Heart of Stone

by C. E. Murphy

  “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.”

  “That would be wonderful,” her mother said after a pause. “If you’re sure it’s what you want.” Margrit cast her gaze to the top of the building across the street, trying not to laugh with frustration.

  “I thought you liked Tony, Mom.”

  “I do. It’s just…”

  “That he’s Italian-American? He can’t help being white, Mom, and besides, he’s really more of a nice golden-brown color all over,” Margrit said, straight-faced.

  “Margrit!”

  Laughter won, breaking free briefly before Margrit rested her head gently against the wall. “Mom, this is a relationship, not a political statement.”

  “Everything’s a political statement, sweetheart.”

  “Then my politics in this case are that I like the guy, all right?” The laughter fled, leaving frustration in its place again. “It shouldn’t matter.”

  “It shouldn’t,” her mother agreed, a follow-up but it does left unspoken.

  Margrit sighed. “Mama, what do you want me to do? I like Tony. He’s a good guy. If I end up with him it doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate my heritage, you know? And it’s not like there’s only one branch to our background. I mean, I hate to break it to you, but we’re not exactly the products of a hundred generations of pure African breeding. There’s plenty of cream in the coffee.”

  “Margrit, this isn’t an appropriate discussion.”

  Margrit bit her teeth together to keep from pointing out that her mother had begun it. Then she exhaled slowly, letting frustration go. “Okay. New topic. I met Eliseo Daisani yesterday, and he said to tell you hello. You know him?”

  She could all but hear her mother’s inhalation. “Why did you meet with Eliseo?” The name was spoken carefully, as if it hadn’t passed her lips in a long time, but she was afraid speaking it might betray something.

  “I’m taking a case against him. Where do you know him from, Mom? I can’t believe you know the richest guy on the East Coast and never told me.”

  “I knew him a long time ago, sweetheart. Back when he was only the richest man in New York. Margrit, be very careful. Eliseo is accustomed to getting what he wants. I know you’re very capable, but he’s a bad enemy to make.”

  “People keep telling me that. Mom, if you know him you could give me all kinds of insight into his psyche. It could be really helpfu—”

  “Not tonight, Margrit. If you’re certain you’re all right, I’ll let you go. Don’t work too hard, sweetheart.”

  Margrit pulled the phone from her ear to look at it in disbelief before bringing it back, a grin staining her face. “Okay, Mom. I love you and I’ll try to come see you next weekend. Tell Daddy I love him, too, and that I’m fine, really.” They hung up, and Margrit shed blankets to return to the kitchen, still grinning.

  Cole looked up from his dinner preparations in surprise. “No rescue necessary tonight?”

  “I’ve found the magic phrase to get her off the phone. It turns out to be ‘Eliseo Daisani said hi.’”

  “Seriously?” Cam’s attention focused like a bloodhound on the scent. “Your mom knows Eliseo Daisani? The Eliseo Daisani? Do you think they had a thing?”

  “Oh, my God. I don’t even want to think that.” Margrit laughed and shucked her coat. “It’d take all the wind out of her sails about Tony, that’s for sure. The way she talks you’d think she never thought a white guy was cute in her life.”

  “Wait. How’d we get from Daisani to Tony?”

  “We got—” The phone in Margrit’s hand shrilled, making her start. “We got a phone call, apparently,” she muttered, and thumbed it on. “Hello?” Cole turned to watch her, eyebrows elevated as he waited to see who it was for.

  “Margrit?”

  Her stomach felt suddenly empty, and an unexpected wave of cold washed over her forearms and calves. Trusting her poker face to have not betrayed her, she waved the phone at Cole. “It’s for me.” She pulled her coat back on and stepped onto the balcony again, closing the door behind her and crouching against it, her gaze fixed on the ground five stories below. “Alban?”

  He exhaled. “Do you know how many M. Knights there are in the phone book?”

  “No.” She could feel her shoulders pulling back with tension, as if a dagger had been stuffed between them.

  “Thirty-four. And none of them with your address listed. This was not an easy number to find,” he said with a plaintive note.

  “You know my address?” Margrit’s voice shot up.

  Alban was silent a few moments. “I apologize. I’ve been watching you.”

  “Jesus motherfucking Christ.” Margrit hung up the phone and stared at the receiver in her hand. Disappointment at not seeing Alban in the park didn’t, it seemed, equate to being delighted at him calling or knowing her address. Consistency was the hobgoblin of small minds.

  The phone rang again. Margrit let it ring, staring at it, until Cole called, “Grit? You gonna get that?” from the kitchen.

  “No.” She thumbed the receiver on anyway, willing her heartbeat to slow down. It stuck in her throat instead, making the emptiness in her stomach bubble.

  “I’m sorry,” Alban said.

  “Sorry? You’re creepy! How long have you been watching me?”

  He was silent again, long enough to make Margrit shiver with discomfort and fear. “Perhaps three years,” he finally said. “I’ve watched you running in the park. I…am concerned for your safety.”

  “Oh good.” Margrit’s voice rose to a high register. “So to protect me from stalkers you thought you’d stalk me a little? For years? Jesus Christ!”

  “Not stalk.” Alban spoke in a low, apologetic rumble. “Protect, Margrit. It’s in my nature.”

  “Yeah, well, calling the freaking cops on you is in mine!”

  There was another silence, even longer, before he murmured, “You haven’t hung up.”

  Margrit closed her eyes. She couldn’t quite bring herself to do it. Her stomach churned with nerves, but a buzz of excitement made her hands cold and her breathing short. Even if the gargoyle knew where she lived, she felt safe here. Continuing the conversation felt like walking a tightrope, the safety net far below, but still in place.

  “Margrit?” he asked after a few moments. “Are you there?”

  “Yeah, I’m here.” Stupid, she whispered to herself, but she didn’t hang up. “I didn’t think you knew how to use a phone.”

  There was a perplexed silence. “Why wouldn’t I?”

  Margrit glanced back toward the kitchen, where Cole and Cameron bantered, then dropped her chin to her chest, closing her eyes. “I don’t know. It doesn’t seem like your style.”

  “You know so much about my style?” Alban sounded amused.

  “No! Look, what do you want? Why’d you come up to me in the park? If you didn’t kill that girl—those girls, more than one is dead now—then just go talk to the cops. You’re wanted for questioning, not murder.” Not yet, anyway, she amended silently. “Who did kill them?” Anger and determination prodded her even more than the pulse-racing stimulation of fear.

  “I cannot go to the police.” Alban’s voice dropped, quiet determination filling it. “My…condition,” he said carefully, “forbids it. If
I should be kept in custody past dawn—no.”

  “Your condition,” Margrit mimicked. “Why are you even worried about—about what people like us think, anyway?”

  “My life is already lived in shadows,” he said. “To spend every night hiding my face until these murders are solved or until those who would pursue it die is too much. Margrit, listen to me. Talking to you in the park the same night that girl died was an unspeakably bad coincidence. It was the first time I had the nerve to do it. I never intended to speak to you again. I only wanted to hear your voice.”

  Margrit shuddered. “That’s incredibly freaky.”

  “I suppose it is. I hadn’t thought of it like that. I…wouldn’t. But I’d intended to leave you alone after that.” He fell silent a moment or two. “You might be glad circumstances forced me to act otherwise. That car would have killed you.”

  “So, what, you just follow me around town every night making sure I’m safe? Oh, Christ.” She lifted her gaze, focusing across the street without seeing. “The gargoyle on the building across my street at work. The one Mark and I couldn’t remember seeing before. That was you. Oh, my God.”

  “It was, yes. I’ve been seeking another opportunity to speak to you. Could we continue this conversation in person? I don’t like talking about myself over the phone.”

  “Gee, I wonder why. My roommates are home,” Margrit said. “They’re not going to take kindly to you knocking on the door.”

  “I believe I can avoid that,” Alban said into the phone and in her other ear. Margrit jerked her head up at the echo, and scrambled to her feet as Alban, wings spread, glided down to her balcony, landing with a gentle clatter on the grated floor.

  He seemed larger outside the confines of a room. Broad shoulders shifted easily in the city lights, wings folding behind him into near invisibility. The alien lines of his face were still handsome, and his body language spoke of confidence. He still wore the jeans, disconcerting on a creature who looked like he was best suited to guarding cathedrals. By comparison, her memory of him seemed like a dream, half remembered and hazy. His presence was as palpable as a mountainside, so solid Margrit wanted to step forward and put her hands against his chest and push, to see if she could move him. To see if the broad expanse of bare skin would be warm and soft under her touch, or if it would be as still and cool as the stone it resembled.

  To see if his breath would catch at her small hands on him, as hers wanted to, simply at the sight of him. To revel in astonished pleasure at the difference in their coloring, her mocha fingers a splash across his alabaster skin.

  “Jesus Christ,” Margrit said into the phone. Alban quirked heavy white eyebrows and clipped his cell phone shut, turning his palm up to show her the instrument, dwarfed by his hand. Margrit swallowed and lowered her own phone, thumbing it off. “My roommates are inside,” she repeated thickly. “If I scream—”

  “I’ll be gone before they can get here,” Alban promised. “Margrit, I don’t want to hurt you. I need your help.” Space inverted around him, and he shrank, changing from the gargoyle to the man. His voice changed register, still recognizably Alban, without the granite. “Is this less distressing?” he asked. Margrit thought she detected a note of wistfulness in the smooth tone. She closed her eyes.

  “Look.” Her own voice was too high, and she couldn’t bring it down again. “Look, whoever, whatever you are, I can’t help you. I can’t even believe you exist.”

  “Even though you see me standing before you?”

  Margrit’s eyes opened involuntarily. “I hit my head,” she said without conviction. “I’m suffering aftereffects.”

  “No,” Alban said. “I am a gargoyle, one of the last of the Old Races. And I—”

  “Need my help, yeah, I got that part.”

  “Please.” He rumbled the word, though the man was smaller than the stone beast, had less breadth of chest to deepen speech. Margrit closed her hand around the balcony railing, inhaling to speak.

  The phone rang.

  She flinched violently, nearly dropping the device. It shrilled again and she set her jaw, watching Alban, daring him to move as she lifted the phone and thumbed it on.

  “I see you,” Tony said.

  TWELVE

  MARGRIT FOUGHT THE impulse to crouch again, to make herself as small a target as possible, an irrational reaction born of pure fear and guilt. Her whole body wanted to flee, as if the act of being discovered with the gargoyle somehow made her a fugitive, too. She locked her knees, fingers clenched around the phone. “Tony?”

  “I can see you,” he repeated. “Two of my men will be at your door in about twenty seconds.”

  “Tony, what the hell are you doing here? What—?”

  “I was on my way over when somebody called in a tip, saying they’d seen a man meeting your pal’s description in the area.” His tones were a shade too clipped to be conversational. “Imagine my surprise.”

  “Margrit?” Alban asked softly.

  She shook her head, knotting her fingers around the railing as she peered down at the street. Tony leaned on the hood of his car, phone at his ear, watching her from five stories below.

  “Tony, I swear to God this isn’t what it seems. Jesus, I barely even know what it does look like.”

  “It looks like you’ve invited a suspected murderer into your house, Grit. Or are you going to tell me he flew onto your balcony?”

  Margrit ground her teeth, shooting Alban a black look. He offered her a wan smile in return, more humor infusing it than she thought appropriate. Then, unexpectedly, sympathetic laughter bloomed inside her. “Would you believe me if I did?”

  “Oh, I’m all ears, Grit. I’d just love to hear this story. Wait, don’t tell me. You were just about to call me, right?” Tony’s anger took the amusement back out of the situation, and an equally profound sympathy for the cop flooded Margrit.

  She cast one more desperate glance at Alban, then shrugged. “He flew onto the balcony. I’d just said I was going to call the cops.” Alban’s eyes widened and Margrit closed hers, shrugging, then moved her thumb over the phone’s mouthpiece so she could speak to the gargoyle. “He’d be more likely to believe space aliens beamed you down than the truth, Alban. It doesn’t matter. I could tell him the truth from now until Judgment Day and it’d fall on deaf ears.”

  “You’re very confident,” Alban whispered.

  Margrit opened her eyes and flashed him a smile. “Sure. It’s not my life I’m defending.”

  Tony swore, loudly enough to echo up from the street below. Margrit flinched, uncovering the receiver again. “You wouldn’t believe me, Tony. Nothing I say is going to help you understand. I’m sorry.” Her knuckles ached, her hand wrapped so tightly around the railing she could feel iron digging marks into her palm.

  She flinched again as a solid knock rattled the front door. Alban’s gaze shot upward, examining the four stories to the top of the apartment building. “Margrit, do you trust me?”

  “Cole, don’t answer that!” Margrit turned away from the gargoyle to bellow through the door as her roommate yanked it open.

  “Grit? What’s wr—Jesus Christ!”

  “Cole, this isn’t—this is isn’t what it looks like,” Margrit blurted again. Alban took his eyes from the rooftops and sketched a brief bow in Cole’s direction, elegant formality in the midst of descending chaos. A touch of delight brimmed and burst in Margrit at the gargoyle’s peculiarly consummate grace. The knocking on the front door intensified. Cam ran for the door, calling, “What the hell’s going on?”

  “Don’t open the door, Cameron!” Margrit’s shout stopped her in her tracks, and she whipped back around to look at the group on the balcony. Confused astonishment filled her face and she froze for a few precious seconds. “Alban, go.” Margrit spun to face him, catching surprise brightening his eyes, though he didn’t move. “Go!”

  “Margrit,” he breathed.

  At the same time Cole was saying, in bewilderment, “I don’
t even know what it looks like. That’s the guy—Jesus Christ, Grit, call the cops!”

  He snatched the phone from her hand, and Margrit heard Tony say, “They’re already here, Cole.”

  Cole stepped onto the balcony between Alban and Margrit. “You’re not going to hurt her,” he growled.

  Alban moved back, retreating as far as he could on the tiny balcony. “I have no intention of hurting her.”

  “Margrit,” Cole said, “get out of here.”

  “Alban, go!”

  “This is the police!” a voice bellowed through the front door “Open up or we’ll break the door!”

  “Cam, answer the door! Margrit, you’ve got to—”

  “What?” Margrit demanded. “I’ve got to what, Cole? You think I can explain this? You wouldn’t believe me if I tried,” she repeated under her breath.

  “Open up!”

  “Goddammit, Margrit!”

  The pounding on the door receded, leaving only the sound of her heartbeat crashing in her ears. Cameron bolted for the door again. Margrit wet her lips, looking beyond Cole at the tall gargoyle. There was a peculiar mix of hope and determination in his eyes, a look she knew startlingly well. Not because of him, but because of the men and women she’d worked with. It was an expression of desperation, the open, raw acknowledgment that he was playing his last card. If she didn’t take his hand now, he would be lost.

  “Do you trust me, Margrit?”

  The words echoed in her mind, bringing chills. She hadn’t heard him ask the first time, though now, with them repeated, it was as if they’d been tattooed on her skin, waiting for her to notice their strength. The question cut through the shouting and the too-loud drumming of her heart, making a place of silent stillness inside her, the world around her fading away. Margrit licked her lips again, painfully aware on a courtroom-lawyer level that it was a tell, revealing her fear and uncertainty to anyone who wanted to read it. Alban held himself terribly still, a step beyond Cole, letting her study the fine lines of his human face and the desperate hope in his eyes.

  He had let her go, more than once. Had saved her from the speeding car and had let her walk away from him despite her refusal to help. His hands, when they’d danced, had been sensual, not threatening.