by C. E. Murphy
“How many of them did they buy?” Margrit asked under her breath.
Her boss acknowledged the barb with a helpless shrug. “I imagine they’ll have the rest of them bought and paid for soon enough. We’re going to have to move very fast to make a difference.”
Margrit’s smile got bigger and she stretched her legs out, showing off her running tights. “Hey, moving fast is my specialty. As of tomorrow, I’m all about the case.”
“And until then?”
“Rest. I promise.” Margrit lifted her hands, protesting her innocence. “I’ll get some rest.”
She just hadn’t said when she’d get some rest. Margrit threaded her way past desks and chairs, hesitating a few yards from Tony’s workstation. He was wearing last night’s clothes, a department jacket thrown over his shoulders for warmth, and his movements were slower than she was used to seeing from him, exhaustion in every motion. “Tony?”
He glanced up, then did a double take and came to his feet. “Margrit. Jesus.” She pushed the chair by his desk aside and grunted quietly as he pulled her into his arms, trying not to knock her forehead against his chin. He hugged her hard for a few seconds, then set her back, hands on her shoulders as he examined her. “You’re all right?”
“Yeah.” Her smile felt watery. “My head still hurts, but I’m not seeing double anymore. Cam said you didn’t leave until you got called in for work. Thanks.” She stood on her toes to steal a kiss, garnering a catcall from one of his coworkers. “What’d you get dragged in for?”
He ignored the question momentarily, brushing his thumb over her hairline, not touching the bruise. “That looks terrible.”
Margrit smiled and traced a circle around the bruise on his eye, also without touching it. “We’re a matched pair now. It- sss! Ow. Hurts! Don’t touch it!”
Tony pulled his hands back. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to.”
“It hurts,” Margrit repeated, probing at the tender flesh despite having just scolded Tony for doing so. “But it’s just a bruise now, not a concussion. I’m okay. I came by because I think I thought of something. Do you have the Blue Room security tapes?”
His expression flattened, wariness battling the hope. “Yeah.”
“Can I watch them again?”
“What’re you looking for?”
“I’ll know if I see it. Just let me watch them.”
“Margrit…” He grimaced, turning the flesh around his mouth white. “Another woman was murdered last night.”
Nausea that had faded with the concussion’s symptoms slammed back into Margrit’s belly, making her cold all over. “When?”
“Between eleven and one. While you were missing.”
“I was…” She closed her eyes, shivering. “I was unconscious most of the night, Tony. He was gone when I woke up the second time. But he didn’t seem dangerous.”
“If he’s not dangerous and not guilty he’s got no reason to not come talk to the police. Just because he didn’t hurt you doesn’t mean anything, Margrit. He could regard you as a prize. Guys like this do.” Tony’s voice was grim. “It was the same M.O., same time frame, same location.”
“The same location?” Margrit’s voice rose. Tony winced at the pitch and shook his head.
“In the park. Not the exact same place. Up on the north end. Anything you’ve remembered might be important. Come on.” A tilt of his head invited her through the station and into a media room, where she waited several minutes for him to sign out evidence before returning with the videos. He primed them while she watched, tapping her finger against her pursed mouth.
“That one. The Goth Room.” She leaned forward on the TV table, watching the screen from the center dome camera’s point of view.
“What’re you looking for?” he asked again. Margrit shook her head, holding up a hand to gain his silence. The video rolled from Alban’s entrance. The corner camera wires were snipped, and before the next rotation of the center camera, the grating was wrenched from the wall, dangling as evidence of Alban’s escape route. “That’s it.” Tony reached for the off button, but Margrit thwacked his fingers.
“Don’t! I want to watch for another minute.”
“There’s nothing else to see. Getting hit on the head was bad for you.” Tony sat back, waiting. The camera made its rotation, recording the carved statues and the dancers in the club. Margrit shot a finger out and pressed the pause button. The picture froze and Tony sat up. “What? What?”
Along the crowded wall of seats was a new statue, wedged into a narrow space near a carved vampire. Someone’s long coat was flung over its shoulder, making it easy to miss along the busy partition. Its snarling face was turned away from the camera, but the line of its jaw was visible, both broad and delicate, carefully chiseled. Long white hair fell over its shoulder, beneath the coat. The camera’s quality was too low to pick them up, but Margrit knew the hair would be carved into individual strands, a masterwork of sculpture. Upswept, pointed ears poked through the stonework hair.
“It’s just another statue,” Tony said impatiently. “What’s the big deal?”
“It-” Margrit broke off, staring at the gargoyle on the screen, then sighed. “It wasn’t there before.”
“Of course it was.” He rewound the tape, scowling.
A minute earlier, the gargoyle wasn’t there. Tony snapped upright, scowling with disbelief at the screen. “No way. No fucking way.” He fast-forwarded the tape again, watching the gargoyle appear. “Christ, but this guy’s good.”
“Good?” Margrit glanced away from the screen. “What do you mean?”
“Look at him.” Tony shook his head, grudging admiration in his voice. “Cool as a cucumber. Must’ve had that costume with him. Knew just where to hide. How the hell did he get out of there without us seeing him?”
“A costume?” Margrit asked faintly.
Tony chuckled. “It’s damned clever. He must’ve lit out of there while the camera was facing the other direction, same way he got into place.” Tony slipped an arm around her shoulders, tugging her against his chest murmuring, “Good eyes. Good thought,” into her hair. “Memory’s crazy, isn’t it? You don’t even know you’ve seen something wrong until it hits you. Good job. Thanks, Margrit. It gives me something to work with.”
She cleared her throat, turning her head under Tony’s chin to look back at the screen. “A costume,” she repeated. But it hadn’t been a costume. She remembered, all too clearly, the way the space seemed to shift around Alban as he became something both greater and lesser than a man.
“We’ll go back to the club and see if we can find any traces of the wig, anything he might’ve left behind. I wonder how he got out of there.” Tony loosened his arms enough to inch back and smile down at her. “Thanks, Grit. I don’t know what we’ll get out of it, but it’s more than we had before.” The smile faded into concern. “Go home and get some rest, okay? I’ll call you as soon as I can.”
She nodded slowly, studying the video screen a moment longer. “Okay.” She turned a brief smile up at the detective. “All right. Good luck.”
“Be careful, Grit.” He nodded a goodbye and turned back to the screen as Margrit left, glancing at her watch.
It wouldn’t be sunset for hours. Making good on her promise to rest sounded like a wise idea.
The sky went dusky blue, the sun disappearing behind the horizon, followed by a noticeable drop in temperature. Margrit tightened her arms around herself, still half-asleep. The walk from her apartment to the park hadn’t quite woken her up, despite the chill. She’d slept five hours, which would wreak havoc on her sleep schedule later, but the lingering headache had faded to almost nothing. A phone call to her doctor had assured her exercise after a mild concussion wasn’t a problem unless she was planning on joining a football game, in which case he advised against it. Margrit had promised not to play any contact sports, and went to the park, confident a run would take care of the rest of the head blow’s aftereffects.
She stretched against a park bench, shaking herself out before starting a slow jog. A mounted policeman rode past her, nodding a concerned greeting. Margrit waved, feeling guilty. It was barely past sunset, she rationalized. People were still out, cops patrolling the pathways. The hour she’d be out running wasn’t long enough or late enough to put her in danger.
And the gargoyle wouldn’t dare come out tonight, anyway. He might be seen and arrested.
Margrit’s gaze went to the sky a dozen times regardless, looking for shapes that couldn’t be. Park lights flickered on, casting new shadows that warred briefly with the last of the light from the horizon, then triumphed. The darkness held no broad-shouldered, winged creatures. Wry disappointment churned in Margrit’s stomach and she shook her head, smiling at herself. No rational person would want a gargoyle-an utterly impossible being-haunting her, anyway.
She lengthened her stride, watching the sky, and ran.
CHAPTER 11
HE HADN’T COME.
The knowledge left an empty place in Margrit’s heart, unexplainable disappointment. She stood beneath the canopy over her building’s front door, looking back toward the park. Not that it was visible: streetlights illuminated the lower reaches of the cathedral nearby, its towers gray and ghostly in the night air. The park lay on the other side, well enough hidden that she couldn’t see it even if she wasn’t at ground level. Alban wasn’t going to glide out of the trees like some fairy-tale creature, ready to sweep her up and carry her away from all this.
A little shiver ran over her. All this. What was all this that she wanted escape from? She had the life she’d built, one deliberate step after another. A good school, a successful career, a relationship that looked as if it might be deciding on a sensible adult path. There was nothing to escape. There was no place for a stony-skinned…
Margrit found herself hesitating over the word monster. She’d met monsters, men whose humanity was far more removed than Alban’s seemed to be. Creature, perhaps, or being. Being lacked the pejorative implications the other words carried. There was no place for an extraordinary being like Alban in the ordered life she’d built.
She’d decided that herself, by refusing to help him. Despite his size and strength, his obviously inhuman capabilities, he’d let her go. He hadn’t stopped her with a word, as he might have. Margrit lifted her eyes to the buildings around her own, searching the shadows. Didn’t he know he might have stopped her with a word? With her name? It was how it worked in the stories. She walks away and he stops her with a single desperate plea, her name. It was classic.
And it was the stuff of films and storybooks. In the real world, men didn’t stop a woman with the utterance of one word, no more than a matter could be settled by an angry John Wayne kiss. By all rights, Alban’s behavior had been gentlemanly, no untoward pressure or embarrassing displays. That was the end of it. Margrit shook her head and turned away from the street, jogging into her building and up to her apartment.
“What’s wrong with your cell phone?” Cole called as she came in the door. “I needed cinnamon, too, but I couldn’t get ahold of you.”
She padded to the kitchen. “What?”
“What?” Cole blinked over his shoulder at her. “Oh, Grit. I thought you were Cam.”
“Not unless she’s really been working on her tan.” Margrit came to peer around his arm at the stove. “What’s for dinner? Where’s Cam?”
“She went to get some evaporated milk. We’re out. Did you make something with it?”
“I don’t even know what evaporated milk is, Cole. Wouldn’t it be gone by default? I did use the last of the cinnamon, though.”
Cole turned an astonished look on her. Margrit shrugged. “Cinnamon toast. What, you think I was making cinnamon cheesecake or something?”
“No, but now that you mention it, that sounds like a great idea. Why don’t you?”
Margrit gaped at him in horror. Cole laughed. “Someday you’re going to have to explain your great fear of cooking to me, Grit.”
She climbed onto the counter, ignoring his scowl as she locked her elbows and leaned. “You really want to know?”
“The curiosity is killing me.”
“The truth is that I’m a pretty good cook, but if I admit that, you’ll stop cooking for me.”
Cole cast her such a dubious look that she laughed aloud. “I’m serious. I’m hideously lazy and I work too much, so left to my own devices I just fry eggs and make toast. If I let on I can do more, you might start expecting me to pull my weight.”
“What are you going to do when Cam and I get married?”
“Go on dates naked,” Margrit said promptly, then arched her eyebrows. “I don’t know. Move in as your live-in maid?”
“I’ve seen your bedroom, Grit. It doesn’t make a convincing argument for your housecleaning skills.”
“I guess I’m going to have to find a boyfriend who can cook, then.” Margrit grinned.
“Speaking of which, what’s the story with Tony? He’s Italian. Don’t good Italian boys learn how to cook at about the same time they start breathing?”
Margrit felt her grin slide into uncertainty as she stared at her feet. Three years of dating, and Tony’s image slipped away from her when they’d been apart for a few weeks. A handful of days, and Alban’s wouldn’t leave her. She felt as if her mind had been cross-wired, bringing up the wrong intensities for each man. “So I hear. What’s for dinner?”
Cole gave her a searching look, then turned back to his preparations. “Chicken in cream sauce. That’s why I needed the evaporated milk. You avoided the question, Grit. What’s up with you two?”
She studied her toes. “I guess we’re going to really try to make it work,” she answered quietly. “We talked about it at dinner last night. We’re going to try to work through things instead of shrugging it off when circumstances get a little rough.” Which was part of why she’d told Alban no, Margrit reminded herself fiercely. She was making a commitment to something real, not a fantasy. Involving herself in Alban’s world would only create a wall between herself and Tony that might never be breached.
If that wall hadn’t already been built.
“Congratulations.” Cole glanced at her again, and modified his tone. “Congratulations?”
“Yeah.” Margrit put doubts away and looked up with a smile. “We’ve just got a lot of talking to do, and these murders are his case, so things are still pretty shaky. Shouldn’t you be using cream for the chicken in cream sauce?”
Cole turned and leveled a wooden spoon at her. “Speak not of that which you do not understand, young Jedi.”
Margrit laughed. “Yes, Master.” The door swung open and Cam strode in, a paper bag of groceries tucked in the crook of her elbow. “Hey, Cam.”
“Hey, Grit.” Cameron slung the sack onto the counter and Cole rooted through it, coming out with the evaporated milk and a bag of carrots, which he looked at quizzically. Cam shrugged. “I like carrots. I thought you could steam some to go with the chicken. You feeling better, Grit?”
“Much, thanks.”
“Carrots? With my chicken in cream sauce?”
“They’ll be pretty!”
Margrit laughed. “Look, I’ve got some work to do. I’m going to let you two fight over whether there’ll be carrots with dinner or not. Is there anything I can do first, Cole?”
He looked around the kitchen. “No,” he said thoughtfully. “No, I think I can handle it by myself, or with Cameron’s capable help. It’ll be a strain,” he added. “Getting it all done without you, I mean. Which is to say, I don’t know how I’ll get through it without you standing here asking me what a strainer is for.”
“I know what a strainer is for.” Margrit stuck her chin out. “It’s for getting rid of the pulp in lemonade. Ick.”
“Ick,” Cam repeated. “That’s one of those professional lawyer terms. I thought you had the day off, Margrit.”
She looked guiltily toward the pile of papers on the din
ing room table. “Day off is relative.”
“Speaking of relatives.” Cole eyed her sternly. “Your mother called twice while you were out.”
Margrit slid off the counter, wrinkling her nose. “Okay. Call me for dinner. It’s the only way I’ll get off the phone with her.” She pulled the phone from the kitchen wall and stepped out onto the balcony, then went back inside for a coat and two blankets before calling home. Nestled beneath them in a corner of the tiny balcony, she watched the sky, waiting for her mother to pick up, and found herself smiling at her worried “Margrit?”
“Hi, Mom. I’m good. Don’t worry, okay? I’m sorry I didn’t call earlier,” she added hastily. “I slept most of the day.”
“You’re sure you’re all right? Daddy could look at you-”
“I’m fine, Mom,” Margrit repeated. “I don’t need Daddy to check my head. He’d only say I was addled, anyway.” It was his eternal diagnosis of his daughter’s state of being, spoken in a deep solemn baritone that did nothing to hide the spark of humor in his brown eyes. “He’d be right for once, too,” she added with a laugh. “Honestly, I’m fine.”
Her mother sighed, a quiet sound full of concern. “I wish you’d consider moving out here, sweetheart. It’s so much safer than where you are. The condo next to us-”
“Mom! I’m not going to move in next door, okay? And I’m not in a bad part of town. Even if I was, I wasn’t here when I got hit. I know you worry, but this is a great place for me, not that far from work-”
“And ridiculously expensive,” her mother interjected.
Margrit grimaced, unable to argue. “That’s why I’ve got housemates, Mom.”
“And what are you going to do when they get married?”
“Maybe I’ll ask Tony to move in,” Margrit said, then bit her tongue. Her mother’s astounded silence filled the line.
“Margrit?”
“Nothing, Mom.” Margrit started to bump her head against the wall and remembered her injury in the nick of time. “We’re just kind of talking about getting serious.”