Shadows & Surrender: A Snarky Urban Fantasy Detective Series (The Jezebel Files Book 3)

by Deborah Wilde

  “It’s in a take-out cup,” he huffed, all fussy and pissy in tweed.

  I smiled tightly and drank out of the cup, keeping it for myself. “There. Problem solved.”

  “Are you well rested now? May we proceed?” Rafael said bitingly.

  I took another sip, needing all the peace and inner joy at this moment. “Yes. But before we do, let me just say that I’m grateful to have you in my corner. You’re irreplaceable and this fight is impossible to win without you. Nothing about our journey together has been as you expected and that can’t have been easy.”

  I was shit at this kind of thing, which was why I’d practiced my speech on the way over. The heartfelt words were somewhat undermined by Mrs. Hudson under Priya’s desk, making disturbing squeaky noises with the cow, but I think I got my point across.

  “Why don’t you tell me what you’ve discovered?” I said.

  That took some of the wind out of his sails. He circled the desk, somewhat warily, and picked up the journal. “These are my father’s records. Adam took possession of the fake scroll and passport on the Thursday morning after your accident. The meeting with Gavriella was set for that same Thursday night.”

  “We’re missing the critical hours of the afternoon and early evening. That’s where we’ll find our answers. When did Gavriella get the book with the message proposing the meeting?” I said.

  “The day before. Wednesday. It was left on her café table while she’d gone to pick up her order. She never saw who left it.”

  “So we’ll never know how he found her.”

  “Through Chariot, I expect. Gavriella had to move a number of times as they closed in.”

  Obviously, I’d suspected as much, especially after my visit with Uncle Paulie, but the matter-of-fact way that Rafael said it, reducing my dad to this sole identity, hurt. I wanted to tell Rafael about the man who could never get the lumps of raw batter out of his pancakes, or how he used to dance with my mom in the kitchen while I did pirouettes around them, but I didn’t, because to Rafael, only one aspect of my dad mattered.

  Was the same true for himself? That the Attendant identity he’d been raised to live up to was the only relevant part of him? Sherlock Holmes had said, “We all have a past, Watson. Ghosts. They are the shadows that define our every sunny day.” Rafael was wrestling with his.

  “Ashira?”

  “Sorry. I was just thinking about my father.”

  Rafael paused. “Don’t get attached.”

  “To who?”

  “Whom.” Off my eye roll, he added. “Anyone.”

  I tossed Mrs. Hudson a treat. “Too late. I’m not being ousted from my life.”

  “Can you live with the consequences should you endanger your loved ones?”

  I’d been through this with Priya on my last case. She’d been kidnapped because of me. I’d tried to remove myself from her life but she wasn’t having any of it.

  “That’s their decision, not mine.”

  Rafael tsked. “That’s a very cavalier attitude.”

  “Don’t you get lonely?”

  He pushed his round, black frames up his nose. “This cause—”

  “Is not human companionship, dude. It’s solitary and lonesome as hell. Let’s just be honest about it: it sucks big-time.”

  “This from a confirmed misanthrope.”

  I brushed a biscotti crumb off my sweater. “A former confirmed misanthrope. Despite all my previous inclinations otherwise, we need this team. Sure, there’s always the chance that someone could prove to be a liability or be used against me, but the usefulness of our combined skills will help in the end. Our friendships will make a difference. I know it.”

  “Personal connections in a situation like this are a double-edged sword,” he said.

  “Very rarely is anything totally good or totally bad. Even if you knew we were going to fail, do you really want to live in a bubble so you never experience hurt?”

  I had, and even with Priya all those years, my life had been poorer for my lack of other relationships. Now other people were slotting into my life: Arkady, even Miles. And especially Levi. I took another sip of tea to hide my smile. Who had Rafael had by his side besides his dad? And had the relationship gone beyond the duties of teaching Rafael his responsibilities?

  Rafael stared down at the journal, his mind obviously far away. He didn’t share his thoughts, shaking himself out of his stupor a moment later. “I ascertained that the codename your father used for his boss—26L1—fit the same pattern as the only other recorded codename we have. A number followed by a letter and another number. Though no Attendant or Jezebel ever cracked it.”

  “Do you mind if we share the codename with the Queen?” I said. “It falls under the parameters of the agreement with Levi.”

  He frowned. “This will take some getting used to, but very well.”

  A text came in. “It’s from Arkady,” I said. “He emailed me photos of the New York Avi Chomskys and wants my opinion if any of them are Adam.” I opened my laptop to see the photos on a larger screen, but couldn’t bring myself to log on. “Sorry.” I scrubbed a hand over my face. “I’m being horribly unprofessional. Just give me a minute.”

  Rafael pulled out his phone, hit a few buttons and set it on the table between us. He’d literally set a one-minute timer.

  I opened my mouth to lay into him and he nudged me playfully.

  “Fucker,” I muttered.

  “Rethinking your stance on personal connections, perchance?”

  I scowled at him, his levity giving me the push to keep going. “If Dad’s been in hiding then it’s plausible that his hair color, eye color, and weight are going to be different than I remember.” I pulled up a photo on my phone of my father that I’d scanned a few years ago.

  It was the summer before he left. Dad and I were sitting on the grass in our backyard, laughing about something I no longer remembered. It was a perfectly ordinary moment, one of thousands I’d taken for granted. At least, that was what I’d told myself when I’d snuck the photo out of the albums that Talia had in storage and made a copy. I’d had all these opportunities to make memories with my father and I’d wasted them because I didn’t realize how finite they were. Then I’d gotten angry at him for not giving me more chances. No one wanted to grow up without a parent—how could he do this to me?

  But now I could appreciate that the big moments in my life—my high school and college graduations, me getting Moriarty and Talia finally trusting me behind the wheel again, my first job—all of these were things Dad had denied himself so that I could live a perfectly ordinary life free from harm. His leaving me wasn’t the biggest asshole move: it was the greatest gift of love.

  Clarity. Dad still had a lot of explaining to do, but it was time to acknowledge that there was a lot more to him than just the parts that made me angry. Time to take him out of the box of the man who’d abandoned and betrayed me and remember all of him.

  “So, this is a picture of Adam.” I blinked quickly, hoping Rafael wouldn’t see how damp my eyes were. “His basic face shape would be the same. I can start by comparing the bone structure and—”

  Rafael took my phone away. “You’re a mess. Allow me.”

  “How can I refuse such a compassionate offer?”

  “You can’t.” He motioned at my laptop. “Come along, log in. I’m desperate to go out for some real tea after this.”

  I pushed my unlocked computer over to him. “I’m literally crying over my dad here and all you can do is complain about the tea. You’re terrible.”

  “Not terrible,” Rafael said, clicking over to my mail program, “only British.” He took forever to sort through the possible men, carefully comparing each one to the old picture of Adam, all while I bit my fingernails down to the quick.

  Mrs. Hudson wore herself out and fell asleep.

  “This is the only potential candidate.” He turned the screen around.

  My breath caught. The man could have been Dad’s b
rother. But close only counted in horseshoes and hand grenades.

  “It’s not him.” I fired a text to Arkady to continue on to Mexico.

  Rafael moved over to the framed book covers on the wall, examining them. “I went with Miles when he drove Mayan home. She was quite distraught.”

  I groaned. “Shit. I didn’t mean to dump that on you. I couldn’t deal with her and had to get out of there. Hey, is there anything in all your Attendant journals about necromancy? One of the journals did mention Repha’im.”

  “Our knowledge of Repha’im is quite superficial and there’s unlikely to be anything on necromancy. That’s not why I brought up Mayan, however.” He stopped, cleared his threat, then looked at the ceiling. “You did well. Often Jezebels tend to only be able to promise revenge for those who have been wronged, not actually be able to prevent the wrongs before they are undoable. Your methods may be unorthodox, but you saved Mayan from being imprisoned and from blemishing her conscience. And you saved Alfie as well.”

  I almost fell out of my spectacularly comfortable chair. Rafael, praising me? Admitting that even though he didn’t agree with how I got there, my solution was sound? Quick, someone check my pulse. But the glow soon wore off as I remembered the rest of what had happened last night. What I still had to deal with.

  “Thanks, that means a lot.” I said. “But it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. I broke a tiara that Priya let me borrow. I’m sure that seems silly in the grand scheme of chasing Chariot and saving lives and everything, but well, without betraying any confidences, it was quite precious to her.”

  How many more casualties could our friendship take? Priya had been with me through so many bad things, but everyone broke somewhere. And as much as I hated admitting it, Rafael had a point. The war with Chariot was going to cost me a lot more than I wanted to pay.

  But Rafael didn’t twist the knife. He sat on Priya’s desk and regarded the ceiling as though some secret of the universe was written there. “You value that friendship. It’s nothing to apologize for.”

  “Now who’s the reformed misanthrope?”

  Rafael rubbed his thumb over the spine of his dad’s journal. “I appreciate what you said earlier about me being irreplaceable. Ever since that meeting, I’ve felt like the odd man out when this fight is my birthright and the others are all just recent arrivals to it. Then when I found out about you and Levi going to the Queen? It felt like this end-run because I wasn’t necessary anymore.”

  “I’m sorry if we made you feel you didn’t matter. If I made you feel that way,” I said. “Because only you’ve got the magic touch.” I gave an exaggerated frown. “Too soon?”

  “You’re incorrigible.” Rafael may have sounded unimpressed, but the corners of his lips quirked up. He tucked the journal under his arm. “If there is nothing more pressing to work on, I’d like to continue cracking the codename.”

  “Go nuts.” I tossed the take-out cup. “And if you want a nice brew while you do so, go to Moon Café two blocks over in the red brick building on the corner. You’ll appreciate the selection.”

  “I might at that. What will you be working on?”

  I logged out of my email. “If Arkady doesn’t find Adam in Mexico, we’ll be back to the entire world as a possibility for finding the missing scroll. None of the Ten have it or the pillar would be dark, so it’s reasonable to assume it’s either still in Dad’s possession, or he was the one who hid it somewhere.”

  “Sounds plausible.”

  “I’ve checked in the past and was never able to find a safe deposit box if Dad had one. He wouldn’t have hidden the scroll in our old house because by the time I had the accident, Talia had already listed it for sale.” The loss of my home had been one more factor in taking that life-changing joyride. “I’m totally stymied as to how else to search for it.”

  Confronted with a problem, I generated a dozen ideas to deal with it. Granted, half of them were shit, but they gave me a place to start. With this scroll, I felt like I was wandering around in a labyrinth, and every time I turned around I hit a dead end. Forget finding the exit, I couldn’t even get to the center to take a breath.

  Rafael stood up. “This isn’t all on you, Ashira. You have a team to help you.” He paused and smiled. “You have friends.”

  I chickened out of going home in case Priya was back from her yoga class, instead driving over to the west side of town.

  I rapped on the familiar front door, pasting on a bright smile when it opened. “Hiya, Rebbe. Got any leftover wedding cake?”

  Ivan “Rebbe” Dershowitz had been part of a recent case of attempted murder that I’d solved, involving a fake Angel of Death and the dungeons of Hedon. Good times. A fleshy man in his fifties, he took a bite of the shrimp sandwich in his hand, mayo dripping on to his sweater. “You’d think those people had been living off war rations the way they fell on the food. Not a crumb left.”

  He turned around and shuffled into the house. I took the open door as an invitation to follow.

  “Can I bring the dog?” I called out.

  He grunted affirmatively. “Come to the kitchen.”

  I hurried through the house, eyes downcast so I wouldn’t have a PTSD flashback from all the creepy bird decorations in this place. Luckily, the kitchen was a bird-free zone.

  “You like shrimp?” he said.

  “What bad Jew doesn’t like shrimp?” I sat down at one of the barstools pushed up to the island while the pug nosed around the room, sniffing at corners.

  Ivan laughed and pulled sandwich fixings out of the fridge. “Rachel won’t touch them. Bottom feeders. She pretends not to know what I’m eating when she’s not around.”

  “Is she away?” I didn’t see any extra dishes or a sweater of hers draped over a chair, and the house seemed quieter. Lonelier than I remembered.

  He used an ice cream scoop to get the shrimp salad out of the Tupperware. “Rehab.”

  “Really?”

  Ivan spread it on one slice, topping it with a dash of salt and pepper. “There was an incident at the wedding. The Queen requested that Rachel seek treatment.”

  “Her requests are hard to refuse. I take it Rachel agreed.”

  “She was mortified.” He sighed, eyes closed for a long moment, his wedding band winking in the afternoon sun. He cut up some avocado into delicate strips, laying them on the sandwich. “You didn’t meet her at her best, but she’s a good person.”

  “Then I’m glad she’s getting help.”

  “Me too. Straight across or diagonal?” He indicated with the knife that he meant how did I want my sandwich cut?

  “Diagonal,” I said.

  “Because you get a wider soft part to bite into.”

  “Exactly.”

  He presented the plate. “Ta da.”

  I took a bite. “Dayum. This is good.”

  “It’s the avocado.”

  “How’s the happy couple?” I licked a gloop of mayonnaise off my lip.

  Ivan rinsed off the ice cream scoop and placed it in the sink. “Beats me. You think when a person pays for a honeymoon they could get one phone call. Apparently they don’t have reception in the French Riviera.” He clapped his hands together. “So, we have sandwiches, small talk, and a very cute puppy. What do you want from me?”

  “Information.”

  “What would I get out of this deal?”

  “Depends on how useful you are,” I said around a mouthful of shrimp salad. “I’ll compensate you financially for your time at the very least.”

  “How about a question for a question?”

  The last question game I’d played had ended up with me narrowly avoiding being chopped up for parts in a cockamamie Dream Market in Hedon. While we were now in the real world, I was kind of gun-shy about doing that, because Ivan was still a criminal.

  On the other hand, thanks to my association with the Queen, it was doubtful he’d risk hurting me, and I think I secretly amused him. Besides, if all else failed, my magic tr
umped his.

  I picked up the other half of the sandwich. “All right, but I won’t dish on the Queen or anything that falls under a confidentiality agreement.”

  “Ask away.” He popped the lid on the Tupperware and put it in the fridge.

  “Do you know any necromancers?”

  Ivan scooped up avocado skins and pits and deposited them in a countertop composter. “Did you know that necromancy is highly forbidden in Judaism?”

  “I did not and that counts as your question, whereas you have not answered mine.”

  “Neatly done.” He was silent as he wiped down the island counter. “There was this one guy I heard rumors of during my incarceration.” He winked. “If you want his name, you gotta ask.”

  “What was his name, Rebbe?” I polished off the first half of my sandwich and wiped my mouth with a paper napkin that he handed me.

  “No clue. He was known as the Shidduch.”

  “A Jewish male matchmaker.”

  Ivan pointed the rag at me. “Now why would a young secular person such as yourself know that?”

  I grinned. “That’s your second question. You made this delicious sandwich so I’ll let you rescind, if you like.”

  “Eh. I have a natural curiosity about people. Rachel says it’ll get me into trouble one day. I stand by the question.”

  “My grandparents were very religious. That’s how they met. Why do you think this Shidduch was a necromancer?”

  “Supposedly, he was a Charmer. Say you were in the market for some military compound blueprints that only a certain general had access to. If you traveled in the right circles and had enough money, the Shidduch would charm that general and you’d have your plans.”

  “I’m familiar with how Charmers work.”

  “There you go, then. My turn,” Ivan said. “What’s your magic?”

  “I’m Mundane.” I swallowed my last bite of shrimp. That had been a mighty fine sandwich.

  “Don’t insult my intelligence.”

  I slid off the barstool. “I’m not going to hurt you,” I said, waiting for his nod, before I picked him up. With one hand.