C.E. Murphy - Heart of Stone

“We don’t.”

Margrit’s smile faded and she rubbed her temple again, as if doing so would push away the memory of the gargoyle woman’s cold eyes. “Well, that means Hajnal, or Ausra, or whatever you want to call her, is killing people deliberately and with malicious forethought. That doesn’t really make me feel any better. I know that the human justice system can’t deal with this, Biali. We’re not equipped to, even if it’s humans who are dying. Is there-Do the Old Races have a justice system? You must,” she said, the realization striking her even as she spoke. “Cara called Alban an outcast. Why? How did that happen?”

Biali laughed, a sharp sound. “Cara? That’s not a name belonging to one of ours. Who is she?”

Margrit hesitated, remembering the young mother’s reticence in naming which races others of the Old Races belonged to, even when it proved clear that Margrit already knew they existed. “A woman I’m helping. A new case.”

“Oh.” Biali’s lip curled, turning his scar into an angry wrinkled slash in the nighttime shadows. “That selkie girl in the vampire’s building. Her people are dead, lawyer. Don’t listen to stories told by the last of a dying race. It’s superstition and lies. Our justice system is nothing like what you’re talking about. War tribunals, maybe, but even those aren’t something you’d recognize.”

“I know what a war tribunal is,” Margrit said dryly.

Biali turned his head and spat to the side, his disgust palpable. Margrit watched him, not yet finished with the conversation, but curious about his anger.

“You know what your war tribunals are. Ours are different. We can’t afford the kind of battles you people pick.”

Margrit shook her head, letting the subject of Alban go. “You can’t afford a renegade gargoyle, either. You loved her once, Biali. I need your help to stop her, to locate her and find a way to get her out of sight, now.” The guy’s a copycat, Tony. Margrit wished she hadn’t said those words. “Doesn’t she understand what will happen, if my people catch her?”

Biali put his weight on his knuckles, shifting and frowning one-eyed up at Margrit. She waited a moment, then stepped closer to him. “Do you know where she is, Biali?”

“No. And if I did, I wouldn’t tell you. Whatever’s between her and Alban is their business, not mine.” He scowled at her. “Korund took my eye and gave me my life. We don’t owe each other anything.”

“Not even the survival of your species?”

Biali shook his head. “Not even that.” He turned, loping a few strides away, the space around him imploding as he shifted from human to gargoyle form.

“Biali!”

The scarred gargoyle turned back to her. The right side of his face was shattered, raw stone with edges smoothed by time. What was left had once been handsome, in the massive way of the gargoyles, though he’d never been as chiseled as Alban. How much of that played into the ancient antagonism that stood between the two, Margrit wondered. “You loved her once, Biali,” she said. “Would she have wanted you to walk away from this?”

He smiled, a ghostly expression that rent the craggy ruin of his face. “No,” he rumbled, “but she didn’t choose me.”

Margrit closed her hand uselessly around the sapphire as the gargoyle pitched himself from the building and disappeared into the sky.

Evasive answers and half-truths. Margrit left with an unfocused destination in mind, not wholly surprised to find herself climbing the stairs to Cara’s apartment not too much later. She had questions she wanted to ask Alban, but with no way to contact him, Cara or Chelsea Huo seemed the best people to talk to, and Cara’s apartment was closer than the bookstore.

For the second time that day, there was no response at her knock. “Cara, are you home?” Margrit tried the knob again, startled when it turned under her hand. She cautiously pushed the door open. “Cara? The door was- shit! ”

The apartment was empty. Even the bedraggled furniture was missing, the rugs picked up from the floor and posters gone. The floor had been swept clean and the walls seemed to have been scrubbed, as if someone was trying to erase all signs of recent habitation. Margrit took a few steps inside the door, looking around in dismay. “Cara?”

The girl’s name echoed through the empty rooms, frighteningly loud. Only that afternoon Cara had promised she could handle her neighbors, and now she had disappeared, so utterly that Margrit could hardly believe she’d ever been there.

Margrit took the stairs down in leaps, breaking into a flat-out run once she hit pavement, to find a pay phone and dial Tony’s number. His answer was composed mostly of silence, before he made a tight promise to be there as quickly as he could. Margrit paced outside the building, keeping warm through movement, until the detective arrived, looking as if he hadn’t slept.

“I’m only on my way back to the station, Grit. I can’t stay. I’ll take a look, but…” He shrugged, a movement of exhaustion and anger. “You know we can’t file a missing person’s report until she’s been gone twenty-four hours. Come on. Show me the place.” He brushed by her without further greeting, frustration in his movements.

Margrit hung back a few steps, eyebrows drawn down. “Tony?”

He stopped just inside the building, shoulders pulled back and full of tension. Margrit reached out to touch him, then stayed her hand, unsure how the gesture would be taken.

“There’s been another murder, after the two last night. One of those was Gray. The other happened in the park, over on the east side.”

Margrit slid her hand into her pocket, tightening her bruised fingers around the sapphire Janx had given her. “I’m sorry, Tony. Another?”

“In the last hour. Down on the park’s southern end.” He swung to face her, defeat clearly written on his features. “This guy’s going to disappear, Grit. He’s got one on each side of the park now. He’s done. I can feel it. He’s going to get away with murder, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.”

“Maybe you’ll get lucky,” Margrit offered hollowly. “I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I know I said thanks for coming here, but thank you again. I didn’t know there’d been another murder. I’m surprised you could come.”

Tony pulled a thin smile. “It lets me put off going back to the station and getting busted for letting the city go to hell in the past week. Let’s go upstairs. I’ll see if there’s anything left that might be helpful.”

“Thanks,” Margrit repeated quietly, and took the lead. Guilt was assuaged by anger as she pushed the door open, the room’s emptiness echoing back at her. “She’s gone.”

Tony sighed, looking around. “So’s everything she owned. It doesn’t look like a kidnapping to me, Grit. It looks like she packed up and moved away.”

“Inside a few hours, without telling me?”

“Margrit.” Tony reached for her hands, then stopped, unsure of his welcome. The distance between them she thought suddenly seemed uncrossable, with too many sharp words lying there, waiting to cut again.

Too many secrets. Only a handful of days ago they’d stood on the edge of trying to build a life together. More had changed in that time than Margrit could wholly fathom. She had changed more in that span of days than she could explain.

She put her hand out abruptly, bridging the space Tony had hesitated to breach. He took it carefully, his grip warm and strong, and stepped a little closer, ducking his head toward hers. “Maybe she’s just found a better place and hasn’t had time to tell you yet.”

“In two hours? ”

Hope slid out of the detective’s eyes. “Grit, I know you’re upset, but yelling isn’t going to help.”