Heart of Stone

CHAPTER 26

AFTER A LIFETIME of not knowing gargoyles hid in the city’s shadows, Margrit’s irritation at being unable to find the one she sought was blown out of proportion. Having Janx’s Cruiser made both her irritation and her inability greater: convenient as a car was, she couldn’t watch the sky while she drove. Fingers tapping against the wheel, Margrit guided the vehicle toward downtown, wondering if she might find somewhere to park it at or near the Legal Aid building on Water Street.

Work. A wince tweaked her. The weekend was gone and she hadn’t been near the office, much less spent the hours putting together supporting documents for the injunction that she’d promised she would. She thought of the Russell will kill you file folder and let a deep breath turn into a sigh. He’d have to kill her. There was no way to turn back the weekend and be in two places at once.

Besides, with Cara missing, there might be no case for the injunction anyway. Margrit swore under her breath and pushed away thought in favor of concentrating on driving. Minutes later she pulled into a downtown parking garage and took the ticket, trying not to think of how much the fee would be for overnight parking. Maybe she could deliver the stub to Janx and let him pick the car up himself.

The idea brought a grin to her face and she left the garage cheerfully, stretching her legs into a jog. Huo’s on First was close, and if anyone had a sense of where Alban might have hidden in the moments before sunrise, Chelsea seemed a likely candidate. Margrit came up the steps to the bookstore two at a time, cheeks pink from exertion. Chelsea appeared from the stacks with a look of amusement. “There you are. Who’s after you?”

“Nobody, I hope.” Margrit folded her arms over her chest. “I can’t find Alban. He suggested meeting here before, so I hoped…have you seen him?”

Chelsea tilted her head toward the beaded curtain at the back of her store, smile warming. “He’s waiting for you.”

Margrit jolted, a few quick steps sending her through the rattling curtain. Alban stood in time to catch her as she flung her arms around his neck. Even in human form, his scent was cold stone, the clean smell of earth after rain. Margrit inhaled deeply, tightening her arms around him and trying not to let herself think beyond the warmth and safety she found in his embrace. “Where the hell have you been? I’ve been trying to find you all night. I thought maybe something’d gone wrong this morning, at sunrise.”

He closed his arms around her carefully, as if she might be fragile. “I landed a few blocks from your building just before dawn. Perhaps I should have just gone to the top of yours, but I thought if anyone knew where you lived…I was careless,” he admitted. “I haven’t been that incautious in centuries. I won’t do it again.” He shifted his weight back so he could look down at her. “After I checked your home and saw you weren’t there, I came here. I hoped you’d think to. I’d have called your cell phone if I’d known the number.”

“It doesn’t work anymore. Malik phased it into oblivion.”

“Malik?” Alban’s voice rose with alarm. “You’ve seen Janx?”

“I’ve been busy since I saw you.” The words seemed so inadequate she laughed and cast a helpless glance upward. “I haven’t done my laundry, though. It’s Sunday, right?”

“It is,” Alban said, bemused. “Laundry?”

“That was my big plan for Sunday. Laundry and cleaning the bathroom. Maybe watch the Superbowl. I wonder who won.” She breathed a laugh and ducked her head. “How did I end up chasing down murderers and gargoyles instead?” She held up a hand to stop his reply, wincing at her purpling fingers. “Rhetorical question. Lawyers like those. Janx set us up, Alban. He sent us after Grace O’Malley so he’d have time to hire a copycat killer. Vanessa Gray was murdered last night.”

Alban’s eyes widened, palpable shock rolling off him. “Daisani’s assistant? That Vanessa Gray?”

“That one.”

Alban whistled, a long high sound of wind howling through stone, and Margrit looked at him in surprise. “You can whistle?”

His eyebrows wrinkled. “Can’t you?”

“Of course, but it’s so frivolous. You’re sort of stolid. I wouldn’t have thought whistling was in a gargoyle’s nature.”

Alban chuckled. “I don’t do it often.” Laughter faded into concern. “Do you understand what Gray’s death means, Margrit?”

“That Daisani’s schedule will be messed up for a week?” Margrit lifted her hand again, dismissing her own flippancy. “I know that Daisani hauled me in this afternoon to tell me I was personally responsible for apprehending the killer. He knows Janx is behind it, but he won’t go after him.”

“Personally responsible.” Alban’s voice became quiet. “Had he said that to me, Margrit, my inclination would be to run.”

“I did,” Margrit admitted in a mumble. “After I threw up.” She stepped out of the gargoyle’s embrace, shrugging. “But not far, because can you imagine any place on earth that he couldn’t find me, if I ran? I can’t, and I’m pretty damn sure if there was somewhere, it wouldn’t be an island paradise in the Bahamas.”

“Mmm. It may be worth considering, regardless.”

“I’m not going to run, Alban. Besides, I might’ve gotten a lead. I had to borrow Janx’s cell phone after Malik zotted mine, and I found an overseas number. Maybe it’s a place to start. I called Tony with it.”

“Tony. Your detective.” The words were half a question, and Margrit felt her shoulders go stiff and uncomfortable.

“Not exactly mine. It’s complicated.” She lifted both hands, index fingers pointed upward, and ducked her head toward them, bringing her thoughts under control. “Not the point. Gray’s death was the point. I thought I knew what it meant. Is it more than a thorn in Daisani’s side?”

“Far more.” Alban’s voice dropped and he turned to lean on the table. It creaked beneath his weight, and Margrit winced, taking an inadvertent step backward. “Gray had been with Daisani since the eighteen eighties.”

Margrit tilted her head, scrubbing a finger against her ear. “I’m sorry, what did you say? The early eighties? She must’ve started working for him when she was about fourteen, then.”

Alban looked down at her. “The eighteen eighties.”

Incredulous laughter broke from Margrit’s throat. “The woman was only forty years old.”

“Vanessa Gray has been Eliseo Daisani’s assistant-among other things-since eighteen eighty-three. Some of the stories about vampires are true.”

A cold wave ran through Margrit, numbing her fingers. “What, he made her a vampire?”

Alban shook his head. “No more than I could be made human. But a taste of a vampire’s blood can bring long life, Margrit. Very long life. I’m sure the records claim a line of descent, family working for family for generations, but it’s the same woman. She was well over a hundred years old.”

“People don’t live that long,” Margrit whispered. The memory of a photograph, an austere bob-haired Vanessa Gray standing beside Dominic Daisani, flashed through her mind. “Jesus. That picture at Daisani’s office. It’s them, isn’t it? Not their grandparents.”

Alban inclined his head marginally. “Eliseo Daisani’s blood could turn New York into the City of Youth for three generations. Vanessa Gray might have been expected to live centuries, if she’d been allowed to-age naturally, for lack of a better phrase. The blood of vampires is potent stuff.”

“So Janx really won this round,” Margrit whispered. “Does this kind of thing happen a lot?”

“No. It precipitates a kind of war, Margrit. Brief and violent and destructive. Perhaps a battle more than a war,” he said with a quick wave of his hand. “We can’t afford wars.”

“There aren’t enough of you,” Margrit murmured.

“And wars tend to be noticed. Especially when fought in the streets of human urban centers.”

Margrit nodded, only half listening. “Who’s Janx’s second? Malik? Does that mean his life is on the line now?”

“That…is a difficult question. Yes,” Alban said abruptly. “Very probably. The difficulty is in how. We do not kill our own.”

“Malik’s not one of Daisani’s own.”

“We all are, in a way. We Old Races.”

“You have to hang together, or you’ll most surely hang separately?”

“As your founding fathers aptly said, yes.”

“Is that why Janx and Daisani haven’t killed each other?”

“I’m not certain they would anyway. They’re in the habit of one another, as well. They’ve been playing this game for a long time.” Alban lifted broad shoulders and let them fall again. “But Eliseo may make an example of Malik, despite convention.”

“Good,” Margrit said viciously, and lifted her chin in defiance as Alban’s eyebrows rose. “I don’t like him. He scares me.”

“Malik scares you.”

Margrit’s chin rose higher. “Yeah.”

“You bargain with Eliseo Daisani, Janx has gained three favors from you and Malik frightens you?” Humor colored Alban’s voice.

Margrit wrapped her arms around herself defensively. “Janx has his own kind of honor, and Daisani…I don’t think I’m even worth killing. Unless that number doesn’t pan out and the guy who killed Vanessa disappears for good. Then I’ll probably get to be a six-o’clock-news object lesson. But Malik would hurt me just because he could. What happens if Daisani takes Malik out?”

“In my youth he would have been exiled for such an action,” Alban said slowly. “But he held less power in the human world then. Exile from the Old Races would mean comparatively little to him, and those of us who have to deal with him would find ourselves doing so regardless of his status. I don’t know, Margrit. Perhaps something like war, after all.”

Exile. The word echoed in Margrit’s thoughts as she looked up at the gargoyle. “Exile. You mean he’d be an outcast?” She remembered clearly the curl of Cara’s lip, the sneer in her voice as she labeled Alban that outcast. The arrogance seemed all the more out of place knowing the selkies were considered mongrels among the Old Races, but the dichotomy hadn’t bothered the thin-boned young woman at all.

Alban’s eyes glittered as he glanced at her. “Yes.” Weight burdened the word, a weight Margrit was certain she wasn’t meant to hear or understand. She put her hand out, gripping the table before she spoke.

“Is that what happened to you?”

The gargoyle went still, more profoundly still than any human Margrit had ever seen. Even his hair seemed too heavy to be moved, and his breath seemed as if it might never come again. “I shouldn’t be surprised,” he said finally. “In a matter of days you’ve become more conversant with our people than I have been in centuries.”

“What happened, Alban?”

“As you surmise,” he said after long seconds. “Nothing more and nothing less, Margrit. It isn’t something I care to dwell on. Hajnal died and I fled the Old World for the new, with only memories to live with.”

“That’s all? That’s all you’re going to tell me?” Margrit leaned forward, as if her intensity might draw more information from the gargoyle. A whisper of presence made itself felt in her mind, alien and familiar all at once, and she curled her fingers, as if she could hook them into shared memory. Her injured hand protested the action, and Alban shifted away, placing a subtle distance between them. Margrit’s eyebrows drew down. “What aren’t you telling me?”

He turned toward her with a faint smile. “Why do you think there’s something I’m not telling you?”

“Because you’re not letting memory ride me,” Margrit said, suddenly sure of herself. “You’re making certain it doesn’t.”

“I chose long ago not to share memory again, Margrit. I’d have been more cautious earlier if I’d known humans were sensitive to it.”

“Why?” she asked, mystified. “Why would you deny yourself that? The memories I got weren’t nice ones, but I’d think being alone after sharing a telepathic link with someone would be incredibly depressing.” The gargoyle shifted at the accusation, and Margrit caught her breath in recognition of his unintentional admission. “It is, isn’t it? How much of being an outcast is self-imposed? Why would you do that to yourself? Are you on a two-century sulk?”

Alban growled deep in his throat, and Margrit smiled, triumphant at forcing a client to acknowledge something he didn’t want to see. He wasn’t exactly a client, she reminded herself, but the principle remained the same. It was time to back away now, leaving him to stew over her words, making him wrestle with their truth. The tactic proved much more useful than continuing to push, in her experience.

“All right. Okay. I’ll let it go this time. We’ve got enough to deal with right now. What’s Janx doing, upsetting the balance like this?”

Alban looked past her, into the bookstore’s yellow light beyond the bead curtain. “Making a play I don’t understand,” he said after a moment. “To make a blow as direct as this one, whatever he’s doing, he must be very confident of his position.”

“Is Janx ever not confident?” Margrit asked wryly.

Alban blinked, then smiled at her. “No,” he admitted. “None of us tend to lack confidence. We’ve paid the price, though. There aren’t many of us left.”

“Maybe one more than you think.”

“I know,” Alban agreed. “The woman Ausra. Grace O’Malley knows her. Knew her,” he corrected. “She disappeared years ago.”

Margrit stared up at him. “When did you talk to Grace?”

“Just after sunset. She followed us yesterday and found the building I slept on. She was waiting when I woke up.”

A chill of irrational jealousy and concern swept over Margrit, lifting the hairs on her arms. “I spent all day worried about you,” she muttered childishly. “And she knew where you were?”

“Margrit.” Alban tipped her chin up, smiling down at her. “She offered me a daytime haven, nothing more.”

Margrit snorted. “So what’d she say about Ausra?”

His smile faded. “Very little. Grace knew what she was, not much more. She was dark-haired and small.”

“Like Hajnal,” Margrit said.

Alban’s eyebrows rose. “How did you know that?”

She looked down, feeling his gaze on her. “I’ve had a busy evening.” The events of the night suddenly overwhelmed her, the list of them leaving her without a place to start. She finally said, “Janx gave me this,” and took the sapphire from her pocket. It rolled in her palm, lamps making a bright star on its side, before she met the gargoyle’s eyes.

Alban took the stone with thick fingers, the least graceful move she’d ever seen him make. “Where did you-” He broke off, squeezing his eyes closed, and rephrased the question. “Where did he get this?”

“There was another murder tonight,” Margrit whispered. “The real killer this time, not Janx’s copycat. She left this at the scene.”

Alban jerked his head up, meeting Margrit’s eyes. “She?”

“Doesn’t it have to be? Someone’s trying to draw you out, blame you for the deaths of women who looked like Hajnal.”

Alban went gray, a bleaching of color that left him less human than before. “How do you know that?” he asked indistinctly. “I didn’t want to tell you-to frighten you.”

Margrit ducked her head. “I’m not easily frightened, remember?” The reminder of his words brought a brief smile to Alban’s face, and she exhaled. “Honestly, I’m already scared, Alban. I’m in way over my head. Anyway, Biali told me. More than told me,” she added, remembering the too-vivid shock in Biali’s memory at the gargoyle woman’s arrival. “I talked to him earlier tonight.”

“Biali. Janx. Daisani. Malik. Are there any of the Old Races you haven’t had truck with since I last saw you? Biali,” Alban repeated, then pressed his mouth in a thin line as he curled his hand around the sapphire. “I suppose I could’ve guessed. Tell me what it is you think,” he said without looking back at her. “Tell me what you’ve deduced, Margrit. I have no heart for speculation.” He seemed to age with the words, until Margrit bit back tears and took a tentative step toward him.

“She didn’t die. She got away somehow, and it’s taken her this long to find you again. Or maybe she’s been waiting for you to expose yourself and talk to somebody. All those other women who died-”

“Daylight hours, Margrit,” Alban reminded her heavily. “Hajnal, had she survived that night, could not have killed any of those women. They died during daylight hours.”

Margrit bared her teeth, frustrated at the reminder. “All right. Still, you’ve said you live alone, privately. Maybe you’re hard to find.”

“I have been so deliberately, though if someone…haunts me…then perhaps I haven’t been circumspect enough. Margrit, I saw-”

“You saw her dying. But dawn was close, and you said the stone heals you. Maybe she got away, Alban. Maybe she was too hurt to find you again. Ausra is Hajnal, Alban. I saw it in Biali’s memories. She was small and had black hair and amber skin and-”

“What?” Alban’s voice went hoarse. “You-what? Rode memory with Biali? ”

“I didn’t mean to. He didn’t mean to let me. I was asking him about Ausra and he said he didn’t know her, but this time a memory caught me. She walked right up to him and he said, ‘You’re dead.’ I saw it. They’re the same person. I think Hajnal must’ve gone crazy.” Insistence lost the battle to sympathy as Margrit concluded her argument.

Alban stared down at her, sightless. “We don’t-” he began.

Margrit shook her head. “Somebody who knows about gargoyles is out there killing people, Alban. Somebody who knows about you. Somebody who’s willing to risk exposing you all, just to hurt you. If the Old Races are so circumspect, isn’t what she’s doing insane?”

“It can’t be,” Alban said, but without conviction. “You…saw her?”

Margrit edged another step forward and wrapped her hands around his, around the sapphire in his palm. “I’m sorry. I know it shouldn’t be, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be. All kinds of things that shouldn’t be, are. Like us.”

“Us.” He looked down at her with weary, questioning eyes. Margrit’s heart skipped a beat and she wet her lips, trying for a smile.

“Us,” she said again. “I mean, a gargoyle and a lawyer? That can’t be written in the book of things that should be.”

“Is it wrong?” Alban wondered, without moving. “This thing that shouldn’t be?”

“No,” she whispered. “No, it’s not wrong.”

He straightened away from the table, making it creak again, and brushed a taloned finger against her cheek, pushing an errant curl back from her face. “It has been a very long time since someone said my name with hers, and meant us.”

Margrit gazed up into his eyes, unable to take a deep breath. “Maybe it’s time to start living again, Alban.”

“Perhaps it is.” He cupped her cheek in his palm, his hand dwarfing her skull. Smiling, Margrit turned her face into the touch as Alban lowered his head.

Beads rattled, a soft precursor to Chelsea’s voice. “Forgive me.” She shifted the curtain a few centimeters, enough to look into the back room. “Forgive me, but I thought you needed to know. There are police on the way.”