by C. E. Murphy
“A chaise longue,” Margrit said with a giggle. “A real chaise longue. Cool.”
“You just reverted to being about twelve,” Cam said, grinning.
“Well, it is cool!” she protested. “Isn’t it?”
Her friend held up a hand in agreement, still grinning. “It is. You’re just not supposed to let it show.”
“Bah. Wow!” Margrit stopped in front of the left-hand window, which curved the entire height of the subway tube wall. “That’s, wow.” The astounding golds and reds that were part of the back wall’s glass mural were more muted in this window, the gray more pronounced, and mixed with rich sea-blues.
“This is more of that expensive lawyer-school talk, right?” Cam stepped past Margrit to nod at a chess set laid out on one of the tables. “I want that. I think that’s real ivory.”
“And obsidian,” another of the attendants volunteered. “The chess pieces are extremely fanciful, clearly hand-carved. It’s more than six hundred years old, and is believed to come from Saudi Arabia. The white pieces appear to be mermaids and the black are traditional Middle Eastern warriors. Please be careful, ma’am,” he added as Cameron leaned as far over the velvet cordon as she could.
“I am,” she promised. “They’re just beautiful. And it looks like somebody was in the middle of a game.”
The attendant smiled. “The pieces’ locations were written down immediately, so they could be returned to the proper place once we were done looking over the room. It’s amazing it hadn’t been looted. Especially considering who found it.”
“Everybody’s got something they respect,” Margrit said. “Maybe history is Grace O’Malley’s thing.”
“Whatever the reason, we’re greatly appreciative.” A deep voice broke over Margrit’s and she turned to find herself shaking hands with the mayor. “Ms. Knight. It’s a pleasure to see you again. Congratulations on the Johnson case.”
“Mayor Leighton.” Margrit smiled up at the man, her hand enveloped in his. “Thank you. It’s nice to see you again, too. This is my friend Cameron Dugan.”
“Mayor.” Cam shook hands, looking slightly starstruck as Leighton turned back to Margrit.
“I hear you’re about to take on our city’s greatest benefactor, Ms. Knight.”
Margrit let another smile flash across her face, hoping it buried the feeling of dismay that swept her. “I know squatters rights are an unpopular issue, Mayor, but I hope I’ll have your support on this case. Mr. Daisani owns the building and certainly has the right to bring it down, but the haste he’s approaching it with will put literally hundreds of people on the street again, and it’s the dead of winter. I’ll be serving the injunction to halt the proceedings first thing Monday morning.”
“If Ms. Dugan doesn’t mind, I’d like to steal you away for a few moments to discuss just that, Ms. Knight.” Leighton arched carefully groomed eyebrows at the blond woman.
Cam spread her hands. “Of course. Go ahead. I’ll meet you outside, Margrit.”
“Sure.” Margrit pressed her teeth together as she smiled, allowing Leighton to guide her away from the tour.
SIXTEEN
“ANYTHING YOU CAN think of.” Margrit sat on the front edge of a couch whose springs had seen better days, her fingers folded together in an attempt to keep herself from pouncing on the girl across from her. The memory of Mayor Leighton’s genial, steely-toned warnings made her entire body feel alight, unnaturally aware of the heat of her own blood. The list of city projects Mr. Daisani was funding—and of the officials he likely had in his pocket—was longer than Margrit could remember with outrage still flaming through her.
She felt as if seconds were being counted off in heartbeats, every one of them pulsing life through her extremities, until her fingers tingled and her feet itched to run. She’d known—intellectually—that strong-arm tactics were often used, that politicians belonged to other, wealthier men. New York’s own Tammany Hall history came to her in bursts of anger, but she’d never quite imagined she’d run up against the same behavior herself.
Forthright fury had flung her in the other direction, more determined than ever to not let Daisani or the city administration he seemed to control win the battle over the decrepit building. Pure temper had brought her to Cara’s home, and the girl was wide-eyed and silent under the barrage of Margrit’s emotional intensity.
“Anything.” Margrit tried to gentle her expression to mere earnestness. It felt as effective as trying to stop a charging bull.
Cara Delaney shook her head, twisting her hair over a thin shoulder. “I’m sorry. There was no talk of developers, nobody coming around or anything, not until a few days ago. The day I met you. They put up signs….” Cara gestured in a small circle, indicating the signs Margrit had seen on her way in. Typical yellow-and-white notices of public interest, indicating that the building was condemned and would be knocked down seven days from the time of posting.
And, at a glance, it was clear the building would be better off razed. The stairs to Cara’s fourth-floor apartment had creaked ominously with Margrit’s weight as she’d climbed them, avoiding broken boards and gaps in the railing. The walls didn’t remember the last time they’d been painted, and the pipes, half exposed in the ruined halls, looked to be held together with rust. Light fixtures held bare bulbs, and windows were cracked with age, paint on the sills peeled back to reveal old, dry wood. It had the air of a place that people went to die, alone and forgotten.
Margrit exhaled. “Tuesday. Yes, I read them. I should be able to get an injunction in place first thing Monday morning, which will give us more time.” They’d covered that more than once. “But seven days is awfully fast. There’s got to be something about this building specifically that’s important.” She didn’t want to frighten the girl by mentioning the conversation she’d had with the mayor. Cara had the look of a woman who might give up in the face of such resistance.
“You can’t think of—” Margrit broke off, then sat forward as guilt and fear darted across Cara’s face. “What? What was that thought, Cara?”
The girl shook her head, a stiff motion full of violence. “Nothing.”
“Cara.” She slid off the couch and crouched in front of the younger woman, taking her hands. “Look. I’m your lawyer, all right? That means anything you tell me is absolutely confidential. If there’s anything at all that might help me figure out why Daisani wants this building down, you need to let me know. You won’t get in trouble for it. I haven’t been able to find any information about new developments for this area, not in any of the city filings—I’ll look more on Monday, when things are open again—but not online, either. I’m working blind here, Cara. If you can shed any light…” Margrit managed a crooked smile and loosened her grip on Cara’s cold hands. “I need your help.”
The young mother wet her lips twice, her eyes fixed on the floor, before she whispered, “S-something of mine is missing. Mine and Deirdre’s. Something important.”
“Something that might have to do with the building?” Margrit tightened her hands around Cara’s again. “Whatever it is, you can tell me. It’s all right. Trust me,” she added with a wry chuckle. “After the last few days I’ve had, nothing can surprise me.”
“The workmen came through,” Cara whispered. “They put up the signs and banged on all the doors and herded us out, to make sure we all heard and understood what was going on. When I came back here, my—our—” She took a sharp breath, as if trying to ward off hyperventilating, then squared her shoulders. Her voice was stronger as she said, “They’re the only thing of value that we owned. Two furs. A small one for Deirdre and a larger one that was mine. They were in a basket beneath the bed. I thought they’d be safe.”
“Furs?” A dozen questions flashed through Margrit’s mind, and some must have come out in her tone, because Cara lifted her head, eyes suddenly dark and defiant.
“They were ours honestly, Miss Knight. I didn’t take them, if that’s what you’re thinking. They weren’t stole
n. They’re ours, honest and true.”
“I believe you.” Margrit met her defensive gaze with a calm, steady one of her own, and squeezed the young woman’s hands. “I believe you. But…” She shook her head. “I don’t understand why that might have something to do with the building being knocked down.”
Cara’s shoulders slumped. “Maybe it doesn’t.” Her tone belied her words, however, although Margrit didn’t understand why. Cara looked up again, misery darkening her eyes to black. “But we’ve got to have them back, Miss Knight. We can’t live without them.” The despair in her voice bordered on strange, but a penny dropped at the back of Margrit’s mind, providing her with a visual so intense she actually focused beyond Cara, on the image. Daisani’s private office, by the bookcases. Two furs, pinned to the wall next to the window, where sunlight wouldn’t damage them. One large and one small, both unexpectedly soft and lush to look at.
“The Secret of Roan Inish,” she blurted. “Oh, my God. I saw that movie. I remember now. That’s what a selkie is, I knew that. Seal people. Oh, my God. You’re a selkie.” She sat back on her heels, gaping at the girl, whose face lit with panic and confusion. “No! No, it’s okay, it’s—oh, my God. He’s got your sealskins. You’re a selkie.”
Margrit jumped to her feet, pacing the little apartment in a few long strides, then swung back to face the stricken mother. The air seemed sharper, clearer suddenly, and it sang in her lungs like the promise of a hunt. This was the high of running, the excitement of never knowing what danger lay ahead. Lifeblood. Margrit’s words spilled out, tumbling together in her haste. “It’s all right. I know about you, about the Old Races. I’ve even met Janx—”
Cara blanched and scrambled backward in her chair.
“No! No, I’m not friends with him, I’m not—but God, no wonder, are there other selkies here? Is that what Daisani wants with this place? Does he know about you? Oh, my God.” The need to run throbbed through Margrit’s body, impatience driving her to pace the room again. “Jesus, God, this makes more sense now, I mean, it would if he knows, if…” She shoved both hands back through her hair, raking her ponytail out and tying it up again in swift movements. “Okay, Margrit. Think, Grit! No, screw thinking, just tell me what’s going on. Cara. Cara, it’s all right.” She strode back to the girl, kneeling again in a deliberate effort to make herself smaller and less threatening.
“I’m sorry,” Margrit said. She modulated her voice until it was calmer and more reassuring. “That was like being outed by a complete stranger, wasn’t it. I’m sorry,” she repeated. “But am I right, Cara? Are you one of the selkies?”
The disbelief and fear written across her face answered the question without words. “How—?”
Margrit crooked a little smile. “I made friends with a gargoyle a few days ago. Alban Korund.”
Cara’s eyes darkened again. “The outcast.” She looked down at her lap, lips pressed together. “I didn’t know you knew about us.”
Margrit’s eyebrows shot up. “Outcast? Alban’s an outcast? Why? What’d he do?” White horror coursed over her vision, making everything too bright and dreadful to contemplate. “Did he kill someone? Isn’t that the exiling offense?” Had she been wrong after all? If Alban possessed the ability to kill, the doubt she’d begun with on his behalf became far harder to hold on to. A seemingly gentle manner could hide danger. Margrit had to remember that.
Cara stared at her, wide-eyed with surprise. “There are other offenses,” she whispered. “Telling humans we exist is one.” It was nearly a question, but Cara shook her head, dismissing any need for answering. “Please, Miss Knight. I’m an adult and can go for a long time without wearing my other skin, but Deirdre—”
Cold worry filled Margrit’s core, replacing the excitement of discovery. “How long?”
“A week,” Cara whispered. “Maybe two. I don’t know, Miss Knight. We don’t keep our children apart from their skins. They get sick.”
“I will do everything I can,” Margrit promised in a harsh whisper. “I’ll go beard the lion in his den, if I have to. Cara, are there other selkies here? Is that what Daisani wants with this place? Does he know about the Old Races? About selkies? I thought—I’d been told there weren’t many of you left. Maybe even none at all.”
Cara jerked her eyes up to Margrit’s, surprise swallowing brown irises to black. “There are. Please, Miss Knight, you can’t tell—”
Margrit chuckled and dropped her head. “I know. I know. Even if you weren’t protected by the lawyer-client confidentiality—I know. God, what a mess. All right.” She lifted her head, lips pursed. “Does Daisani know about the Old Races? Has he got some kind of grudge against your people? Something that would prompt him to do this?”
Cara laughed, a quiet bitter sound that seemed at odds with the dark innocence in her eyes. “They all think we’re mongrels, Miss Knight. They don’t need any other reason to hate us.”
“They? Mongrels?”
“The others. The gargoyles, the djinn.” Cara made a short hard gesture, as if cutting herself away from them. “The other Old Races. We bred with humans,” she said flatly. “To survive. There was no other way.”
“You can do that?” Margrit’s voice soared with surprise, and she cleared her throat. Cara sent her a look as flat as her words.
“It’s the third exiling offense. We’re careful about the bloodlines, to keep as true as we can so we don’t lose ourselves to humanity, but they wouldn’t care. As far as they’re concerned, if any of us are left we’re contaminated.” The girl sounded older than her years, as if an ugly memory learned by rote had come alive to haunt her. Then vulnerability washed back in, her gaze going dark as she dropped her eyes. “It’s just how it is.”
Sympathy surged up in Margrit, and she offered her hand. “So we’re cousins.”
Cara hesitated, then put her pale fingers in Margrit’s café latte ones, eyebrows drawn down with uncertainty. “Cousins?”
Margrit smiled. “Sure. If your people bred with humans to stay alive, then we’re cousins, right? Not close, maybe, but cousins.” The smile turned into something near a laugh. “There are six billion of us, right? Strength in numbers, Cara. Who cares what the other Old Races think.” Margrit squeezed her hand, nodding. “It’ll be okay. I’ll figure out a way to make it all work.”
She burst out of the apartment building at a run, despite her jeans and heavy boots. She couldn’t think, being too excited and full of revelation to put coherent thoughts together. She needed the clarity of motion, the purity of thought that developed as her strides lengthened. It was miles to the nearest park she knew, miles to get home or to the office, and she wasn’t sure where she needed to go, anyway.
Run. That was what she needed most. To run. Lose herself in physical action and let it work its magic, clearing her mind and tiring her body until she could make sense of the unexpected, chaotic layer of the world she’d been introduced to.
The rational mind wanted to discard the proof she’d been handed: Alban’s impossible transformations; the manifest panic in Cara’s eyes as she’d realized Margrit knew her secret. The thinness of the air around Janx, as if she stood in the presence of something that took up all the oxygen in the room, rather than the cheerful redheaded devil she’d met. An entire world under her nose her whole life, and Margrit had never suspected.
Unmitigated disbelief seemed in order. Margrit huffed a smile. Unmitigated disbelief in the sky or gravity made about as much sense. The only thing to do now was run with it.
Run, and ignore the blisters from the boots, she thought ruefully, collapsing onto a park bench half an island later. “Ow.” She bent forward, pulling a boot off to examine her foot as it steamed in the cold air. Red spots graced her heel and instep, and a blister had already burst on the side of her big toe. “That was dumb.” She pulled her sock and boot back on and flung herself against the back of the bench, arms spread wide as she stared at the sky. A mounted policeman clopped by and she nodded w
ithout seeing him, gaze fixed on the darkening dome high above. It was too early for stars, too much blue left above the city, but Margrit searched for one anyway, trying to settle on a wish.
The fruitless one that came to mind was wishing she understood the world she’d found herself involved in, but even without wishes, she knew she was beginning to. The pieces didn’t fit yet, but they would, and when they did a murderer would be caught and Alban’s name would be cleared. And Margrit would have some bad enemies. Eliseo Daisani already wanted her incapacitated or working for him. Either would make certain she was under control.
A grin slid across her face. Daisani would have to learn to live with disappointment. Margrit laughed. In five days she’d gone from knowing nothing of the Old Races to spitting in the face of a powerful man who wanted to harm a selkie girl. The world had changed, and she was ready to take it on in all its new glory. An impulse rose up in her, delight over telling—Tony. Only there’d be no sharing this with him, and the realization filled her with regret. Margrit shifted restlessly. Out of everyone she might tell, he was the first and last who should be told. Catching killers was his job, and Margrit wasn’t equipped to do it, but there was no way to explain the situation to him without betraying confidences. Not just Alban’s, but those of whole races who relied on discretion for survival. As much as she’d promised Tony they’d talk, that they’d try to make it work, there were larger factors in place. She couldn’t share with him what she’d learned any more than he could talk to her about the intimate details of his investigations. The inevitable wall was one they’d have to learn to scale together.
Or not at all. The thought whispered through Margrit’s mind and she pushed it away with a shake of her head. There would be a way to make it work, as long as they were willing to try. As long as they could find enough common ground to keep them together through the rough patches. She scanned the streets and pathways near where she sat, suddenly have the sensation of being watched.