by Anton Strout
“Marshall,” I chided, louder this time.
Rory laughed, and my face went red. “Lexi and me? No, that would be…weird. We’re besties.”
“Marshall!” I screamed as loud as I could, which drew his attention, but just barely. His eyes flickered toward my voice, and he did a double take when he saw me standing there. I let my thought of Marshall as an enemy go.
“Oh, hey, Lexi,” he said. “I thought maybe you went downstairs for something.” His face turned beet red. “We were just…talking.”
“So I heard,” I said. The stone’s energy was all but gone now, but I turned my thoughts back to Marshall as an enemy. Much to my disappointment he just kept looking at me.
“You okay, Lexi?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said, taking my necklace off, the stone no longer giving off a lick of energy. “Was just experimenting. Thought I might have fixed something, but it was only temporary. Going to have to work on that.” I leaned down to pick up Alexander’s secret tome. “I hope I don’t have to bleed out every time I want to open this damned thing.”
“But still, it worked for a little bit, right?” Rory asked. “That’s promising.”
I nodded, giving Marshall a pitying shake of my head.
“What worked?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I said, flipping deeper into the newfound master book. “There’s more in here about those soul stones the gargoyle mentioned. Cross-referenced to half the library, naturally: book threads to follow listed as the Crown of the Titans, the Eye of God, the Ruler’s Chest, and the Heart of the Home. That’s going to take some serious heavy reading.” I flipped to the earlier sections of the tome. “There do seem to be a few things here I wouldn’t mind experimenting with—that is, if our gargoyle friend comes back anytime soon. And I’m going to get to the bottom of something.”
“What’s that?” Rory asked.
“Devon’s murder,” I said, and shut the book.
Eighteen
Alexandra
Although the building collapse that had killed my brother had happened more than four months ago, not much had changed at the site on St. Mark’s Place. The only noticeable difference now in the debris-filled lot was the construction walls put up around it that bore the Belarus business logo—an octagon with a stylized B, like the marking on my necklace sans wings. Traffic, both the pedestrian and vehicular kind, came and went along the cross street in small packs, which probably made Rory, Marshall, and me look like just another group of NYU students returning home from a late-night bender. The October weather was just cool enough tonight that I welcomed the extra padding of my puffy North Face jacket, as it kept the stone book in my backpack from digging into my spinal column too badly.
“Love what you’ve done with the place,” Marshall said, peering into one of the gaps where the hinged board door met with the rest of the surrounding wall. “So glad I left my Magic: The Gathering tournament to come out at midnight to meet you for this.”
“What can I say?” I asked, not expecting an answer. I stepped to the padlocked chain that ran through the center of the closed-off entrance. “I warned my family I’m really bad at the family business, even before Devon was crushed here. There are higher priorities among all the properties they have me working on right now. In my defense, I at least had them close it off with this pretty blue plywood. Not that you can see any of it beneath all the posters for the Roseland and other concert venues.”
Rory took the chain from me once I pulled it clear, and after a pack of NYU kids passed by, I slipped inside the lot with the two of them following quickly behind me. Neither of them was as mindful of the ground as I was, and both slipped on chunks of brick lying loose on what remained of the sidewalk. Rory danced across them with grace, swinging the chain in her hands as if performing some strange dance, handing the length of it back to me at the end. Marshall, however, twisted his ankle and went down hard onto a nearby pile of stone and wood. He recovered as I rechained the gate from the inside and slipped the padlock back onto it.
I turned to see Rory already marveling at the large pile that rose several stories to a peak at the center of the open lot. “This looks like the most dangerous game of King of the Hill ever,” she said.
“Wow,” I said, intimidated by the sheer amount of it all. “Finding anything regarding Devon’s death will actually be worse than finding a needle in a haystack. I doubt hay is as painful as brick.”
“How the hell are we supposed to examine this?” Marshall asked, dusting himself off and kicking at the crumble of bricks all around our feet. “We’d need a backhoe or something.”
I gave him a smile. “I brought my own,” I said.
“What?” Marshall asked, still looking down at his feet.
Rory’s eyes darted to the skies. “Incoming!” she shouted and lunged at Marshall, driving him back, stumbling across the outer rise of the pile. Stanis slammed down onto the ground, his approach silent up until that moment, only the crunch of rubble under his feet rising up from the impact.
Rory’s arms were still around Marshall, who had gone wide-eyed, shaking. He flailed his arms for his freedom, eventually causing Rory to let go and back off. “You could have killed me!” he shouted.
Stanis straightened up. “I would not have landed on you,” the gargoyle said, folding his expansive wings in close to his body.
Marshall looked down at the ground where Stanis stood. “I’m pretty sure that’s exactly where I was standing, in fact.”
Rory leaned in close to him. “Let me get this straight,” she said, draping an arm over his shoulder. “Are you picking a fight with a gargoyle?”
A sickly sheepish grin crossed his face, all bluster leaving him.
“Maybe you should apologize for calling him a hoe,” she said, clapping Marshall on the shoulder.
“I didn’t,” he said, backing away. “I said we’d need a backhoe to get through any of this.”
“Voila!” I said, gesturing to the gargoyle. “One backhoe.” I turned to face him. “Good evening, Stanis.” As far as large, magically enchanted stone men went, he wasn’t bad-looking, and I couldn’t help the small smile curling up at the corner of my mouth.
He turned from Marshall and Rory, rising to his full height, almost a foot taller than me. “And to you, Alexandra.”
“Lexi,” I corrected.
The gargoyle paused as if in thought.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I am sorry,” he said, his words curt. “That does not sound…proper to me. My maker was Alexander and you are of his kin. If you do not mind, I would prefer to call you Alexandra.”
“No big,” I said, shrugging it off, but deep down, if I was being honest with myself, it stung, his unwillingness to be familiar. I turned my attention back to the collapsed building, gesturing toward it. “If you would…”
“As you wish,” the gargoyle said, and stepped past all of us, heading straight to the edge of the pile, setting to the task of clearing a way to and through the heart of the lot. The sound of his efforts echoed across the lot and off the walls of the surrounding buildings, and I wondered what kind of attention we might be drawing. I ran to the gate and peered out between the cracks at the joints, but no one was currently passing by and for the moment I breathed out a sigh of relief, pressing my back against the wall.
When I opened my eyes, Rory was giving me a look.
“What?” I asked.
“Shouldn’t we help?” she said.
“Why? It’s not like we’re going to be able to move much of this.”
“That’s not the point,” she said, giving an uncertain look over at the gargoyle. “It’s rude, isn’t it? To just watch?”
“Rude? How is it rude? It’s magic and stone we’re talking about here.”
Marshall remained silent, watching the work.
“It’s what he wants, guys,” I told them, but after hearing them, it was hard not to notice that I sounded like I was trying to convi
nce myself. “He was designed to aid our family, so that’s what he’s doing. It’s what makes him happy. His only purpose.”
“Whatevs,” Rory said. “You’re the sorceress supreme.”
Marshall unfolded his arms and pointed to the creature. “I don’t mean to criticize, but at this rate, I don’t think we’re going to get anywhere, even by dawn.”
It was true. The gargoyle worked like a machine, hefting huge chunks and piles of broken brick aside as he cleared a path, but for every pile he shifted, more slid down into place for him to move.
“I’d help,” Rory said, holding up her hands and wiggling them, “but this would run havoc on my nails, and I’m already fighting an almost losing battle with them on my dance days.”
I glanced over at Marshall, who held his hands up defensively. “I’m more of an idea man myself,” he said. “Not too keen on my arms falling off trying to deadlift bricks and all.”
“So how about some ideas, then?” Rory asked, but I was already working my backpack off my shoulders.
“I needed to spend more time in this spell book, anyway,” I said. “I don’t think I’m quite up to building him a companion yet to help him dig, but maybe there’s something I can use here…”
The book was heavy, even in paper form, so I sat down where I thought the light was best and tried to read the book. Part of a streetlamp leaked behind the wall, and the book was legible enough here, despite the fact that much of the language within the books was still indecipherable to me.
I don’t know how long I had been studying, but by the time I found something promising, Rory was busy stretching herself out and Marshall was sitting on the ground next to me.
“Well?” Marshall asked when he saw me looking up.
“I think I have something,” I said. Rory stopped what she was doing and came over to us. “It seems a small thing, really, that I’ve been toying with since picking through my great-great-grandfather’s notes. Part of what binds Stanis into what he does has to do with what Alexander called ‘speaking to stone.’ I don’t think it accounts for what makes up his higher functions, but I was thinking of experimenting with it on a small scale.” I opened my notes, breathed out the words written on the page, only partially understanding them, then pressed my will into one of the bricks Marshall had slipped on. I willed it to move, and like a shot it flew across the lot and into the side of the building off to our left.
“Wow,” Marshall said, then looked at the pile at the center of the lot, his face falling. “You only have to do that a billion more times now.”
“I was thinking of taking a shovel approach,” I said. “This is about will and determination, and believe me, I’m more than determined to find out what really happened to my brother. Hey, Stanis!”
The gargoyle had worked through the start of a path into the mountain of debris, stopping when I called to him. The three of us walked over to him.
“We’re going to try something new,” I said, “but I need you as backup in case it…you know, doesn’t work.”
Rory clapped me on the shoulder. “She means in case she crushes us.”
He nodded. “Very well.”
We moved past him to the front of his path.
“Stay close, everyone,” I said, adjusting the book in my hands. “I don’t know how large an area I can cover with this.”
“Comforting,” Marshall said from a few feet back, his voice catching in his throat.
“Cuddle up,” Rory said, pulling him closer. “At least we’ll be together if all this collapses down on us.”
“That will not happen,” Stanis said, coming up behind us. “I will go last, and if need be shield you with my wings.”
I wasn’t too sure that would help but I wasn’t about to get into it, not with the look on Marshall’s face, anyway. The boy looked like he was about to throw up. Any further delay, and he just might. “Come on,” I said. “I’m not sure how strong this spell is and I want to get moving before I lose my nerve, determination or no.”
I consulted the book once more before closing it and pressing forward. It was my will against that of the stone, bound to it, but mixing with it at the same time. I stepped forward tentatively and the bricks before me tumbled away like I was pushing them aside with an invisible plow. There was resistance, thick in the air, but not enough to stop me. Not yet, anyway. I’d have to see how it went once I went deeper into the giant pile of rubble.
Without any further hesitation, I moved forward, the stones yielding to my passage. The safe space around me spread out like a ball radiating from my body, its shape becoming clearer the deeper I pushed us.
When we were shoulder-height deep into the rubble, Marshall grabbed my arm.
“Hold on a sec,” he said. I heard him fishing through his backpack, but didn’t turn for fear of losing my concentration. A moment later, there was light shooting forward over my shoulder.
“Thanks, Boy Scout,” I said, and started forward. Stone caved in on top of the bubble around us, but none of it hindered my progress, although with each step deeper my body felt more and more like it was sludging through knee-high snow.
“You okay?” Rory asked after bumping into me when my progress slowed.
“Yep,” I managed to squeak out, only then realizing how clenched my jaw was from exerting my will over the brick and stone.
“Maybe we should turn back,” Marshall said. “You look like you’re about to burst a vein.”
“Just…taking a lot of…effort, is all,” I said through my teeth.
“He may have a point,” Rory added. “You don’t want to overdo it.”
“Not leaving,” I grunted under the increasing effort. “Until I find something of my brother.”
“Well, let’s hurry on, then,” Marshall said, swinging the light in a searching arc back and forth in front of us. The stone continued parting out of the way, despite our depth, my own grim determination keeping it from crushing down on us.
I stopped, a strange sensation rising in my awareness. “Marshall, flash your light off to my left.”
A different type of stone jutted out from the debris, darker and, more important, seemingly one piece. Intricate scrollwork decorated it, reminding me of the knot work design I had uncovered on the gargoyle.
“What is that?” Rory asked from over my other shoulder.
“I’m not sure,” I said, pressing the bubble of my will toward it. My teeth ground together so hard it took a conscious effort on my part to relax my jaw without causing an avalanche on top of us. “However, I can’t seem to move it.”
“Great,” Marshall said with nervous enthusiasm. “Time to go, then. Let’s back it out of here.”
“No, wait,” I said, realizing it was a stupid thing to stay buried this far under the collapsed wreckage. “I need to check it out.”
I headed off toward the exposed piece of stone, watching the broken bricks tumble away as I closed in on it, but the polished stone still wouldn’t budge. In fact, the closer I got, the more debris fell away from in front of it, a familiar shape forming before me.
“A door,” Marshall said.
“Ya think?” Rory asked, only partly giving him grief. Her eyes were transfixed on the door, too, and she brushed passed me, pressing all of her hundred and twenty pounds against the ornate knot work twists along the front of it. “Awesome. Won’t budge.”
“I told you that,” I said.
“You want me to try?” Marshall asked, and I held back the urge to laugh at him.
“Don’t strain yourself,” Rory said. “Lexi, magic it some more, will ya?”
“If I can,” I said, far less sure than Rory had sounded. I looked up at the mountain of rock pressing down against my spell. “I don’t think I can keep us in this bubble and push this thing open at the same time. I might kill us all.”
Rory and Marshall both fell silent as I stood there staring at the formidable stone door before me.
“I can keep the stones off us,” Stan
is offered, and spread his wings. At their fullest width, he twisted them ever so slightly so they rose above us like a massive umbrella.
“You sure you can keep all that up while I concentrate on the door?” I asked. I couldn’t hide the skepticism on my face or in my voice.
Marshall snorted. “I trust his physical presence holding all that up more than I trust the invisible ball surrounding us right now,” he said. “No offense.”
Rory grabbed him by the shoulder and whispered in his ear, “Please don’t piss off the person generating said invisible ball,” she said, and Marshall fell silent.
“All right,” I said, relaxing my concentration a little. “I’m letting go.”
I eased my mind off thoughts of keeping the bubble active, the tension in my jaw letting go. A cloud of red-brown dust came down on us while I listened to the scraping of stone on stone settling onto Stanis and his wings. The veins in his stone neck bulged out from the effort, his lips pulling back to reveal the fangs within his mouth. It was hard not to stare; I found I could not turn away.
“I have it,” he said, “but I would urge you to hurry.”
I opened up my book of notes and held it at the center of Marshall’s light, flipping like mad through it. The stone of this door wasn’t going to yield to conventional pushing and shoving, not if I understood his love of puzzles. This was going to take more than just brute force, but what? From my all-too-limited understanding of my great-great-grandfather’s arcane art, driving crumbled bricks was fairly mundane, even though it was clearly taking a heavy toll on my body pushing the spell too far tonight. Something this well carved and able to resist an entire building falling on it was going to need something with more oomph to it, and I wasn’t sure whether I could muster any more of it at this point.
Still, whether I was moving rubble or rocks or trying to affect this door, some of the magic principles should be the same. I could make this move. I just needed to sort out the how of it.
Marshall coughed from somewhere behind me, then sneezed. The light source bounced away from the page for a second. I prayed he wouldn’t drop it, and with haste I kept looking through my notes on binding the stone, blowing fallen brick dust off of the pages as I continued my reading.
