by Anton Strout
I started to argue, but decided against it. There was no malice in what Marshall said, only the fact-based concern of a true friend. I gave him a genuine smile.
“Thank you,” I said. “You work miracles.”
He dropped the vial behind the counter and leaned forward on top of it. “Just promise Rory and me that you’re not going back out tonight.”
It was my turn to avert my eyes in avoidance, busying myself as I pulled my blood-covered Burberry jacket back on.
“I can’t make that promise,” I said. “I just . . . can’t. Too much to do . . .”
“You need rest,” Rory insisted.
“I can sleep during the day,” I countered, heading for the door, “when they’re inactive.”
Rory sighed behind me.
“Ten bucks says she doesn’t make it to the weekend without another injury,” Marshall said.
“Wait,” I said with a growing sense of doom. “What day of the week is it again . . . ?”
“Monday,” Rory said, shaking her head at me.
“Crap on a crap cracker!” I said with dawning realization.
“What’s the problem?” Marshall asked.
“You’ll both be happy to hear that I am going home,” I said.
“What’s the matter?” Rory asked. “Has getting knocked about enough finally beaten some sense into you?”
“Worse,” I said, spinning back around to the door and walking out into the night, thankful that at least the rain had subsided. “I’ve got to be social.”
Four
Alexandra
Entering the familiar comfort of my building on Saint Mark’s Place always calmed my soul and reminded me of my great-great-grandfather’s guildhall beneath all of its new construction. It reminded me of how far I had come as the only practicing Spellmason in the past year since discovering the location. The only thing that outdid my own transformation was Caleb Kennedy going from the alchemist who had attacked Rory and me there, to becoming actual dating material.
I wasn’t sure reformed alchemical freelancers were typically considered the best boyfriend stock, but given how little time I had for things like practicing my artistic endeavors or just a life right now, someone who shared my arcane interests was as good as it got as a distraction from all the crazy.
As I climbed the stairs up to my main living area and dining room, my heart raced a little in anticipation of what our planned date night might have in store for me. Much to my surprise, however, I found the dining room untouched.
“Awesome,” I said to the empty space. I pulled off my backpack and laid it on the table, disappointed. Only then did I notice the plain white note card sticking out from under it, and that was because a piece of string snaked off the table from it and ran across the room.
I pulled the note card free.
The presence of your company is required for an evening under the stars.
A small smile crept to my lips, and with curiosity getting the better of me, I followed the string across the room where it led out the doorway and continued up the stairs. It snaked around the banister the entire way, other cards dangling from it as I followed.
Closer.
Almost there.
Getting hungry yet?
Pushing open the rooftop access door, I stepped out into the familiar sight of Gramercy Park, recreated painstakingly on my rooftop. Much of the rain had dried up from earlier, and the string trailed off down one of the cobblestone paths. I turned and pushed the door shut behind me, watching it vanish as its false stone facade matched itself back into the column concealing it.
The string continued along the path next to the running brook, and the farther I moved into the park, the more sounds of activity within there were.
In the clearing at the center were two tables lit only by the minimal light of the moon and a few scattered candles. One of the tables was set with a dark red tablecloth, flowers, and place settings. On either side of the gold chargers were more forks and spoons than I was used to seeing. Caleb worked over a mix of food, test tubes, and vials at the other table, the moonlight catching in his muss of dirty blond hair.
The string led to one of the chairs and I went over to it, finally drawing Caleb’s notice.
“Sorry I’m late,” I said, as sheepishly as I could. “I . . . umm, almost forgot.”
“Forgot?” he said, looking up from the table he was working at. “Or were you working too hard?”
“Not you, too,” I said. “Did Rory and Marshall call you?”
“No,” he said. “Let’s just say I have mad pattern recognition skills.”
“It’s busy out there,” I said in my defense. “Halloween’s coming, and I’d like as many gargoyles off the street as possible before costume confusion sets in. I don’t want someone getting crushed because they mistook a grotesque for someone on their way to a Halloween party.”
“Relax,” he said, coming over to pull my chair out for me. “You’re home now.”
“Thanks,” I said, remaining standing. I leaned against the back of the chair.
Caleb held a small white spoon with a raw slice of beef in it. He pulled a vial from within his jacket of a thousand pockets and poured whatever mixture was in it over the spoon. The piece of meat sizzled, and I detected not only the aroma of the meat from the spoon but the hint of buttery potatoes, corn, and what smelled like apple pie.
“What is it?” I asked when he offered me the spoon, taking it with a bit of reluctance.
“Taste it,” he said. “It’s something new I’m trying. Alchemical cooking.”
I pulled the spoon away from my mouth. “I’m really not an experimental-alchemical-potions-imbibing kind of gal,” I said.
Caleb took my hand in his and eased it back to my lips. “Try it,” he said. “It’s safe. I promise. Alchemist’s honor.”
Given his checkered past, I wondered how honorable that actually was, but held my tongue. There was a comfort and trust in the way he asked, and I put the spoon in my mouth. An explosion of the flavors I thought I had smelled erupted in my mouth, so intense I couldn’t quite process all of them.
“What exactly am I tasting?”
“It’s your complete dinner,” he said. “All in one spoon. There’s steak and potatoes, creamed spinach and corn, topped off with both a blueberry and apple pie. But that’s just the beginning of dinner. That amuse-bouche is the essence of the arc of the meal I’ve prepared tonight for you.”
I sat there for a moment, moving it around in my mouth, letting the various flavors hit me. Hearing what Caleb was going for helped me to pin down each of them.
“Well . . . ?” he asked, his eyes desperately seeking approval.
I smiled. “The snozzberries taste like snozzberries, Wonka.”
His face lit up. He walked back to his prep table.
“So, honey,” he asked in a singsong voice. “How was your day?”
“Day?” I repeated. “During the day, I was asleep. My night, on the other hand . . .”
“Busy?”
“You might say that,” I said, pulling off my coat. I poked my finger through the gash in the upper part of the left sleeve of my shirt, the blood there now a dried brown stain.
Caleb’s eyes widened and he stepped back over to me, examining the jagged hole.
Under the moonlight the hint of a scar was barely visible. I reminded myself to get something fancy for Marshall from that ThinkGeek site he was always showing Rory and me.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m okay. Now, anyway.”
I wasn’t about to tell Caleb the full extent of my wounds from earlier. There had been enough lectures about it at the game store this evening. My late-night dinner date with Caleb might go easier if I kept quiet on the subject.
“You really should take it easy,” Caleb said.
“What?” he asked. “Is it so wrong that I don’t want you getting yourself killed, especially on date night?”
“Maybe if I had some help,” I shot back, half kidding but also half serious. “You are partially responsible for the recent resurgence in gargoyle activity, after all.”
“Through no fault of my own,” Caleb added with lightning speed. He walked back to his prep table and continued on with his cooking.
“No fault . . . ?!” I repeated, shocked. “You’re joking, right? My intended spell was meant to work on one statue, not all of Alexander’s across Manhattan.”
“You and I have different recollections of that evening, then,” he said, throwing me a sidelong smile.
“Do we, now?” I asked, slumping back in the chair, arms folded across my chest.
“Yes, we do,” he said, walking back over to the dining table and sliding a plate across it to me. “By my accounting of it, I was trying to save you and your friends.”
“You were trying to save yourself,” I said, pointing a finger at him.
He considered it for a moment. “Those are not mutually exclusive.”
“Fine,” I conceded. “Continue.”
“I had a plan,” he said, going back to his prep table. “Kejetan’s evil little gargoyles would have had to contend with the other gargoyles I created by way of amplifying your spell. Had my plan worked, I would have added, what? Maybe several dozen stoners out there, tops, not the whole city’s worth.” He pointed at me with a fork. “That’s on you and your friends for interfering with what I was trying to accomplish.”
Caleb finished filling his plate before dropping it across the table, joining me.
“And that doesn’t bother you?” I asked. “Knowing what you’ve brought down on this city?”
He sighed and looked up from his plate, his attitude blasé. “If I got upset with every arcane twist or turn that’s happened in my freelancing career as an alchemist, I’d be the most morose person out there. Magic is a pseudoscience on a good day, which means it’s at best often unpredictable.” He shrugged. “I roll with the eldritch punches.”
“I couldn’t do that,” I said. “Jesus, I can barely sleep for all the guilt I bear over my involvement in it.”
“Of course you can’t sleep,” he said, going back to eating. “You’re a product of arcane privilege.”
“Excuse me . . . ?” I asked. “What the hell is that?”
“Don’t be so offended,” he said. “You can’t help it. You were born into it. You’ve never had to hustle on the street to make a living selling spells or potions or taking odd alchemical jobs to make ends meet. That’s arcane privilege.”
“I work hard at what I do,” I protested.
“Sure you do,” he said. “But it’s not like it’s a job.”
“Not everyone is motivated by profit,” I said.
Caleb laughed at that, enjoying the good-natured ribbing and verbal jousting as much as I did, maybe more since just then I was actually a little offended by his accusation.
“Do you even hear yourself?” he said with a laugh. “Ever hear the maxim ‘Money makes the world go round’?”
“Some people do things because they have a love for it,” I said. “A talent for it. Maybe a family legacy to excel at it.”
He held his hands up. “Fine, fine,” he said. “Look. I didn’t come here for an argument. I came to celebrate.”
It was too late. I was riled now. “I’m out there every night trying to get control of this situation . . . a situation you and I created! Anything bad that happens while those stone creatures are out there is on us. With great power comes—”
Caleb shook his head at me. “Don’t give me that Spider-Man crap,” he said, then reached across the table to take my hand, squeezing it. “Lexi, I love your altruism, but I just don’t think the best solution is to try to personally hunt down every last one of these creatures.” He tapped his forehead. “You know, work smarter, not harder and all that.”
“Well, what are you actively doing to help the cause?” I asked. “Because right now it looks like you’re doing two things: jack and shit.”
He smiled at that.
“I’ve got my connections,” he said. “My feelers are out there. The arcane community—what spastic factions there are of it, anyway—is already trying to contend with this sudden influx of gargoyles in their own way.”
“How?”
“Well, for one, I’ve done a lot of groundwork making sure no one knows who actually caused said influx of gargoyles.”
I shook my head with a grimace. “Again, protecting yourself,” I said.
“And you,” he said, his face turning serious. “You don’t understand these people, Alexandra. They see this awakening, as they call it, as a hostile move by some grand sorcerer supreme out there. Some of the local factions in the boroughs are out for blood. It takes a lot of effort to keep you and me out of their sights.”
“Wonderful,” I said. “I’m a child of arcane privilege and a Magical’s Most Wanted now.”
“Back to that, are we?” he said. “You’ve just never had to scramble for it, that’s all. It’s not a judgment call.”
“You don’t have to scramble anymore for it, either,” I reminded him. “You can come work for Team Belarus. I’ll put you on retainer.”
Caleb raised one eyebrow. “Tempting,” he said, “but I think I’ll pass.”
“What?” I asked. “My money’s not good enough?”
“You know what high esteem I hold financial gain in, but it would be . . . well, odd. Let’s not bring money into our relationship. My favorite part of being a freelancer is the being free part.”
“You, sir, have commitment issues,” I said, my mood a solid mix of flirtation and frustration by then.
His eyes met mine from across the table and he smiled. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
His words bordered on being far too suave, almost cheesy, but I couldn’t help smiling back.
“I tried to resist you,” I told him as I raised a glass. “I really did, but you just had to go be all adorable by blowing yourself up on our enemies’ boat to save me and my friends, didn’t you?”
“Years of downing alchemical concoctions will make a fellow nigh invulnerable like that,” he said with a shrug like it was an everyday thing for him.
I reached across the table and took his hand, squeezing it. “You act like blowing yourself up was nothing,” I said, “but back then you didn’t know you were going to prove near indestructible, which only makes your intended sacrifice all the more noble.”
And Lord, did I have a soft spot in my heart for nobility, I thought, allowing myself to finally relax into my evening and try to enjoy the moment.
Or I would have. A flurry of activity dropped down out of the sky into the shadows to the left side of our table, the rooftop shaking with the impact. Caleb and I were both up and out of our seats before either of us could process what was going on, reacting out of pure instinct. Caleb’s hands were already reaching into his coat for one of his alchemical concoctions, and I had snapped my connection out to pavement stone pathways all around us.
A lone figure stepped out of the shadows, but even before it fully came into our circle of candlelight, I recognized its gigantic bat-winged form.
“Stanis,” I said, letting go of my connection to the pavers, settling them back into the pathways. “You startled us.”
“Forgive me,” he said.
Strangely, I already had. After a long evening of hard words with friends and arguing up on the roof with Caleb, it was Stanis I realized that I felt the worst about having been unkind to earlier. If anyone should be asking for forgiveness, it was me.
Caleb, on the other hand, appeared wary still, his h
and remaining inside his coat.
“Easy,” I said, waiting until Caleb’s hand dropped back to his side before turning back to Stanis.
The grotesque looked around the space and took in everything Caleb had arranged up here tonight.
“I am perhaps interrupting something,” Stanis said.
“Ya think?” Caleb asked, already exasperated as he settled down.
I laid my hand on Caleb’s arm, silencing him. “Did you happen to get a chance to take care of that Fort Tryon grotesque Rory and I had to contend with earlier?”
“Given your agitation at the Cloisters, I came by to reassure you that Jonathan would be taken care of. He is off with Emily now. She has a natural way with the induction of her fellow initiates into their newfound lives.”
“You sure she’s a wise choice?” I asked, bristling a bit at the mention of her. Ever since the gargoyle population had gone up a thousandfold, Emily Hoffert had been Stanis’s constant companion, not just tonight. Having once myself been the one Stanis used to watch over exclusively, I couldn’t help but hate on her a little bit. I didn’t have to like myself for realizing that fact, but there it was if I was going to try to remain honest with myself. I wasn’t simply going to discount it or sweep it under my mental rug. “It’s not like she’s much more seasoned at this grotesque thing than that troubled monk we found.”
“She was the first,” Stanis said without any hesitation, “the one who came to me, seeking my counsel out after having been used by the darker forces in my family. And she was truthful at the first about her role in deceiving me. Emily has since given most of her time over to proving herself through her assistance with my efforts to unite all of my grotesque kind. So, yes, I trust her with the task. Emily well knows the confusion that comes from inheriting this new life. You need not concern yourself with her affairs.”
His words stung, but surely no worse than the short ones I had slung at him earlier in the evening at the Cloisters.
“I wish to be a better ruler than my father was,” Stanis said.