Heart of Stone

by C. E. Murphy

  “What the fuck are you?” Margrit’s voice shot up, almost a shriek.

  “My family name is Korund,” Alban rumbled. It was the granite-on-granite voice she’d heard before, the one that seemed familiar and strange all at once. Margrit put her palm against her concussed forehead and closed her eyes for a moment. “It means stone,” he added. The sound lifted goose bumps on her arms, and she shivered as she looked down at him again. Even crouched, he was easily four feet tall. “I am—your people would call me—a gargoyle.”

  Margrit stared at him in silence, then shook her head violently. “That’s impossible.”

  Alban’s mouth curved in a smile. “Merely improbable.”

  “No!” The word came out too sharply, and Margrit found herself backing up. “No, it’s just impossible. I don’t know what the hell kind of hallucinogenic was in that tea, but you’re going to regret it, I swear to God you’re going to regret it—”

  Alban stood up. Margrit’s throat went dry as she raked in seven feet of gargoyle with one look.

  Seven feet of naked gargoyle.

  “Jesus Christ.” Color scalded her cheeks, banishing terror in one embarrassed swoop.

  Alban’s wings stretched again, tips bumping against the ceiling only half unfurled, his bulk added to immeasurably. “I’m out of the habit of clothes in this form,” he said dryly, stepping past her to pull open a drawer and drag a pair of jeans out, and on. “My apologies.”

  Margrit swallowed and averted her eyes. “What happened to them? Your clothes.”

  “A gargoyle transforms in front of you, and you wonder about his clothes?” Alban turned back to her, safely clad in jeans that were no less distracting than the nakedness of a moment before. Margrit stared at his hips, where ivory skin slid into dark denim, and swallowed again. There were no telltale curls, no chest hair of any color running in a V down his abdomen to be hidden by the jeans. Her fingers curled as she fought the urge to step forward and touch his stomach and see if it was as absurdly smooth to touch as it was to look at. She wondered if stony skin would be cool under her hand, or warm as human flesh.

  “Margrit?”

  She yanked her gaze back up to his face. Her head ached, bright pulses of pain behind her eyes. “What the hell was in that tea?” she asked again, voice hoarse.

  “Willow bark,” Alban said, puzzled. “A little…oh. No drugs, no hallucinogens. I’m afraid I’m real. And the clothes stay with the form.”

  “So you, what, don’t need them in this one?” Margrit asked faintly. His feet were enormously wide, as if his weight was meant to stand forward on them, though he didn’t. The nails there were taloned, too, just like his hands. Margrit’s gaze drifted to the jeans again, this time at the hems. They were undamaged, belying the breadth of his feet. “That must get chilly. Shrinkage and everything. Embarrassing.” Her voice was shrill and thin, a barrier against accepting the impossible as it stood before her.

  A whisper of humor entered Alban’s tone. “Stone doesn’t react like flesh. I don’t suffer—” more amusement flooded the word “—shrinkage. In this form I don’t usually need clothes. Having them change with me would be inconvenient, don’t you think? I would destroy my outfit at dawn each day.”

  “Dawn?” Margrit looked back up at him. Her mind was addled, she thought distantly. It was the only possible explanation for standing there holding a near normal conversation with a gargoyle. She shivered hard and wrapped her arms around herself, still staring at him. Fear, no longer distracted by the extraordinarily pragmatic question of his clothing, swept back over her, taking the strength from her muscles and leaving her shaking.

  “The sunlight holds power over my kind.” Alban dropped into a crouch again, both hands folded over his knees now. He looked comfortable, as if it was his natural stance. “Rather like your people’s tales of vampires, although we’re not destroyed. Only transformed.”

  “Into…stone?” Margrit put her fingertips against her forehead again, testing the injury there. It throbbed badly enough to make her dizzy once more. She was hallucinating. The thought gave her comfort even as she swayed and shivered.

  “Or very nearly,” Alban agreed, and offered her a hand, his palm up. Margrit stared at it as if it might bite her. Alban closed his fingers against his palm, loosely, then let his hand fall. “I’m not your enemy, Margrit. I won’t hurt you.”

  “You can’t possibly exist.” She closed her eyes. “I want to go home.”

  “Will you hear me out?”

  “No!” Her eyes flew open. “No, I just want to go home. My friends will be worried sick about me.”

  “Call them,” Alban urged. Margrit snorted, then whimpered as the inhalation seemed to drive spikes through her nose and into her brain.

  “Call them and say what?” she demanded, cradling her head in both hands. “‘Don’t worry, I’m fine, a lunatic with a special effects machine has got me’?” She turned and dropped to her hands and knees, looking for her purse in the tawdry neon light. The impact with the floor sent a jolt of agony through her head, but she scrounged around until she found the bag.

  “I’m leaving now.” She climbed to her feet. “I’m leaving now, and you’re not going to stop me.” Weaving her way to the door took fierce concentration, one careful step after another.

  Alban dropped his head. “Margrit. Please.”

  “No.” She hesitated with her hand on the knob, expecting a word from him, a movement to stop her. It didn’t come.

  She yanked the door open and stumbled out.

  TEN

  THE FRONT DOOR swung open as Margrit fumbled with the lock, which doubled and swam together again no matter how hard she concentrated. Cole swept her into his arms, incoherent with relief. Margrit’s knees stopped working and she clung to him. Cam enveloped both of them in a hug.

  “See, I said she was okay, Cole. You’re okay, aren’t you, Grit?” Cameron unfolded Margrit from Cole’s arms, wrapping her own arm around her waist to keep her steady. “Good God, what happened to your head? How many fingers am I holding up?”

  “Two?” Margrit hazarded.

  Cam clucked her tongue. “No, sweetheart, just one. God, we’ve been worried sick. Cole, call Tony. Oh, you are, good man. He told us you’d been hit by a car,” Cam said to Margrit, who looked at her blankly. “He said you went flying and he couldn’t find you. You’ve been gone for hours, Grit. Where’ve you been? Sit down. Let me get a compress for your head.”

  Somehow, Margrit had been shuffled into the living room during the barrage of words. Cam sat her down on the couch, and Margrit sank back into it, shutting her eyes. “Don’t fall asleep, Grit!”

  Cole, a cell phone pressed against his ear, knelt by the couch to take her hand. “Cam’s right, Grit. Don’t fall asleep, okay?”

  “Pssh,” Margrit said. “You always tell me to sleep more.”

  Cole smiled lopsidedly. “Not right now. Where’ve you been, Grit? What happened? Tony!” His voice sharpened and he turned his attention to the phone. “Grit’s back. I don’t know. She just staggered in. A knot the size of Texas on her head, but she’s okay. Maybe a concussion. All right. We won’t. Okay. See you soon.” He hung up the phone and dropped it on the coffee table. “Tony’ll be here in a few minutes.”

  “Tony? Oh good. We were going to have sex,” Margrit said gravely, then winced.

  Cameron choked on a laugh. “Too much information, Grit. TMI.”

  “No kidding,” Margrit muttered. “My head hurts.”

  “We’ve been frantic, hon. I called your parents. Everyone was afraid—” Cole broke off, pale as Margrit straightened up.

  “When’d you phone them? Call back. Tell them I’m fine. They don’t have to come in.” That, if nothing else, was clear in her mind. “I’m not dead, and if they come they’ll be here for days, Cole. I swear, I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine,” she promised.

  Cole’s lopsided smile flashed again. “So fine you’re announcing your sex life to anybody who
wants to listen. Maybe you’re right. Maybe your parents shouldn’t hear that. I called them right after Tony phoned here, but your mom’s a practical woman, Grit. She just got very calm and said she’d contact some of her network to see whether anyone could help find you. She thought she could do it better from there than here. Panic feeds on itself, she said.”

  Margrit slid down in the couch, feeling it grab her hips. Alban had been more polite, she thought, when they’d danced. The couch was pushy. Not a nice date. She wanted to snort at her own absurdity, but was afraid it would hurt her head. “Go Mom,” she whispered. “She’s probably got half of Queens awake. What time is it?”

  “About two. You’ve been gone six hours.”

  “Six hours. It didn’t seem that long. I slept more than I thought. Please call them. Tell Mom I’ll phone her as soon as my head stops hurting. Tomorrow.” Margrit closed her eyes, the pounding in her temples fading a little. “Thanks for worrying. I’m okay.”

  “Of course you are,” Cam said with a briskness reserved for emotional emergencies. “Take this.” She folded something into Margrit’s hand, then moved it to her head. Cold pierced through the throbbing and Margrit yelped, straightening up again and jerking the ice away. “It’s good for you,” Cam said.

  “I can tell you’re a physical trainer. Work through the pain, right?” She pulled her feet up onto the couch and leaned on the arm, holding the ice pack against her head gingerly.

  “You got it, babe. God, I’m so glad you’re okay, Margrit.”

  “Me, too. Can somebody call my parents?”

  She felt Cameron and Cole exchange wordless glances before Cam said, “All right. You sure you don’t want me to ask them to come in?”

  Margrit squinted her eyes open and frowned at Cameron, who lifted her hands in defeat. “Okay. Rest for a while. We’ll wake you up every twenty minutes or so. I don’t want you sleeping through that concussion.”

  “Hey.” Cam’s murmur made Margrit catch her breath and whimper. “You’ve got a visitor, Grit. Wake up.”

  “Go ’way,” Margrit said sulkily. Cameron laughed quietly and did. Tony sat down on the edge of the couch, the shifting weight making Margrit squint again before she pushed herself upright, frowning. “What happened?”

  “I was going to ask you the same question. Where have you been? It’s two in the morning, Margrit.” Tony’s eyebrows drew into a frown.

  Margrit shook her head carefully. The room spun, but not as dramatically as before. She looked around for the ice pack. “I don’t know. What happened?”

  “The car came out of nowhere. I got the license number, but it’s stolen. Belonged to somebody in Connecticut.”

  “And it hit me?”

  Tony hesitated. “It had to have. It happened so fast. I saw you fly into the air.” He broke off again, scowling. “And then you were gone. I looked, but—where did you go?”

  “I don’t know. I woke up in an apartment somewhere. Alban was there.”

  “You got away from him?” Tony’s voice rose an octave.

  “He let me go. He didn’t hurt me.” Margrit pressed her eyes shut again, watching Alban’s impossible transformation replay behind her eyelids.

  “Can you describe the apartment? The part of town? Any landmarks?” Concern and professionalism mixed in Tony’s voice, the cop struggling briefly with the man.

  No, Margrit thought, the cop was the man. As much as the lawyer was the woman, with her. “We’re gonna have to work on that,” she mumbled. “Redefining ourselves outside of the job.”

  “What?”

  She shook her head again, another small, careful motion. “Nothing. There was a bar,” she said fuzzily, then closed her eyes. “I don’t know. I really don’t. I got a cab outside the bar, but I just don’t remember, Tony. I’m sorry. Everything’s blurry.”

  Clarity snapped through her, bright enough that pain spiked behind her eyes. The car’s headlights blinded her again, this time in memory. Something hit her, slamming into her ribs, bruising them: Alban’s broad shoulder. She doubled over, smashing her forehead not against the car, but against the improbable solidness of his back.

  Like smashing her head against stone.

  There was nothing after that, no memory of flight, nothing until the smelling salts in the apartment and the explosive pain in her head.

  “I don’t remember.” It was true enough. The waking moments in the apartment were clear, but the time surrounding it stretched and pulled thin, unfocused and difficult to hold in memory. Almost a blessing. She wasn’t sure what she might do if she could direct Tony to Alban’s hideaway. Wasn’t at all sure what Tony would do if faced with Alban’s incredible secret.

  Wasn’t sure what she wanted to do with the knowledge she now had, or if she could do anything about it at all.

  She heard Tony inhale slowly, deliberately, and then let the breath out again. “It’s okay,” he said, keeping his voice steady. “Concussions screw with people’s memories. The important thing is that you’re okay. Thank God you’re okay.”

  “I’m all right,” Margrit agreed without opening her eyes. “Just tired. Really tired.”

  “They haven’t been letting you sleep, have they?”

  “Just naps,” Margrit mumbled. “That’s all Alban would let me have, either. He gave me some kind of tea and I got better. But then I hit my head again.”

  “On what?” Tony asked. Margrit pried her eyes open and frowned at him.

  “On Alban.” She watched his expression crumble with dismay and let her eyes close again. “Maybe I’m still a little out of it. I just need rest.”

  “All right.” Cam appeared from the kitchen, clapping her hands together as if knocking off eraser dust. “I’ll stay up with her. You—”

  Margrit was asleep before the arrangements were finished.

  She popped awake ten seconds before Cameron’s alarm went off. Twin spots reflected on the television screen gave her a moment’s pause, the headache receded but the double vision remaining. She frowned at the screen as the alarm went off and Cam sat up with a groan. A quarter-size circle of light shone on her forehead, a second one shining past her onto the TV screen. Margrit squinted over her shoulder, then breathed in relieved recognition at the slats of the dining room birdcage, which broke the morning sun into columns of light. “I think I’m better.”

  “Oh good. I can get some sleep.” Cameron stretched and climbed to her feet, padding across the living room and through the dining room to the kitchen. “Want some yogurt?”

  Margrit’s stomach rumbled and she clapped a hand over it. “Yeah. I feel like I haven’t eaten in a week. Yogurt. Eggs.” She stood up cautiously. The room didn’t sway, and she grinned again. “Yeah, I’m better. Oh! Oh hell. Where’s Tony? I thought of something while I was sleeping.”

  Cameron looked around the fridge door and peered through her bangs at Margrit. “He got a call around three and went to work. Did you remember where you were?”

  “What? No, but I want to look at the club tapes again. I need to check something.”

  “Well, it’s after ten. You could give him a call.”

  “Oh, God. My work.” Margrit bolted for the phone.

  “I already called them.” Cam held up a carton of strawberry yogurt. “You’re good for a couple of days. They said take the rest of the week off.”

  Margrit took the yogurt, then frowned. “Isn’t it Friday?”

  “Well.” Cam ate a spoonful of her own yogurt. “Yeah.”

  “Generous of them. No, I’ve got to at least call Russell. I have to talk to him about the Delaney case.” Margrit pulled the top off the yogurt cup and licked the foil, fumbling with the phone. “Crap.” She put the yogurt down so she could dial, then wedged the phone against her ear and stole bites of yogurt between speaking. “Voice mail,” she reported a minute later. “I need to go in. I’m gonna take a shower and head over there, okay?”

  “Breakfast first,” Cam said equitably.

  “
Shower, then breakfast, and I swear, you and Cole are like my parents. Did somebody call them?”

  “Yes.” The following silence spoke volumes about what they’d had to say. Cam shook her head, then stepped over to Margrit to give her a brief, hard hug. “Call your mom tonight, okay? She’s worried. I’m really glad you’re all right, Grit.”

  “Me, too,” Margrit mumbled back. “Okay.”

  Cam smiled and let her go. “Go shower. I’ll make you eggs and toast.”

  “Thank you. You’re the best. Man, I feel better.”

  “Good. Now go.” Cam shooed at her, grinning. “Go, or you’ll be standing here babbling until the sun goes down.”

  Blood rushed through Margrit’s ears, suddenly pounding like the sea. Sunset was only hours away.

  Only hours until she could see Alban.

  She shook herself and went to shower.

  Margrit rapped on Russell’s door, announcing her presence. He glanced up and gestured her in, the shirt and tie he wore making her self-conscious as she stopped inside the door and leaned on it, clad in her running tights and sweatshirt. Russell took in her closed-off stance, arms folded around her ribs, and tilted his head. “All the way in, Margrit.”

  She shook her head, staying where she was. “I’m fine, thanks. I just wanted to stop by and see if there was anything I needed to take home for the weekend.”

  Russell got up, frowning, and came around his desk to put a hand on her shoulder. “Are you sure you’re all right? Everyone’s very concerned. I didn’t expect to see you today.”

  “I’ve been better,” Margrit admitted. “No, but I’m okay. I’m not hurt.” She unwrapped an arm to touch the bruise at her hairline. “Despite appearances, maybe. And I’m not here for work,” she added, flicking her fingers at her clothes. “But you said we were going to have a lot of fast work to do, and I don’t think I can afford a three-day delay if that’s the case. I thought I’d come in tomorrow to start doing groundwork.”