C.E. Murphy - Heart of Stone

“Miss Knight,” she whispered, “I’m stronger than I look.” Her fragile bone structure belied the words, but Margrit found herself drawing back, stomach knotting.

Not human. It was hard to remember. Hateful to remember, Margrit thought, but she set her jaw and asked, “What about Deirdre? Are you strong enough to keep her safe, too?”

Despair slumped Cara’s shoulders. “I thought I was. But without her skin-”

It was Margrit’s turn to straighten, shock and embarrassment coursing through her. “I forgot. That’s why I came. Here.” She withdrew the fur from beneath her shirt, missing its warmth as soon as it left her. But Cara gasped and snatched it up, clutching it against her chest. Joy illuminated her, making her seem fully alive for the first time since Margrit had met her. It enhanced her color, bringing warmth to her cheeks and brightening her dark eyes to amber. Her pupils were still enormous in their golden bed, making her waifish and vulnerable, but strength shone from them now. Determination, and beneath that a core of something wild, as if the girl had been transformed into a creature raised by wolves.

Not human, Margrit remembered again, but unmistakably beautiful. It hadn’t been, until that moment, a word she’d have chosen to describe Cara. Now she wondered how she’d missed it.

“Miss Knight! You-how did you-?”

Margrit smiled quickly, wryly. “Believe it or not, Daisani needs something from me. I got this in return. I’ll get yours back, too, Cara, so just hold tight, okay?”

Wariness crept into the wolf-colored eyes. “What did he need from you? You have to be careful, Miss Knight. You don’t understand the dangers.”

“He needs me to find someone,” Margrit answered quietly. “Cara, I need to understand the danger I’m in.” She managed another quick smile. “I know I’m in trouble, so anything you can tell me, anything at all, might help me.”

“Do you know what he is?” Cara’s voice dropped to a whisper, as if she didn’t want Deirdre overhearing the conversation. Margrit nodded, and relief let Cara change positions, sitting Indian-style with Deirdre’s skin still held tight in her hands. “There are five of us left,” she whispered. “Five Old Races.”

Margrit nodded again. “Dragons and djinn, selkies and gargoyles and vampires.” Chelsea was right, she realized. “Dragons and djinn” was delicious to say. The other pairing lacked the music, and vampires stood uncomfortably alone.

“Selkies from the sea,” Cara explained, still whispering. “Gargoyles from stone, dragons from fire, and djinn from the air. We all have our places in the world. Djinn are desert-dwellers. Gargoyles like the mountains. Dragons came from the hot places near volcanoes, but they can’t stand one another and have spread far and wide so they don’t have to share territory. We all know where we come from.”

“Water, earth, air and fire,” Margrit said. “But what about the vampires?”

Earnestness faded from Cara’s eyes. “The vampires say they’re not from this world at all.”

Cold sprang up over Margrit’s skin. “Is that even possible?”

Cara studied her for long moments, then got to her feet and climbed over the ruined remains of her sofa to pick Deirdre up. Margrit stood, watching, as the baby squealed indignantly, then cooed when Cara wrapped the sealskin around her.

The fur squirmed, writhing, suddenly full of life as it snuggled and wrapped itself around the child in Cara’s arms. It distorted space more violently than Alban’s transformation, an external element to it that he hadn’t shared. Then Cara held a mottled tan-and-white baby seal, its brown eyes as bright and interested as Deirdre’s had been. For the first time Margrit saw strength in Cara’s thin body, as she held her child and leveled her gaze in blatant challenge. “You tell me, Miss Knight.”

At Margrit’s hard swallow, the girl knew she’d won, and spoke with authority. “Janx would use you up and cast you aside, Miss Knight. That’s what dragons do, when their treasures lose their luster. Alban Korund would crush you and it’d be over in an instant. But Daisani will make you his creature, until you can’t live without him, yet you have no life with him.” Cara ran her fingernails over her daughter’s seal belly, splitting an invisible seam until the skin fell away and a wriggling, happy baby girl emerged.

“I owe you,” Cara said, “and I can survive without my skin if I have to. If you get a chance to break free of Eliseo Daisani, Miss Knight, don’t hesitate. Everything you do for him, even making a bargain to help someone like me, will pull you down until the deeps are stained and the shallows run red with blood.”

Denim was lousy material for running pants. Margrit jogged anyway, arms loose and her strides long as she darted around other people, brushing shoulders and elbows with them. The cadence of ir-rah-shun-al was gone, leaving her mind clear to think about other things.

Like how to trace a hired killer. Margrit let out a breath through her nose, almost a laugh. Finding a hired killer was even further outside her arena of expertise than housing lawsuits. Nice girls didn’t know about that kind of thing.

The key, though, had to be the hired part of the equation. Whoever had killed Vanessa Gray had done it for Janx, so the money would lead back to him. Should lead back to him. Whether it could be traced was another question entirely.

With Daisani’s help, overt or otherwise, the money could lead back to the dragonlord. But Daisani wouldn’t help. Margrit shook her head and rounded a corner, strides lengthening. She understood on a surface level why he wouldn’t touch Janx, but the subtleties of their interactions were beyond her.

If she thought much about it, that fact was a relief. She grinned briefly, shaking her hands to loosen them as she cantered through the city. The pavement sent sharp jolts into her knees with each impact, comforting and always the same. Someone whistled as she jumped a curb, the impersonal admiration helping to restore Margrit’s sense of freedom in running.

Fingering Janx wasn’t the answer. There had to be another way to find the killer through him. Margrit skidded to a halt at a crosswalk, jogging in place to keep her heart rate up while she waited for the walk signal.

He’d promised her one more favor. Margrit broke into a run again, flashing a smile at a passerby, then huffing in discontent. One more favor, but she didn’t want to call it in yet. She owed him already. When she made the third request, she wanted it to be huge.

Margrit wondered when protecting her own life had become something less than huge and laughed, a breathy burst of sound that interrupted her run. She stopped to catch her breath, saying, “Okay,” out loud. A passerby averted his eyes and Margrit flashed a grin after him, trying to keep her thoughts to herself.

She had to find Alban, first. Janx could wait. If she were a gargoyle caught outside at sunrise, she would…Well, she would go back home again come sunset, or as close to home as she could get. His hideaway under Trinity had been compromised, so her apartment might be the next safest place. Margrit dug her cell phone out of her pocket and dialed her home, propping one foot on the building behind her.

After four rings, the answering machine picked up. “This is Grit. If Alban comes by, can you ask him to give me a call? He doesn’t know it, but they-well, they didn’t find the real killer yet, but they know it’s not him. Tell him…nevermind, just have him call. Thanks. Bye.” She hung up and tapped the phone against her lips, then punched up the received-calls screen, a thought striking her.

Alban’s number wasn’t there. She scowled at the screen, remembering he’d called her on the house line, not her cell. “Crap!” She dialed the house back and added, “Me, again. Could you also check the answering machine and see if there’s a record of Alban’s cell phone number on it? Thank you. I owe you. Bye again.”