House of Cards

by C. E. Murphy

  Alban stood fast, as caught by memory as he was by his rival in the physical world. Biali tore at his mind, and Alban strengthened his resolve. He had not endured centuries of solitude, had not earned the appellation the Breach amongst his own people, to fall beneath Biali’s demands so easily. For an instant he felt Biali’s will falter.

  Victory sang through Alban’s blood and he pushed harder, seeking not just to protect his own memories, but to mine Biali’s. Something drove the other gargoyle, some need to possess memories that only Alban held, and of those, only one had the power to set Alban apart from all his people for all his years. He buried thoughts of promises made eighteen score years and more ago, and drove forward into stony memory, searching for Biali’s motivations. Why attack Malik, why raid Alban’s personal histories, why—

  An answer broke, flaring bright and sharp on the surface of Biali’s thoughts. No more reason to attack Malik than to draw Alban into battle, though below that lay a stony lack of care as to what happened to the djinn. His life was irrelevant, a trinket to use, as if Biali had learned lessons at Janx’s feet all too well. Alban faltered, shocked, and his rival surged forward again, regaining lost ground.

  A new peak shattered up from the earth, bolstering Biali’s confidence, comfortable and uninvited all at once. It lay too close to their memories—to Biali’s, to Hajnal’s, to Alban’s own—to be so unknown, and too far away to be welcomed within the stretch of range that was their own. But its roots went as deep as any other, making it belong whether Alban recognized it or not. Curiosity and caution drove him to reach for it, seeking knowledge of its maker to learn whose memory lay so close to theirs. To learn from whose memory Biali could draw such strength, and to see if it was a source from which his own reserves could be fortified.

  Familiarity swept over him once more. The new memories tasted of Hajnal and Biali; and most of all, bitter hate born from insanity.

  “Ausra.” Alban heard himself speak the name in a scraping voice, and on the physical battlefield saw Biali’s eyes flash with angry triumph. Alban thrust memories of the girl who might have been his daughter away too late; for a bare instant all that he knew of her was laid out before Biali’s silent inquisition. The tragedy of her birth, the madness of her life.

  The method of her death.

  Biali capitulated so quickly that Alban stumbled forward, off balance. He expected, but didn’t see, the blow that caught him between the wings, and bellowed with pain. Biali skipped to one side with a harsh, derisive bark, not pressing his advantage. Alban scrambled out of reach, then faced his opponent warily.

  “Breach.” Biali spat the word, then simply turned away, scarred face wrinkled in disgust. As Alban watched, astonished, he opened his wings and caught a gust of wind, letting it carry him away from the Flatiron Building.

  Malik, as if riding the same drafts, appeared at Alban’s side, a thin smile beneath a bruise purpling on his cheek. “You’ve done yourself no favors by playing my champion.”

  Alban straightened, voice heavy in reply. “It’s not a part to play. And no.” He turned his focus on the djinn, ignoring the nastiness of Malik’s smile. “I haven’t. Why aren’t you afraid?”

  “Of him?” Malik’s lip curled with derision. “What can a gargoyle do to a djinn?”

  “That blow could have broken your neck. Djinn are hard to hit, not impossible.” His gaze fell to Malik’s cane. “Which it seems you should already know. And if not of Biali in particular, then of whomever it is who’s hunting Janx’s men in general. Djinn are only hard to hit,” he repeated thoughtfully.

  “Biali won’t land another blow,” Malik said through his teeth. “As for the others, they were only human. Humans are my prey, not my predators.”

  “Humans like Russell Lomax?” The question was born from Margrit’s suspicions, rather than any detail stolen from Biali’s memories, and Alban had no way to force a response. The best he might do was find an answer in Malik’s reaction, and share with Margrit what he learned from that.

  Disdain washed over Malik’s face. “You’d like to run back to your human lawyer with all the answers, wouldn’t you? Play her hero, having failed as mine.” He began to disappear into an oily black shadow. “Try. You’ll fail again, with no way to stop it. I’ll visit her and hers in the morning. Sleep on that, Stoneheart.”

  TWENTY

  MARGRIT STOOD AT her own front door, key in hand, oddly reluctant to use it. Beyond that threshold lay her ordinary life, not made up of Old Races’ quorums or gargoyle lovers.

  Beyond it lay explanations she didn’t know how to make. She took a breath, then stepped back, abandoning her plan to go home in favor of somewhere—anywhere—else. Chelsea’s, maybe, or even Daisani’s office. Kaimana’s hotel suite. Anywhere that wasn’t home, facing friends who lay on the far side of a divide that seemed to grow deeper by the moment.

  “Coward.” She whispered that aloud, bringing the heat of another blush to her cheeks. Running was the coward’s way out, an action that belonged to someone else. Finding the heart-pounding desire to escape within herself was an embarrassment. Even in the chaotic first days, when Alban had first come to her for help, she hadn’t run. She’d refused, but it hadn’t been a childish fear of confrontation that had driven her to do so. She thrust her jaw forward now and reached for the doorknob.

  It turned under her hand and Cole pulled the door open. He had his coat and shoes on, relief spilling over his features as he stepped back to let her in. “There you are. We were worried. I was about to go look for you.”

  Margrit squeaked and put her hand over her heart, dragging in a deep breath. “I told you I was going to disappear. Sorry.” She came in and toed her shoes off as Cole closed the door behind her.

  Cameron appeared from the kitchen to hug her. “Yeah, but I thought you’d introduce us to Mr. Daisani first. Where’d you go?”

  “For what it’s worth, he noticed you.” Margrit winced at the admission, wishing Daisani hadn’t seen her tall blond friend amongst the selkies, and having no idea how it might’ve been avoided. “He said you were lovely. I had to…work.”

  Cameron’s smile wobbled. “Tell him thanks. You okay, Grit?”

  “No. Not really. It’s been a horrible few days. Tony broke up with me.” The last words came out randomly, surprising her. Margrit stared down the hallway, afraid to look at either of her housemates as she tried to sort out her emotions. She felt numb, primarily, as if someone could bounce coins off her skin and she’d only detect a distant thud of impact. Buried beneath the safety of that anesthesia lay an ugly worm of relief, and she didn’t want to face that yet.

  “Oh. Oh, no, honey, I’m so sorry.” Cam walked her down to the kitchen and put her hands on Margrit’s shoulders, slouching to get a look at her expression. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m…” Margrit shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. “I’m okay. I’m fine. This’s been coming since January. I just… Do we have any ice cream?”

  “I can send Cole out for some.” Cameron’s voice was already rising as she spoke.

  “No. No, it’s okay. I’m okay, really. I’m just…I don’t know.” She looked back at the front door. “We’ve been off and on for so many years, I think now that it’s real I don’t know how to…” Words failed her again and she ducked beneath Cameron’s arm to pull open the freezer door. “How can I be out of ice cream?”

  “Maybe because you eat it a pint at a time?” Cam asked. Margrit looked over her shoulder to find a gentle smile on her friend’s face, and closed the fridge door again.

  “Yeah. Yeah, okay, I guess that might be why. I should buy stock in Häagen-Dazs.”

  “You mean you don’t own controlling interest by now?” Cameron crossed the kitchen to hug her. “What happened tonight?” she asked more quietly.

  Margrit put her forehead against Cam’s shoulder for a moment, hanging on. “It was a business meeting. I didn’t know Alban would be there. I didn’t know Tony would be there.�
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  “Would it have changed anything if you had?”

  Margrit looked away, caught. “I don’t know. It might be better this way.”

  “Are you sure? I don’t want to make this even more complicated, Grit, but you’re talking about a guy who was wanted on murder charges a couple months ago, right?”

  “For murders he didn’t commit.” Margrit set her front teeth together at the blasé application of truth in that claim, but left it alone, unable to explain further. “If Alban had never come into my life at all, Tony and I might be planning a wedding by now, and we might’ve even managed to live happily ever after. A good solid ordinary life. And I’d never know what I was missing.”

  “What are you missing?” Cole spoke from the kitchen door.

  Margrit, hopelessly, said, “The chance to fly,” and lowered her eyes so she didn’t have to see the uncomprehending look her housemates shared. “I’m going to go get ice cream. Want any?”

  “You want company?” Cameron asked.

  Margrit shook her head. “I think I might go for a run first. I feel kind of sick. It’d make me feel better.”

  “It’s eleven at night, Grit,” Cole said doggedly. “Working for Daisani’s got to come with a gym membership. If you’re going to run, be safe, will you? Go use a treadmill.”

  “I hate treadmills, Cole. You don’t go anywhere. I’ll—ugh. All right, all right,” she said to twin disapproving glares. “I’ll just go to the corner store. Shit,” she added with feeling, as Cam scooped up her own coat from a dining room chair and gestured imperiously toward the door. Margrit sighed. “What, you don’t trust me? I’m wearing heels. Not even I go running in heels.”

  “Extenuating circumstances. You’ve just been dumped. It may cause drastic behavior changes. Besides.” Cameron herded her toward the door. “You always get me that chocolate banana stuff and I need a new favorite before I turn into a monkey. If we’re not back in twenty minutes,” she said over her shoulder to Cole, “we’ve gone out to drown Margrit’s sorrows in Long Island iced teas, and won’t be home until the bars close.”

  “Hey. You said ice cream, not a night of boozing it up. Wait for me.”

  “Cab,” Margrit said firmly. It was the only word she could remember having spoken since the bartender had announced last call. She’d lounged on a bar stool until Cameron poured her off it, and in the interminable thirty-foot walk from the bar to the street, the only thing Margrit had been certain of was the need to take a taxi home.

  “It’s only four blocks, Grit,” Cole said. “You can run four blocks in thirty seconds.”

  “Nope. Cab.” A surge of giddy pride at inserting a second word into her protests knocked her off balance, and she stopped walking. The world wobbled precariously around her and she breathed slowly, keeping herself drawn up straight and tall.

  “Grit, you only had one drink. You’re faking it.”

  Margrit made a slow, ponderous turn to face her housemate. “I had one Long Island iced tea, Cole. That’s seven shots.” Smug delight bloomed at enunciating “seven shots” clearly. Buoyed by it, she put her hand out and worked her way toward the nearest wall, finally slumping with drunken exhaustion. “I’m just going to take a nap here. Let me know when we get a taxi.” With her eyes closed, she felt less obliged to produce a facade of sobriety. “You want meet him?”

  The urge to slap her hand over her mouth and take back the question was overridden by the lack of coordination to do so. Even prying her eyes open to find Cameron and Cole glancing at each other took more effort than seemed worth it. Margrit tilted her head against the building. “You can say no.”

  “Why don’t you tell us a little about him first?” Cole’s voice was guarded.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “How about, why didn’t he go to the cops in January?”

  Margrit drew in a deep breath, just sober enough to realize she shouldn’t have opened herself up for questions when she’d been drinking. The influx of oxygen produced a feeling of nausea in a stomach awash with alcohol. “He’s got a condition,” she said very carefully. “He can’t be out in daylight, at all, and there was no way to be sure he’d be in and out before dawn.”

  “What, like a sun allergy?” Cameron’s voice drifted down the street. Margrit squinted, finding her standing on the curb searching the street for a cab. “I’ve never heard of a sun allergy that bad. What about hats and sunblock?”

  “Sunblock and hats don’t work. He can’t be in the sunlight at all. Like dating Lestat. Only without the whining.”

  “Cops would’ve worked with a medical condition, Margrit.” Cole’s voice remained stiff.

  Margrit sighed. “Maybe. But he felt like he couldn’t go to them.” She closed her mouth on further explanations, painfully aware that they, too, would fall short.

  Cole eyed her a moment, then let it go. “So what’s he do for a living, if he can’t go out during the day?”

  “He’s got, what do you call it? Means. Not rich, but he doesn’t work.” Margrit rolled her head against the wall, trying to shake off a little of the alcohol. “He does soup kitchen volunteering and stuff. He’s a decent guy.”

  “How does he know Eliseo Daisani? Hey! Hey, taxi!” Cameron’s whistle ripped along the street, shocking Margrit into wakefulness. A cab down the block flipped its turn signal off and came toward them as Margrit took careful, precise steps toward the curb.

  “They belonged to the same exclusive club when they were younger. Guess they still do. They’re not friends. They just know each other. I don’t know if anybody’s friends with Daisani.” Margrit bit her tongue to keep from babbling as Cole opened the cab door for her with a gallant flourish.

  “So how come you took the job, anyway, Grit?” His question followed her into the taxi a moment before he did.

  “It was better to have him over a barrel than be over one myself,” she answered with forthright honesty, then made duck lips at him. “You’re asking me questions because I’m too drunk to think before answering, aren’t you?”

  “Absolutely. Why’d you break up with me in college?”

  Margrit threw her head back and laughed out loud, as Cole looked pleased with himself. Even Cameron laughed, too, giving the driver their address before saying, “Even I know that one. Everybody says you had all the chemistry of wet flour. Too bad. You’re very pretty together.”

  The cab pulled up in front of their apartment building and Margrit paid, then put her hands out toward her housemates. “Help, please.” They drew her from the taxi, trying not to laugh openly as she staggered to keep her feet. “You’re horrible friends,” she told them. “Laughing at my misfortune. I get dumped and drunk and never did get any ice cream and you’re laughing at me.” She shook their hands off, drawing herself up to her full three inches over five feet in height. “I’m going to get ice cream.”

  “Wired on sugar and buzzed on alcohol,” Cole said to Cam. “I think we should go with her and watch this.”

  “Good. You can buy me ice cream. I just spent all my money on the cab.” Margrit reeled around and marched off to the convenience store.

  TWENTY-ONE

  “MARGRIT.” ALBAN STEPPED out of an alley, realizing his error when Margrit shrieked and stumbled away. He knew the pair she was with from glimpses through doors and a few seconds of watching them at the ice rink. The slender blond woman with the broad shoulders was Cameron, and she yelped as well, clutching Margrit’s arm. Their escort was Cole, black haired, shorter than Cameron and instinctively protective as he stepped in front of the women. Alban opened his mouth and shut it again, startled at his own loss for words. “Forgive me,” he said after a few seconds. “I didn’t intend to alarm anyone.”

  Cole’s belligerent growl died in his throat, stance relaxing a little as he half recognized Alban, though he cast a glance at Margrit for a cue as to how to behave. She said, “Alban,” in relieved exasperation as she edged past Cole. “What are you doing here?”
/>   “No one was home at your apartment.” He made a small gesture, more to the sky than the buildings. “I waited, and when I heard your voice, I…” Words failed him again, this time because the truth seemed peculiarly ludicrous in the presence of Margrit’s housemates. It was easy to say “I came down from the rooftops” to Margrit, but not when Cole and Cameron stared curiously at him. “Forgive me,” he said again, and drew himself up. “I’m Alban Korund. We’ve never quite met.” He offered a hand to Cole, wondering if the human male would take it.

  Margrit muttered a curse and said, “Sorry,” more clearly. “Sorry, sorry. Cole, Cameron, this is…this is Alban. These are my housemates, Cole Grierson and Cameron Dugan. Shit. Sorry. I’ve had too much to drink.”

  Cole scowled between Margrit to Alban before Cameron inserted herself in front of him. “Hi. I’m Cam. I’m glad we’re finally getting a chance to meet you.” She shook Alban’s hand with an unexpectedly firm grip and offered a warm smile. “We’re on our way to get some ice cream, just to make sure Margrit’s really hung-over in the morning. Want to come along?”

  “Oh,” Alban said. “I—”

  “Might as well.” Cole, clearly outplayed by Cameron, set his jaw, then shook Alban’s hand without making a contest of it. “Sorry about the last time we met.” There was little apology in his voice, but Alban inclined his head, in recognition of the form, if not Cole’s sincerity.

  “You had cause to be suspicious. It’s good that Margrit’s friends care enough to protect her.”

  “That’s ancient history now,” Cameron said firmly. “Come on. Grit’s out of money, so we have to buy her her drug of choice. Triple-chocolate fudge ripple with brownie chunks.”