C.E. Murphy - Heart of Stone

“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.

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.