C.E. Mutphy - Hands of Flame

Now, after the fact, warning him what she intended felt supremely stupid. She stopped a few yards down the block, arms folded over her ribs as she tried to hold back stomach-churning nausea. Feeble intellect proclaimed that challenging the vampire openly had been the right thing to do, and she’d been confident enough in that rightness to walk into his lair without fear. Now that the moment was past, though, she wasn’t certain she had strength left to get home, much less draw together the resources necessary to bring about his downfall.

“Mind over matter, Grit.” She spoke the words softly, trying to encourage herself, then nodded a couple of times and pushed herself upright, leaning against the wall. “One step at a time. Um.” Unable to think of another platitude, she managed a smile at herself and dug for the cell phone she’d pocketed when she’d put on her running gear. She’d set the autodial in motion and brought it to her ear before she fully noticed the screen was a pixelated mess. “Oh, goddammit!”

“Sorry?” A startled man—not a local, from both his response and from the T-shirt reading Oklahoma Is OK!—edged out of her way as she clenched the useless phone in her fist to stop herself from dashing it against the sidewalk in frustration. She’d ended up hurt and without a cell phone both times a djinn had snatched her. For one overblown moment, the loss of the phones seemed vastly more debilitating than the physical injuries. The fact that Janx wouldn’t be replacing this phone only added insult.

Margrit channeled destructive tendencies into running and left weariness behind in the rush of endorphins. Even so, by the time she arrived home, she was gasping, thirsty and vividly aware that she hadn’t eaten since lunch the previous day.

There were no leftovers in the fridge, more disappointing than the discovery warranted. She took out a cup of yogurt and stirred it into a bowl full of granola, then left both on the counter as she searched for a pint of ice cream from the freezer. Two bites told her she needed real food first, and she shoveled the granola yogurt into her mouth while she called for Chinese delivery. With a promise of Mongolian beef and cashew chicken in twenty minutes, she sank down in front of the phone to finish eating her snack.

A key in the front door warranted looking, but not getting up. Margrit’s stomach clenched around the food, the anticipation of another confrontation with Cole too much to face, but it was Cameron who stepped in, gym bag slung over her shoulder and long legs shown off beneath a short, white tennis skirt.

“I thought you didn’t play tennis.”

Cam yelped, startled, and swung around to regard Margrit’s position on the floor in front of the telephone table. “Normal people say hello first!”

Margrit smiled. “Hello. I thought you didn’t play tennis.”

Cameron pointed a toe to flex lean muscle. “I took it up so Cole’d buy me a diamond tennis bracelet. You like the look?”

“You look gorgeous,” Margrit assured her. “Is it working?”

“Not unless he gets a substantial raise, but I don’t really need a tennis bracelet.” Cam smiled back and threw her gym bag into the room she and Cole shared before coming back to straighten up a kitchen Cole never left messy. “You left the party early last night, and you’ve got ice cream melting on the counter. Are you okay?”

“The ice cream didn’t taste good. I needed real food first.”

Cameron put out a hand and Margrit put her empty bowl into it for inspection. “So you ate cereal and yogurt?”

“I’ve ordered Chinese.”

“Cole will never forgive you if you stink up his fridge with leftover Chinese.”

“I’ll eat it all. I haven’t eaten since yesterday.”

“That’s not good.” Cameron frowned down at her. “What’s up with that?”

“I’ve been…it’s been…”

“Ah. That, huh?” Cam sat down beside Margrit, looping her arms around her knees. “Is that why you bailed on the party?”

“Yeah, I had some things to do.”

Cam gave her a sly look and Margrit laughed. “No. Not those kinds of things, or that kind of doing. It was sort of business.”

“So…” Cameron hesitated, then sighed. “I don’t know how much of this I’m going to be able to ask when Cole’s around, so I’m asking now. I understand how you got involved. I even understand why you’re staying involved. I just don’t think I get…how deep you are. Because it’s deep, isn’t it? How did that happen?”

“I couldn’t mind my own business.” Margrit offered a faint smile, then scrambled to her feet as the doorbell rang. “Fastest delivery in the city. Oh, God, I’m hungry.” She ran to pay, then returned to sit on the floor and start eating out of the cartons. Cameron stole a spring roll and waited, eyebrows lifted, for Margrit to continue.

“It was mostly that I was trying to help Alban clear himself of the murder charges. It just turned out that doing that kept digging me deeper and deeper into their world. Once I knew about all of them, I became an obvious choice to be a go-between.”

“Obvious. Sure.”

“Well, it was obvious to them. And I…thought I could do some good.”

“Could you? Can you?”

Margrit shrugged and scooped up a ball of sticky rice. “I’ve affected a lot of change, anyway. Whether that’s good or not, not even I’m sure anymore. But there’s no going back on any of it, so I have to keep going forward.”

Cam balanced the spring roll on her fingertips, blowing steam away from it. “Are you ever going to tell me more than generalized statements?”

Guilt twisted around the food Margrit had eaten. “Maybe, but maybe not, too. This is dangerous, Cam. They depend on secrets.”

“Yeah, I know. That’s one of the things Cole hates.”

Margrit ducked her head. “Just one, huh?”

“He’s genuinely freaked out.” Cameron got up to pour a glass of milk and gestured with the carton to ask Margrit if she wanted some. At Margrit’s nod, she brought a second glass, then returned the carton to the fridge and leaned on the broad orange door. “It’s not just that you’re sleeping with a gargoyle. It’s that they exist at all. You won’t take it wrong if I say you’re about all we’ve been talking about the last couple days, right?”

“Heh. No. I’m not surprised. I’m sorry, Cam. It wasn’t supposed to go this way.”

“I know, Grit, but the more we go around about it, the less sure I am any other way would have made much difference. I don’t think it’d be easier for Cole, and that means it wouldn’t be easier for us.”

“Us you and me or us you and him?”

“Any of us. The worst part is I can feel myself siding with him. I mean, I’m not angry like he is, but…”

“Cam, he’s your fiancé. You’re supposed to side with him. It’s okay. You don’t have to make apologies. He spelled it out last night at the party. ‘I love you but I can’t watch you do this,’ though not in those exact words. It’s okay.” Margrit sighed. “The sad thing is I thought he’d be the one to understand. I mean, out of him and Tony. The men in my life.”

“Wait, Tony knows? I thought he didn’t.”

“He found out last night. After the party. He saw…not just Alban, but a lot of them.” And he’d watched Margrit herself come back from the dead, a gift which might well have tempered him toward accepting the Old Races. The juxtaposition of truths made Margrit’s bones ache. She knew as well as Tony did that if it weren’t for her involvement with the inhuman races, she wouldn’t have been so badly injured in the first place. On the other hand, that involvement taken as rote, she’d survived through their gifts. Nothing could be taken for granted, and nothing was made easy. She looked down at her food and shook her head. “Maybe if Cole talks to him…”