by C. E. Murphy
“What about a family, Grit? What about a real life? You can’t have that with—him.”
“We haven’t gotten that far,” she said quietly. “Come on, Cole. Tony and I broke up two days ago, for heaven’s sake. I hadn’t seen Alban for months, not until this week.” She sighed, lifting her hands to her face. They were cold against her burning cheeks. “And it’s not impossible. If that’s what we decide we want.”
“What’s not? A family? A life? A family, Grit?” Cole’s voice rose in dismay. “How could you—”
“Look at me, Cole.” Margrit lowered her hands, spreading them and gesturing at her skin tones, then at the loose curls falling over her shoulders. “I come from two or three definable ethnic backgrounds. Bloodlines mingle. It’s not impossible.”
“But he’s not even—”
“It’s possible, Cole,” Margrit said more firmly. “You’re just going to have to trust me on that.”
Fresh horror bloomed across Cole’s face. “Trust y—You’re not pregnant, are you?”
“What?” Margrit stared at him, then flung her hands up. “No! No, I’m not pregnant! Jesus. Forget it. Forget it, I’m not having this conversation anymore. Jesus, Cole!” She stalked out of the kitchen to her bedroom, narrowly remembering not to slam the door and risk wakening Cameron.
Only when the door was closed behind her did her knees give out. Margrit slid to the floor, hands shaking as she folded them over her abdomen. Pregnant. That sort of risk was beyond her scope; she’d been on the pill since college, with no mishaps. Still, they’d used no other sort of protection, and she had no idea whether human medicine could stand up to alien invasion. Fingers pressed against her belly, Margrit shook her head and whispered, “I’m not pregnant.”
She woke up huddled on the floor beneath Alban’s silver-shot jacket, unable to remember when wide-eyed fretting had turned to sleep. Cameron’s voice slipped under the door, words indistinguishable. Margrit pushed up, wincing in anticipation of stiffness from sleeping on the floor.
Not a muscle complained. It startled her enough that she stopped trying to get to her feet and simply flexed and stretched, searching for soreness. “Daisani.” She breathed the name, almost a laugh, and sat all the way up. It was the little things that his gift surprised her with.
“Grit?” Cameron tapped on the door. Margrit got to her feet, yawning as she pulled it open. Cam had the phone pressed to her shoulder. “Are you awake? It’s Joyce Lomax.”
“Awake enough.” Margrit took the phone and knotted an arm around her ribs as she said, “Hello, Joyce. This is Margrit.”
“Margrit.” A shaky smile sounded in the older woman’s voice. “I have a favor to ask.”
“Anything.”
“I wondered if you’d be willing to speak at Russell’s service this evening.” Joyce’s voice cracked and Margrit bit her lower lip, trying to ward off sympathetic tears. “I know it’s very short notice, but I think he would have liked it. Most of the other speakers are older, and I think he would have liked a colleague from your generation to say something.”
Margrit pressed her fingers over her lips as tears stung her eyes sharply enough to hurt. Cameron put a hand on her shoulder, and Margrit tried to twist her crumpled features into a smile. “Of course I will.” Her own voice sounded as strained as Joyce’s. “I’m honored to be asked. Would you like me to come early and help with anything?”
Joyce sighed. “That would be wonderful. The children and some friends have been helping, but we’re all exhausted. Keeping busy is better than doing nothing, but…”
“I’ll be there at six,” Margrit promised quietly. “Take care of yourself, Joyce.” She hung up. Cameron stepped forward to wrap her in a hug.
“You doing okay?” her friend asked.
“I don’t know what okay is anymore, to tell the truth.”
Cam gave her a cautiously sly smile. “You sure about that?” She gestured to the tuxedo jacket and long shirt Margrit wore. “He’s not here. What’s the story with that? Don’t tell me he’s one of those guys who bails the second the alarm goes off.”
“No, he dropped me off last night.”
“In that?” Cameron squealed with delight. “Damn, sister! What happened to your dress?”
“Uh…” To Margrit’s dismay, a blush erupted over her cheeks. “It got lost.”
“Lost? Oh my God.” Cameron seized her hands and pulled her toward the bed. Margrit stumbled along after her, laughing despite herself, and sat down as Cameron plunked onto the mattress. “I want all the details, and I want them now.”
For a moment the impulse to blurt out all the details overrode everything else. Margrit bit the tip of her tongue to keep herself from speaking, and instead frowned uncertainly at her blue-eyed friend. “Do you remember the stained-glass windows in the speakeasy?”
Cameron’s smile faltered with confusion. “Yeah…? They made a picture when you put them together. Dragons and mermaids and stuff. So? Oh my God.” Her smile brightened again, her eyes widening. “Did he take you down there? That’s so cool! Did you lose your dress because security chased you out? Man, I never get to have any crazy sexual hijinks!”
Reality trumped the desire to confess. Cameron wouldn’t believe her without seeing what Cole had seen, and that had gone as badly as it possibly could have. Better to let it pass, and try to talk to Cole again later. Margrit dredged up humor, trying to keep a smile in place. “Something like that. I don’t know, Cam. You could talk to Cole about the sexual hijinks thing, but really, sneaking home through New York City when you’ve lost your dress and your underwear isn’t something I’d recommend.”
“You only say that because you’ve had a chance to do it. I think it sounds like exactly the sort of thing everybody should experience once.” Cameron squeezed Margrit’s hands, her expression growing a little more serious. “You like him, huh?”
“Yeah.” Her voice dropped. “Yeah, and Cole and I had a fight about him this morning, and this…it’s not going to be easy to make it work.”
“It wasn’t easy with Tony, either.”
“And look how that turned out.”
Cameron nudged her reassuringly. “Maybe it didn’t work with Tony because it wasn’t supposed to, Grit. What’d you and Cole fight about?”
This time Margrit didn’t have to quell the impulse to tell the truth. She only shook her head. “Alban in general, my new job, everything. He doesn’t like me dating the guy Tony suspected of murder a couple months ago. And he and Tony are friends, and…” And Alban was a gargoyle.
“We’re all friends. Unless you’re going to make us start choosing sides.” Cameron eyed her. “This isn’t going to be one of those breakups, is it?”
“I don’t think so. Although Cole’s angry enough to choose sides himself, maybe.”
“I’ll talk to him,” Cameron promised.
Margrit winced. “Let me try again first, okay? He’s got reason, I guess, and I don’t want to put you between us.”
“If you’re sure.”
“I am.” Margrit leaned over on the bed, snaking a hand beneath the pillow. “Besides, I’ve got protection if I need it.” She pulled out the small water gun Cameron’d had a few days earlier, and squirted her friend twice. Cam shrieked in dismay and jumped off the bed, hands making a useless shield.
“You’re sleeping with water guns? That’s a whole new kind of kink. Isn’t it leaking all over your mattress?”
Margrit waggled the gun threateningly, then tilted it, looking for leaks. “It hasn’t been, actually. This is not your standard-fare ninety-nine cent plastic water gun here. This is a top-of-the-line polyurethane-sealed .38 Special with a fitted cork plug that swells to keep the ammunition in place.”
Cameron squinted. “It is?”
“I have no idea, but it sounded good, didn’t it?” Margrit put the gun on her nightstand and got up, smiling. “It’s got a cork plug, anyway, and it doesn’t leak. I thought I’d start carrying it instead of my
pepper spray.”
“It’s neon-green, Grit. Nobody’s going to believe it’s real.”
“Well, maybe I can fill it with pepper spray or mint oil.”
“Minty fresh bad guys. I like it. Carry the pepper spray.” Cameron glowered, good nature only half masking her seriousness.
“I’ll become the most dangerous gun in Central Park. Mint oil in one hand, pepper spray in the other. Raar.” Margrit felt as if she was forcing levity, trying to ward off memories of the fight she’d had with Cole and the funeral service she had to face in a few hours.
Cameron’s scowl gentled, as if she suddenly understood what Margrit was trying to do. “Well, all right. But I expect you to show me both gun and spray before you leave the house today, young lady.” She hesitated, then added, “You want me and Cole to go with you to the service? You know we’d be glad to.”
“Cole’s pretty pissed at me. I don’t know if he would be.”
“He has his moments of being a jerk, but I don’t think he’d be that much of one.” Cam tilted her head toward Margrit’s bathroom. “Go take a shower and get ready to face the day. And when you come out again, I want you armed and dangerous.”
THIRTY
“I’M GOING TO tell her if you don’t, Grit.”
“She won’t believe you.” The water gun, its nozzle plugged with another cork, was actually tucked into Margrit’s trousers at the small of her back, beneath her suit jacket. Cameron had laughed out loud when Margrit had shown it off, just before Cole drew her aside to speak with her through clenched teeth. The whim to drench him caught her, and Margrit folded her arms over her chest to stop herself. “You wouldn’t have believed me if you hadn’t literally seen him with your own eyes. And it’s not my secret, or yours, to tell.”
“I don’t give a damn. I’m not keeping it from her—”
“You shouldn’t have to.” Margrit shook her head. “You shouldn’t have to. It’s too big and too weird to keep to yourself and you shouldn’t have to exclude her. But will you please at least give me a chance to talk to Alban first? He’s going to have to show himself to her to make her believe it.”
Even through Cole’s anger and dismay, Margrit could see the logic of her request hit home. He clenched his fists and fell back a step. “Will he?”
“Yes. He’d risk it because I trust you. I trust her. He trusts me. Cole…” She held her breath a moment, searching for the right thing to say. “Look, I’m sorry for some of the things I said this morning. I was—scared.” The degree of understatement seemed ludicrous. “I did pretty much the same thing the first time I saw him. I threw a…a bowl, I think, at his head. And then I ran away. The night the car hit me. That was the night the car hit me. Alban saved me.”
Cole made a choked sound of disbelief. “Tony would’ve seen him, Margrit. He would’ve said something.”
“Would he?” Margrit sighed. “It happened so fast, and would you believe your eyes if you thought something big and pale and winged had swept down and snatched me up? Or would you think, no, you must’ve seen me go flying, nothing else would make sense?” She offered an unhappy smile. “And I can’t ask him if he thinks he saw something impossible, because Alban’s life depends on secrecy.”
Frustration contorted Cole’s features as he opened and closed his hands. “You’re protecting him. You’ve been lying to all of us to protect that…thing.”
Anger bubbled in Margrit’s chest and she tightened her arms around herself, trying to keep it in. Letting Cole bait her only gave him control over the discussion. It did no one, least of all Alban, any good for her to rise to the fear and accusation in her housemate’s words. Still, several seconds passed before she trusted herself enough to say, “Yes,” in a neutral voice.
“I thought I knew you, Margrit.” Distrust hollowed Cole’s eyes. “I thought we were friends.”
“You do. We are. You have no idea how much I would’ve liked to have told you about all of this from the beginning.”
“You should have.”
Margrit swallowed. “Should plantation owners who helped run the Underground Railroad have told their families what they were doing, Cole? Should Germans who sheltered Jews have announced it to the neighborhood?”
Real anger flashed in Cole’s eyes, so sharp Margrit clenched her thighs to keep from stepping back. “That’s not the same thing at all, Grit.”
“Why not?” She kept her voice soft, knowing the argument Cole would make, but waiting to hear it said.
He didn’t disappoint her, though at the same time, he did. “Because slaves and Jews are human.”
Margrit nodded stiffly, her entire upper body swayed slightly with the motion. “Not if you asked most slave owners. Not if you checked Nazi doctrine.” She had once read a facetious argument that claimed that once Hitler came into a conversation, any rational discussion was over. She felt as if she balanced on that line, trying hard not to stray into overblown rhetoric. “You see my point?”
“I see it.” Cole bared his teeth. “I just don’t accept it.” He turned and walked away, leaving Margrit slumped by her bedroom door. She turned her wrist up, looking at her watch, and her shoulders sagged farther. It was hours until she had to be at the memorial service. She should’ve waited to shower and dress, and taken time to go for a run. Without consciously planning to, she pushed away from her door to find a pair of socks, then pulled her running shoes on.
“I’m going for a walk,” she said quietly and slipped out the door to no response from her housemates.
It wasn’t as good as running, but it was vastly better than being cooped up in the apartment with Cole’s censure hanging over her. Margrit stalked along, hands in her pockets, letting her feet take her where they wanted while her thoughts hopped in exhaustive detail from one moment of the past week to another. More than once emotion threatened to overwhelm her, making her steps unsteady as she worked her way through the park. It would have been easier with Alban at her side, but sunset’s refuge was still far away. She had to face daylight troubles alone, as long as she was with him.
Cole’s anger and fear came back to her, and she sat on a bench, face buried in her hands. Any fantasy of sharing Alban and his world with her friends and family had shattered at his reaction. Worse, promising Cole that she would explain to Cameron created a new level of danger for them. Margrit herself had petitioned to lift the law forbidding humans to learn of the Old Races, and had done so with full understanding of what could happen to those who couldn’t bear the weight of their secret. She hadn’t thought that threat would strike so close to home, or so quickly.
She would have to make him understand the necessity of silence. Margrit pushed to her feet again, mouth set in a grim line. Of all the shocks and upheavals in the last week, she might at least be able to address that one before anything terrible came of it. One small victory would seem a candle against the dark, and she would take whatever light she found.
“What is it you’ve done, love?” The soft transatlantic accent came out of nowhere, startling Margrit into a stifled shriek. Grace O’Malley, catlike in her amusement, sauntered up the pathway and took the seat Margrit had just abandoned. She spread her arms along the bench’s back, using all the space, and smiled at Margrit, though the expression didn’t reach her brown eyes.
Margrit glowered at her as much from envy as embarrassment at being taken off guard. She’d never seen Grace in daylight before. In the sun, her pale vibrance was set off even more dramatically by a black trench coat. Some of her height came from the extra-thick soles on her heavy boots, but even without them she was taller than Margrit. Sprawling across the bench showed her long limbs to their best advantage. Her platinum-blond hair, cropped short, had much darker roots, a nod toward humanity that Margrit imagined would be bleached away again in a day or two.
Not that the leather-clad vigilante was inhuman, according to Alban. She was merely leggy, gorgeous and looked good with the pale gargoyle, which was offensive enough. Margri
t’s glare faltered into rueful humor. She approved of what little she knew about Grace, and if Alban found her attractive, it seemed evident he found Margrit more so. “What do you mean, what have I done?”
“I’ve been watching.” Grace pulled herself together, taking up less room on the bench, and Margrit sat down again. “The ice rink. The ball. You’ve got them all dancing to your tune.”
Margrit laughed in disbelief. “I wish I had your confidence about that. You’ve been watching? Why?”
“What goes on with you and yours affects me and mine. Don’t pretend you’re not the fulcrum, love. Change swirls around you like a maelstrom, and you stand steady at its center.”
“You’ve got a funny idea of steady. I’m barely keeping my head above water.” Margrit shifted, uncomfortably aware that, protests aside, Grace had a point. “I didn’t mean for all of this to happen. Everything has just snowballed, from the night I met Alban. What was I supposed to do, dig a hole and put my head in the sand? Snowball and sand,” she muttered. “I’m mixing my metaphors.”
“Might have been better. Grace likes a steady boat, and you’re running like a mad thing, trying to overturn it.”
“Like I overturned the demolition of your building in Harlem?” It hadn’t been Grace’s building at all; it had been one of Eliseo Daisani’s properties. But beneath it lay one of the major hubs for Grace’s complex under-city existence. Daisani had deliberately moved against her, in retaliation for Grace exposing his subway speakeasy to the world. “How did he even know that building’s subbasement was one of your centers, anyway?”
Grace’s voice sharpened. “He’s Eliseo Daisani. What doesn’t he know, if he wants to? I didn’t think anyone used it,” she said more lightly, though it sounded as if doing so cost her. “That chess set down there with the selkies and the djinn, well, I recognized that, didn’t I? But the place was sealed off tight as a tomb, not even any dust to come filtering down. If I’d known the Old Races still used it, I’d never have shown it to the city, good press or no.” She brought her focus back to Margrit, a crinkle appearing between her eyebrows. “But aye, even that, like overturning the demolition of that building. It would have wreaked hell with our network, but vengeance would’ve been a done deal and all of us let alone after that. Now?” She opened her hands, a fluid gesture that reminded Margrit of Janx’s grace. “Now we’re still riding the troughs and peaks of the storm you’re stirring up.”