C.E. Murphy - Heart of Stone

Margrit’s chin rose higher. “Yeah.”

“You bargain with Eliseo Daisani, Janx has gained three favors from you and Malik frightens you?” Humor colored Alban’s voice.

Margrit wrapped her arms around herself defensively. “Janx has his own kind of honor, and Daisani…I don’t think I’m even worth killing. Unless that number doesn’t pan out and the guy who killed Vanessa disappears for good. Then I’ll probably get to be a six-o’clock-news object lesson. But Malik would hurt me just because he could. What happens if Daisani takes Malik out?”

“In my youth he would have been exiled for such an action,” Alban said slowly. “But he held less power in the human world then. Exile from the Old Races would mean comparatively little to him, and those of us who have to deal with him would find ourselves doing so regardless of his status. I don’t know, Margrit. Perhaps something like war, after all.”

Exile. The word echoed in Margrit’s thoughts as she looked up at the gargoyle. “Exile. You mean he’d be an outcast?” She remembered clearly the curl of Cara’s lip, the sneer in her voice as she labeled Alban that outcast. The arrogance seemed all the more out of place knowing the selkies were considered mongrels among the Old Races, but the dichotomy hadn’t bothered the thin-boned young woman at all.

Alban’s eyes glittered as he glanced at her. “Yes.” Weight burdened the word, a weight Margrit was certain she wasn’t meant to hear or understand. She put her hand out, gripping the table before she spoke.

“Is that what happened to you?”

The gargoyle went still, more profoundly still than any human Margrit had ever seen. Even his hair seemed too heavy to be moved, and his breath seemed as if it might never come again. “I shouldn’t be surprised,” he said finally. “In a matter of days you’ve become more conversant with our people than I have been in centuries.”

“What happened, Alban?”

“As you surmise,” he said after long seconds. “Nothing more and nothing less, Margrit. It isn’t something I care to dwell on. Hajnal died and I fled the Old World for the new, with only memories to live with.”

“That’s all? That’s all you’re going to tell me?” Margrit leaned forward, as if her intensity might draw more information from the gargoyle. A whisper of presence made itself felt in her mind, alien and familiar all at once, and she curled her fingers, as if she could hook them into shared memory. Her injured hand protested the action, and Alban shifted away, placing a subtle distance between them. Margrit’s eyebrows drew down. “What aren’t you telling me?”

He turned toward her with a faint smile. “Why do you think there’s something I’m not telling you?”

“Because you’re not letting memory ride me,” Margrit said, suddenly sure of herself. “You’re making certain it doesn’t.”

“I chose long ago not to share memory again, Margrit. I’d have been more cautious earlier if I’d known humans were sensitive to it.”

“Why?” she asked, mystified. “Why would you deny yourself that? The memories I got weren’t nice ones, but I’d think being alone after sharing a telepathic link with someone would be incredibly depressing.” The gargoyle shifted at the accusation, and Margrit caught her breath in recognition of his unintentional admission. “It is, isn’t it? How much of being an outcast is self-imposed? Why would you do that to yourself? Are you on a two-century sulk?”

Alban growled deep in his throat, and Margrit smiled, triumphant at forcing a client to acknowledge something he didn’t want to see. He wasn’t exactly a client, she reminded herself, but the principle remained the same. It was time to back away now, leaving him to stew over her words, making him wrestle with their truth. The tactic proved much more useful than continuing to push, in her experience.

“All right. Okay. I’ll let it go this time. We’ve got enough to deal with right now. What’s Janx doing, upsetting the balance like this?”

Alban looked past her, into the bookstore’s yellow light beyond the bead curtain. “Making a play I don’t understand,” he said after a moment. “To make a blow as direct as this one, whatever he’s doing, he must be very confident of his position.”

“Is Janx ever not confident?” Margrit asked wryly.

Alban blinked, then smiled at her. “No,” he admitted. “None of us tend to lack confidence. We’ve paid the price, though. There aren’t many of us left.”

“Maybe one more than you think.”

“I know,” Alban agreed. “The woman Ausra. Grace O’Malley knows her. Knew her,” he corrected. “She disappeared years ago.”

Margrit stared up at him. “When did you talk to Grace?”

“Just after sunset. She followed us yesterday and found the building I slept on. She was waiting when I woke up.”

A chill of irrational jealousy and concern swept over Margrit, lifting the hairs on her arms. “I spent all day worried about you,” she muttered childishly. “And she knew where you were?”

“Margrit.” Alban tipped her chin up, smiling down at her. “She offered me a daytime haven, nothing more.”

Margrit snorted. “So what’d she say about Ausra?”

His smile faded. “Very little. Grace knew what she was, not much more. She was dark-haired and small.”

“Like Hajnal,” Margrit said.

Alban’s eyebrows rose. “How did you know that?”

She looked down, feeling his gaze on her. “I’ve had a busy evening.” The events of the night suddenly overwhelmed her, the list of them leaving her without a place to start. She finally said, “Janx gave me this,” and took the sapphire from her pocket. It rolled in her palm, lamps making a bright star on its side, before she met the gargoyle’s eyes.

Alban took the stone with thick fingers, the least graceful move she’d ever seen him make. “Where did you-” He broke off, squeezing his eyes closed, and rephrased the question. “Where did he get this?”

“There was another murder tonight,” Margrit whispered. “The real killer this time, not Janx’s copycat. She left this at the scene.”

Alban jerked his head up, meeting Margrit’s eyes. “She?”

“Doesn’t it have to be? Someone’s trying to draw you out, blame you for the deaths of women who looked like Hajnal.”

Alban went gray, a bleaching of color that left him less human than before. “How do you know that?” he asked indistinctly. “I didn’t want to tell you-to frighten you.”

Margrit ducked her head. “I’m not easily frightened, remember?” The reminder of his words brought a brief smile to Alban’s face, and she exhaled. “Honestly, I’m already scared, Alban. I’m in way over my head. Anyway, Biali told me. More than told me,” she added, remembering the too-vivid shock in Biali’s memory at the gargoyle woman’s arrival. “I talked to him earlier tonight.”

“Biali. Janx. Daisani. Malik. Are there any of the Old Races you haven’t had truck with since I last saw you? Biali,” Alban repeated, then pressed his mouth in a thin line as he curled his hand around the sapphire. “I suppose I could’ve guessed. Tell me what it is you think,” he said without looking back at her. “Tell me what you’ve deduced, Margrit. I have no heart for speculation.” He seemed to age with the words, until Margrit bit back tears and took a tentative step toward him.

“She didn’t die. She got away somehow, and it’s taken her this long to find you again. Or maybe she’s been waiting for you to expose yourself and talk to somebody. All those other women who died-”

“Daylight hours, Margrit,” Alban reminded her heavily. “Hajnal, had she survived that night, could not have killed any of those women. They died during daylight hours.”