Hernandez consulted her notes. “We could only make out some of the letters. P-A-L-E...something. The rest was scuffed away.”
The thing inside me froze—then retreated completely, leaving me wobbly with newfound freedom. “Pale?” I asked quickly. “Like the color?” The phrase ‘Behold a pale horse?’ shot through my mind, a snippet from Revelations. That was strictly Christian territory, not Jewish, but Mordechai wasn’t one to give a shit about that. Had he been trying to send me a message?
My demon remained silent, but Hernandez only shrugged.
“Could be. Or part of a longer word. Palestine? Paleontology?” She waved off those ideas, giving me a wry smile. “We’ll probably never know. Either way, there were no indications that Rabbi Mordechai had written it—no dirt on his hands, just blisters.”
“Oh.” I frowned, deflated. For the life of me, I couldn’t remember another biblical reference to pale. Why had Mordechai used his last bit of strength to write it?
“But your nails are all clipped—the dirt would have been gone, but something dug that deep would have broken at least a few nails, unless you had them professionally manicured.”
I snorted. “I’m not really the manicure type.”
“No, I can see that.” Hernandez looked at me as if she were measuring each of my words, trying to find the balance of bullshit in them. “You said you two met when you were ten years old?”
“Yeah.” I offered my best “My how the time flies” grimace but didn’t trust myself to say anything more.
She didn’t give me much of a chance, anyway, moving straight into her next question. “You went with him on his visits to, ah, exorcise demons?”
So she did know about that. “Sometimes.” I nodded, resisting the urge to cross my arms over my chest. I read somewhere that when you did that, it looked like you were trying to hide something. I didn’t want to tuck my hands in my pockets either, because surely that also meant something bad. Instead, I gestured to the sitting room where she stood, looking once again too big for the space. “Sometimes people just came here, and he helped them.”
“And you were present for those as well. I did a little research about exorcisms. You working as his assistant seems…unusual.”
“Not for him,” I told her truthfully. “I mean, I stayed out of the way, of course, but yeah. It was like a doctor’s appointment,but not really a private thing unless people wanted it to be. Sometimes it was better to have more people around.”
“Fair enough.” She looked again at all the shelves. “I was kind of curious to see if he fell in here.”
I frowned at her. “Fell? Oh. The mark on his head.” I studied the casually cluttered room. “Possibly?”
“Possibly,” she agreed. She blew out a long breath, rocking back on her feet. “Sure looks like there’s a lot of Jewish demons out there.”
I refocused on her. “Oh—there are a lot of demons, sure. But they aren’t, like they don’t…” I frowned, trying to explain. “It wasn’t only Jewish people who came to Mordechai, that’s not who he was.” Now I did shove my hands in my pockets, grief creeping up on me unexpectedly. “He helped anyone who showed up at his door.”
“Including you?”
I looked up at her sharply, something else curling inside me now, next to the grief. Surrounding it. Something that felt a lot like anger, though I couldn’t let this woman see it. She didn’t know me; she shouldn’t judge me. But I didn’t say any of that. After all, I’d already told her about the rabbi. About how he’d been a good role model, gotten me into school. How he’d always been there. Until suddenly, he wasn’t.
He’s not coming back. Ever.
My heart shriveled at the parasite’s unexpected return.
“Especially me,” I said.
“Well, I appreciate your time.” She fished in her pocket, pulled out a card. “Please don’t hesitate to reach out to me, if you think of anything I should know. It’s not an official investigation, but—it’s bugging me. His injuries.”
“I appreciate it,” I said, holding up the card. “If you learn anything, please call me. I don’t have a card, but…”
She pulled out a cop-standard notebook and wrote down my number. When she got to the door, she looked back. “You said you have a key?”
“Mordechai gave it to me,” I said. “After he fell asleep with a candle burning.”
Her mouth tilted. “I’ll keep that our little secret, then. Just lock up when you leave.”
She stepped out into the morning and was gone.
Chapter
Twelve
