A Shade of Myself (Magic After Midlife #4) Paperback

Chapter 1

Phone calls at 3AM meant only one thing: someone was dead.

The caller was Tatiana, so clearly the dead person wasn’t her, even though my boss was in her eighties. My adrenaline rush blunted my grogginess while I quickly sorted through which of my friends or loved ones had bit the dust. It made for an interesting cocktail of super wired and slow on the uptake, and by the time I’d understood that Tatiana was phoning about a quick job, I was halfway to my car, keys in hand, hospital bound.

Yawning and knocking on the wood and glass front door of the client’s mansion on swanky Point Grey Road, I wished that I’d worn more than a light sweater over my pajamas. When no one answered, I double-checked the address, though with the electronica on full blast inside that sent vibrations up through my feet out here on the stoop, that was hardly surprising. I tentatively pushed the door open, following the music down a hallway past an Ansel Adams photograph on the wall. Unlike the identical one that I’d hung in my dorm room, this wasn’t a mass reproduction.

“Hello?” I called out. “Tatiana sent me.”

I’d been working for the elderly artist as her archivist and magic fixer minion for almost two months now, and it had its ups and downs. Tonight’s job promised to be a quick in and done, though the last time I’d assumed the assignment would be simple, I’d ended up with a human heart on my passenger seat, vaulting me into one of the top spots as the murder suspect.

The slap of my shoes on the intricate mosaic tile made me suspicious that—yup, I was wearing slippers. They were green and fuzzy with a fake fur trim that clashed with my orange pajamas, although given how much the place stank of weed, our client, Davide Forino, probably wouldn’t notice my lapse in professional attire. Tatiana had warned me he was a snowboarding celeb and rumored to be constantly stoned.

I put my hand over my mouth and nose to minimize the chances of getting a contact high. I had no problem with pot, especially not now that marijuana was legal, but I had to drive home. Unfortunately, that left only one hand free to plug my ears against the pounding bass and its sassy conga line in my back molars. With my right hand over my mouth and my left in my ear, I felt like I was playing a children’s game.

I stopped on the threshold to the airy living room and bellowed out, “Could you please turn that down?”

A pause, and then the music was lowered to barely tolerable levels, but my ears still rung.

“What?” a man drawled in a dazed voice.

I snorted.

He was sitting, back toward me, in a chair shaped like a scorpion spine that probably cost as much as a new car and resembled a Delia Deetz creation from Beetlejuice. Presumably the sitter was staring out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the gently rippling waves with crests of foamy white, which met the inky darkness of an endless night sky.

Oh, to have a view like that. Give me this guy’s decorating budget and I’d have installed long bookcases and comfortable seating in decadent fabrics, not this ridiculously shaped bullshit that no one could lounge on. Other than a pizza box tossed on the ground, the all-white room was spotless, which meant he had a cleaning service, because he sure as hell wasn’t applying that elbow grease.

I hated him a little more.

“I’m Miriam.” I stepped over the pizza box and entered the room. “You texted Tatiana Cassin about sensitive material that you needed magically disposed?”

“I did?” Davide spun the chair around, looking like Shaggy after a bender. Which, come to think of it, was what Shaggy always looked like. Except Davide was also scratched up. He took a drag off a joint, ashes dropping onto a ratty plaid bathrobe that fell almost to his knees. At least it was tied tightly, sparing me the sight of dark, thick chest hair covering his torso like a pelt. Or worse.

I took a very long, very slow breath. “Yes. You did.”

Davide darted a wary look behind his sofa at—I tried to follow his gaze—his laptop sitting on a bookshelf crowded with snowboarding trophies? Was there a file he wanted scrubbed? My hacker skills only went as far as emptying the trash.

“If it’s something electronic—” I said.

“It’s not.” He exhaled hard then stood up with a grim expression. With the joint clamped in the corner of his mouth, he scratched his belly, picking the bathrobe out of his ass with his other hand. Who said men couldn’t multitask? “Over here, dude.”

I gave a wide berth to the mangy French bulldog on the large white carpet, snoring and drooling on a chipped statue of a reclining leopard. “Is the dog friendly?”

Davide shrugged and blew out a stream of skunk-scented air. “No clue. Never seen him before tonight.”

I dug my nails into my palms. He was getting on my last mom nerve.

He opened the sliding doors, letting in a stiff breeze from the water. It ruffled my hair, making me shiver, though I appreciated the fresh air coming in as the stench from his joint vented outside.

I crossed my arms over my very cold nipples, which were now pokey enough to press elevator call buttons, stumbling to a stop behind the sofa when I saw the material in question. I swallowed and backed up, my foot falling out of one slipper as I retreated. The shoe lay on its side, the last thing between me and something red and glistening that no longer made sense.

The fresh air had dissipated the smell of weed enough that the acrid copper tang of blood filled my nostrils. Gagging, I pressed the back of my hand against my nose.

Behind me, the bulldog snorted in its sleep, and I flinched at the startling noise. Letting out a controlled breath, I carefully toed my slipper back onto my foot, wanting as much of a barrier between me and what lay before me as possible.

Limbs, part human, part shifter, were scattered between the back of the sofa and the window like a meaty IKEA bookcase awaiting assembly. Conscious of Davide’s scrutiny, I bit down hard on my lip, the pain grounding me enough to continue my examination. How could he just stand there, expecting me to deal with this?

Judging by the human arm, the victim was a Caucasian male. There wasn’t much in the way of unique identifiers beyond a small, silly French mustache tattoo on one side of his index finger.

Did the deceased like to cheer people up by springing it on them? Affect a pretentious pose and ridiculous accent? It was goofy and funny and so human, unlike the state of this corpse.

Clenching my fists, I gathered the shreds of my professionalism together. Here was a murdered Ohrist and my prime suspect had phoned it in as a material disposal case. Was Davide some psycho with no remorse looking to avoid a murder charge or was he in shock?

Either way, I had to get to the truth of the matter. I put on my scariest mom voice. “Care to tell me how this body got here?”

“Cool.” The snowboarder nodded, sounding relieved. “You see him too.”

Ohmigod. My mind went blank, but instinct kicked in and my magically animated shadow, Delilah, jumped up protectively.

Davide made no move in my direction, however. He stared at the corpse, his brows furrowed.

Everything took on a surreal cast and I dug my heels into the ground to center myself. This was so far out of my realm of experience. Was I supposed to secure the crime scene? Arrest him? Davide obviously wasn’t of sound mind. Was I in danger?

Pro: if he was high enough to forget going all Texas Chainsaw Massacre on someone, I could probably move faster than he could. Con: I was alone in a house with an Ohrist possessing unknown magic who was unsure if he was hallucinating dead bodies.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket, backing up into a nice, dark corner where I could easily access the Kefitzat Haderech. “I should call the Lonestars.”

“Should you though?” Stubbing the joint out on a wall and stuffing the remainder of it in his bathrobe pocket, he crouched down by the human torso covered in an explosion of dark feathers and twisted the bird’s head toward me. “This dude was a turkey, dude.”

Who handled a corpse like that, like it was a joke? I bit down a shiver. All that weird shit aside, Davide had a point. The shifter’s red bobbly beard was a sad, wizened thing and the long tailfeathers protruding from his ass were ragged. If there were majestic turkey shifters out there, the deceased had not been one of them.

“Let’s restrain ourselves to one ‘dude’ per sentence.” I massaged my temples. If I phoned the magic cops, would Davide try to stop me? My phone didn’t work in the Kefitzat Haderech, so I couldn’t call from there, and I wasn’t sure if leaving the scene of the crime would come back to haunt me.

Or if Davide would let me out of here in one piece.

Focus, Miriam. Keeping one eye on the client, who’d sat down resting against the sliding door, I tried to glean what had transpired from the body parts.

If the victim’s right human arm under the ottoman was indicative of how scrawny he’d been, he couldn’t have physically taken on Davide, a renowned athlete. Then there was the discarded baseball cap with a pizza restaurant logo on it. If anything said “lured in and murdered,” that was it.

I poked the shifter’s beak and the spurs on both turkey legs—note to self to change the Thanksgiving menu—confirming they were sharp enough to cause the scratches on Davide’s hands, face, and one calf. “What happened?”

“Self-defense.”

I quirked an eyebrow and tried not to sound too snarky. “Really.”

Davide slung his thumbs into his robe pockets. “I know my crimes.”

“A minute ago you weren’t even sure this man was real, now you’re an expert in law and order?” It came out sounding mean, but I meant it. Something about this didn’t track. Davide wasn’t acting the way he had less than a minute ago. Something was off.

He smirked. “That was then, this is now.”

What was that supposed to mean? The shock had cleared away his high enough for him to think clearly?

“He showed up with pizza and went ballistic.” Davide pointed to a particularly ugly gash on his cheek. “That dude was not a nice person.”

“You have an Ohrist turkey leg on your floor in a pool of congealed blood. You’re not winning any Good Samaritan awards yourself.”

Davide laughed. “You’re funny. Wanna get a breakfast wrap after this?”

“God, no.” I wanted to wrap this up and get away from the killer showing absolutely no signs of remorse. I liked him better when he’d been high as a kite. Self-defense or not, he’d taken a man’s life. Getting a confession was important, right? “So, he attacked and then?”

I heard the coherent sentences coming out of my mouth as if from a distance because the scream in my head was pretty loud. How could he sit there so coldly?

“You what?” I prompted. “Killed and dismembered him?”

Please let it have been in that order. Wait. Was that leading the suspect? Entrapment? Did I even have rules I had to abide by other than telling the Lonestars?

“He had some kind of seizure and dropped dead,” Davide insisted. “That wasn’t on me.”

I put my hands on my hips. “Seriously? Because a seizure doesn’t equal slices of human, dude. What, did you chop him into pieces instead of calling 911?”

Davide grinned sheepishly, momentarily morphing his right forearm into a single long blade made of bone. “He’s a turkey. I’m a knife. I mean, circumstances just don’t align like that every day.”

Why had I answered my phone? Look at that, no need to pause for breath with a scream heard only in your head. It didn’t require a good set of lungs. A good set of frontal lobes, perhaps? Okay, I was losing it.

I clasped my hands in front of my chest, praying for patience. “Your text to Tatiana stated that you had sensitive material to dispose of. This isn’t sensitive material, it’s a shifter.” I applauded myself for staying on topic. And for muscling down the sour bile that surged up every time I looked at the deceased.

“Turkey shifters are crazy sensitive.” Davide tapped his head. “Not all there either. Good thing that magic doesn’t show up often, right?”

Yeah, a true blessing. I examined the body from different angles, because the pieces weren’t adding up to a coherent picture, until I figured out the issue. “Why aren’t you covered in blood? Does your magic cauterize it?”

“No…” Davide got a distant look, his brows drawing together. He peeked under his bathrobe, barely making it into another deformed chair before his legs gave out. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”

The robe gaped open enough to reveal blood matted into his chest hair. I shuddered, sorry to have called it. Bears had less fur than this guy.

He held his hands up in front of his face like they didn’t belong to him. “I think I washed these.”

How stoned did a person have to be to forget this? Or had he gotten this wasted precisely for that reason? And more importantly, why had he gone from making jokes about the murder to being freaked out and spaced out once more?

For some reason, the more anxious Davide became, the steadier I felt, giving me a better shot at figuring all this out. Mom composure: staying calm in playgrounds, supermarkets, and murder scenes everywhere.

“You claim he went ballistic,” I said. “Out of nowhere?”

At Davide’s nod, I left Delilah guarding him while I crouched by the shifter’s torso. I didn’t glean anything from it, but when I turned over his human arm, my heart skipped a beat at the telltale red streaks on the skin that looked a lot like blood poisoning, but weren’t.

The turkey shifter had been dybbuk-possessed. And now he was dead.

That meant…

I looked at Davide, expelling a hard breath. Shit. No wonder his personality seemed to flip. When the turkey shifter, a possessed host, died, the dybbuk jumped into the closest magic body with lowered inhibitions.

Davide.

Enthralled hosts struggled with the dybbuk for control of their body for the first week. Based on Davide’s behavior, I’d bet he was attacked first, then once he became enthralled, he’d sliced and diced.

At some point tonight, the real Davide had gained the upper hand, which was when he texted Tatiana for help. He’d been his regular self when I’d first arrived, cycled to the dybbuk being in charge when he so callously discussed the crime, and was now back to himself.

Sighing, I scrubbed a hand over my face. Did that change things as far as calling in the magic police? I walked over to the snowboarder, probing his shadow until my skin itched at the sense of an abomination that needed to be destroyed. Well, I guess it was better that he was enthralled than straight up psychotic. “One moment. I have to confer with my boss.”

Davide shot me a panicked look.

“Everything’s going to be okay. Don’t worry.”

He nodded, toking up once more with trembling hands.

I dialed Tatiana, putting her on speaker when she answered. “Hey. I’m here with Davide.”

“Yo,” he said.

“Yo?” Tatiana sniffed primly. “Is there a problem with the disposal?”

“Potentially,” I said. “Given that the object to be disposed of is a dismembered turkey shifter.”

“What?” Tatiana snapped. “Davide!”

I smirked. She wouldn’t have let me walk into this blind had she known the true situation.

“Yeah?” His eyes dropped to his feet like a little kid who knew he was in a ton of trouble.

I placed the phone on the cushion next to him and, recalling Delilah, casually moved behind our client.

“You didn’t mention this was piece work in your text,” my boss chided. “Are you trying to stiff me out of my proper fee?”

My smirk disappeared, the dark shadow that had swirled down my left arm in a half-formed scythe, now paused. “That’s your concern?” I said. “We’ve got a shit show here. The corpse was dybbuk-possessed. Was. Capisce?”

“Yes, Miriam. I get it. And?” Tatiana said with her regular laissez-faire.

“Do we call the Lonestars in? Because I refuse to have more threats of Deadman’s Island held over me. Once was more than en—” My sentence ended in a high-pitched shriek as I was forced backward against the wall with Davide’s arm blade pressed against my throat.

Minus the rest of him.

It was detachable? Fuck me. My magic fell apart as I panicked, trying to get free.

“Here’s how this is going to go down, dude.” Davide didn’t even quit smoking up while intimidating me, his right sleeve dangling limply without its forearm. That was impressive—no wait.

I attempted to worm a hand between his blade and my very nice, undamaged throat and got my skull conked against the wall for my troubles.

“Your little worker bee’s going to do the job she came over for and keep her mouth shut.” Davide blew pot smoke in my direction and winked.

“Not without my agreed-upon fee, you drawling hippie.” Tatiana tsked him from her side of the phone call. “Enunciate like a normal person.”

Now was not the time for the woman who sounded like a Wiseguy to school the enthralled turkey carver on his diction.

He pressed the magic blade harder against me and I swallowed.

“Please. Let me go.”

“Fine.” Davide snapped his fingers, recalling the bone blade. It slipped up his sleeve to seamlessly fit to his upper arm, becoming a human appendage once more. “But the clock’s ticking. Got it?”

My pulse drummed against the thin skin under my jaw, beating faster with my rush of anger. You messed with the wrong worker bee.

Dude.

“No,” Tatiana said, unfortunately still on the call. “She doesn’t ‘got it.’ Not until we negotiate my fee.”

Delilah puffed up and punched the stoner in the head, momentarily disorienting him.

I sprinted closer, Delilah meeting me to transform into a swirl of dark magic that settled into my scythe, and I smashed it into the floor, severing Davide’s shade from his body.

“Is anyone listening to me?” Tatiana said.

Davide’s eyes rolled back to show the whites and he hit the ground.

That was good. The furious crimson and sickly gray mass of a dybbuk that spat out of him and attacked me, not so great.

Gripping the weapon securely in my left hand, I cried, “Mut!”

“Miriam.” My boss sounded annoyed. “You better not be complying with that man before I have come to a satisfactory working arrangement with him.”

The second that the Hebrew letters for “death” appeared on the blade, I cleaved the little ghost bastard into oblivion, dropped to my knees next to Davide, and began CPR. This side-effect of saving enthralleds from dybbuk inhabitation had become commonplace enough that I’d recently redone a first aid course.

“I’m going to count to three,” Tatiana warned, “and then I expect an answer.”

“A little busy,” I said, doing chest compressions.

She humphed. “Call me back.”

Upon regaining consciousness, Davide took one look at the mutilated turkey shifter and bolted out of the room, white as a ghost.

Since I didn’t want to stay with the corpse by myself, I walked out onto the large balcony, resting against the railing and letting the ocean and salt-tinged breeze calm me before I called Tatiana back. What a senseless tragedy. I hoped Davide wouldn’t be held culpable for his actions by either the Lonestars or the dead man’s family once he was identified and his loved ones told the terrible news.

3AM phone calls really were harbingers of death.

Clouds rolled in, hiding all trace of the full moon. That’s right, tonight was the last night. I stared at the water, my breath easing into rhythm with the caress of the waves, wondering where Laurent was. We’d barely spoken since we’d hooked up almost a month ago. In our last conversation, he’d mentioned having bought condoms and I’d been in a worked-up state of anticipation ever since.

Also, frustration because first he’d been away on a job, and then his mother had suffered a heart attack and he’d flown back to Paris. I’d left messages asking how she was but hadn’t gotten a response. Laurent had put an ocean between himself and his family, plus from what little I’d gleaned, there were issues with his father, so for him to drop everything and go, he must have really been worried about her.

He wasn’t due back for another week, and I didn’t relish telling him what had happened tonight, though he’d be happy to hear that Davide had been saved.

I think.

Had his silence really been because of his mom or was he feeling excluded since he couldn’t help the enthralled? I shook my head. No, that was silly. He’d pushed so hard for me to figure out how to save them. He wouldn’t get sulky about it. But if it wasn’t that, had he had second thoughts about another hookup? Were that the case, we’d deal with it like mature adults and discuss it. My desire to keep our friendship was stronger than the one to get naked with him.

As strong.

It was strong.

I glanced back into the living room. Davide hadn’t returned but it wasn’t right to put off getting Tatiana’s permission to bring in the magic cops, even if that did land our client in trouble. However, before I could head inside, a cough floated up to me from the dark beach below. I peered over the railing.

A figure in all black stood on the sand, mostly hidden by the balcony. “You’re not a blank after all,” a man said. “I didn’t believe that someone could hide their magic for that long, but look at you go.”

I tried and failed to see his face. Everything about him was indistinct, including his generic North American voice, so there was nothing to latch on to to help identify him. As I was unable to manifest my scythe, he wasn’t a dybbuk or a demon, and it was too dark to summon Delilah and see if he was a vampire.

That still left plenty of unpleasant possibilities.

“Don’t be shy,” I said. “Introduce yourself properly.”

“Maybe next time.”

The promise of future encounters. Oh goody. I gripped the railing, rising onto tiptoe to lean farther over and get a better glimpse of the intruder. “What do you want?”

“Call me curious.” He moved farther into the shadows. “Are you a baby shark or are you planning to finish what your parents started?”

My mind reeled. A children’s song, threats about my past—hold on, my past?

“Did you know my parents?”

Did you kill them?

It was too far to jump down to the sand, and I didn’t want to lose him in the time it would take to get through the house and out to the beach.

“I never met them, but I like to follow whispers.” He chuckled. “The faintest ones often prove most interesting.”

“What are you talking about?”

There was only the white noise of the waves and the pounding of my heart in answer. He was gone.

I dropped my head into my hands. What were Mom and Dad up to and why did this stranger care about my magic? I hadn’t even used my powers in a couple of weeks, spending most of my time recently working on archiving documents for Tatiana’s memoirs. Had this other weirdo been stalking me and I didn’t notice?

That was a frightening thought. Maybe Eli could give me tips on detecting a tail.

Needing something concrete to do, I found a sheet in a linen closet and draped it over the grisly remains of the turkey shifter.

Davide returned, looking pale and shaky. His hair was wet, and he’d changed into clean jeans and a bright hoodie. He carried a bowl of water in one hand and a package of deli meat in the other.

“Did you call the Lonestars? Am I going to be taken to Deadman’s Island?” he said in a dull voice. He sat down on the carpet next to the collarless bulldog, who snuffled awake. Davide placed the bowl beside the animal and dropped a couple slices of bologna on the carpet.

The dog tore into the food with wet smacking noises that made me inadvertently glance at the corpse and shudder.

“Not yet, but I doubt you’ll be arrested,” I said, “especially if an investigation proves this man died from something other than your attack, like you claim. You were enthralled. I’ll testify to that, and it should mitigate you being held accountable for your actions.” I narrowed my eyes. “You were enthralled when you…got up close and personal, right?”

He nodded, doling out more food and looking miserable enough that I believed him.

“Do you have your phone on you?” I said.

“Yeah, why?”

“Can I see the text you sent Tatiana?” I was grasping at straws but maybe Davide had included something that could help me find the stranger since I didn’t have a name or physical description.

He unlocked the phone and tossed it over to me. “Dude, I was so far gone I don’t even remember sending her anything.”

I scrolled through his texts with a sinking heart, checking once, then twice for the message. Nothing. No text requesting Tatiana’s assistance, none providing Davide’s address, not even her number saved under another name.

I handed him back the phone and exhaled. “That’s because you didn’t.”

Davide showed the empty deli meat bag to the dog, then frowned at me. “I don’t understand,” he said as the dog licked the dirty bag. “Who would want to hurt me like this?”

“No one.” I clenched the phone in my hand, looking outside. Whether or not the stranger had been following me, he hadn’t lucked into a display of my magic tonight. “This attack was never aimed at you. It was a test. For me.”