“We don’t know how the Sefer came to earth,” he said, “but once it did, it cracked into five scrolls, and luckily, Chariot only got hold of one. It was enough to allow them to release magic into our world, though they didn’t count on others ending up with it.” He wiped some dust off of one of the pieces. “Unless they have all five, the formula for immortality is denied to them.”
Lucky Rafael that he could stand there unaffected when every molecule in my body cried out.
I swallowed to get some moisture into my mouth. “So, Asherah showed up and created the first Jezebel to engage in some back-and-forth game of who’s got the pieces?”
“She created your kind to destroy the book.”
“But the joke was on her, wasn’t it?” I said. “The magic of each individual piece defeated the Jezebels’ abilities and so we hide them away in hopes Chariot doesn’t find them.”
Lots of perfectly nice people followed Kabbalah with no evil intentions, but of course, as with any ideology, there were those wanting to twist it to their own ends.
“You were created specifically to destroy them.” He removed his glasses, blew on the lenses, and then wiped them clean with the hem of his vest. “Why ever would you be unable to complete that task?”
“I couldn’t destroy the feather.” My vision was getting blurry. I stood up abruptly, breathing heavily.
“Obviously,” he scoffed. “That was part of an angel.”
“But Nefesh magic is diluted angel magic, and I can destroy Nefesh magic.”
“Exactly. Very heavily diluted. Even the tiniest part of an actual angel is beyond your capabilities. Should an angel ever deign to show itself on Earth?” Rafael shuddered. “Regardless, the scrolls we have here are merely pieces and we need the Sefer in its entirety before a Jezebel can destroy it.”
I dragged my feet towards the scrolls, as if pulled by an invisible string. “Close the pillars,” I grated out, harshly. “I passed your damned tests. I proved myself a Jezebel. To exploit my weakness like this is just cruel.”
“What weakness?”
I stilled, my fingertips a scant half inch from one of the scrolls, the soft glow turning my skin gold. “The cravings, damn you.”
“What on earth are you talking about?”
“The cravings!” My anguished cry bounced off the walls. “The constant longing to take magic that Jezebels have. How do you not know this?” My hand closed around the papyrus, its rough edges scraping against my skin. One taste.
I brought forth a silky red ribbon of magic and sent it into the scroll. A zen-like high infused my soul as I fell through that cosmic dust, bathing in it. It sang to me in a chorus of celestial voices, cradling me tenderly as I drank.
The library fell away and I was back in the grove where Rafael had tested my magic, pink almond blossoms falling gently on my skin. I reached out to touch one, laughing in wonder.
But it didn’t last. The magic on the scroll hollowed me out and soon I was in the familiar, black, all-consuming void outside the grove. I wanted to leave, struggled to hold onto any sense of myself but the magic ate me up from the inside. Darkness pressed in, threatening to devour me.
There was no way out. I was overwhelmed and beaten and the only thing I could do was surrender.
Into that nothingness came a trickle tasting of the freshest river stream. The trickle became a flood, rich and clear and life-affirming.
I came to on the library floor, straddling Rafael, his magic a smudgy pull from a bleeding gash on his forearm. I’d wound it like taffy around the finger that I sucked into my mouth. Bile rose in my throat and I tried to shut the connection down but Rafael clamped on to my wrist, thrusting his arm closer.
His magic ran down the back of my throat, washing away the taste of sandstorm and easing my cravings. There were no red forked branches, no clusters, simply a slowing of his magic back down and then a quiet pop of release as I instinctively unhooked from the scroll’s magic, unharmed and sated.
I should have been consumed with horror but my body hummed, the siren song quiet, and the sandstorm already a hazy memory. My ankle didn’t even hurt any longer.
Under me, Rafael’s pupils were dilated, his cheeks flushed, and a very prominent erection pressed against my thigh.
“Um.” I scrambled off him.
“Quite,” he said, sitting up and hugging his knees to his chest.
A long silence ticked out between us. I thought I knew the meaning of the word “awkward.” Nope. All those other times had merely been practice for this World Series of embarrassment.
“Had I known we were going in this direction, I’d have bought you dinner.” I bit my lip. Rafael didn’t respond and just continued to look pained. I racked my brain for something to say to diffuse the situation, something, anything. “Is it gone?”
Rafael glanced down at his lap and blushed further. He cleared his throat. “This wasn’t about you.”
I frowned. Really? Because right now I was finding that a little hard to believe, what with his flagpole dick straining against his trousers. “Well… good?”
“I mean, you’re an attractive enough person, but that connection…” His fingers flexed, his eyes gleaming fervently.
My heart sank. In quieting my siren song, Rafael had gained one of his own. He’d just been trying to help me and now his chest was panting and he looked so desperate to get another taste.
“You’re not thinking clearly. Your magic. I took it.” My heart hammered in my chest. What I’d done was monstrous by itself. The fact that I’d made him enjoy being stripped of his magic was even worse. He was going to hate me when this wore off.
Rafael frowned, then brightened as though some brilliant idea had just occurred to him. I wasn’t sure what exactly could be so wonderful about losing your magic, but he still wore a dazed expression so his thinking probably wasn’t totally rational right now. “You’re applying Nefesh logic to my magic. My powers were bestowed upon me by Asherah, as yours were. You can’t destroy my magic. You simply used it as a remedy. At my instigation. There was no lasting damage. I feel it already replenishing itself.” He stretched languidly, a content smile playing at his lips.
Fuck. Was this part of the bond between Attendants and Jezebels? A way to create intimacy between two people otherwise stuck in a relatively isolated bubble? Because that was messed up.
“Is this how Jezebels control their urges? We feed off our Attendant’s magic?” Start my day with a healthy breakfast and thirty seconds of Rafael. I dropped my head into my hands with a strangled groan.
“Not up to this point, but it appears there’s a first time for everything.” He escorted me to one of the high-backed chairs. “Wait here,” he said, and disappeared.
I sat there with my hands clasped between my knees, taking in the quiet of the room. The pillars were once more intact, hiding the Sefer, but I didn’t desire its magic. I gently circled my right ankle in one direction, then the other. I’d been in such a rush that I’d come to the library in sock feet.
With no swelling and no more sharp twinges, I was free to dwell on my upset stomach, the thickness in my throat, and the all-over nausea that I’d somehow betrayed Levi. Which was ridiculous.
If no other Jezebel used their Attendant in that fashion, there was another way to silence the urges and strengthen myself against the Sefer. Good. Not that I’d known any better when I sucked—medicinally ingested—Rafael’s magic. Really, it was no different than say, getting an IV bag of drugs for any other condition. Even if IV bags tended to go limp as you drained them, not—
Rafael appeared with a delicate china teacup on a saucer, steam curling off the top, and I jumped halfway out of my seat. My eyes bounced all over the room desperately looking for somewhere innocuous to land.
Brows furrowed, he pressed the cup into my hands, his fingers folding over mine. “A spot of Darjeeling. I hope you like milk and sugar.”
“What? No scones?” I said. He bit his lip and I shook my hea
d. “A joke, Rafael.”
“Tea is a serious business. I wouldn’t wish to offend.”
I took a sip, the sweet milky liquid scalding my throat but also incredibly soothing. “You’re not going to be impossibly British and avoid this conversation, are you? Because you and I just went further than I did with my first boyfriend.”
Rafael dragged a chair up to mine and dropped into it. He gave me a crooked smile and a knot formed in my gut. “I fear that you are something of a conundrum, Ashira Cohen.”
“Tell me about it. I’m thinking of having buttons made to that effect. But what specifically are you referring to?”
“These cravings of yours.” He toyed with his dark wooden ring, burnished to a high-gleam, that was identical to mine.
“Yeah, what’s up with that?” My smile was easy, but my ribcage constricted. “You Attendants really need to warn us about how bad those get, because man, I have had it up to here with unexpected surprises.”
Rafael jutted his chin towards the myriad of books lining the shelves. “No other Jezebel in our vast and storied history has had them.”
“Gavriella had them. That’s why she took Blank.” Though anything that cost me my magic wasn’t an option.
“Gavriella used the drug to escape many things in her life,” he said, “but this wasn’t one of them. You hold the exciting and somewhat dubious distinction of being the only one addicted to magic.”
I set the teacup down on its saucer with a rattle, tea sloshing over the rim. Each of his matter-of-fact words battered and unmoored me, as if the universe had considered my determination to succeed as a Jezebel no matter the obstacle, smiled maliciously, and said, “good luck.”
Rafael pulled a linen handkerchief out of his vest pocket and mopped up the spilled tea. “While you can sense magic on the Sefer Raziel HaMalakh,” he said, “it shouldn’t have any effect on you. In fact, you shouldn’t even sense it from a distance. Only if you send your magic directly into a scroll should you be able to verify its presence. The ward that suppressed your powers all those years must have interfered with the natural order of things in terms of how you interact with the Sefer’s magic.”
I choked on the sip I’d taken to calm my nerves. I’d been so focused on the “what,” that I hadn’t considered the “how.”
Rafael thumped my back, his hand lingering a moment too long.
I jerked away. That damned tattoo. Another reason to never forgive my father for what he’d done. His actions had hampered my abilities and forced me into a twisted relationship with my Attendant that I saw no way out of.
I exhaled slowly. Find Adam. Get answers. Move forward. That was the plan and I was sticking to it.
“How bad are the cravings?” Rafael said.
Was he worried or hopeful? “Usually, about a two or three out of ten. If I’m midway through destroying someone’s inherent magic and that gets aborted for some reason, it gets worse. A taste of angel-affiliated magic? I’d take crashing a car into a concrete wall again over its awful beauty. Though they’re gone now. Thanks to you.”
“I feared those scrolls were killing you and did the first thing that popped into my mind.”
Pip. Pip. You have cravings. I can calm them. So very reasonable, when I wanted to hurl my cup against the wall. Rafael had made it clear that I was his reckless and barely-capable player in the fight against Chariot. If he wasn’t railing against this massive shortcoming, then he was still brainwashed by my magic on his.
“You weren’t wrong,” I said, “but that was quite the gamble.”
“It was. However, my magic is rooted in serving and protecting my Jezebel. I send out the magic that tests potentials, I am keyed to this library to safeguard it, and I have healing magic specific to my Jezebel, should she require it.”
I leaned forward. “If you’d found me years ago, would both you and your father have been my Attendants?” My daddy issues didn’t run anywhere deep enough to have wanted this dynamic with Rafael’s father.
“No. As there is supposed to only be one Jezebel at a time, there is only one Attendant at a time. I took over my father’s duties when he died. It would seem that my protective qualities extend to quieting your cravings. It was a risk I had to take.” His eyes went soft and dreamy as he spoke, his finger tracing the gauze now taped over the gash in his arm.
Fuck. On top of everything, I’d wounded him.
How long was this enchantment going to last? I snapped my fingers under his nose. “Cut it out.”
“Should those cravings continue to plague you, and when it comes to the Sefer, I almost guarantee that they will, then you’ll be in need of my particular assistance, and only mine.” His smile was smug, his pupils still glassy.
“There has to be another way,” I said.
He actually pouted for a second, before a crafty gleam entered his eyes. “We have a solution and we will avail ourselves of it because I’ll not let anything stand in the way of you doing your job. Those scrolls must be found and destroyed and you are susceptible to their magic.” He shrugged, artfully careless. “Without my aid, I’m not sure how many more episodes like that one you can be brought back from.”
Rafael’s commitment to the cause was absolute, but as Sherlock Holmes once said, “Nobody deceives like an addict.” Addicts elevated con artistry to a survival skill. Rafael’s words were true, but given his current condition, they were also a justification. Thing is, considering his magic remedy was the only thing that currently worked, what choice did I have either way?
I pulled on my collar, as if that could help me drag air into my seized-up lungs. Reason. Intelligence. Deduction. Those were the qualities I prized, not feeding like the undead off the hot guy I’d enthralled. I preferred my men willing. Like—no.
I searched for something in the room starting with the letter A for the self-soothing technique I’d learned in counseling after my dad left. Armchair, bowtie…
“Then it’s settled,” Rafael said. “We may proceed to the actual reason for your visit.”
Nothing was settled. This was a disaster and we couldn’t have a rational conversation. Chances were exceedingly high that when Rafael snapped out of this, he wasn’t going to be thrilled that he’d felt this way about me. In fact, he’d probably be quite distraught and not want to be around me for a while. I couldn’t walk into danger with him in that condition and expect him to have my back.
Glasses, hand…
“How is Adam’s book connected?” I said.
“When Gavriella flatlined back when she was still Gracie,” Rafael said, “it was during a mission. She’d stolen a piece of the Sefer away from Chariot, giving us the three we currently have. Luckily, my father got to her in time and saved her life, ensuring that piece stayed ours. But as you know, with her death, your magic activated.” Rafael caught himself tracing the gauze and stilled his hand. “Gavriella insisted on moving here to try and find you. She had no connection to this city and her death certificate was public record. She and my father hoped they’d have an edge in finding the next piece.”
Nails, oxygen… My breathing was shallow.
“Did Dad give the book to Gavriella or was this intended for me?”
“The book was in Gavriella’s possession,” Rafael said. “Though that doesn’t negate it being placed at that Weaver’s house and used to draw you out now.”
“Regardless, Dad got her that coded message, so he must have known about Jezebels and wanted to help.” Signs pointed to him being a good guy.
“Or it was a trap even then,” Rafael said. “Chariot had pulled this stunt before. We have no way of knowing which it was, because the contact never showed up.”
“The contact has a name,” I said in a sharp voice. “Adam Cohen. My father.”
Rafael inclined his head at the correction and clasped my hands between his. “It may be best for you to prepare yourself for the worst-case scenario. Adam didn’t make the meeting. There are many potential reasons for that, som
e more upsetting than others.”
All this needy touching was making my skin crawl.
I stood up abruptly, pacing the room. “He’s not dead. My father is a level four Charmer. He can talk his way out of anything. If he was working for Chariot and planned to betray them, they could catch him in the act and he’d still be able to assure them of his loyalty. Also, I’m not convinced he didn’t show up. Adam’s self-preservation instincts are finely honed. If he suspected that Gavriella had the upper hand going into this, he’d have aborted it. I assume she had some plan to bring this unknown contact in for questioning?”
“Of course.”
I folded my hands together, staring down at the long fingers that I’d inherited from my dad. We used to press our palms together when I was little to see how much more mine had to grow to catch up to his. If I did it now, would they finally match? Or had his hands, like everything larger than life that I remembered about my father, diminished?
“There are a lot of unanswered questions,” I said, “but Adam is out there and I will find him. What else can you tell me?”
“Gavriella was unsettled by the fact that someone, friend or foe, had learned of her new identity so quickly,” Rafael said. “It irked her that she was never able to solve who had reached out to her or for what purpose. Plus, there was the matter of the sunflower drawing. She was convinced that it, too, was part of the coded message and it drove her barmy trying to figure out what it meant.”
I smiled. It would have driven me crazy as well.
“Though why use a Sherlock Holmes novel to send the message and not a simple letter?” Rafael said.
“Dad liked to get personal with his marks,” I said bitterly. “To disarm and build trust.”
“He sounds like quite the character.”
“He has his moments. So, there’s still one unclaimed piece of the Sefer out there and it’s all tied to Adam.”
“It would seem so.”
This was bigger than my need for closure. Finding my father was a vital step in stopping Chariot—provided they didn’t find me first.
Shadows & Surrender: A Snarky Urban Fantasy Detective Series (The Jezebel Files Book 3) Page 6
