Heart of Stone

CHAPTER 13

THE DOORBELL JANGLED pleasantly when Margrit stopped inside the door, taking in a tiny, crowded store with towering shelves overloaded with books. The space had a sense of serenity that seemed impossible to dislodge, with the scent of old books mixing with the sweetness of tea. She turned back to look over her shoulder at the reversed letters on the door, proclaiming Huo’s On First: An Eclectic Bookshop, with hours that seemed extraordinarily late for a bookstore. A feeling of contentment settled over her, making her smile. The aura of bookstores, so calm and quiet, had the power to soothe her even after a day like the one that had passed. It was the same aura of sanctuary provided by churches, albeit with more reading material and considerably more comfortable chairs.

She ducked between stacks, hunching her shoulders to keep from brushing against shelves. A ladder leaned against a wall, its wide steps stacked precariously with paperbacks. Margrit picked one up, flipping through the pages as she tried not to elbow another stack of books to the floor. Used bookstores-at least the best of them-always seemed to be as crowded as this one was, as if walking around ran a distant second to the importance of the bound and printed pages.

“Insomniacs.” The voice came from above, making Margrit glance up, startled. A very small woman with black hair and blacker eyes peeped down from the top of a shelving unit. The set of her face was purposeful, fine lines carved around her eyes and the corners of her mouth. Margrit took two steps back to better see her as she clambered over the top of the shelves and down the ladder, knocking off a stack of books as she passed them. Margrit snatched two out of the air, the other three raining to the floor with finality.

“Thank you.” The woman hopped down from the ladder, rescuing the fallen books and brushing dust off their covers with definitive motions. “You’re new here, aren’t you? Welcome to Huo’s On First. I’m Chelsea.” She offered her hand. “Chelsea Huo.” Her eyes crinkled with pleasure, and Margrit smiled as she shook it.

“It’s nice to meet you, Ms. Huo. I’m Margrit Knight.”

“Chelsea.”

“Chelsea,” Margrit echoed obediently. Chelsea’s eyes crinkled again, her smile making wizened apple wrinkles in her round face. “Nice to meet you,” she repeated. “Insomniacs?”

“Are why the store is open so late. I get all sorts of sleepless customers, looking for the comfort of books, or sometimes for one dull enough to send them into slumber. They’re constants, aren’t they?” Chelsea asked cheerfully. “Books are. That’s why we like them so much. They seem immutable. They’re not, of course, not from the author’s first draft to the tenth printing, but they seem like it.” She leaned in confidentially. “And used bookstores like this one are always crowded because the books breed, you see.”

Margrit laughed, looking up at shelves tilting toward one another with the weight of volumes, and grinned. “I didn’t even know I’d said that out loud. It explains a lot, though.”

“Doesn’t it? Now, what can I do for you, Margrit? What are you looking for tonight?”

“I’m looking for-” Margrit cut the words off with a hard swallow. “I’m supposed to meet someone here. Tomorrow.”

Chelsea’s feather-fine eyebrows rose. “You’re a little early, then, aren’t you? Who are you meeting?”

“His name is Alban.” Margrit folded her arms around herself, glancing down an aisle between shelves. She felt, more than saw, stillness settle over Chelsea, and looked back at her curiously.

“Of course,” the tiny woman murmured. “You’re the runner in the park. The young lawyer. Peculiar that he should contact you, but-mmm. Well. How interesting.”

“You know him?” Margrit’s voice broke as she reached for Chelsea’s arm, at the last instant stopping herself from grabbing the other woman. “You actually know him? I mean, do you really know about him?” She almost laughed with frustration, trying to rein in frantic words. She sounded as if she was bordering on lunacy, even to herself. It took a moment to deliberately flex her fingers and move her hand back from Chelsea’s arm, pulling in a discreet breath as she did so. “Please,” she said in a calmer voice, “if you really know Alban, it’d be nice to have somebody tell me I’m not losing my mind.”

Chelsea Huo reached up and grabbed Margrit’s chin, pulling her down for examination. Margrit bit back a growl of protest at the proprietary action and let the tiny woman study her. Chelsea turned her face this way and that, as if inspecting her for flaws, and Margrit felt a growing sense of indignation rising in her. She wasn’t chattel to be declared worthy or inspected for salability.

On the other hand, the imperious little woman knew Alban. It was the first chance to validate what he’d told her, and putting Chelsea off might close the only avenue of information available to her. Margrit bit her teeth together, feeling her jaw clench under Chelsea’s fingers, and strove for a polite tone. “Please. I really don’t know what I’m up against here.”

The bookstore owner let her go with a critical click of her tongue. “Well, then, I suppose you’d better come in back and have a cup of tea.”

“…I mean, it’s not possible.” Margrit ducked her head over the teacup, hands wrapped around it as if she was cold. “It just isn’t possible. But I saw it. I saw him turn into a gargoyle. So either I’m losing my mind or…what did you put into this tea, anyway?” She squinted at the pale liquid semisuspiciously, then looked up at Chelsea with a crooked smile. “I’ve been not telling people.” She could hear herself imbuing the words with capitals, Not Telling People, as if every waking moment had been focused on not sharing the new facet of the world she’d learned about. “All day. Every time I think about it I want to blurt something out, but who would believe me? So here I am with you.” She lifted her eyes, half apologizing with the glance. “Spilling my guts. So I hope to God you’re one of the good guys, or I’ve totally screwed Alban.”

“I’m not one of the bad guys.” The bookseller’s eyebrows fluttered up again. “Though I suppose one of the bad guys would say that, too. So you explain it-why are you telling me?”

Margrit ducked her head over the tea again, all but putting her nose in it. “Because Alban chose this place to meet, I guess. Because if I don’t talk to someone I’m going to go insane.” She glanced up again. “And because I don’t really think I’m on the good drugs and imagining all this. I really need to understand what’s going on. This is awfully good tea.”

Chelsea’s pure laugh rang up to the ceiling and bounced down again. “So you’ve said three times. Any more and I’ll think you’re full of blarney.”

“But it’s true!” Margrit protested, then bit her tongue.

Chelsea smiled delightedly at her. “Thank you. I grow it myself. All right, Margrit Knight. Much of this is not my story to tell, but I will tell you what I can. I’ll tell you enough.”

“Who gets to decide what enough is?”

“I do,” Chelsea said with a simple shrug. “Because it’s not my story.”

Margrit closed her eyes, then nodded. “All right. I’ll take anything. I’m lost.” She laughed without humor. “What is he?”

“A gargoyle, as he said. But you mean that question in a larger sense, I think. The answer to the question you really mean is, he is one of the Old Races.”

“The old races. And I thought that was like the lost tribes of Israel, or something.” Margrit shook her head. “What the f-” She cleared her throat, censoring herself. “What are the old races?”

“They were the children of a different evolutionary path, from before this world settled on what direction it would take. There are four or five left, now. Five, if the selkies still survive. They were so terribly few, and then…” Her thin eyebrows arched and she shrugged. “There used to be more. Creatures you know the names of. Yeti and siryns.”

“And then?” Margrit put the question off in favor of a second: “Sirens?” She glanced toward the door, half expecting to hear police cars wailing.

Chelsea’s mouth pursed in amusement. “Siryns,” she corrected. “Mermaids, you’d probably call them. Sea-born creatures, whose shape could be changed to let them leave the oceans, only at great cost. Once transformed, they could never return to their home.”

“Isn’t that a fairy tale?” Margrit smiled crookedly, meaning to tease, but Chelsea’s eyebrows flitted up.

“Many of humanity’s oldest legends stem from creatures that were once real. And a few of them still are, but not the siryns. They’re dead now, or so depleted they can no longer breed. The selkies had countable numbers a few generations ago, but the siryn pods disappeared in the seventeenth century. A shame,” she murmured. “Their music was enchanting.”

“Literally?” Margrit asked, humor infusing the word. Then her eyebrows dipped. “How do you know?”

Chelsea’s eyes disappeared into a smile and she gestured with her teacup. “I collect knowledge of the Old Races. My records are desperately incomplete-only the gargoyles truly record their histories-but there is information to be found, if that’s what you desire.” She swirled the tea in her cup thoughtfully. “If you have only the gargoyles to deal with, you’ll be fortunate. They’re the least changeable of the remaining Races, and perhaps the most trustworthy.”

“Chelsea,” Margrit said as steadily as she could, “the only gargoyle I know is suspected of murder. You’re not inspiring a lot of confidence here. What are the others? How can I recognize them?”

The woman looked up, her lips pursed in a wrinkled smile. “Dragons and djinn, selkies and-” She broke off, distracted. “‘Dragons and djinn’ go together so nicely in the mouth. It’s a pity none of the others are so tasty to say.”

“Selkies and…?” Margrit prompted, a little desperately.

“Oh.” Chelsea’s thin eyebrows shot up. “And vampires, of course.”

“Vampires.” Margrit wrenched herself from a blank-eyed stare filled with nothing but Chelsea’s pleasant expression and a phantom thrum in her own ears. She felt nailed to the chair, grounded in a way that mocked the soaring freedom she’d felt in the Blue Room. Instead of being on the verge of breaking free, the earth itself seemed to have set hooks into her muscles and skin, binding her down with malicious intent. “Vampires and dragons and…They don’t exist.”

Neither did gargoyles. She could all but see her own thought reflected in Chelsea’s gaze. A chill made her shiver, and Margrit wrapped her hands around the teacup, lowering her eyes to study it. “I don’t want to believe this.”

“Not believing won’t make it any less real.”

“I know.” Beneath the emptiness in her stomach lay a kernel of acceptance-and an edge of excitement. Rationality told her this was all nonsense; her own experience told her otherwise. “I know,” she repeated with more strength. “Am I too far in it to back out?”

Chelsea shrugged, a minute motion that Margrit saw through her eyelashes. “Probably not. Will you abandon Alban, then?”

The acceptance burst through in a quick explosion of recognition, fear dissipating into a familiar thrill of preparing for battle. “No.” Margrit looked up, fighting back a tiny grin. “No, it’s not in me. You’re totally serious, aren’t you. There’s these old races and I’ve gotten dragged into them. Jesus.” She got up to pace about the tiny back room, realized there wasn’t enough space, and sat down again. “So what are you? Chelsea Huo, Proprietor of Huo’s On First: Also, Old Races Propaganda Officer on Tuesdays and Thursdays?”

She laughed, pouring Margrit another cup of tea. “Close enough, overlooking the fact that it’s Saturday morning now. There are people in most of the large cities, Margrit, who know about the Old Races. It’s nearly impossible to live an entirely isolated life, even when you’re trying to protect a secret identity. There are people who help. With food, with money, with shelter.”

“With books,” Margrit said.

Chelsea nodded, eyes disappearing once more into a smile. “I help, when I can. I wouldn’t say propaganda officer. I prefer not to talk too much about them. Secrets don’t stay secret if you talk a lot, and the Old Races rely on discretion.” There was a warning in her words, one that made Margrit look up and spread a hand in promise.

“Who would believe me?” Margrit frowned at her tea, brushing the question aside. “If the old races-”

“Old Races,” Chelsea said gently, with an emphasis Margrit hadn’t used herself, a quiet resolve that bordered on reverence. “Give them the respect of years, Margrit. The Old Races are a group of peoples who have survived Saint George and Van Helsing, Odysseus and Aladdin. They have survived persecution and now eke out a living in a world so crowded with people they have no choice but to wear human forms and pretend they’re something they’re not. Afford them the title they give themselves. They deserve that much accord from humankind. They are the Old Races.”

“Ala…they’re all fictional, Chelsea. Legends.”

The woman glanced toward her bookstore, the leaning stacks and golden lights suddenly seeming darker and more ponderous as Margrit followed her gaze. “Are they?” the proprietor asked, with a spark of challenge in her eyes.

Certainty fled, leaving a question where none had ever been. After a few seconds Margrit gave an unsure smile and inclined her head. “Okay. The Old Races.” She said the words more carefully, making them a title in her mouth, then sighed. “If the Old Races rely on discretion, then isn’t what’s going on with Alban dangerous for all of them? If the police arrest him, or even just bring him in for questioning, and dawn comes-why wouldn’t the other Old Races just get rid of him first? Before that risk could come to fruition?”

“Get rid of him?” Chelsea echoed the phrase with interest.

Margrit made an abrupt motion with her hand. “Kill him. Take him out of the picture. Whatever was necessary in order to ensure he wasn’t going to betray the rest of them, whether he meant to or not?”

Humor creased Chelsea’s mouth. “It’s such a human response, isn’t it? Destroy the source of trouble. Murder is a human weapon, Margrit. The Old Races don’t stoop to it. To kill one of their own-any of the Old Races-is an exiling offense.”

Doubt crept into Margrit’s tone. “They wouldn’t kill one of their own even to protect the rest?”

“It’s not their way.”

“That’s-” Margrit broke off and laughed, a low sound. “Insane. Not that killing people is a good thing, but-you know what I mean.” She looked up to find Chelsea’s bemused smile turned on her. “It’s not human behavior.”

“That,” she said, “may be the point.”

Margrit dropped her chin, frowning at her tea. “What do they do to people who threaten the status quo? There must be something. There must be ways to find help or to get someone out of the limelight. Like witness protection.” A pang knotted her heart, stealing her breath. Witness protection would mean losing Alban.

If she could lose something she’d never had. Margrit tightened her hands around her teacup, remembering the hope in his colorless eyes and wondering at her own regret.

“I’m sure there is.” Chelsea shook her head. “But I’m not the person to ask that question of.”

“Then who is?”

Chelsea swirled her tea again. “If I tell you, you’ll act on the knowledge?”

“Yes.” Margrit tempered the bluntness of the answer with a faint smile. “I told him I’d help him, for one thing. For another, this is like Pandora’s box. I can’t put all this knowledge back inside where I don’t know it anymore. I’m involved in this.”

“Acting on what I tell you may involve you far more permanently than you wish, Margrit.” Chelsea’s almond eyes were serious. “You’re at a place where you might still walk away from what you know, but the line is there and you verge on crossing it.”

Margrit felt a smile creep over her face, the same tense, prepared smile that she felt when facing a courtroom or a new runner in the park. It spread tingles through her body, lifting hair on her arms and making her aware of every tiny sound around her: the ticking of a blunt old grandfather clock, the creak of floorboards, age and weather changes settling them rather than the pressure of footsteps. Horns and engines in the streets beyond the front door, as quiet as they ever got in the city. Amusement flashed through her as she remembered Cole’s words: Russell had waved a red flag in front of her and she’d charged it. The same was happening here, the taking of a major risk. Jumping with both feet. Leaping headlong before looking. Margrit’s smile grew into a full-out grin. God help anybody who tried to stop her. “I’m prepared for that.”

Wryness sparked in Chelsea’s expression, more vivid than speech. “Then you need to talk to a man named Janx.”

Margrit flinched, straightening up so fast she spilled tea on her hand. She sucked the hot liquid off her skin, staring at her in astonishment. “Janx?”

Chelsea’s feathery eyebrows lifted again. “You know him?”

“No, but somebody else said his name to me tonight, too. I’ve never heard of him. Who is he?”

“He runs an establishment in East Harlem called the House of Cards.”

“Oh.” Margrit slumped back, staring into her teacup. “They say the guy who runs that place is a devil.”

Chelsea cocked her head to one side, her expression unchanging. “The criminals in your world use Janx’s people to do what even they won’t, Margrit. He’s a dangerous man.”

“But he’d know about people you don’t?” Margrit studied the petite woman across the table, gauging the tension in the lines of her mouth.

“Janx has informers,” Chelsea murmured. “I only have gossip. This is terribly dangerous, Margrit.”

“This is the part where I say, ‘Yeah, well, so am I,’ right?” She crooked a grin. “Okay, so I’m not. But maybe there’s something I can bargain with. Something he might want?”

“Your life would be a pretty trinket,” Chelsea said mildly. Fine hairs lifted on the back of Margrit’s neck, delicate prickles that stayed awhile, then spilled down her spine and ran goose bumps over her arms.

“Are you trying to frighten me?” she asked as lightly as she could. “Yes.”

Margrit inhaled, then let it out in a little puff of breath. “It’s working.”

“Good.” Chelsea pursed her small mouth again. “Unfortunately, I don’t have another answer.”

“There’s always another answer.” Margrit pushed her chair back and stood up again. “In this case, the other answer is ‘Go directly to jail, do not pass go.’ So I guess I’m going to East Harlem instead. Thank you, Chelsea. For the tea and everything.”

The shopkeeper stood, smiling, and came around the table to hug Margrit, who squeaked at the unexpected embrace. “Be careful. And come back and visit, if you can. We can exchange stories about Alban. I’m sure you’ll know him quite well by then.”

Margrit grinned, flipping her hair over her shoulder. “That sounds fun. Thanks again. For everything. Especially for taking the risk of trusting me and telling me some of what’s going on.”

Chelsea made a dismissive moue and flicked her fingers. “It’s not that much of a risk, my dear.”

Margrit pushed her way through the beaded curtain that separated the little back room from the main area of the bookstore, then turned around to wave. Chelsea nodded, reaching for Margrit’s teacup as rattling beads fell into place. She rubbed her fingers around the inside of the cup, smearing a thin film from the tea between her fingertips, and touched her fingers against her tongue. Bitterness stung her, a potent mixture disguised from Margrit by the tea’s strength and unfamiliar flavor.

Doorbells jangled, announcing Margrit’s departure. Chelsea smiled after her, wiping the substance away on her shirt as she climbed to her feet and went to wash the dishes. “I’m afraid it’s not that much of a risk at all.”