House of Cards. C.E. Murphy

Margrit repeated. “So the light doesn’t screw up the colors. So I can see you properly. Please.”

      “Margrit.” Her name came heavily, a sound of defeat. “It’s better for you to remain apart from my world. Dining with me only … prolongs the inevitable.”

      “Which inevitable is that, Alban?” She stepped toward him, watching him tense and glance toward the trees, as if seeking escape. “Are we talking about inevitable heartbreak? An inevitable clash of your world and mine? Inevitable ending to whatever this thing between us is? Or are we talking about the fact that I’m inevitably stuck in your world already, because that’s the inevitable I’m facing.” She kept her voice low as she approached him, trying not to let irritation flare. “I’ve been accosted by a dragon, a djinn, a vampire and a selkie in the last twenty-four hours, and nothing you do is going to change that. I’m part of your world. If there’s an inevitable here, it’s that we’re involved with each other. Did you really think I’d be allowed to stay out of it once I knew the Old Races existed?”

      “Accosted?”

      Margrit let her head fall back, blowing out an exasperated sigh. “Well, at least something got your attention. Nobody seriously hurt me, but your world’s not going to leave me alone.” She took a breath and held it, touching her fingers against his sleeve. “Can we please go somewhere else and talk? You might not feel the cold, but I do, and I really am hungry. I came here from work and I haven’t eaten.”

      “I’m unaccustomed to dining in public.”

      “I’m unaccustomed to having to ask a guy three times to get a dinner date out of him. We ‘re both going to have to adjust. Will you please come out to dinner with me?”

      Alban hesitated a moment longer, then retreated one step into shadow. “No. Margrit, I am sorry for involving you in my world, and I should have acted sooner, before the inevitable did draw you back in. I’ll do what I can to loosen the chains that bind you. I swore to protect you—”

      “So help me, Alban! Skulking around in the sky isn’t protecting me, not when Janx wants me to keep Malik alive, and Malik’d rather kill me than let that happen!”

      Alban flinched, his expression incredulous as he searched her gaze for truth. For a moment a thread of hope tightened in Margrit’s heart. A relieved smile curved her mouth and she moved forward, but Alban retreated again, deliberate and intricate as a dance. “I’ll deal with Janx,” he growled. “Forgive me, Margrit. I shouldn’t have let this go on so long.” He set his jaw, resolution coming into his eyes. “I will not watch for you again at night. I will not be here to protect you. Fondness kept me lingering too long as it is, and has done neither of us any favors.”

      Cold clenched Margrit’s stomach, dismay born from belief. “I don’t believe you. You’re a gargoyle. You protect. That’s what you do, what you are.”

      “And the best way to protect you is to leave you very much alone. My mistakes are to your detriment. I will always be sorry for that.” Alban pulled in a deep breath, broadening his chest. “Be well, Margrit Knight. Goodbye.”

      He turned and sprang into the shadows, into the sky, a pale blur of winged imagination before treetops and distance took him away. Margrit shouted his name, running a few steps forward before stopping again in open-mouthed fury as the gargoyle disappeared from sight for the second time in three nights.

      Regret and rage wound through him like snakes, conspiring to take away his breath. He ought to have known better; he did know better. It wasn’t only Margrit who might look for him in the night sky, and of those who were likely to, she was the least troublesome. He ought to have kept his word to himself, his promise to the beautiful lawyer, and stayed away. Instead he’d let sentiment rule him—he, a gargoyle, bending to the whim of emotion—and now Margrit paid the price.

      Well, if irrationality was to govern him, he would ride it as far as it took him.

      He folded his wings and dove, flight from the park having carried him high and to the north. He back-winged only a matter of yards above the rooftop he sought, wings aching with the strain of pulling out of the dive. Then again, it wasn’t a soft landing he intended. Stony weight smashed down, Alban landing in a three-point crouch that shook the roof, and, he trusted, echoed deep into the warehouse establishment below him. Caution made him transform to his human shape, heavy taloned fingers turning to a clenched mortal fist before his gaze.

      Seconds later the rooftop door flew open and half a dozen armed men spilled through it. Alban lifted his gaze by degrees, knowing full well the picture he made: a solitary, pale man splashed against the black rooftop, a place with no easy access. The wind lifted his hair and opened his suit coat, making a flare like wings as he came to his feet with slow deliberation. The men who surrounded him—tough-looking, as if they’d seen their share of battle—exchanged wary glances, unsure of how to respond to his fearless stance.

      One raised a gun as Alban stepped forward, daring to block the gargoyle’s path to the door. “You can’t go in th—”

      “Stand down, Ricardo.” It wasn’t the voice Alban wanted to hear, but it would do; Malik appeared in the doorway, his cane held by its throat as he swung it. “Korund. What a surprise.”

      Alban walked forward until he stood inches from the djinn, staring more than eight inches down at him. “I am already an exile. If any harm comes to Margrit Knight, I have nothing to lose by avenging her. You would do well to remember that.” He felt surprising freedom in voicing the threat, as though it broke shackles he’d been unaware of wearing. “I will see Janx, and I will see him now.”

      “Janx doesn—nnk!” Fury lit Malik’s eyes as Alban planted a hand against his collarbones and shoved him against the door frame. It proved that Alban’s decision to transform to a human shape had been wise: had the armed men now behind him known that Malik was other than human, Alban would never have been able to put a hand on the djinn. The distinctive sound of weapons cocking followed hard on Malik’s outraged protest. Alban ignored them and stalked down concrete stairs toward Janx’s office. Malik’s voice sounded, ordering a stand-down for the second time. The door above banged shut, no heavy mortal footsteps following him. An instant later Malik coalesced in front of Alban, rage contorting his features.

      Alban ignored him, startled to discover how little he had to say to the djinn. Malik vaporized again rather than be trampled, and a hint of small-minded glee bubbled at the back of Alban’s mind. He and the djinn could, at best, stymie one another. Malik might be capable of taking the breath from Alban’s body, but could do nothing to the gargoyle’s stone form, and gargoyles, as a people, were far more patient than the djinn. A gargoyle could remain in his stone shape until his djinn tormentors grew bored and left.

      It would hardly come to that on Janx’s threshold, though. Malik didn’t reappear a second time, no doubt gone to warn his master of Alban’s arrival. That was unnecessary; short of human methods of destruction, only a gargoyle could manage the building-shaking landing Alban had made a minute earlier, and the only other gargoyle in New York was in Janx’s employ.

      Concrete steps turned to iron grating, creaking beneath Alban’s weight. As the casino below came into view, he paused, fully aware of the windowed alcove to his right that overlooked the same broad room he studied. This was Janx’s House of Cards, the center of more criminal activities than Alban could easily name. The police, he understood, often managed to arrest minor players in Janx’s empire, but Janx himself went unscathed. Whether that was because he owned enough of the city to keep himself safe or because the authorities feared what might rise in his place, Alban didn’t know.

      Below him, the desperate and weary played poker and roulette, hoping for a life-changing break of luck. The air tasted of despair, neon lights turning smoke to off-colored swirls as dull as the hope in the room. No one looked up: so human of them. Alban might well have walked through the warehouse’s upper reaches in his natural form and gone unnoticed. The temptation to risk it by shifting flared and died again. Anger had carried him this far, but a gargoyle’s temperament didn’t lend itself