Juma

by Madhuri Pavamani

  “You did notice the hidden door just now, right?” I asked and watched her, amused but also wondering when she would quit bullshitting me.

  She stopped in her tracks and pressed a finger to her gorgeous mouth as if suddenly enlightened by my words. “Ohhhhh, that’s what that whole sliding-door, now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t was about.”

  I rolled my eyes in the face of her sarcasm and she laughed.

  “Why don’t you stop pretending like these clothes interest you and instead tell me where you’re going?” I asked as I grabbed some black pants, a holster, and a tank and tossed them her way, followed by panties and a bra.

  She pulled on the panties, then shot me a look as she worked the pants over her hips. And even though I was annoyed and could feel my blood pressure rising, I couldn’t help but think to myself that one of the most beautiful sights in this lifetime was watching Juma Landry work anything over her hips. Her hips were straight out of my wildest fantasy and they mesmerized me even when I didn’t want them to.

  “Why don’t you stop using that magic dick of yours to prevent me from leaving?” she replied without missing a beat.

  “I asked first.”

  She glanced my way as she continued dressing, wrapped the holster around her waist twice, then kissed me soft and slow.

  “You’re so cute when you act like a five-year-old.” She smirked, then stepped around me and went in search of the only item missing on her body: her machete. I listened to her for a few minutes, checking the apartment, her steps coming faster as her stress increased, so tied was she to that knife.

  “Has no one ever told you it’s the poor warrior who becomes so attached to his weapon?” I asked as I came up behind her in the kitchen and handed over her precious Simone.

  As in Nina.

  As in I heard her loud and clear the first time she told me the name of her blade, even though I acted like it was no big thing.

  As in god, the more I learned about this woman, the more I fucking loved her.

  Juma took the blade from me, kissed it, and secured it at her hip.

  “First off, I am not a boy, so his weapon means nothing to me. Second, nor am I a warrior, I’m a Poocha. Do not confuse the two. And third, I don’t give a fuck what anyone says, I love Simone.”

  She ran her fingers through her short hair, patted her blade, met my gaze, and smiled.

  “Okay, then.”

  The sunlight coursing through the front window cut across her face and her freckles seemed to dance but instead of making me feel foolish and light and lucky to be in love with a most magical of magical beings, I felt mocked and ridiculed for my desire to protect her from everything bad this world could throw at her. Because Juma thought she knew evil and darkness but what she knew were its plains and valleys, the malignant matter that washed over your skin and splashed around your feet but didn’t work its way into your bloodstream, pump through your heart, fill your lungs. That was my area of expertise and I had no desire for her to master its nuances.

  “And please, Dutch,” she added as she wove her fingers through my belt loops and pulled me close, “stop thinking of all the ways you’re going to save me from the bad shit out in the world.”

  I took her face in my hands and studied her for a second, amazed by our interconnectedness but also simply unable to stop myself, as if she required repeated study.

  “I love you. It cannot be helped.” I admitted so much with that simple phrase.

  “Loving me means letting me go,” she whispered, and pressed her forehead to mine.

  “Not when every time I do, you die.” And I knew I sounded desperate but she was down to six lives, I was counting, and I knew she knew I was counting.

  She stilled and remained silent for a few moments, allowing my words to sit alone, their significance made more pronounced by our quiet. Then she pulled away and traced the hollows of my face, dragged her finger along my lips, touched the tip of my nose as if imprinting my features on the pads of her fingertips for safekeeping.

  “My sweet, sweet Keeper.” She spoke in a low hush and I knew I wouldn’t like what she had to say but I loved her and would listen to even her ugliest words for the remainder of my days. “I have to go and you must let me and you cannot follow me. I have to check in—my death has been noted and there’s going to be all kinds of hell to pay and questions to answer and I need to take care of it sooner rather than later because then I have to deal with my parents.”

  And here Juma looked so distressed and full of despair, and if I couldn’t protect her, if she would not allow it, I could at least help her handle her parents, alleviate some of her panic.

  “What do you have to do with your parents?” I asked, then added, “They are fine.”

  “How do you know?” she asked and a flash of wild raced across her eyes and for a second I wondered if she trusted me enough to know anything about the two people she loved more than life.

  “Juma, I would never.”

  “Oh god.” She cut me off and wrapped herself around me. “I know you wouldn’t, Dutch. I’m sorry. I just panicked. I wasn’t expecting you to have seen them and when those words left your tongue, I saw Veda and Keepers and shit! I am sorry.”

  “Stop it, Juma.” I pulled away from her because I needed her to see it was fine, that I was serious and wanted to help. “Don’t apologize for worrying about them, just tell me what you need me to do.”

  “Nothing. Good god,” she replied and her eyes widened as if I’d said something strange. “What could you possibly do for my parents?”

  And even though I sensed her question was rhetorical, I intended to dispense a litany of ways I could be of assistance.

  “I’m assuming you’re worried about The Gate finding them.”

  She shook her head.

  “Veda knows exactly where they live. She found me outside their home soon after I reclamated my ma.”

  As those words tumbled from Juma’s lips, their gravity must have hit her and if I hadn’t known better, I would have assumed she was on the verge of a complete breakdown. But I did know her and even though she looked devastated, I surmised she would somehow turn that emotion back on itself and render it into some deadly shit, willing and able to unleash it on the next member of The Gate with the misfortune of crossing her path.

  “You deal with Death, I’ll deal with Veda.”

  Juma stared at me hard and I knew she and I were both thinking about that goddamned dining room

  and the table

  and those leather straps

  and the sound

  of

  those

  knives.

  “No, Dutch.” She shook her head and I knew she wanted to protect me as much as I her, but we had no such freedoms in this game of lives. My life was a mere pawn put in play, twisting and turning on the winds of fate and fuckery. There was no way some Poocha was going to change any of that any time soon. No matter how much she loved me.

  “Yes, Juma.” I grabbed my holster off the kitchen counter, strapped it on, and sheathed my blade, which was really James’ blade, Everlee, which gave me no end of pleasure every time I considered that fact. “I am the best way to distract Veda and Khan from anything you need to do.”

  “I will not allow you to sacrifice yourself at their feet,” she growled, and I knew she was reliving whatever horrors Veda had relayed, imagining me lying on that table, carved up like a farm animal before a holiday feast. She moved toward me and maybe she wanted to stop me from gearing up, maybe she just wanted to touch me, get my attention focused on her. I didn’t know because I sidestepped her and continued prepping to depart.

  “Juma.” I tightened the holster at my waist and met her stare. “This is me letting you go, just as you asked. That is how much I love you—I will let you go and I will handle those giving you a reason to need to leave in the first place. But just as I give you your freedom and set you free to do as you will, no matter what I say or desire, you must afford me the same.�
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  She stared at me for a second, open-mouthed and at a loss for words, and I knew she was frantically searching the archives of her brilliant mind for a witty comeback to my words. I could almost see her wheels spinning, her frustration with me and our situation and her inability to counter my words so visible on her face, the furrowed brow, the cut of her mouth, the silence enveloping us.

  “Babe.” I stepped close and touched her cheek. “I won this round. Now and then it happens. Accept it and let’s get out of here.”

  I waited

  one

  two

  three

  beats before I smirked and kissed her and she maybe-laughed as she watched me make my way down the stairs and head for the front door, but there was no joy in the sound.

  “Where’d you get that blade?” she asked, and I stopped on the stairs and turned back to her.

  “Why?” I replied as I fingered Everlee’s steel and thought back to exactly how I got her.

  “Because I’ve never seen it on you and quite honestly, it doesn’t look like you at all.”

  I glanced down at the weapon at my side, then smiled at Juma.

  “She belonged to James Sussex and her name is Everlee. And now she belongs to me,” I replied and she cocked her head to the side, considering my words and—knowing Juma—thinking back to my cryptic reference to James earlier in the evening.

  “And what happened to James Sussex that makes you speak of him in the past tense?” she asked with a mischievous gleam in her eye and I fell for her intellect all over again.

  “I happened to James Sussex, Juma.”

  A slow smile spread across my face as I acknowledged ending that goddamned asshole’s life and after a few seconds of digesting the meaning of my words, she smiled too, and we left that condo looking smug as shit because now and then, being some dark twisted motherfuckers wasn’t such a bad thing.

  33: JUMA

  Dutch and I parted ways at the corner of Ponce De Leon and Highland Avenue. A grey Mercedes convertible with a big-busted blonde at the wheel pulled up, honked, and winked at him. She was stunning in that am-I-an-escort-or-am-I-a-college-kid kind of way, despite looking well past any average admissions age.

  “Heeeeeyyyy Juuuuuuuuma,” she called out to me and blew a kiss, her full lips puckered and her eyes full of flirt, “don’t you worry your pretty head, I’ll get him where he needs to be, safe and sound.”

  Then she shot him a look that was one thousand percent professional and contained zero bullshit that screamed let’s go without her uttering a word.

  I liked her.

  “Old fuckbuddy?” I raised a brow and kissed him quick.

  “Something like that.” He glanced her way and shrugged and didn’t really care about her or anything involving them and it was just another reason to love him. Yeah, Dutch fucked damn near everyone whose path he crossed, but he only touched me. It was both hopelessly romantic and goddamned scary. “Believe it or not, her name is Amber Discreet.”

  “Shut up.” I punched his arm and laughed. He was so full of shit. “You are lying.”

  “I kid you not.” He held up his arms and looked positively innocent and trustworthy. “Looks like a stripper, has a name like one, too.”

  “Stop it.”

  “It’s true, Juma,” Amber Discreet called out from the car. “Now let’s wrap up this goodbye so I can get this gorgeous thing where he needs to be cuz as cute as y’all are together, and holy smokes y’all are something else, I have things to do and they definitely don’t include listening to some ridiculous conversation about my name and its working-girl status.”

  Dutch pulled me close and whispered “be safe” in my ear as he pressed something small and square into my palm and closed my fingers around it. I opened my hand and studied what sort of looked like a small packet of cocaine but upon closer inspection contained minuscule multifaceted crystals.

  “Oh my god.” I looked up and feigned shock. “You really are a cocaine kingpin,” repeating one of the many nefarious professions I had given Dutch that first night together in my apartment.

  He smiled for a second and maybe he, too, got a little lost in the version of us all those many moons ago when everything seemed tentative and full of potential and even though we knew loving each other was unnatural and dangerous and full of all kinds of impossibility, we couldn’t help ourselves. Then his eyes flashed serious and dark and we stepped back into the here and now.

  “Only when shit is really fucked up.” He closed his fist around my palm. “And I mean really fucked up. Toss some of this on your assailant. Just a little will do the trick.”

  “What is it?”

  “Frist made it a long time ago when she was selling arms and black magic voodoo shit to the Israelis, but I think she knew it was pure evil and held on to it for herself, afraid of the consequences should it get into the wrong person’s hand. Then she met me and decided I needed my own brand of protection. She said so I could make the things that go bump in the night disappear. This version will be safe for you.”

  I raised a skeptical brow as I pondered those words.

  “I don’t even know what that means and I’m not sure I want to.”

  “It means the version I use is special to me,” he explained with an amused expression on his face, “and this one is all yours.”

  “You had Frist make some special sauce just for me?” I asked, all dreamy and star-eyed and little-schoolgirl-crush-like.

  Dutch laughed and kissed me, then hopped into the convertible next to Amber Discreet.

  “Just for you, babe.”

  I studied him for two beats, memorized his brown sexy one more time, imagined his voice in my ear and his hands on my body as he fucked me slow and sweet and forever, then I smiled and leaned into the car, whispered “be magic” in his ear, and took off down Highland Avenue toward the Five Points hub before he could say another word because I knew anything else out of his mouth, any sweetness or love or even snark, would make me hesitate and reconsider parting ways and what I had to do now, I had to do on my own.

  We couldn’t always be together.

  We were never meant to be together.

  I was a Poocha and he was a Keeper—together was not supposed to be an option. His kind hunted mine. My kind despised his.

  Our union was unnatural and forbidden and stupid to consider, much less act upon. We were always meant to be solitary creatures, Poochas and Keepers, hunting and reclamating on our own, maintaining a healthy distance from others in order to do what we had to do on a daily basis, do it better than anyone else, and stay alive.

  Dutch and I knew better than to think that just because we loved one another we were allowed to ignore the very simple fact of who and what we were. Life, or lives in my case, didn’t work that way. And we could do our damnedest to turn the norm on its head, but here and there, it was impossible. We each had our own battles to fight; thinking we could fight them together was childish and naive.

  I slipped into the hub while the Atlanta sunshine burned bright and strong and hot as fuck, walked twenty feet along the train tracks, kicking rocks and debris along the way, startling tiny creatures that went scampering for cover, passed the ornate doors salvaged from some old plantation, felt the familiar chill of Death’s dominion, and was back on her turf.

  I looked up and down the hall for any signs of her, fully aware she would know I’d used up my third life, certain she would demand the details, determined to keep them from her as long as possible. Which would cause me all sorts of bodily pain and grief, but would give Dutch some extra time to get wherever he needed to be and as far away from her as possible.

  She promised me all those nights ago, when I begged her to let me cross back to life quickly, cross back to him quickly, that if she ever felt Dutch was a threat to my lives, she would kill him first and ask questions later. I needed to make sure she did not leave our meeting in a vengeful mood.

  “Juma.” Kobe Sax came up behind me a
nd quickly matched my stride with his long-legged one, his eyes full of concern and relief. “You’re back. Goddammit, woman.”

  He stopped and pulled me into a warm embrace and even though his arms had wrapped around me many times, late at night early in the morning in a bathroom of a restaurant in the middle of the day, this hug felt less lover-like and more brotherly.

  “Who the fuck is Dutch?” he whispered into my hair as he held me close.

  I leaned away from him and studied his face, so beautiful—dark eyes and doe-like features, full lips and square jaw—drawn so serious, as if the world weighed upon his shoulders. And with all of the responsibility I put on him, sometimes it kind of really did. But this night and that name tumbling from his lips meant nothing but trouble for me and he knew it, hence his tight-lipped, stormy-eyed expression.

  “Why?” I answered his question with one of my own.

  “Juma,” Kobe kind of growled in that way to suggest we’d known each other far too long and far too intimately to play games with each other when the stakes suddenly seemed so high. “Don’t fuck around with me. I don’t know what’s going on between you and her”—and here he raised his eyes to the sky the way he always did when he spoke of Death—“but something is up. I’ve noticed it, the team has noticed it, shit, everyone walking the halls of this place has noticed it. Most suppose it’s as simple as you no longer want to be her lover, but I’m not stupid, I know it’s some deep shit, and now I also know it involves someone named Dutch.

  “I’ve always had your back,” he continued, leaning close and kissing my forehead, “but I can’t help if I don’t know what’s going on.”

  “No one can help me, Kobe,” I replied with a resigned smile, and for a moment I considered keeping Dutch and our fucked-up situation to myself so in my world, my professional world, he remained mine and only mine. I didn’t have to share him with anyone, no one but Death and Marina knew he was my assigned Keeper, no one but Death and Marina knew he was the love of my dwindling lives.