House of Cards

by C. E. Murphy

  “Pacing. Gargoyles are suited to hunching and brooding, not pacing and swearing.” She hopped down, leaving the shelves without a wobble. Grace O’Malley was perhaps the most graceful human Alban had ever known, almost as unfettered by bonds of earth as one of the Old Races. She slunk around him, languid humor warming her porcelain skin and curling her full mouth. Another man caught at the center of her prowling might have felt like prey. Alban’s stony form, though, stood easily a foot taller than Grace, and her slim body was no match for his in strength.

  Not until she’d made a full circle around him did she come to a halt, hands in the pockets of her black leather pants. “Why fight it? Your Margrit’s in it up to her neck no matter what you do. She made her own promises to the dragonlord Janx, without part or parcel of you, so there’s no escaping the Old Races, not for that one. If you want her, gargoyle, pursue her.”

  “It is not so simple as that.”

  “You’ve said the vampire gave her blood for health. Another sip brings long life, and he’s hungry to have a hook in her. You can get what you want, Alban, but not by sulking belowground. I offered you shelter in return for helping to watch over my children. I didn’t mean for you to pull the streets over your head and pretend the world wasn’t there. Go live. You might find it suits you.”

  “How do you know what you know, Grace?”

  “What?” She launched herself into motion and had her hand on the doorknob before he spoke again.

  “How do you know these things about the Old Races?” He had no illusions that the power of his voice might stop her, but he asked regardless. “That two sips of a vampire’s blood brings long life, or that I chose Margrit over one of my own. I’ve told no one that. You’re not one of us, just a human wo—”

  “Just.” Grace turned her profile to him, pale and sharp. “Now there you might have a problem with your lawyer lass, my friend. Humans don’t take kindly to being just anything.”

  Alban gritted his teeth with a sound of stone grinding on stone. “I meant no offense. You are a human woman beneath the streets of New York. Such people aren’t expected to be conversant with the Old Races at all, much less possessed of intimate details about us. How do you know so much?”

  “Grace has her secrets, love.” The answer came back to him coolly. “Living a half-life like this one, trying to give kids shelter and food, and keep them out of the gangs and in the schools, means learning things however you can, and playing what you’ve got for all it’s worth. That’s what brought you here.” She turned her gaze on him, eyes brown and calm beneath the startling whiteness of her bleached hair. “My knowing about your kind was enough to give you something to trust. That’s how we survive down here, gargoyle. I learn things and I keep my mouth shut. It’s hours till dawn,” she added as she pulled the door open. “Stay in like a sullen child if you will, but a man would find it in himself to step outside and take a stand.” The door closed behind her with a resounding clang, leaving Alban to bend his head.

  “You forget, Grace,” he murmured to the echoing chamber. “As does Margrit.” He lifted his head again, straightening to his full height of nearly seven feet, and spread taloned hands to study them in the candlelight. “You forget.

  “I am not a man.”

  The blankets weighed an inordinate amount, as if they were warm stone pressing Margrit into the bed. Flowing heat tickled her fingers, running over them like water. It contrasted deliciously with cold wind, though the chill was only a memory. She recognized strong arms and the clean scent of stone: the smell of the outdoors and wilderness wrapping her close and safe. Raw, sensual power, housed in such grace it hardly seemed he could be dangerous.

  Her heart beat faster as she shifted closer to her captor, desire building even through the confines of sleep. She knew the long hard lines of his body, harder than ordinary humans had words for. She had shied away from exploring those lines more than once, uncertain of how to breach a distance she barely understood. Now, though, she let herself be bold, pressing herself closer to brush her mouth against a stony jaw. Soft skin tasted of fine grit, like the rich flavor of dark earth and iron. He was too tall, even in flight, and she pulled herself up his body, an open act of intent as she hooked a thigh over his hip. His grip changed, holding her in place, and stone encompassed her as city lights spun below her, broad wings spread to keep her aloft with the man—

  Not a man, he whispered.

  Is this my dream or yours? Margrit demanded. Surprise coursed through her, then a wash of laughter rough as sand in water.

  Neither, I think, he replied. I hadn’t meant to think so strongly of you. Memory rides us. Forgive me, Margrit. Goodbye. A faint hint of wistfulness accompanied his final word: Again.

  The dream turned to falling, a short sickening plunge. Margrit jerked awake, covers clenched in her fists, breath cold and harsh. A nearly inaudible click sounded, followed by her radio alarm increasing in volume as she lay on the bed, staring through darkness at the ceiling.

  Irrational.

  TWO

  “MARGRIT?” HER NAME came through the door, hoarse with sleepiness. “Hey, Grit? You awake?”

  Margrit bundled herself in a towel, hair dripping in corkscrew curls down her back, and ran to yank the door open. Cameron, the taller of Margrit’s housemates, leaned on the frame with the telephone pressed against her pink-robed shoulder. Her eyes, barely open, closed all the way as a huge yawn squeezed tears from their corners. A second yawn overtook her as she thrust the phone at Margrit. “For you.”

  “It’s six-thirty in the morning.” Margrit took the phone in astonishment, putting it against her own shoulder to block their conversation from the person on the other end. “Who’d be calling at this hour? What’re you doing home?”

  “My six o’clock client canceled.” Cameron yawned again, this time shoving away from the door to stagger back to the bedroom she shared with her fiancé. “I’m supposed to be sleeping in. G’night.” She crashed into the door frame, muttering a complaint as she reoriented herself and made it through the bedroom door on the second try.

  Margrit watched Cam go, then brought the phone to her ear. “This is Margrit. Mother?”

  “Oh dear,” a pleasantly light-voiced man said, his voice infused with mirth. “No, I’m afraid not. I’m sure I could arrange to have her call, if you’d like, but it seems as though it would be rather melodramatic. To do it properly I’d have to kidnap her and make her call, angry and frightened, from the wa—”

  “Janx.” Margrit closed her bedroom door and slid down it, digging her fingers into her hair to hold her head up. “God forbid anybody should ever subpoena my phone records. Why are you calling the house instead of my cell? How in hell could I explain getting six o’clock phone calls from someone like you?”

  She avoided more descriptive terms deliberately, though they danced through her mind. Crimelord was the only one she was willing to give voice to, but it didn’t scratch the surface of what Janx really was. The handful of times Margrit had been in a room with him, it had been all she could do to keep breathing, his presence burning up the air. As well it should have: she’d gone in knowing he was of the Old Races, but not that she was dealing with a dragon. A red dragon, if ginger hair and flame-green eyes told the truth, though Margrit had no idea if it did, or if it mattered.

  “It’s six-thirty,” Janx said in injured tones. “And I tried calling your cell, but you didn’t answer. I thought young people today were connected twenty-four-seven. I’m very disappointed. But I could kidnap your mother,” he offered. “If you need the phone records explained, I mean. Or I could—”

  “You may not kidnap my mother, Janx.” The absurdity of chiding a man of Janx’s position—either crimelord or dragonlord—struck Margrit, and she steeled herself to keep a trace of laughter from her voice. “What do you want?”

  “Oh, Margrit, you hurt me. Can’t an old friend call up to say hello after a few weeks’ absence?”

  “Old friend?” Ma
rgrit kept her voice down with effort. “Pit vipers would be safer friends than you, and old friends don’t call at six in the morning unless they’re in real trouble. You can’t be in any trouble I could possibly help you with. The world’s not that capricious.” The accusation left aside the middling detail that Margrit, despite her better judgment, rather liked the fiery-haired dragon. “What do you want?”

  “Capricious,” Janx said with admiration. “Well done, for someone who protests she’s just been wakened.”

  “I’m a lawyer. I’m supposed to be capable of conversing with an augmented vocabulary in order to obfuscate an argument without exerting myself. Besides, I was already awake. What do you want?”

  “Better than a circus act,” Janx said happily. Then his bantering faded, a note of tension replacing it. “I require your services, Margrit. A balance has changed.”

  Margrit coughed in disbelief. “You called me up at six-thirty in the morning to give me cryptic messages? ‘A balance has changed’? What the hell does that mean? A balance changed in January when you had Vanessa Gray killed, Janx. Alban told me that you’d breached protocol by doing that. You’re not supposed to go around murdering people’s assistants, especially when they’ve been assisting for over a century. It’s not playing fair, or something.”

  “Margrit, my dear, I would never murder Eliseo Daisani’s assistant. That would be an inexcusable act of warfare.” Teasing lightened Janx’s voice again. Margrit groaned aloud and shook her head against the door.

  “Right. You don’t kill anybody yourself, right? You just hire people to do it.” Janx had all but confessed to arranging Vanessa Gray’s assassination, and it had been through his cell phone records that Margrit had helped the police track down the hired killer. The man had never gone to trial. Instead, shortly after his arrest, he’d been found spread in grisly detail across the Rikers Island prison courtyard. Rumor said the inmates were told he’d been arrested for child molestation, and had meted out their own justice. Margrit had no intention of asking whether Daisani had taken matters into his own inhuman hands.

  “Don’t be silly, Margrit. Of course I kill people.” Janx sounded downright cheerful, enough that she pulled the phone away to eye it. Uncomfortable as she was with the thought of the Old Races facing the human justice system, Janx’s bald-faced admission was beyond the pale.

  “I am a lawyer, Janx. You shouldn’t go around telling me you kill people.”

  “You’re not recording this conversation, are you?” Thin tension came back into Janx’s voice at the question, lifting hairs on Margrit’s arms. The dragonlord had rarely been anything but ruthlessly chipper in her experiences with him. She was certain she didn’t want to know what was making him cautious, and equally certain she would find out.

  “I don’t usually record my home phone calls, but if you’re going to be calling up regularly to make blanket confessions, I might start. What’s going on?”

  “We’ll discuss it this evening. I’ll send a car for you.”

  “Just as long as Malik’s not driving.” The djinn, Janx’s second in command, had none of the dragonlord’s peculiar sense of honor. That Malik coveted power had been obvious in Margrit’s first meeting with him, but he was no match in personality or intellect for Janx. A nasty, cruel man, he exercised what power he had over those he considered inferior, and Margrit numbered among them. Janx might play with her, cat and mouse, more interested in the game than domination, but Malik would simply hurt her until she broke or died. She had stood her ground against dragons and vampires, but it was the djinn who frightened her.

  Too late, she grimaced at the implied consent in her answer. “Don’t bother sending a car. I’ll get there myself.” Then impulse caught her and she asked, “Tonight?” with as much wide-eyed ingenuity as she could. “You don’t think my boss would be okay with me cutting out for a few hours to visit the notorious House of Cards and rub elbows with a gangster?”

  “If I’d gotten to him first,” Janx said mildly, “I have no doubt it could have been arranged. The situation, I fear, is otherwise, and so I’ll see you this evening. Goodbye, Margrit.”

  “If you’d—What? Dammit!” Margrit glowered at the silent phone, then got to her feet and stomped around the apartment as she finished getting ready for the day.

  A Town Car idled on the street, its driver leaning on the hood so he could watch her building’s front door. As Margrit exited, he snapped to attention, calling, “Ms. Knight? I’m your transportation.”

  Margrit looked both ways along the street, as if someone else might appear and answer to her name. “Are you talking to me?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He was a few years her elder, far too young to call her ma’am.

  Margrit glanced up the street again, a terse smile forming. “I’m sorry. There must be a mistake. Excuse me.” She turned and managed a few steps before the driver moved in front of her.

  “I’m supposed to give you this if there’s a problem, ma’am.” He offered a sleek cell phone, so small that his palm dwarfed it. “The number you want is programmed in.”

  “The number I want,” Margrit echoed disbelievingly, and took the phone with dismay curdling her stomach. A glass of orange juice had seemed like a good idea minutes earlier. Now it felt like a bottle of acid had been poured into her belly and left to churn. She pressed the dial button and raised the phone to her ear, wincing preemptively.

  “You have a problem, Miss Knight.” Eliseo Daisani sounded distressingly pleased to make such an announcement.

  Margrit, prediction fulfilled, bit her tongue and waited until her impulse to respond with sarcasm faded. “Good morning, Mr. Daisani. Coming from you, that’s an alarming statement.” Coming from Eliseo Daisani, almost anything could be alarming. The appalling quickness with which he moved came back to Margrit as forcefully as the taste of his blood had the night before.

  “Good morning,” he said, undeterred by her stiffness. “I think you’ll want to come to my office to discuss your problem, rather than stand there on the street.”

  “It’s a quarter to eight, Mr. Daisani. I’m on my way to work.” It was an obligatory line of defense that allowed Daisani to chortle indulgently.

  “Of course you are. I’ve already spoken with Mr. Lomax,” he assured her. Margrit bit her tongue again, this time on an exclamation of understanding. Daisani had gotten to her boss first, forcing Janx into the situation he called otherwise. “He can spare you for an hour or two,” Daisani went on. “Obviously, your ride is there, or we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

  Clichéd protests leapt to Margrit’s lips. “You can’t do this, Mr. Daisani,” was first and most obvious of them, though it was abundantly clear that he could, in fact, arrange her schedule to his liking. “I’ve asked you not to call me at work,” ran a close second, foiled by Margrit neither being at work yet nor having had the foresight to make that request. She said neither, clenching the phone and staring at the Town Car as people rushed by.

  Getting in constituted Daisani winning a round. Margrit ran her thumb over the phone’s number pad with a half-formed thought of calling her boss and asking if the business mogul had indeed arranged for her to come in late. She had no doubt, though, that he had, and that Russell would tell her not to be absurd by refusing the vehicle Daisani had sent for her. She’d end up going regardless, and only arrive at Daisani’s stunning corporate headquarters breathless from walking. Margrit flipped the phone shut and let the driver open the car door for her.

  Minutes later, the security guard at Daisani’s headquarters waved her in without asking for identification. Though it told her there was no chance she’d have turned Daisani down, not having to sign in made her feel better. She pushed the elevator button hard enough to hurt her finger, making a face at her own inconsistency.

  Polished brass walls inside the lift reflected her sour-faced image back at her. Margrit drew herself up, shaking off the countenance of ill temper. There was no point in facing Dai
sani already on-edge and sulky. When the doors whisked open, she stepped out with at least a semblance of good nature in place.

  On the surface, the front lobby of Daisani’s suites hadn’t changed since the last time she’d been there. It was opulent, with an enormous curved desk of pale wood dominating the room. No one sat behind the desk, and an embossed brown leather appointment book lay at a careful angle on its otherwise empty surface. The rest of the room was equally ostentatious, all the chairs antiques, many of them covered in rich red velvet that Margrit knew was as soft as it looked. Hardwood floors reflected inset lights from the ceiling, but not harshly; the whole room glowed with a warm, winning ambience.

  Because she knew where to look for it, a slightly paler patch on the wood-paneled walls revealed where a portrait had once hung. Margrit walked around the desk and touched the spot gently, unexpected regret rising to clog her throat.

  “Miss Knight.”

  Margrit flinched, yanking her hand away and twisting it behind her back as she faced Eliseo Daisani. “Mr. Daisani. I didn’t hear you come in.”

  The doors behind him, nearly twice the height of normal doors, were open just enough to let him step through. Their size emphasized his: Eliseo Daisani was not a big man, barely taller than Margrit herself. Framed by the doorway, he appeared almost delicate.

  “You look well behind that desk, Miss Knight.”

  Margrit managed a faint smile and stepped out from behind the desk. “You haven’t replaced Ms. Gray yet?”

  “Ms. Gray was irreplaceable. I believe I’ve mentioned that.” His glance skittered to the pale spot on the wall and he inclined his head slightly. “Perhaps I’m sentimental. The photograph is in my office now.”

  “I think even a vampire is allowed to be sentimental when somebody who was with him twelve decades dies, Mr. Daisani.”

  “When someone has been murdered.” Daisani’s words were gentle, but his expression contorted, barely holding back rage before a fresh facade of good nature rose to replace the darker emotion. “You’ve become bold since the last time I saw you. You wouldn’t have thrown that word around so lightly, before.”