by Price, E A
Kylie followed it, almost screaming as a frog jumped on her foot. She gave it a small flick, and it jumped away again. Huh, you didn’t get this in New York. Well, there were rats, but they were really no different from the human occupants of the city. Some of them were even better behaved.
She found herself at the opening of a slightly unkempt hedge maze. In spite of its obvious neglect, it was still fairly intact. Clearly, someone had been using the maze. The worn path led directly inside. She wondered what on earth for; Professor Hardcastle hardly seemed like the whimsical sort, and hedge mazes were surely the epitome of whimsy and spoke of someone who had lots of money, lots of spare garden and lots of time on their hands. The average gardener stuck to bordering plants, perhaps the odd tomato plant and at most an ornamental water feature. Hedge mazes were the type of thing you were more likely to see in the Red Queen’s garden in Wonderland.
She was intrigued. Since she was kind of, ever so slightly, already trespassing, she decided she might as well find out what the point was of the damn maze. Uneasy worries of finding some kind of graveyard – perhaps of the professor’s deceased wives (all of which he killed) – oozed through her stomach. Although, that seemed unlikely. It wasn’t an unkind thought, but he was the least likely Don Juan since Mr. Magoo.
Carefully, she made her way through. Annoyance and fear of becoming lost were overruled by downright nosiness. It was fairly easy to navigate; it was probably more difficult when it was well kept and every route looked the same, but now the overgrown parts of the hedge had grown into interesting and distinctive shapes such as the sheep, the deformed sheep, the two-headed sheep and the sheep with no ears.
When she finally found the center of the maze, it was a relief, and Kylie let out a groan of relief. Combined with her adventure in the house, she had walked more in one day than she normally did in a whole week, and her calves were not happy bunnies. Perhaps it wasn’t a bad thing. She had been a little lax when it came to exercise since… ever. In New York, the most effort she made was in walking to the subway or raising her arm to hail a cab. And here in Devil’s Hang, well, she lived over the shop where she worked and the grocery store was just down the road. Perhaps she could…
Her thoughts trailed away as she took in the sight before her. The clearing was shaded, hidden by the overgrown hedges, but the few peeks of sunlight shone through and danced on a stone statue displayed in the middle on a short ledge. The earth around it looked a little muddier than the rest. She assumed this had once been some kind of pond - stepping stones dotted the ground. It had long since dried up, though.
Curiosity propelled her toward it. She circled around it. It was massive, and a lot like the decaying statue that the professor had in his study. But he was even bigger and his features even sharper, more realistic. There was no doubt it was a he. He was kneeling, one knee raised, and an arm slung over it while his other rested on the ground and his large hand curled into a ball. His wings curled tightly against his body, but still they loomed over his head almost menacingly.
He was a gargoyle; that was for sure. But Kylie wondered why he was kept all the way out here instead of displayed somewhere on the house, terrifying potential visitors with his hard stare. She leaned in for a closer look and even rested her hand on his enormous shoulder. The carved detail was amazing. Gently, she traced a finger over his chest; the muscles had been rendered with so much precision that they looked more real than a human’s. Of course, she couldn’t imagine a human male with such a perfect physique. Only someone’s imagination could create a man like this.
Or should that be beast. Yes, he was definitely a beast. “But you are a handsome beast, aren’t you?” she murmured, absently. His feet were huge and ended in wicked looking talons. While his hands were almost human-like, they too ended in claws that looked like they could rip through stone without too much trouble. Not to mention the horns and the tail…
“What are you doing?” snapped a shrill, disagreeable voice.
Kylie snatched her hands away from the statue and guilt washed over her. For reasons she couldn’t quite fathom, she felt as bad as if she had been caught drooling over another woman’s husband. Which was ridiculous, obviously. Was the statue perhaps married to the garden gnome she passed on the way in there? She stifled a hiccup of laughter as the professor glared at her.
“I’m sorry,” Kylie muttered, feeling every inch a naughty schoolgirl as she blushed profusely. “I got lost, and I was looking for an exit and I, uh…”
Hardcastle stroked his weak, bristled chin. “I see you found him.”
Her eyes flickered to the mountain of muscled stone, and her cheeks reddened even further. “Uh, yes. I’m…”
“I understood from your aunt that you were not interested in antiques,” he said, slowly, piercing her with a guarded glare.
“I’m not, but he’s not… I mean, it’s not… well, I wouldn’t say I was interested in it… besides, it looks brand new.” Her scattered thoughts refused to coalesce into a sentence.
“He does, doesn’t he?” mused the professor.
Kylie ignored the use of the word he. “How old is it?”
“At least a thousand years, I expect closer to eleven hundred. He’s a family heirloom, passed from generation to generation. Or at least he was, he came to me because the family ran out of generations.”
She looked at the statue critically, if not for the style of the rendering she would swear the thing had been carved last week. “I guess he’ll be your nephew’s next.” Kylie slapped a hand over her face as soon as she said it. Making an oblique reference to someone dying was in no way polite. “I’m sorry,” she stammered, “I didn’t mean…”
Hardcastle waved a gnarled hand. “No, you’re right. I wish you weren’t, but you are. My nephew will probably sell everything as soon as he gets his grubby hands on it.” His sneer turned mournful. “Not that it will matter by then. Time will probably run out before then anyway. There’ll be nothing left to do but sell him in the end, or worse, destroy him.”
Kylie stared at him as he continued to mutter under his breath. Briefly, she wondered if the professor was perhaps losing it. In general he seemed sharper than a tack, more than a match for the town council who had petitioned him repeatedly to tidy up his driveway that wasn’t in keeping with picture postcard little town. He sent them away with a flea in their respective ears every damn time. But, he certainly wasn’t as young as he used to be. It was a trite saying that Kylie hated – no one was as young as they used to be. The difference was that the professor was at least eighty. So he definitely wasn’t as young as he used to be when compared to other people who weren’t as young as they used to be.
“It would be a waste to destroy it,” she murmured, softly.
He refocused his eyes on her and actually smiled. “You like him.”
Kylie felt that internal blush that quickly became external return. “I think it’s a very… fine statue,” she admitted, lamely. She was going to say handsome, but it was more than a little creepy to admit that she thought a stone creature was handsome. At least it was creepy to admit it to other people.
“He’s a gargoyle.”
“How come you don’t have him perched on your house scaring visitors?”
“I manage to scare visitors away just fine on my own,” he told her, proudly and smugly. “He needs to be outside for the sunlight, but he’s too valuable to display on the house. I can’t risk him being damaged. He’s special.”
Kylie nodded. Yes, she could see that. Not that she had a lot of experience in this area, but she’d never seen another statue quite as impressive as this one. The amount of work that went into creating it must have been monumental.
The professor cocked his head at her. “Don’t you want to know?”
“Know what?”
“How much he’s worth. It’s the first question everyone who has ever seen him asked me.”
Kylie shrugged. “It’s not important.”
&nb
sp; “Some people only care about him when they find out he’s worth money.”
“I think most people who come into Aunt Bea’s shop are like that. They don’t care what something looks like; they only want to know that it’s worth money.”
Hardcastle regarded her gravely. “Is that why you don’t like antiques?”
No, that was probably more to do with having to haul the heavy things around town. “I just don’t think you should base how much you like something on its price tag. I think this gargoyle is, uh, fine. But I’d still think it was fine if someone told me it was worth fifty cents or a million dollars.”
“His name is Lucifer.”
“Like the devil?” scoffed Kylie.
He grinned widely. “You’re offended by that?”
She didn’t know why the thought made her angry, but it did. “Well, it’s not the devil, it’s just a… ah...”
“A gargoyle,” supplied the professor, simply. “If it makes you feel any better, I’m told he prefers Luc.”
Kylie gave him a sour look. Was he making fun of her? Well, he was the one who kept referring to it as he.
He chuckled at her expression. “I’m not judging. I often come out here and talk to him.” His face clouded in anger. “He’s the only one around here worth a damn.”
“I should probably be going,” she said, reluctantly, eyeing the statue. “Bea’s probably wondering where I am.”
He nodded. “I’ll walk you out,” he offered in a surprising fit of solicitude.
As the professor turned, Kylie whispered a goodbye to the gargoyle. Considering the amused twitch of Hardcastle’s lips, he heard, but was thankfully too polite to comment on it.
She cast her eyes one last time over Luc, memorizing every detail before turning on her heel and walking away. A strange feeling of regret swelled within her every step she took.
Chapter Five
Kylie sighed as the rain battered against the windows of The Birds and the Bea’s Antiques. Aunt Bea had traveled to New York to attend an antiquities auction on behalf of one of her clients. Despite Kylie’s pleading to accompany her, Bea had adamantly left her behind in charge of the shop. Still, she promised to bring Kylie back a Gyros sandwich from a Spiros fast food restaurant. Bea had wrinkled her delicate nose and warned her it would be pretty disgusting by the time it arrived back in Devil’s Hang, but Kylie didn’t care. Fast food was always better when it had a little time to mature as far as Kylie was concerned. Other people were not quite as on board with that theory.
It was 2.30pm, and there hadn’t been a single customer since she hauled ass out of bed and opened up at 9.30am. The masses weren’t hoarding; the masses were sensibly staying in. No one wanted antiques enough to brave the downpour. Ice cream maybe would stand a chance in this weather, but not freaking antiques.
Devil’s Hang was a quaint tourist spot, famed for its cute B&Bs and that tree where apparently the inhabitants hung a woman possessed by the devil three hundred years ago, and several others after. Oh come on, how else would the town get its name? It was really just a big tree. The town mostly attracted young couples, getting away from the city together for a romantic getaway. Middle-aged couples who had run out of things to talk about with each other. And elderly couples who hated buzzing tourist locations and preferred their entertainment to be mild and generally consist of cream teas. Perfect antique hunters the lot of them. Sadly, she thought, looking out at the gloomy weather, even they had their limits.
She’d dusted the shop and every single antique three times. She’d practiced those three yoga moves she knew from that one yoga class she accidentally stumbled into and was then too embarrassed to leave. She had thought she was attending an introduction to beekeeping class – she once had a dream of harvesting her own honey, but it was dropped, quickly when it became apparent that bees hate her. She’d read a gossip magazine that a customer had left in the store, inside out. And finally, she had actually picked up one of her aunt’s books on antiques and tried to read that. She lasted two minutes with that endeavor.
Sigh. Kylie needed to talk to her aunt about putting a TV in there again. But Bea was staunchly opposed to the idea for some reason. Hell, Bea didn’t even own a TV in her house.
She was so bored she actually considered sauntering across the street and talking to Gary, the fishmonger. She had caught him out the corner of her eye stepping out of his shop and casting a wistful glance at the antique store. He’d done it about six times so far that day.
Since arriving in Devil’s Hang, Kylie found herself to be the very unwitting object of Gary’s affection. At least until a prettier girl walked past. It wasn’t that he was awful. He was pretty okay, and that wasn’t a bad thing. In her experience, the toady men she had been out on dates with were merely aspiring to be okay. It was just unfortunate for Gary that he happened to remind Kylie of Brian – the dick. Both had a habit of letting their eyes ogle other women while they were talking to her. She had tolerated it with Brian because – ha ha – they were in love. But she was definitely not looking for a carbon copy of him. Was it too much to expect a man to pay attention to her and to only want to look at her? Was that really asking too much?
Sadly, Gary didn’t seem to want to take no for an answer. And despite how many times he asked her out, or how many times Bea told her while significantly waggling her eyebrows that he was a steady guy, she wasn’t about to give in.
She wasn’t that old to be single. Thirty was not old! So it annoyed her when everyone acted as if she were already an aged spinster.
On the other hand, her friend Maggie applauded her for not just rolling over and falling at the feet of the first man to show interest in her. Maggie gave her a speech about female empowerment and how women didn’t really need men – Kylie was only half listening, but she got the jist.
Absently, Kylie doodled on a pad of paper. Maggie was the only real friend she had made since coming to town. Everyone was friendly enough, and she was friendly with them. It was just that everyone else in the town was so picture perfect cookie cutter-Stepford wife-ish. They all looked like they’d just stepped out of a knitting pattern catalog. The women Kylie’s age milled around town in khakis, twin sets and pearls, looking absolutely perfect. Kylie’s wardrobe looked more like it had time-traveled there from Woodstock. But there was an exception – Maggie. She was a few years younger than Kylie and, to say the least, didn’t really fit in with the rest of the town. Maggie had a dyed black pixie cut and sported enough facial jewelry to give a metal detector a fit. Her clothes were invariably black, red or purple and ripped while sporting as many occult symbols as possible.
Maggie had befriended Kylie the moment she came to town. She eschewed the rest of the town as boring and claimed that Kylie was chic for having lived in New York. Kylie didn’t feel in the least chic but didn’t have the heart to disabuse her friend of this notion.
Maggie ran a gift shop and tearoom that specialized in magical books and knick-knacks called The Witch’s Brew. It was one of the most popular businesses in Devil’s Hang and did a steady trade. Tourists would probably be disappointed if they didn’t get to at least buy something vaguely magical or demonic, given the supposed origin of the town. Maggie also did night tours of the town pointing out all the magical hotspots, and they invariably ended with everyone camping in the graveyard overnight. The pastor of the church didn’t seem to mind, Maggie was his niece after all. And Kylie also believed that it was the pastor who threw a sheet over himself and ran through the graveyard, to give the tourists a thrill whenever Maggie was giving a tour.
The rest of the town didn’t seem to mind her eccentricities. No, in fact, they seemed to embrace her. Kylie supposed everyone liked an oddball. Which was probably why they also had no problem with the almost reclusive, and grouchy Professor Hardcastle. She supposed they liked to conform, but they enjoyed having one or two people around who didn’t.
Maggie stuck out like a sore thumb, but Kylie supposed this was why she
never moved away to New York. In the little town of Devil’s Hang, she was different and stood out from the crowd. In New York, she would be swallowed by the crowd. Better to be a weird fish in a small pond, than an average one in a freaking ocean of weirdness.
In spite of any quirks, Maggie was a good friend. How could you fault anyone who had put a curse on your cheating ex-boyfriend and erstwhile, slutty ex-best friend?
Kylie glanced down at the pad and realized that she had been doodling a picture of the gargoyle statue she had seen in Professor Hardcastle’s hedge maze. It was an admittedly crude image – she was no artist – but it was definitely the same statue. She shook her head and ripped off the page, crumpling it into a ball and tossing it in the garbage.
It had been four weeks since she had seen it. In that time, she had thought about it often. It was the strangest sensation. It kept creeping into her mind when she least expected. She had even started doing Internet searches on gargoyles, trying to learn all she could about them. She had no idea that they were originally supposed to be aqueducts. She had always just thought they were supposed to guard churches and keep bad spirits away.
Much to her annoyance, the professor hadn’t bought anything from Bea in the last few weeks, so Kylie had no excuse to go up to his house and catch another glimpse of the thing. She kept hinting to Bea that maybe she should contact the professor and suggest he might want to buy something else, but Bea just looked at her curiously and didn’t say anything.
The bell over the door jingled, and before she even looked up she started rattling off the greeting, “Hello, and welcome to The Birds and the Bea’s…” She paused as she caught sight of her visitor shaking out his umbrella.
It was a man. Not just any man, possibly the handsomest man she had ever seen. Definitely not a local, but he didn’t seem to fit the usual ilk of tourists. He had to be at least six-foot-two, and the tight black shirt he wore was clinging to his obvious muscles, barely contained within. His clothes were plain black, and he wore unflashy loafers, but it was clear that they were well made. His chiseled face and adorable chin dimple wouldn’t look out of place on a god. This tight, gorgeous package was all topped by closely cropped blonde hair and startling green eyes. He looked professional, but was surely too buff to be anything like a lawyer or a businessman.