cherries. “In some ways it would have been better if he hadn’t had magic at all.”
“Why?”
“As the two of you developed, gestated, Ari’s magic must have inhibited yours. His lay dormant, waiting for the induction ritual, and that leeched onto your magic.”
“But when the ritual happened, it was my magic that burst free.”
“Because your magic is innately stronger. It overpowered his.”
I rubbed my temples. “Even so, why didn’t I get all my magic at once?”
“The induction ritual freed it, but that ritual is designed to only call out the magic bestowed upon Rasha.” She shrugged. “That’s what you got.”
“The elimination magic pertaining to killing demons. Right.”
“Give your magic time to fully manifest and stabilize.”
Sienna pushed the door open, letting in the hum from the floor polishers outside. Her scrubs were printed with teddy bears and she’d changed the beads on the ends of her dreadlocks from blue to glittery green. She saw me and groaned. “My day is complete.”
“Happy to brighten your world. Anyhow, Rabbi Abrams is totally a candy sneak which can’t be good for his diabetes.” I babbled on, while Sienna placed her hands on Dr. Gelman’s chest and closed her eyes.
“I have a nurse on this ward, you know,” Gelman said. “She’s lovely and takes very good care of me.”
Sienna finished her magic treatment before responding. She opened her eyes, shaking out her hands. “She doesn’t have my vested interest. I lose you, I lose the best rugelach around.”
I clasped my hands under my chin. “You make rugelach?”
“She does.” Sienna headed for the door. “If you want any, next time spring for something better than crappy hospital store flowers.”
Dr. Gelman frowned. “Why didn’t you want her to know?”
I made sure Sienna had disappeared down the corridor before answering. “I get the impression she hates the Brotherhood.”
Gelman snorted. “To put it mildly.”
“For all intents and purposes, I’m still Brotherhood.” My Rasha ring glinted under the lights. Was there a way to get this stupid ring off me if I wasn’t Rasha?
“You’ll need to be trained in the full extent of your infusion and elimination magic.”
“Are you offering?” Having Dr. Gelman as my mentor was my dream.
“Depends. There’s a test to verify you are a witch and not a mutant Rasha.” Gelman nudged me with her blanket-covered foot. “This is where you come in.”
“Shouldn’t this have happened before you welcomed me to the club?”
“I was trying to make you happy. You so desperately looked like you wanted to belong.”
I rolled my eyes. “What kind of a test?”
“Enough questions. There is a test. You will take it.” Gelman plucked a flower out of the vase beside her bed. Not from the bouquet I’d brought. Mine were at least all alive. “Restore the azalea to its natural beauty.”
“Is most infusion magic healing?” How boring. I exhaled in a hard “oomph” like I’d been punched in the gut. My lungs started bubbling, going at it like a pot of water on full boil, getting larger and larger, pushing everything else inside me aside. I was going to pop.
“I’m infusing your lungs with air. Blowing them up like a balloon. Does that feel very healing?”
I flailed around until she released me, then rubbed my chest. “Can I learn that?”
“We’ll see.” She squeezed my hand and warmth unfurled inside me, taking the pain away.
The azalea sprig had only a single white-tipped pink bloom, brown curling one shriveled edge. I carefully took the wilted piece of compost…
…and two of its three remaining petals fluttered to the ground.
“Brilliant start.”
Everyone was a critic. I wasn’t warm and fuzzy at the best of times so pulling some latent Mother Nature instinct out of my ass didn’t exactly come naturally. I waved my finger over the flower like a wand.
“Say ‘abracadabra’ and I’ll stab you,’” Dr. Gelman said.
“Like that plastic cutlery’s gonna inflict hella damage.” I scrambled for a different plan. “You’re not such a bad little flower. You just need a little love.” The words had worked for Linus and the Christmas tree. Thinking good vibes, I sent the tiniest spark of magic into the sprig, hoping that might jump start it back to life.
Its last petal fell off.
“Let’s table this for now.” Figuring that electricity was at the heart of all things and perhaps the flower simply needed a good long soak, I infused the sprig with a constant low-grade stream of magic. “Did you know about Lilith or what the painting implied? Any of it?”
“No.”
I peeked in at the petal. Nada. “Could Lila be the one binding demons? Even if she’s part demon or whatever now, she was a human witch at some point so she could have both red and blue magic giving us the purple. She’s got to be massively powerful.”
“She’s not a demon.”
“She has to be. Mahlat was her daughter and Asmodeus her grandson. Weird though. That would have made him only a quarter demon, but his power was immense. He was like demon royalty, not some wannabe. And he didn’t dissolve into gold dust when I killed him like other halflings do. Like his own two spawn did.”
“Lilith isn’t an ordinary human.” Gelman adjusted her blankets. “By the time she’d birthed Mahlat, she was already suffused with dark magic. If Mahlat and her sisters presented as full demons in every way that counted, then I imagine the demon and dark magic formed a genetic mutation resulting in this superbreed of creature. And remember, David already had Rasha magic when he slept with Mahlat and had Asmodeus. The mother of Asmodeus’ offspring must have been a regular human.”
“Insanely powerful mutant demons. That’s terrifying. But what about Lila feeding off my sexual memory like a succubus?”
“No, Nava.” She cut off all further protest. “Lilith is not a demon. It doesn’t work that way. There is no spell to make a person part demon. You can’t be turned or bitten. The only way she could still be alive is through magic so dark I don’t know how it hasn’t killed her.” Her brows drew together. “No one else has ever survived its practice for very long.”
I opened my fist again but there was only the same flowerless stem. “Everyone is so certain they know how this all works. Except when they don’t.”
“I do. Lilith offered to find you the witch. She never would have done so had she been the one binding those demons, and you can be sure Malik would have known if it was her.”
“But she isn’t helping me.” I glared at the azalea, frustrated with my lack of a name, a lack of answers, a giant fucking lack.
Gelman poured herself some water. “She isn’t helping you because you refused whatever price she put on the job. Yes?”
I raised startled eyes to hers and she nodded. “Your Rasha may not have understood your coughing fit, but I did. Lilith is not the one you seek.”
“Then who is? Your leads aren’t panning out but som
eone has to know something about the bindings. I’m a witch. Introduce me. Get me into the community so I can actively investigate.”
“Give me a week to get through this final round of chemo. If I haven’t found anything then I’ll bring you in.”
“Like a witch debutante. I’ll start shopping for my gown.”
“You’re impossible.”
Sweet Tooth 911. Orwell had texted me.
I tossed the azalea sprig onto her bed. “I have to go.”
“Nava.”
I waved at Gelman over my shoulder.
“Nava.” More insistently.
I turned and she held up the sprig. A single green bud had formed. She tossed it to me. “You’re a witch. And probably a damn good one with enough training. But more importantly, you really are part of our group, and we’re going to find whoever is betraying us.”
Us. I tucked the precious bud behind my ear. “Yeah. We are.”
“Are we sure this was Sweet Tooth?” I said to Rohan and Drio. I’d texted them the second I’d left Gelman’s room and they’d gotten there first.
“They fucked themselves to death.” Drio moved away from the rooftop ledge so I could take his place. He handed me the camera. I knelt down to get the best angle, loose rocks digging into my bare knees, and peered through the telephoto lens. “Holy hell. They look like they were torn apart by wild animals.”
The crime scene bedroom on the sixth floor of the building across from the roof I stood on was destroyed. This wasn’t an overturned lamp or shit knocked off shelves during a bout of crazed sex with red scratch marks and a couple of hickeys. This was every photo and stick of furniture smashed, holes in the plaster with blood smeared at the edges, and–
“Fuck me!” I shoved the camera at Drio. “She’s got a chair leg stuffed up her vagina. She’s impaled on it.”
“To be fair, his dick broke off, so…” Rohan said.
I grabbed the camera back.
“It’s in the far corner,” Ro said.
I swung the lens over. “That’s not a lumpy sock?”
The cops and the coroner left the room, missing the appearance of the oshk. The one with the female face. She flowed over to stand directly over the victims for a moment, her expression downcast, and blinked out.
The Unlikeable Demon Hunter: Crave (Nava Katz Book 4) Page 21