C.E. Murphy - Heart of Stone

“In less than a week, you think you know the Old Races so well?” he asked.

“I think I know people pretty well, Alban, and I think people adapt to survive in the environment they’re forced to live in.”

“We’re not-”

“Don’t!” Margrit snapped a hand up, cutting off his argument. “So you’re not human.” The words sent a shudder through her, a sudden acknowledgment of Alban’s alien nature that lifted goose bumps on her skin. “You’re still people, ” she muttered. “And people do what they have to. They change.”

“I haven’t.”

“Maybe that’s what you thought you had to do.” Margrit turned away, irritation still in full bloom, and stared down the city block toward the lightening sky. “And I think Biali’s lying. I just don’t know how to make him tell the truth. Short of an iron collar around his neck,” she added, only half joking.

“Margrit!”

She looked over her shoulder at Alban. “I’m kidding. I wouldn’t do it, but that’s what I’m saying. Welcome to the human race.” Margrit extended a hand, its color changing with streetlights fading and sunrise coming. “I think I’m basically a pretty good person, but there’s still a part of me that thinks that way, even if I wouldn’t act on it. Maybe it’s human nature, maybe its society, but you don’t have to go far to see how fast people turn to the concept of might makes right.” She shrugged, dropping her hands as her annoyance faded. “You really think somebody living among us for centuries wouldn’t learn to think that way? To take whatever advantage they had or could make in order to protect and survive?”

“Margrit…” Alban made a slow fist in the shadows. She watched the light shift, then jerked her head up, heart rate accelerating as she realized what she saw.

“Alban! The sun’s coming up!”

“Yes.” The word was hardly more than a whisper, his acknowledging nod just as faint. Acceptance filled the single word, no fight to it, sparking anger in Margrit’s breast. It sent her running toward him, shoving him with her momentum.

“Go! Get somewhere safe!”

“Margrit,” he repeated, and she pushed him again.

“We can argue later! Go! Go! ”

Alban inclined his head and turned, a few long-legged strides taking him down an alley. The last step became a leap, air and light imploding around him as his form shifted. Crimson light colored alabaster skin as he reached the rooftop and disappeared from Margrit’s sight.

SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE, WAS playing the William Tell overture very, very badly. It echoed in flat tonal beeps around the curved walls of the hidden speakeasy, bouncing off the stained glass windows until they bled together and shattered into a cacophony of falling glass.

The chess pieces, ebony and ivory, swelled into life, facing off against each other with drawn-back lips and clawed hands, hissing silently at one another with the increasing pace of the music. Margrit shrank back from them, trying to hear her own labored breathing, feeling as if she were caught in a test tube. The light bent around her, making a fishbowl of the speakeasy. A rook on the ebony side ballooned larger, solid and misty at the same time. He slid forward, reaching for an ivory pawn, which was small, delicate, wide-eyed with fear. Margrit pounded on the wall of her glass cage, shouting a soundless warning that went unheeded. The pawn shrank in on herself, arms wrapped around a tiny bundle as she cowered.

An ivory knight crashed forward, blocking the rook’s progress. For an instant the chessboard went still, rook and knight facing off against one another, against all the rules of chess. The rook flashed a malicious smile and leaped toward its opponent, sending them both tumbling across the floor. A knife rose and fell in a flash, and the rook shrieked, a silent cry that shook the walls of Margrit’s glass prison.

The ivory king stood above the wrestling pair, his shimmering blue staff thrust through the rook’s back. The rook convulsed a final time and collapsed on top of the knight, who panted out a thanks and shoved the corpse away. The rest of the chess figures were strewn about the speakeasy lounge amid shattered glass and broken furniture. Both sides, ivory and ebony alike, were watching the ivory king, who made a gesture of fluid, weary grace. Without argument, the pieces turned away from him and began picking up pieces of the ruined stained glass windows. They fit shards together without paying heed to which window they’d come from. Margrit found herself pounding against her prison walls again, in time to the beep of the overture. She felt her mouth forming words, felt the vibrations of her shouts in her throat, but heard nothing. You’re doing it wrong! she yelled silently. You’re-

“-doing it wrong!”

She jolted awake, throat raw from shouting, one hand clenched around her cell phone, which was repeating the overture tones yet again. Margrit flung it away violently, then winced and scrambled after it, looking for the right button to turn the alarm off. The beeps finally silenced, she dropped her head to the floor and made a fist, smacking the wood. “Shit. Shit, shit, shit. And good morning to you, too, Margrit Elizabeth.” She rolled onto her back, staring up at the bumps and lines of her bedroom ceiling, until a knock intruded. Margrit pushed up on an elbow. “Yeah?”

“It’s Cam. Are you okay?”

“Damn, and I thought it’d be Jude Law come to take me away from all this.” Margrit lay back down, staring at the ceiling again. “C’mon in.”

The door creaked open, Cam peeking her head in. “I heard swearing. Are you okay?” The door opened farther as curiosity got the better of her. “You’re on the floor.”

Margrit nodded.

Silence reigned. Then Cam said, “You smell like a sewer.”

Margrit nodded again. “I fell in one.”

“You what? ”

“Actually, it was a storm drain. Still didn’t smell good.” She wondered if Janx’s nose was more sensitive than hers, and if her visit had offended him. The idea was both alarming and amusing. She grinned at the ceiling.

“How? No.” Cam cut off Margrit’s answer before she began it. “Shower first. Cole’s already at work, so you’ll have to suffer through my breakfast while you tell me what’s going on.”

“I can’t, Cam.”

“You didn’t come in until dawn, Margrit.”

Margrit closed her eyes. “I know. And what you’re thinking is-probably right. But I can’t tell you.”

“Nobody else can, either, Grit.”

“I know.” Margrit sat up, wrapping her arms around her knees and dropping her head against them. “But I can’t.”

Cam stood silent for a moment, leaning heavily on the doorknob. “Can you tell me why you can’t?”

She lifted her head, but closed her eyes. “Because somebody’s life depends on me not telling.”

“People like the women who’ve died?”

Margrit winced, shaking her head. “Someone else.”

“Alban,” Cam said. Margrit nodded. “His life is more important than the people who are dying?”

She opened her eyes again reluctantly. “All I can say is it’s complicated, and I know that’s not a good enough answer. But it’s the only one I’ve got. We’re trying to find the real killer, but I can’t tell you anything else. I promise that if I ever can, I will tell you. Okay? I’m sorry I can’t do better.”

Cam sighed and came into the room, to crouch at Margrit’s side before pulling her into a hug. “I guess it’ll do. Are you okay, Grit? For real?”

Margrit wrapped her arms around her housemate gratefully, returning the hug. “I’m all right. I’m in way over my head and I have no idea how this is going to end and I smell like a sewer, but I’m basically all right.”