Scales: Book 1 of the Fate and Fire Series

by Amity Green

  He counted to himself in soft grunts. When he dropped the bar into the saddle-brackets above his head, I knocked softly on his door.

  He walked toward me, stopping to grab a towel on the way. I stepped back, trying not to make it seem completely obvious I’d been watching him work out.

  He smiled at me through the sliver of sight between us, letting me know I’d been caught watching. “You’d have a much better vantage from inside.” He pulled a t-shirt over his head and down his torso, covering all that muscle.

  Sad me.

  “Sorry to interrupt.” I smiled and tried sincerity.

  “Right.” he winked, and wiped his face with the towel.

  I smiled, trying to keep with the façade that I had no idea what he meant. “I just wanted to say hi. I was getting bored. Don’t know how you deal with these long afternoons sometimes.”

  “Well, now you do.” He smiled, gesturing to the large set of weights and other means of self-torture, like a jump rope and a speed bag like boxers use to work out. He continued to wipe away sweat from pumped up muscles, still breathing a little hard from his work out.

  “I miss running. That’s how I used to blow off steam. It sort of made me feel liberated somehow. Writing makes me feel better, too.” Over his shoulder, I spotted a hallway leading beyond the room we stood in. “Hey, your room is huge. That’s hardly fair.”

  “There’s more to my presence here than just selling books.” He gestured toward his bed, so I sat. Apparently I wouldn’t get a grand tour.

  “I’ve a bargain for you.” The offer was laced with warning. “If you can be trusted.” He looked like he wasn’t so sure if opening his mouth was the greatest idea.

  “That would be awesome.” I was all ears. We had to start somewhere, and I’d much rather work on trust with Peter since he seemed more pliant toward accommodating my well-being. Ezra was distant, easily angered, and unapologetic. And he didn’t offer any concessions.

  * * *

  Peter and I worked out a deal during the next week. Before closing every day, if there weren’t many customers in the store when it was close to time to flip the sign, he’d lock up when business slowed in the afternoon if I would open up in the mornings. Being the early riser I was, I gladly accepted. The bargain between us allowed for extra journaling time for me, which was much easier accomplished without talons, so I tried hard to find time to add entries in my journal while human every day. It was perfect. I could find a quiet place each afternoon and tuck myself between the pages of what I wrote. I was briefly happy during those times when I detached myself from my surroundings.

  I sat on the second floor of the bookstore, ensconced in one of my favorite reading nooks, scribing away in a creamy moleskin notebook with the perfect shade of green ink.

  A book fell on the ground floor. I set my things aside. Peter had locked up already. I’d seen him flip the sign myself. I chilled inside, rising from my chair in an instant when I peered down through the banister to see a girl walking the aisles, innocently perusing the reads at her leisure. I could barely make out her face from my vantage point on the second floor. She’d been locked inside the store and must have knocked a book over on a shelf to cause the noise.

  Holy hell.

  Nightfall approached and there was a teenaged girl in the store. Not good, considering that’s how my life got jacked out from under me. I needed to get downstairs and get her to leave. As far as I could tell there was no way to unjack my life, and it wouldn’t do for someone else to suffer the same fate as me merely because they were curious and young, too.

  I took the spiral stairs two at a time to get down faster and rounded the corner at a run, looking for her and trying to catch up before something horrible happened. I’d be Garging Out any second but I couldn’t risk Ezra finding her, so I didn’t call out to get her attention. If I could just meet up with her and convince her to leave and come back tomorrow morning, I’d save her. I ran, peering through bookcases and around corners, looking franticly.

  A loud thump sounded ahead of me. I broke into a sprint, hating the tingling in my skin that marked the start of my nightly transformation. It seemed to be happening a little faster because I was so amped up. I stopped short in the entry to one of the store’s many alcoves.

  I was too late. The girl I’d been searching for had collapsed on the floor, just inside.

  A gasp pulled my attention to the right of the nook.

  Ezra stood motionless. He appeared a little paler than normal, if that was possible. My hands went to my temples as I digested the scene. Why couldn’t I have been seconds quicker getting to her? He’d beaten me to the punch. But he just stood there. Statuesque. Even creepier than normal.

  Something wasn’t right. Not that anything in my new world was the way I’d pictured it. Ezra seemed to be in shock. His pure white eyes were transfixed on the young girl.

  “No … no,” Ezra moaned. He crouched beside her crumpled form.

  The realization of what I was seeing hit me hard.

  Unbelievable.

  “You’ve lost control of it.” I stepped through the doorway and straight to the two of them. I was changing fast, my emotional state speeding my transformation. When I tried to take a knee beside the pair of them, I went back on my haunches and rested on a splayed wing.

  She wore a faded black t shirt that was so old I couldn’t make out the design on the front. Dirty jeans and tired sneakers with no socks made up the rest of her outfit. Long, blackish brown hair had fallen in a mass of twisted strands across her face. Her hands were dirty and she didn’t smell all that great. I wanted to cry for her.

  I glanced at Ezra, who’d still said nothing.

  “How long?”

  “How long what?” he answered.

  “When did you lose control of the magic that does … this!” I yelled. I couldn’t help it. Seeing the unconscious girl and knowing what awaited her hit home. My temperature soared. I wanted to reach over and throttle him, but I knew better. I didn’t know for sure, but something told me he could end me just as easily as he’d created me.

  “I wish everything had always gone as smoothly as it did with you, but it’s been a challenge at times.” He reached to clear the girl’s hair from her face.

  “Smoothly? You call this smooth?” I hated his ability to downplay the most terrifying event in my life. I hissed at him. “Do you have any freaking idea what it’s like? Just ….” I grit my fangs. “Don’t touch her,” I snapped, in a new, lower range for my voice.

  “Watch your tone, Tessa. You forget yourself.” He glared across her form at me. It amazed me how he managed to pull off a perfect glare with no pupils.

  “What, you going to lock her in a room and let her fall to pieces while she changes? Alone?” It’s what he’d allowed to happen to me, and we both knew I’d never forgive him.

  Guilt covered Ezra’s face, so fast it could have dripped onto the floor.

  I scooped her up, careful not to scratch her with my talons.

  “Keep a close eye on her.”

  I ignored him. She was so light in my grip, although she was rather tall. Tears stung the back of my eyes. I would do for this girl what Peter had done for me when I changed. Where he’d only been there for the end, I’d be at her side for the whole, terrifying experience. I would be there from the first instant she awoke. I stole out of the alcove with her in my arms and half ran, half flew to my room. I didn’t look once to see if Ezra remained where I’d left him.

  Chapter 10

  She started changing and woke up before I got her inside. Her body twitched against my chest repeatedly while I worked to open my door. She screamed at me to let her go. I laid her down as gently as I could while she thrashed. Her skin turned a deep red, almost the same shade as blood.

  She shrieked at me when she saw me watching her. I tried to calm her by speaking softly. “It’s okay. I can explain it all.”

  She stared with pain dripping from her eyes.

 
; “The burning will pass and things will be easier soon.” She had a friend to lean on. I would help her.

  Her transformation seemed to pass faster than my first one had, but it could have seemed that way because I was watching it happen to someone else rather than feeling the terror and pain. I continued to try to calm her.

  She glared at me from a serpentine shaped face and head. Her hair clung to her cheeks in matted strands of copper and blood red. She hissed at me, showing a long tongue between jagged rows of shark teeth.

  My bed was shredded and my reading lamp crashed to the carpet with one last spark of life.

  Her eyes were on me again, a beautiful shade of hazel. I reached to put a hand on her shoulder but she jerked away, slapping my forearm hard.

  “Ow!” I cried. “What was that for?”

  “Don’t ever touch me again,” she hissed. It was barely audible. The girl had major work to do in the articulation department.

  “I was just trying to comfort you. I know how you’re feeling,” I offered.

  Her head rocked back toward the ceiling and she laughed. It was the laughter of someone sick. Deranged. She stood and took a few steps away from the bed.

  “You’ll pay for this, if it’s the last thing I do.” She glared at me. I could detect a British tone to her words when she spoke a longer sentence.

  “Wait, wait. Whoa. I didn’t do this to you. I saw it happen and brought you up to my room here to try to comfort you as you changed, so you wouldn’t be alone somewhere. I was trying to help.” I stopped talking. It probably sounded unbelievable to her.

  She examined me through narrowed eyes while her head rocked from side to side. I shuddered. The girl’s transformation had left her more “angry monster” than the canine nature of Peter and me. She was a lot like a big snake with wings and it was freaking me out. The way she had no fear of me was alarming, because I was under the impression she’d never seen a gargoyle before. Perhaps I was wrong.

  Her eyes darted around my room and came to rest on the window where I had half drawn the blinds earlier.

  I was a millisecond too late trying to grab her when she ran toward the window and lunged through the glass into the night. She screamed viciously from outside. I carefully stuck my head through the jagged glass but all I saw was a long skinny tail slipping away into the dark of the cool night sky.

  I sighed. I’d never find her by the time I made it outside and she wouldn’t come back with me, if I was lucky enough to pick her out in the darkness. Flying must have come easier to some than others.

  * * *

  I pounded continuously on Peter’s door until he opened it. I stalked inside.

  “Won’t you please come in?” he asked dryly.

  “You, my friend, are a freaking saint.” I panted a little.

  He regarded me with one raised brow. “What is going on with you now?” His tail twitched despite his obvious opinion that no matter the case, I was overreacting.

  “There is a new gargoyle,” I stated. I crossed my arms over my chest plate and stared up at him, tapping away at the floor with the tip of my tail. “You are a very patient and sweet person to put up with the emotional outcome of someone changing for the first time, without throttling them.”

  “Where is it?” He stepped toward his door. The “stop over-reacting” look evaporated from his face.

  I exhaled and put a foot down to stop my tail from swishing like an agitated cat’s. “There’s a problem.” I scratched my forehead. He was going to lose it when I told him.

  “Come on then, let’s have it.”

  “Don’t snap, Peter.” I fidgeted. “She left.” Might as well just put it out there.

  “Left?”

  “Yes. She flew out my window.”

  “What the bloody hell were you doing with a strange, new gargoyle in your room, Tessa?” he yelled.

  “Don’t yell at me, buddy. I was just trying to make sure she had someone with her the whole time, instead of wandering around this place not knowing what was happening to her!” One more person yelled or hissed at me and I was going to chew one of their arms clean off.

  “I just remember looking for you everywhere because it seemed like finding you was the only thing that would help when I was changing. I didn’t want her to feel alone.” I looked down. I’d failed miserably at helping the girl at all. Peter was mad. Ezra had even warned to keep an eye on her, and I was so full of my ability to take charge that I’d paid no heed.

  Peter sighed. He continued in a low, emotionless tone. “Does Ezra know?”

  I perked up. “Well there’s an interesting, new development with him. He didn’t do this.” I had the inside scoop, for once.

  “Come on, you can explain that on the way to find him.” He pulled me out of his room by an elbow, so fast that my wing struck the door jam.

  “Ow!” I winced, reached over my shoulder, trying to rub a part of my body I was unable to touch.

  Peter turned quickly when I cried out. He stopped moving and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Tessa. You all right?” he examined my wing with concern, pulling me around so he could check the damage.

  I jostled myself free of his grip. “I’m really tired of being shoved out of the way.” I rubbed the side of my wing, close as I could to the actual injury and followed him to the stairs.

  “She hates me.”

  “Who hates you?” he said over his shoulder.

  “The new gargoyle. She thinks I’m the one that made her Garg Out.”

  Peter stopped moving and shook his head. “Really, Tessa? Garg Out?”

  “What?”

  He continued down the hall. “Let’s go talk to Ezra first. He’ll know what to do.”

  “Well that’s the thing,” I began. We glided over the banister to the ground floor of the shop. “He knows already.”

  “That she left the store?”

  “No, not that part.”

  “Knows what then?” The loss of his patience grew obvious.

  All I could do was try to explain it, best as I could. “Because changing her into a gargoyle wasn’t exactly his idea. Somehow, she was changed without him doing it.”

  Peter studied me as if he had a dozen unspoken questions, none of which I had the answers to. “You’re telling me someone here, in the store, performed the magic to create a gargoyle, and it wasn’t Ezra?”

  “That’s a good point. I don’t know. I mean it was obvious Ezra isn’t the one who did it, but it’s possible it could have happened outside, before she walked in, right? Someone could have zapped her outside and then when she was in the store and it started getting dark, she changed in here?” I was reaching for answers, but it had to have happened somehow.

  The feeling that I knew more about the situation than he did abandoned me like a bee to a fresher flower. It figured. And Ezra was going to be pissy because of the way I talked to him when I saw him last.

  “I don’t really want to see Ezra. He’s mad at me again. Still, I mean.”

  “He’s never going to stay mad at you for long, Tessa, trust me.” His statement was stone-cold, harboring an edge of sarcasm.

  “Why would you say that? He acts like he hates me.”

  “Well he doesn’t. He calls you our ‘perfect addition’.” I imagined Peter making little air quotes around the words as he spoke, to match his tone.

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Mph.”

  “Hold on there, Peter, do I sense a bit of jealousy?” I teased.

  “Don’t flatter yourself.”

  “You’re jealous!” Spit flew from between my fangs with my lisp.

  He shook his head.

  “Well who could blame you?” I laughed. “I am pretty darned thpecial.” I bounced along behind him, fluffing my wings.

  “Special. Exactly,” he laughed.

  “It’s okay, buddy. We can’t all be his favorite.” I giggled, poking at his shoulder with a talon.

  He laughed. “Just keep telling yours
elf that, sweetheart.”

  Peter kept walking and I didn’t know what else to do but to follow.

  Chapter 11

  Ezra reacted with the couth and temperament of a spoiled three-year-old. He threw books and the lamp from his desk.

  “Brilliant,” he sneered. “Leave.”

  I did that without being told a second time. Peter stayed behind and the two men shouted and grumbled behind the closed door. I waited for Peter to emerge and broke into step beside him, but he was silent. The emotional tension eased as we walked toward my room. I’d left my door open in my haste to get to him after the other gargoyle broke out, so when we arrived the trashed out bed was in clear view.

  “Well this is a fine mess.” Peter glanced around. “I’m going to go get a couple things from downstairs. Take those sheets off the bed and I’ll be back with fresh ones.”

  “Thanks.” The air was cold in my room and smelled of the damp city outside. The blind was pulled down with slats broken out in the middle. I decided to make short work of the situation and picked up the mattress, shaking loose a pile of bedding.

  Peter returned with a small tool box and a stack of neatly folded sheets that smelled of lavender.

  “You’re my hero,” I told him as I took the linens. I tried to be careful, but felt a claw dig into the fabric.

  “That didn’t take much.”

  Ignoring his commentary, I replaced the bedding while he put thick plastic over my broken window, being careful to leave what glass remained hanging where it was, from outside the plastic. He was impressive with his claws, while I struggled to keep from ruining my new sheets. When my room was fixed up for the most part, we gathered up the bedding and broken glass and headed toward the back of the store to the alley. We left everything stacked neatly beside the door to go out to the rubbish bin.