A Dream of Stone & Shadow

by Marjorie M. Liu

  “I know that, too. Would you like me to take you to him?”

  “If I say yes, will I be writing my own death?”

  “Oh,” said the woman, and her red lips curled, just so, like petals. “I can think of something far more interesting than mere death.”

  “That’s good,” Aggie said. “Let’s go.”

  The witch lived in the Merchant City, a place where Aggie had spent quite some time. Apparently the wrong time, because she certainly had not seen anything that would indicate a witch keeping house with a captive gargoyle.

  But there, at a warehouse Aggie remembered passing on at least three separate occasions, the witch pulled out a set of keys and said, “Mi casa es su casa.”

  “That’s quite all right,” Aggie said. “I think you have enough people in your home.”

  The witch smiled—and her teeth are white and sharp, and the pot bubbles as she says, “Have a bite, you’ll like this, since gargoyles are to your taste”—and a shift, a—knife that she holds—and—blood—and pushed open the door. Aggie, blinking, reading violence and sickness and death, followed her up the stairs.

  The home was surprisingly mundane. The kitchen was dressed in steel and black and gray, with splashes of red tile; fruits and vegetables covered a long wood table. Something boiled on the stove. Aggie remembered gargoyle, and her stomach hurt.

  “So,” said the witch, as she put away her book and purse. “Let’s get down to business. I assume you’ve come to fetch Charlie.”

  “Yes,” Aggie said, and the future spun yet more blood, more viscera; the knife in the witch’s hand was long and sharp. The probabilities were high. Aggie was going to die very soon.

  The witch made a humming sound. Aggie wondered just what the limits of her powers were, but she decided the woman was not a mind reader when she said, “I can’t imagine what you plan to offer me—or even if Charlie would go with you. He has his brothers to think of, and I simply won’t allow them to leave. It’s a matter of pride.”

  “I don’t know anything about his brothers,” Aggie said, “but I do understand Charlie’s loyalty.”

  “Yes, I suppose you do.” The witch wandered to the stove. “Are you hungry? I think you might like this. Charlie…made it.”

  Aggie thought, I am going to fucking rip you apart. But instead she said, “No, thank you.”

  The witch smiled. She opened a drawer and picked up a knife, pressed the tip of it against her palm until she bled. She spoke a sharp word. Aggie felt the hairs on her body lift. Aggie saw in her head—bullets hitting the witch’s chest and falling harmlessly to the ground—the knife darting quick at her neck, blood spurting—her heart in the pot, cooked with gargoyle in a soup—and variations of the same: Aggie fighting, Aggie screaming, Aggie being killed. The witch always deflecting her blows with a smile.

  Except for one time. One precious variation.

  “You’re scared,” said the witch. “I can see it on your face.”

  “Yes,” Aggie said. “You scare me. Does that make you happy?”

  “I suppose so, though it also disappoints me. I…studied you, when I discovered Charlie’s fascination. Very tough woman. Macho, even. Take no prisoners. And you are different”—she tapped her head—“up here. All of your friends are different.”

  Aggie said nothing. The witch tilted her head. “I have been entertaining guests lately, people who are like you. They also work for an organization. For a time, I thought perhaps yours was one and the same.”

  Aggie buried her emotions, the conflict those words stirred in her. Only recently had the agents at Dirk & Steele discovered they were not alone. The other side—and there appeared to be several groups, all rivals—was dangerous. And if one of them was trying to recruit this woman, who was so patently cruel and powerful…

  We’re in deep shit. They’re one step ahead of us, and we don’t even know we’re in a race.

  “Where’s Charlie?” Aggie asked. “I want to see him.”

  “A kiss before dying?”

  Aggie did not answer. The future had suddenly gone dark inside her head. Book closed, probabilities lost. Her gift had copped out on her, and again, at the worst time.

  Remember what you said? You’re making your own future now.

  Faith, then. Faith, and the memory of what she did have.

  “Charlie,” Aggie said again, and did not look at the knife.

  The witch smiled. She pointed to a door set in the stone wall off the kitchen. Aggie waited for a moment, then walked to door. Glanced one more time at the witch, who stood watching like a perfect deadly little doll. The future lay quiet.

  Aggie opened the door. She was not sure what to expect, she had caught only glimpses before, but what lay before her stole her breath.

  The entire floor of the room was covered in sand. Inside the sand, a circle. Beyond the circle, three stone statues of winged creatures, and inside, at the center, curled in a ball was another body, this one made of flesh. Aggie saw wings and silver arms, long silver legs, and part of a hard stomach. The face was hidden, but she saw wild hair, silver and blue and black.

  She stepped into the room, walked to the circle and stopped. Instinct. She did not think she would survive crossing that line in the sand.

  “Charlie,” she said, and her voice was loud. It echoed, though the room was not large.

  The body stirred, uncurled. Red eyes peered at her from a face that was strong and bony and utterly inhuman.

  But not ugly. Charlie had been so wrong.

  “Agatha,” he whispered, and it was odd, so odd, to hear his voice—that lovely gentle voice—come from a real face, a moving mouth. She wanted to touch that mouth; she wanted to press herself close and feel his warmth, his breath, his voice in her ear. No more illusion. Just flesh and blood.

  Relief poured through her muscles; her knees trembled, but she did not fall down. She did not cry. She wanted to do both those things, but she felt the witch behind her and she could not afford weakness. She looked into Charlie’s eyes and she tried to tell him, tried to make him understand what she felt, and he nodded, slowly. She saw the same message in his eyes—and God, it was good to see his eyes, no matter their color. It was good to see his face and not some shadow, some replica. The truth was so much more beautiful. A perfect accompaniment to a brave and lovely soul.

  “So there is your gargoyle,” said the witch. “Are you disappointed? Were you expecting a prince?”

  Aggie smiled at Charlie. She did not bother answering. It was a waste of breath. Charlie’s silver lips curved upward. He stood, slow, and his height was immense. He folded his wings around his body; they covered him like an iridescent cape made of silver skin and pink veins and light bone.

  But there was terrible fear in his eyes. As much fear as love, and Aggie looked down, away, because she could not bear to see it. She turned to face the witch.

  “What do I have to do?” she asked.

  “No,” said Charlie in a hard voice. “No bargains.”

  “He’s right,” said the witch. “I don’t bargain. And I am going to kill you. I just wanted Charlie to see it with his own eyes. He’s such a hopeful creature. I think he really did believe you would find him.”

  “He was right to believe,” Aggie said, and she felt him stand directly behind her. She imagined his warmth spreading out through the circle against her back, embracing her body down to her soul.

  The witch played with her knife. “If I was a better person, this would be the moment when I let you both go. I would change my ways and become good, and this would be my first act of redemption.”

  “It’s not too late for that,” Charlie said.

  “I think it is,” the witch said. And then, to Aggie: “I made a spell. You might have seen me do it. You cannot hurt me.”

  “I know,” Aggie said. “I wasn’t going to try.”

  The witch swayed close. “You have a gun in your pocket. You won’t use it? Not a bullet, then? Not a fist in my face? No
scratching and clawing to save yourself or the gargoyle you love?” She studied Aggie’s face. “I didn’t expect you to be a quitter. You’re committing suicide.”

  Aggie thought about fighting, using her gun. Violence would be easy.

  But it would also be the wrong choice. She had seen the bullets fall and her throat cut and her body eaten. No amount of fighting would save her from that. Nothing at all could do that.

  You’ll see, Emma had said, and it was true. The future had passed before her in all its infinite variations, spilling probability, and Aggie remembered. One time. One chance at life, and while she did not know why or how, it was still her only choice, an inexplicable leap of faith. And though it was terrible, terrifying, she made it.

  Aggie looked at the witch and waited.

  “Agatha,” Charlie growled, desperate. “Don’t, Agatha. Do something. Fight. Run.”

  The witch hesitated.

  “What?” Agatha asked. “Are you changing your mind?”

  “It’s unnatural,” came the reply. “What you’re doing.”

  “No,” Aggie said, and she glanced over her shoulder at Charlie. “Death really isn’t a high price to pay.”

  “All right, then,” said the witch—and plunged the knife into Aggie’s chest.

  She did it fast; there was no time to react. Aggie heard Charlie scream as she fell to her knees, and thought, Oh, shit, that was the wrong choice.

  But as Aggie began to slump sideways, she gazed up to find the witch staring down in horror at her own pale chest—at the blood seeping between her own breasts, a mirror to Aggie’s injury.

  “Impossible,” breathed the witch. “You cast nothing. There was nothing in you…”

  Her voice trailed away and the woman staggered, falling clumsily to the ground beside Aggie, who watched with a numb sense of victory as her foe slumped on her elbows and then her side, gulping for air, fingers fluttering against the wound beside her heart. The witch’s hair lost its luster, receding like coiled snakes to her scalp. Aggie saw gray. She saw a lot of other things, too—spinning lights, sparkling, as the pain hit and her body became one open nerve. The knife still jutted from her chest. Bad aim, though. It had missed her heart. Not that it mattered in the long run.

  “How?” whispered the witch, her eyes rolling around and around in their sockets, unable to focus.

  “Don’t know,” Aggie breathed, weakness flooding her limbs, trailing darkness through her mind. “But I think you’re dying…and I just can’t bring myself to feel sorry about that. You’ll be gone and he’ll be free. I’ve seen it. And that’s all that matters to me.”

  Charlie still screamed. Aggie heard a beating sound, rough, like wings, like stone scraping, cracking, hammers slamming on rock, and it was terrible—those terrible sounds, violent and fierce like a tempest, like death—and Aggie, darkness fluttering in her eyes, thought, Yes, even demons would be scared of that.

  Blood, everywhere. Hers and the witch’s, mixing and soaking into the sand. Aggie stared at the witch, the dying woman, watching that blood pour from her body, and saw her make that final breath, the slow exhale.

  Then Aggie closed her eyes and died.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  It was a dream of light and warmth, a sickle-shaped sun inside her chest, glowing bright and brighter, burning her skin, and she heard a voice say her name gently, and then loud, louder and louder until she opened her eyes.

  For a moment Aggie forgot herself and she almost became a fool. A screaming fool. But memory swept through her mind, stealing away the scream in her throat, and as her vision cleared and she focused on the four monstrous faces looming over her, relief and victory took the place of fear, and she wanted to weep for the joy it gave her.

  She recognized only one of the gargoyles. Red eyes blinked inside a silver face ravaged by grief.

  “Charlie,” she whispered, but he did not say anything except to make a low noise, a gasping choke, and he buried his face against her shoulder and neck. Wings dragged over her body. She smelled of blood and sweat. Stone. Fire. Her chest hurt like hell.

  “You’re free,” she breathed. “I guess it worked, then. Wow. That’s good.”

  “Lady,” said one of the gargoyles standing above her. “You got some brass knockers down there.”

  He was a darker shade of silver than Charlie, but his size was the same, as were his wings. His chest was shaped differently. More ridges. Same with his face, his jutting brow. The other two beside him were a little broader through the chest, somewhat shorter, but their faces were less bony. She wondered absently, shape-shifting powers aside, how any of them ever passed as human. That was some trick.

  “Charlie,” Aggie said again. She tried to move her arm to pat him on the back, but was too weak. “Charlie, are you okay?”

  He shuddered and pulled himself just far enough away to stare into her eyes. “Do I look okay?”

  “You’re alive,” she said, feeling stronger. “So yeah. You look pretty damn good.”

  Charlie groaned and squeezed shut his eyes. He rolled off her body, sprawling on his back in the sand. Aggie felt very small next to him. She looked down at her chest. The knife was gone. There was a hole in her shirt, lots of dried blood, and beneath all that, a scar.

  “How?” she asked them.

  “My brothers,” Charlie said, unmoving. “It’s why the witch wanted them.”

  “We’re mages,” said the one who had spoken to her first. “It’s rare amongst our kind. The witch knew it. She wanted to control us, siphon off our powers for her use alone.”

  “What about Charlie?”

  “I was away from home,” he said. “And I’m no mage.”

  “But the rest of you can bring people back to life? Is that what you did for me?”

  The three looked at each other; Aggie was not sure she liked their expressions. Human or not, their faces were still an open book. A symptom of bad liars, she thought.

  “Under the right circumstances,” one of them said, “we can resurrect the recently dead.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said. “But…”

  “But everything has a price,” said the other. He had green hair, Aggie noted.

  “That doesn’t sound good,” she said. Charlie stirred beside her and propped himself up on his elbow. Gazed down at her with eyes that were exasperated, a mouth that curved with affection and a body that leaned so protectively over hers that Aggie felt like she was stretched beneath a great stone wall.

  “I told you that gargoyles live longer than humans,” he said. “I gave you part of that life. My life. So Aggie, the next time you croak, so will I. So please, don’t go throwing yourself on any more knives. Or bullets. No more car chases, either.”

  “You’ll be asking me to check into a nunnery next.”

  His brothers laughed out loud. Charlie gave them dirty looks. He climbed slowly to his feet and then said to her, “I’m going to move you now. Are you ready?”

  “Yes,” she said, and he very carefully scooped her up into his arms. She looked down. The knife lay on the ground nearby. So did the witch.

  “She aged,” Aggie remarked. White hair, deep wrinkles, shriveled breasts and bony hips. Blood covered her.

  “Everything before was an illusion.”

  Aggie did not feel much when she looked at her. Empty, maybe.

  “How did you know?” Charlie asked. “How did you know that giving yourself up like that was the right thing to do?”

  “Even we have no idea how you did it,” said one of his brothers. “We have never seen a spell backfire in such away.”

  “I saw the future,” Aggie said. “There was only one variation where she died and Charlie was free, and that was the one I chose. I didn’t think of the how or the why.”

  “But you knew you would have to die.”

  “I was going to die anyway, Charlie. I just didn’t want it to go to waste.”

  Charlie sucked in a great deep breath. His brothers stood around, solemn. Agg
ie soaked in their bodies: wings and eyes and strong bony faces. Odd and beautiful.

  She felt tired. Charlie said, “Sleep, Agatha. I’ll be here when you wake up.”

  “Good,” she murmured. “I missed you.” And then, lulled by his movements, she fell into a sweet darkness.

  Charlie did not lie. He was there when she opened her eyes. He stood at a window, wings draped over his shoulders. He looked like a gothic angel. The room was dark. Aggie lay on a wide bed and the sheets were cool and soft on her body. She was not wearing any clothes.

  She did not say anything for some time. Just watched him.

  Finally, though, she said, “You lied.”

  Charlie jumped, and it was nice knowing she could surprise someone like him. That he was twitchy, no matter how medieval he looked. He walked to the bed and sat gingerly beside her. The mattress groaned, as did the bed frame.

  “I would never lie to you,” he said.

  “You said you were ugly.”

  A smile tugged on his lips. “I still think I’m ugly. By human standards, anyway.”

  “And by gargoyle?”

  He shrugged, but his smile grew. Aggie laughed. Her chest did not hurt, but she winced anyway. Reflex. Charlie’s smile died.

  “You scared me to death,” he whispered. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

  “I didn’t have a choice. I told you. I was going to die, anyway.”

  “Then you shouldn’t have come to me. I was stupid to tell you where I was. You could have been killed. You were killed. Agatha…I had no future beyond death until I met you and Emma. And then…then you go and….” He stopped.

  “I’d do it again,” she said softly. “Or do you regret killing yourself every time you came to me and Emma?”

  “That’s different, Agatha. I was able to come back to life.”

  Aggie sighed. “I’m sorry, Charlie.”

  He shook his head. “Don’t be. I wouldn’t want to live without you, anyway.”

  Her heart hurt hearing those words. Charlie looked quickly away, eyes downcast. He began to stand, but Aggie grabbed his hand. His skin was warm and leathery. He went very still when she touched him. She tried to see his future—their future—but her mind remained dark and quiet.