Alban pulled his lips back from his teeth, once more keeping his human form with effort. “I do not play games, Grace.”
Her eyes narrowed. “So I’m told. And I’m told you hold the pieces to bring it together, as well. It’s an enigma that you are, isn’t it, love? Grace likes a mystery.” She reached out to brush a finger down Alban’s chest, a featherlight touch that felt as if it slipped beneath his skin instead of pressing against it. Alban caught her wrist again and she froze, not out of fear, but with amusement dancing around her mouth.
“Who tells you these things?”
Grace shrugged loosely. “Another gargoyle, a long time ago. Her name was Ausra.”
“Cara?” Margrit pounded on the door, then tried the knob, aware she was intruding but too breathless and hopeful to care. She’d taken four flights of stairs two steps at a time, Deirdre’s sealskin warm against her belly, safe, her only thought the baby girl’s sweet, tired smile. “Cara, it’s Margrit. Can I come-in?”
Cara sat in the midst of shambles, the worn apartment rendered far worse than it had been the first time Margrit was in it. The sofa had been upended, cushions cut open, with stuffing strewn across the room. Deirdre, oblivious to her mother’s distress, lay in a mat of the stuff, cooing and pulling white batting apart with determined baby fingers.
Crockery lay shattered, chunks of porcelain spraying out of the kitchen. Scars marked the walls where they’d been hit by shards of dishes, the pieces of a jug lying next to the window. Blankets had been torn to strips and were flung about the room in wanton destruction. The building had no heat; without blankets to bundle in, Cara and Deirdre could easily die of exposure.
“Daisani?” Margrit dropped to her knees, taking the girl’s cold hands in her own. “Cara, did Daisani do this?”
She laughed, a soft, bitter sound. “My neighbors.”
“Why?” Margrit’s voice rose and broke, incredulous. “Why would they do something like this?”
Cara turned her gaze on Margrit, hopelessness in her brown eyes. “Because I talked to you. Because I asked for help. They think if we keep our heads down we’ll be forgotten, just like we always are. They think the building won’t come down if they stay quiet.”
“They need a scapegoat.” Comprehension wasn’t the same as understanding, not on an emotional level. A chill ran over Margrit’s skin, leaving sorrow in its wake. “Someone they can actually attack, somebody closer to their level than Daisani’s corporation. Oh, Cara. I’m so sorry. You and Deirdre should come back to my apartment. It’s warm, and you’ll be safer.”
She drew herself up, straightening her thin shoulders. “No, thank you.”
“Cara, this could just be the first wave. It could get a lot worse. For your own safety-”
“Miss Knight,” she whispered, “I’m stronger than I look.” Her fragile bone structure belied the words, but Margrit found herself drawing back, stomach knotting.
Not human. It was hard to remember. Hateful to remember, Margrit thought, but she set her jaw and asked, “What about Deirdre? Are you strong enough to keep her safe, too?”
Despair slumped Cara’s shoulders. “I thought I was. But without her skin-”
It was Margrit’s turn to straighten, shock and embarrassment coursing through her. “I forgot. That’s why I came. Here.” She withdrew the fur from beneath her shirt, missing its warmth as soon as it left her. But Cara gasped and snatched it up, clutching it against her chest. Joy illuminated her, making her seem fully alive for the first time since Margrit had met her. It enhanced her color, bringing warmth to her cheeks and brightening her dark eyes to amber. Her pupils were still enormous in their golden bed, making her waifish and vulnerable, but strength shone from them now. Determination, and beneath that a core of something wild, as if the girl had been transformed into a creature raised by wolves.
Not human, Margrit remembered again, but unmistakably beautiful. It hadn’t been, until that moment, a word she’d have chosen to describe Cara. Now she wondered how she’d missed it.
“Miss Knight! You-how did you-?”
Margrit smiled quickly, wryly. “Believe it or not, Daisani needs something from me. I got this in return. I’ll get yours back, too, Cara, so just hold tight, okay?”
Wariness crept into the wolf-colored eyes. “What did he need from you? You have to be careful, Miss Knight. You don’t understand the dangers.”
“He needs me to find someone,” Margrit answered quietly. “Cara, I need to understand the danger I’m in.” She managed another quick smile. “I know I’m in trouble, so anything you can tell me, anything at all, might help me.”
“Do you know what he is?” Cara’s voice dropped to a whisper, as if she didn’t want Deirdre overhearing the conversation. Margrit nodded, and relief let Cara change positions, sitting Indian-style with Deirdre’s skin still held tight in her hands. “There are five of us left,” she whispered. “Five Old Races.”
Margrit nodded again. “Dragons and djinn, selkies and gargoyles and vampires.” Chelsea was right, she realized. “Dragons and djinn” was delicious to say. The other pairing lacked the music, and vampires stood uncomfortably alone.
“Selkies from the sea,” Cara explained, still whispering. “Gargoyles from stone, dragons from fire, and djinn from the air. We all have our places in the world. Djinn are desert-dwellers. Gargoyles like the mountains. Dragons came from the hot places near volcanoes, but they can’t stand one another and have spread far and wide so they don’t have to share territory. We all know where we come from.”
“Water, earth, air and fire,” Margrit said. “But what about the vampires?”
Earnestness faded from Cara’s eyes. “The vampires say they’re not from this world at all.”
Cold sprang up over Margrit’s skin. “Is that even possible?”
Cara studied her for long moments, then got to her feet and climbed over the ruined remains of her sofa to pick Deirdre up. Margrit stood, watching, as the baby squealed indignantly, then cooed when Cara wrapped the sealskin around her.
The fur squirmed, writhing, suddenly full of life as it snuggled and wrapped itself around the child in Cara’s arms. It distorted space more violently than Alban’s transformation, an external element to it that he hadn’t shared. Then Cara held a mottled tan-and-white baby seal, its brown eyes as bright and interested as Deirdre’s had been. For the first time Margrit saw strength in Cara’s thin body, as she held her child and leveled her gaze in blatant challenge. “You tell me, Miss Knight.”
At Margrit’s hard swallow, the girl knew she’d won, and spoke with authority. “Janx would use you up and cast you aside, Miss Knight. That’s what dragons do, when their treasures lose their luster. Alban Korund would crush you and it’d be over in an instant. But Daisani will make you his creature, until you can’t live without him, yet you have no life with him.” Cara ran her fingernails over her daughter’s seal belly, splitting an invisible seam until the skin fell away and a wriggling, happy baby girl emerged.
“I owe you,” Cara said, “and I can survive without my skin if I have to. If you get a chance to break free of Eliseo Daisani, Miss Knight, don’t hesitate. Everything you do for him, even making a bargain to help someone like me, will pull you down until the deeps are stained and the shallows run red with blood.”
Denim was lousy material for running pants. Margrit jogged anyway, arms loose and her strides long as she darted around other people, brushing shoulders and elbows with them. The cadence of ir-rah-shun-al was gone, leaving her mind clear to think about other things.
Like how to trace a hired killer. Margrit let out a breath through her nose, almost a laugh. Finding a hired killer was even further outside her arena of expertise than housing lawsuits. Nice girls didn’t know about that kind of thing.
The key, though, had to be the hired part of the equation. Whoever had killed Vanessa Gray had done it for Janx, so the money would lead back to him. Should lead back to him. Whether it could be traced was another question entirely.
With Daisani’s help, overt or otherwise, the money could lead back to the dragonlord. But Daisani wouldn’t help. Margrit shook her head and rounded a corner, strides lengthening. She understood on a surface level why he wouldn’t touch Janx, but the subtleties of their interactions were beyond her.
If she thought much about it, that fact was a relief. She grinned briefly, shaking her hands to loosen them as she cantered through the city. The pavement sent sharp jolts into her knees with each impact, comforting and
