Chapter
Ten
Jewish funerals took place within twenty-four hours of death, so I couldn’t wallow for long, no matter how much I wanted to.
Mordechai’s funeral sucked.
Everyone said the right words, but all I heard was the silence where he should have been. The prayers, the platitudes, the murmured condolences—they slid off me like rain on concrete. I kept my arms wrapped tightly around myself, gripping my elbows as if I could hold in everything that was threatening to spill out.
I knew what I wanted to do next—the only thing I wanted—though I hated myself for it. I wanted to read Mordechai’s newest case file. The one that discussed the big house with the flat roof. There were six incidents of possession in that file. Six. A family that seemed to haunt its own photographs. What had happened there to make demons feel so welcome?
And why did it matter to me?
Mordechai had been the exorcist, not me. He was the one God worked through. I was a stunt double at best, a fraud at worst, sneering at victims like Iris even as I tried to save them. The memory of my own voice in Mrs. Klein’s house still made mystomach turn. But that file, this case that wasn’t even my case, was all that I could hold onto, with Mordechai gone. It was the only thing that gave structure and form to the world.
It was all I had left.
The street to Mordechai’s place was already crowded when I turned down it. Cars lined the driveway under the heavy trees. Sad faces going in, sad faces coming out. I didn’t want to see any of them. I didn’t want another ceremony where I didn’t belong.
Head down, lost in my thoughts, I swung around the corner and collided with someone—a tall man in a long black coat. Not an old man, I thought. Not a boy. Too close. Usually, I was more careful.
“Sorry,” I muttered.
“No, no, my fault,” he said easily.
I looked up, and up a little more—and froze. For the first time in days, the thing inside me went silent as the world snapped into razor-sharp focus. A face from a grainy photograph stood in front of me, suddenly real.
“It’s you,” I whispered.
I was super subtle like that.
“Sorry?” the guy asked with a mild smile, sounding exactly like I expected he would. His voice was high and clear, as open as his expression, and hinted at education and wisdom and more than a little weariness, despite his hope.
I…he was kind of cute, actually.
With that traitorous thought, something inside me woke up. Something with claws and teeth and rage, sending bolts of jagged pain punching through my lungs, my stomach, burning bile climbing up my throat.What the fuck is this?
My mouth twitched despite the pain. The voice inside me was asking what this was…not who.
Because we both recognized the boy-man from Mordechai’s case file.
The pain finally escalated strong enough to make me gasp, and I lurched away from the guy and hurried up the driveway, now forced to act like I was actually going inside to sit shiva.
What was he doing here though?
I’d called in advance to find out if attending Mordechai’s funeral was even allowed for someone who wasn’t Jewish, and some kind-voiced person had assured me that, of course it was, had even explained how to show my respects in full without looking like a complete moron. But I’d never intended to do any of it. All those clumps of dirt raining down on Mordechai’s casket had been more than enough. I suppressed a full-body shiver.
“Hey, I’m sorry,” the guy piped up behind me, startled and hopeful. Too loud. Too hopeful. “Are you Delia Thompson?”
My traitorous feet stopped moving, rooting me to the ground as the guy came back up to me. This time, I looked at him with nothing but clinical interest, and the pain winked out.
He wasn’t a college kid anymore, Mordechai was right. He was a straight-up adult—hell, maybe hewasolder than me. Or maybe grief had aged him beyond his calendar years?—
Who gives a fuck? Answer the question.
“Oh,” I said, trying for a smile as I shoved down my still-fuming inner voice. “That’s who I am, yes. I—I don’t think we’ve met?”
“Gosh, no. I’m sorry.”
