I also felt his discomfort keenly, in that undefined place inside where we shared our strange kind of connection. So I kept my questions confined to his abilities, rather than anything about his appearance.
I’d told Sebastian once that he was still the same person, and I’d meant it. The shape of his face, the curve of his smile, even the way he’d crinkle up his nose before making a funny comment. All of it was the same boy from school.
But he had changed, and I couldn’t pretend it was just what was obvious on the outside. I heard it in his voice. I saw it behind his eyes. The months we’d spent apart after the Circe left town had changed me, too – not in the same way, but I knew I looked at life differently. I’d only just gotten to know Sebastian before he became my guardian. Now, I was getting to know him again, but slowly this time, and with more deliberate steps.
I bit my lip. There was so much I wanted to ask him – a thousand questions about this new person he’d turned into. Out of curiosity, sure, but more than that. Out of wanting to understand, of wanting, somehow, to comfort him, to let him know …
But I didn’t dare tread into that territory. It was way too fragile for him. I knew because I’d catch him – when he thought I wasn’t looking – staring at his hands, turning them over, palms down, to examine his claws – all the time with such a look of self-loathing that I felt it like a slap. I’d seen the way his gaze drifted to the edges of his wings as he walked, again with that same haunted and awful look. But never, ever when he knew he was being observed.
He took their stares – the others in the camp that made me ashamed of my troupe. Sebastian took everything with a firmly controlled grace that I hoped I would one day be capable of myself. Only the Marksmen seemed to affect him. And, I was forced to admit, Quentin, most of all.
I realized I was still squeezing Sebastian’s hand, and I quickly let it go.
‘Hey,’ said Katie, leaning over me. ‘You’re going to break that.’
I shook myself awake and I glanced down at the dandelion pendant in my hand. I wasn’t aware I’d taken it off, yet here it was, clenched so tightly between my fingers that when I opened my hand, I could see the indentions the edges of the glass left in my skin.
Katie yawned loudly. She pulled out a chair; its legs scraped gratingly against the tile floor. She plopped down next to me. ‘Josie, talk to me.’
‘There’s nothing to say, really. You heard everything.’
‘That’s not what I mean.’
I smoothed my hair across the back of my neck and replaced the necklace, tucking it under my collar. I stretched my legs underneath the table. They felt stiff and sore. I touched my right leg, feeling the large rip in my jeans I’d gotten from sliding across the road. I hadn’t given it a thought since we’d returned, but now, I became aware of a dull throbbing in my shin.
‘Josie.’
Katie’s voice was less soft. More demanding. Her emotions were always on display, turning feelings turned into words as fast as she felt them. I felt a prick of jealousy towards her open nature, immediately followed by a stab of guilt. Hadn’t I confessed to Sebastian just days ago that I didn’t really have any real friends? But, that wasn’t true.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, not as a cop-out this time. ‘Katie, I’m really, really sorry. You’ve been … I mean, I couldn’t ask for a better friend. And I know I’ve said that before, but I’m going to prove it to you this time, I promise.’
Katie shrugged. ‘Hey, you don’t have to prove anything to me.’
‘Yeah,’ I replied. ‘I do.’
She kept a casual expression on her face, but she couldn’t hide the hint of smug triumph. ‘Look, I know you think I don’t get all of this. And, well, maybe you’re right. A little. But I get the stuff that counts, I really do. And what counts the most is being here for you, okay? I’m sorry if I’m pushy. Well, no, I take that back. I’m not sorry.’ A grin brightened her features. ‘People like you need it sometimes. Otherwise, I’d never get any details. Just like some other people I know.’ Katie rolled her eyes. ‘I swear, you and Sebastian really were made for each other.’
Made for each other.
The words turned me hot and cold, all at once. Sebastian and I were bonded, no doubt. Guardian and charge. I knew now there was so much more. But there was Quentin. There was my family, my position – and the unclaimed throne, which I had pushed so far away from me that I didn’t even want to see the Queen.
The Queen.
I let out a frustrated cry. ‘What am I doing?’
Katie looked at me doubtfully. ‘You mean, besides sitting here talking to me?’
‘I need to go see my aunt.’
‘The … Queen?’ asked Katie, using the word hesitantly.
‘I told Hugo I’d wait until he got back from the Court of Shadows. Well, he’s back, and I need to see her.’ I pushed myself away from the table with more force than was required. ‘I know we have a plan for what to do if Sebastian’s found guilty, but I don’t want him to be found guilty, Katie. He didn’t kill Karl.’ I felt a burning in the back of my throat. ‘He’s never done anything wrong. He doesn’t deserve that.’
‘But the Queen’s out of town, remember?’ said Katie. ‘That Marksman guy with the D name told Hugo she was gone on business and wouldn’t be back until the trial. Right?’
The air deflated out of me like a balloon. ‘Right.’
Just like that, I was back to that helpless lump of nothing again. I smoothed my shirt over my stomach, using the movement to calm my fidgeting fingers. There was a time I used to consider myself patient, content to wait for things and trust in the structure of my clan and of our ways.
The floorboard in the hall creaked, and right after that, Esmeralda appeared in the kitchen. She didn’t stop at the table, and she didn’t even look our way. Instead, she headed straight for the back door, undoing the chain lock with one hand.
‘Where are you going?’ I asked, standing.
She opened the door. ‘Out.’
‘No, you don’t,’ I said, suddenly finding a mass of hot anger that I thought had cooled. ‘Not by yourself.’
Ezzie glanced over her shoulder. ‘I must. The chimera from earlier has returned. Whether it came because it was tracking Hugo’s parents, or because it smelled so much Gypsy flesh in one place, I can’t be certain. But since I’m the only protector this clan currently has, I’m going to make sure it does not threaten any under this roof.’
Katie screwed up her face. ‘Gypsy flesh?’
Esmeralda studied her with the patience of someone contemplating the actions of a small child. ‘Yes, Katie Lewis. Shadow creatures need meat. For a chimera – vile abominations that they are – this isn’t limited to just partaking of wild animals.’
Katie’s eyes went super wide. ‘Does that mean that gargoyles … do you … I mean, you don’t do that, too … do you?’
The patient expression warped quickly into one of offense. Ezzie straightened to her full height, shoulders back. ‘That would be murder,’ she replied darkly. ‘Punishable by death, as well it should be. Human life is precious, and to take it would be to sin against the Maker himself.’
Katie backed up. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean—’
‘This world is new to you,’ said Ezzie. ‘I realize there is much you don’t understand and even more that you haven’t yet seen.’ Her countenance softened. ‘You’re forgiven.’
Katie smiled for a second, then puckered her lips. ‘Okay, so chimeras are evil, but that doesn’t really explain why these things need to eat people.’
To my surprise, Ezzie didn’t seem irritated, or even offended, anymore. There was a strange, ghostliness in her eyes.
‘It’s not a need,’ I said, understanding. ‘It’s a want.’
Ezzie nodded. ‘Keveco Romany, in his wisdom, was able to take what was once a force of evil destruction and shape it into something good – defenders of the Roma, pledged to the safety and justice of those who did not have such.
But without a human component inside them, shadowen are no different from the terrible monster from whom we are descended.’
‘The terrible monster,’ I repeated. ‘La Gargouille.’
A conflicted look passed over Ezzie’s features like a dark cloud. ‘Yes.’
My throat closed up, like I was being choked. I couldn’t accept it, the claim that Sebastian encompassed everything that was La Gargouille. It felt like a never-ending nightmare, worse than any I’d been subjected to all those months before he came into my life.
No, it wasn’t that I couldn’t accept it. I refused to accept it. Sebastian hadn’t become a monster after he transformed from that sweet, shy boy into a living, breathing gargoyle. And he wasn’t a monster now.
The assurance of that fact awakened something in me, gave me new life and energy. ‘Ezzie, if you’re going out there to fight a chimera, you’re going to need help. You said yourself it was only your reputation that kept it from attacking before.’
‘That’s true,’ she replied. ‘But this time, I am more prepared.’
She turned around fully now, and I saw a weapon at her side. It resembled a medieval mace, but each of the spikes sparkled with a sheer diamond coating. My eyes widened. I knew how rare diamond weapons were, and I’d never seen anyone apart from a Marksman wield one this large.
‘Where did you get that?’
She held it up to the light, creating an odd picture. A woman with red-streaked black hair, standing in a farmhouse-style kitchen, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, with her eyes sparking silver and a glittering mace in her grip.
‘Zindelo,’ she replied. ‘The Sobrasi also have access to such defenses.’
She stepped out onto the covered back porch, but Katie and I were on her heels. Ezzie was nearly down the steps when she abruptly stopped, forcing us to do the same before we ploughed into her. Esmeralda was only a couple of inches taller than me, but at that moment, she might as well have been a skyscraper.
‘This is not where you need to be, Kralitsa.’
I brushed aside the formal title. ‘I’m sick of being helpless.’
She paused at that, her forehead creasing, and lines appearing on either side of her mouth, aging her in the way a hard life ages some people. ‘I know,’ she replied, in an empathetic tone. ‘Perhaps you won’t be much longer. For now, you and Katie go back inside and wait for me until I return.’
Esmeralda Lucian leapt off the last step, mace raised menacingly. She rounded the back of the house and melted into the oppressive night. I waited a few seconds, listening carefully. Then I eased down the stairs.
Katie grabbed my arm, the question written plainly in her eyes. I found myself smiling back at her, more than I had all night, more than I probably should have. I pulled my knife from my back pocket and shrugged.
‘I don’t always do what I’m told.’
19. Josephine
We hid behind the hedges lining the back yard of the Dandelion Inn. My tennis shoes were soundless on the thick grass, but Katie’s sequined flip-flops made a slapping noise with every step. I wasn’t sure how good Esmeralda’s hearing and scent were as a former gargoyle, but I didn’t want to make things any more obvious than they already were.
‘What are we doing, exactly?’ Katie whispered harshly in my ear.
‘I just want to make sure Ezzie’s okay.’
We got as far as the garden gate when I saw Ezzie pull up short in the center of a wide row of tomato plants and look in our direction. I hadn’t tried to persuade Katie not to follow me, since I knew she was just as stubborn as me, but she was scared.
Fear wasn’t a bad thing. It was a natural part of my balancing acts at the Circe. Not too much of it, though, just enough to sharpen your senses and keep you aware of your surroundings.
The houses on either side of the inn were still dark. It was early Sunday morning, I realized, which meant no one was stirring yet. The sky had shifted from bluish-black to nearly gray, clinging to the last remnants of night.
I stared hard into the garden, straining to see. Ezzie’s attention shifted back to the rows of plants, and she hunched low. The mace glittered faintly, catching some bit of light that filtered through the curtained windows along the back of the house.
The thick branches of the overhanging trees swayed under the stirrings of a breeze. I brushed a strand of hair out of my face. It was slick with sweat. The air around me thickened, humid and sticky, like it did after a rain shower.
Esmeralda glanced to the left, and then she ducked into one of the rows. I moved forward and hurried along the length of a line of potatoes, trying to catch sight of her again. Katie copied me, but her shoulder pressed into mine. An inhuman screech sounded inside the garden.
I shuddered and looked at Katie. She immediately read my thoughts. She shook her head vehemently, and when she spoke, her voice was a harsh, snapping whisper.
‘Ezzie told us to stay inside.’
‘What if she needs help?’
‘She’s one of these things! I think she knows what she’s doing.’
I turned the knife over in my hand for a better grip and started down the row. Katie, for all her protests, fell in right beside me. Up ahead, a clump of tall sunflowers swayed violently in a suddenly chilly breeze. The hair on the back of my neck prickled in warning. The screech rang out again.
‘Katie, maybe you should go back,’ I said, keeping my eyes on the sunflowers. ‘Just in case.’
‘I’m not a Gypsy,’ she huffed. ‘It wants to eat you, not me, remember.’
I jerked to a stop. ‘That doesn’t make you immune to an attack. I doubt it’s going to care who its victims are. I’ve got a knife and a little more experience.’ I flicked my gaze briefly in her direction. ‘If something happened to you, I’d never forgive myself. And your parents … what would it do to them?’
‘Oh, so your death is just going to be totally okay with everyone? Seriously, this is stupid. If you really think Ms Lucian is in over her head, then let’s go back and get some of the guys. I mean, they’re huge and tattoo-ey, surely they’d be more than—’
‘Katie.’
It was no longer a request from me, and she knew it. Her pale face turned an ugly shade of red. ‘Fine. Have it your way. I’m going back. But I’m telling Hugo you’re out here. And I don’t care if I just sounded like a five-year-old.’
She whirled around, blonde hair fanning out behind her, and trounced back to the house, like we’d gotten in a disagreement over what movie to watch. I hoped I hadn’t done any irreparable damage to our friendship – but as soon as she was gone, I felt a hundred times lighter. I prayed she’d eventually understand.
Clenching the knife tightly, I dropped my body as low as I could and waited. Scenarios played out in my head as the cold breeze bent the sprawling limbs above me. Minutes passed and my legs began to cramp. I shifted to my knees in the dirt. What if Ezzie had already killed the chimera or, at least, frightened it off? But if so, then where was she?
Sebastian told me once how Esmeralda had single-handedly fought off the three gargoyles during my ribbon act at the Circe, saving his life in the process. Whatever she lacked in her former abilities, she definitely had gained in other ways. She could still shadow. I’d seen her do it myself. Katie was right; Ezzie knew what she was doing.
Still, a nagging sensation pulled at me. The breeze continued, frigid now. Something wasn’t right. I hesitated, torn between going forward and heading back. I clenched my teeth and stood up quickly.
A dark form loomed in my periphery.
I spun, knife out. The figure ducked out of the way.
‘Whoa, hold up!’ growled a deep voice.
I clamped a hand over my mouth to keep from screaming. My heart pounded in my ears. Hugo stood in front of me, his eyes dark and glittering in the pre-dawn light.
Before I could say anything, another screech – ear piercing and deadly – pealed out from somewhere to our right, followed by a woman’s cry. Hugo charg
ed through the vegetable plants, and I didn’t hesitate this time. I ran behind the Corsi leader, letting him barrel through the tall plants and wired cages, clearing out a path.
He had a weapon in his hand as well, similar to Ezzie’s. We burst into a clear patch of garden. Esmeralda crouched, surrounded by three shadowen. One sprang at her and she swung her mace with both hands. It connected with a sickening crunch against the creature’s temple, and the feline-looking grotesque spun through the air, landing with an equally disgusting thud.
A second grotesque, a lizard thing, screeched with fury and reared its head. Hugo let out a yell of his own and rushed in, aiming for the creature’s feathered wings. The diamond spikes in his mace drew blood.
The third shadowen watched the proceedings with a wicked gleam in its solid silver eyes. It was a chimera, but it wasn’t the same one as before. It was female. Black, oozing drool seeped from the corner of the chimera’s mouth as it fixed those ungodly eyes on me and sniffed the air. The chimera’s gaze shifted down my body, resting on the rip in my jeans. I glanced down and noticed the dried blood.
The chimera’s black lips pulled back, revealing wicked teeth. As I stared into that face, a wave of nausea crashed up my throat. I knew that face. Sebastian had called her Anya – one of Augustine’s failed experiments. Recognition clicked in the chimera’s eyes as well, making it look even hungrier for a piece of me.
I raised my knife. The breeze caught the cold sweat on my neck, lifting it away. My pendant burned uncomfortably hot against my tender skin. A warning? Anya crept towards me on feet and legs that were more animal shaped than human. Her dark, crackled skin moved across muscles in her neck and arms as she spread her bat-like wings.
‘Sebastian,’ I heard myself say.
A painful shock, like a surge of electricity, went up the back of my neck and skittered across my scalp. Suddenly, in that strange place where we shared that bond, something sparked to life and buzzed through my brain. I squeezed my eyes shut and poured everything I had into it.
Midnight Page 16