'I’m all you rate.' Biali stumped ahead, yanking open the steel roof door with casual ease and not bothering to see if Margrit followed him. He transformed before the second door, an implosion of space shivering the air, and it was a stocky man in jeans and tight a T-shirt who led Margrit through the building to Janx’s alcove.
Janx sat just as he had the first time Margrit met him, leaning back in a metal folding chair with his long legs propped on the table and crossed at the ankle. His hair, falling in dark red lines across his cheeks, played up smoldering anger in eyes gone darker green than she’d seen them before. There was no languid grace in the way he moved his hands or head, though thin smoke whirled after those motions in its usual slow dance. Heated air burned Margrit’s lungs, and her throat convulsed with the struggle not to cough.
'You have a strange way of showing your loyalty, my dear.' The customary warmth was gone from Janx’s voice, leaving controlled rage to replace it.
Nerves hollowed her belly again, sickness that was beginning to feel familiar. 'Malik’s not dead, is he?'
'Not at all. In fact, I was sent a dispatch this afternoon that informed me Malik was under the express protection of Eliseo Daisani, and that any injury that came to him would be considered an act of war. I understand you’re also to be congratulated on your new employment, but under the circumstances I feel strangely reticent.'
Margrit laughed, a shrill sound of shock, then forced herself to move forward as if the air didn’t want to hold her back. Difficult, but not impossible; job training had taught her not to show fear if it was at all possible to hide it. Then again, it’d taught her not to show surprise, either, and she’d given that game away. There’d be hell to pay later, when she dealt again with Daisani, but for the moment she seized on the opportunity he’d created for her. 'Really? It was practically your idea.'
Janx kicked his feet off the table as she spoke, leaning forward with his hands clamped together until the knuckles whitened with passion. 'I’m fascinated to hear how you came to that conclusion.'
Margrit smiled and dragged a chair from the table, swinging it around on one leg so she could straddle it and draped her arms over its back, a deliberate echo of how he had sat three nights before. 'You gave me a Herculean task, Janx.'
Something indecipherable slid through his expression, and cockiness grabbed hold of Margrit. 'That means impossible,' she explained, nearly laughing at her own audacity. Adrenaline made her dizzy, pulsing in her veins the way it hadn’t even during her run. Russell’s death was easier to put aside when she was suffused with the thrill of fencing with a dangerous opponent. Buoyed, she kept her helpful smile in place as insult and anger darkened Janx’s pale golden skin to ruddy. Even the smoke lingering around him seemed to thicken, disturbed by his deliberately slow inhalation.
'My people know better than yours what Herculean means, my dear, and let me warn that you tread on lava shells.'
Curiosity bumped cockiness out of the way. 'I get the idea, but lava shells?'
'The thin surface of magma exposed to air and hardened into a crust. It appears trustworthy, but cannot be walked upon, Margrit. Humans might survive a fall through thin ice into a frigid lake, but you will not survive a plunge into lava.'
'Right.' Some of her invulnerable edge fell away and she reached for it again, keeping her voice clear and direct. 'You said to protect Malik through any means necessary. I don’t have the capability, physically, to do that. So I went to the source of the threat as you defined it, and negotiated. Et voilà.'
She spread her hands, mimicking one of Janx’s own gestures, and hoping she masked her own perplexity. Daisani hadn’t agreed to the proposal she’d barely made, but she doubted his offer to protect Malik was altruistic. 'You didn’t give me a how-to manual, Janx. You just said to do it. But I want to know something.'
'Another favor, Margrit?'
'No. I just want to know why you didn’t tell me Kaimana Kaaiai was a selkie. Did you know-' She gave a thin laugh as Janx’s eyes lost their animation, going flat and dark as a snake’s. 'You didn’t know. I thought you must not. If you’d known and hadn’t told me, I’d…'
A hint of life returned to his face. 'You’d what? I wonder. Scold me fiercely?'
'Something about that effective, probably. It seemed childish, knowing and not telling me. I think more highly of you than that.'
Janx’s eyebrows flicked up. 'I have no idea why.'
Fully aware the dragon would hear her, she muttered, 'Neither do I,' then spoke in a more normal tone. 'Kaaiai doesn’t seem like the type to be skulking around killing your men. Why risk his status?' A knot of horror bound itself below her breastbone. It hadn’t occurred to her that Kaimana might want Janx and Daisani in the same place so he could easily rid himself of them.
No. Long gone from the others or not, selkies were of the Old Races, whose law prohibited killing their own kind. Even if the selkies ignored that law-they were already exiles-Kaimana wouldn’t have requested a public setting if he had murder on his mind.
'And yet knowing this, that I believe selkies are the tool used to eliminate my men, knowing that there was a selkie in our midst, you chose to bargain with Eliseo, and not Kaaiai.'
'I had something Daisani wanted.' Half a dozen other explanations came to her lips as well, but Margrit held them back, trusting the simplest statement to be the most effective. 'And you have something Kaaiai wants.'
'I do?' Dangerous curiosity piqued in Janx’s gaze. 'A roster of those most important to me, perhaps, so he or his people need not work to determine it themselves?'
Margrit smirked. 'I don’t think so. I don’t actually know what. He just asked me to have you meet him tomorrow night at the Rockefeller Center at eight o’clock.'
'And why would I do that?'
'So you can find out what’s going on. You’re the one who said a balance had changed, Janx. You’re the one who changed it. Maybe you’re going to have to reap what you sowed.'
Admiration curled the corner of Janx’s mouth, while his eyes remained a hard jade. 'My dear Miss Knight, was that a threat?'
Tension sluiced out of Margrit in a quick laugh. 'Oh, God, I hope so. I love the idea of threatening you bold- faced. Me. Lil’ ol ’ human me.'
Janx watched her, unblinking, until her own eyes started to water. It took effort to not turn her head as she let her eyelashes shutter for a moment. In that brief instant, Janx’s expression changed, so when she met his gaze again he was smiling. Margrit lengthened her neck uncertainly. 'What?'
'How delightful. You so brave, and making so many meetings and maniuplations on your own. So much effort on his part, all for nothing.' Janx sat back, picking up a cigarette and waving it in the air with lazy contentment.
'On whose part? What are you talking about?'
'Alban, obviously.'
Margrit tilted her head, uncomprehending. 'Alban dumped me, Janx. Whatever he’s done, it’s got nothing to do with me.'
'On the contrary, my dear. It has everything to do with you. You must understand the scale of time we are discussing, Margrit.' Janx’s voice softened, as if he spoke to a child. 'Your country was not yet founded when Alban chose to stand apart from his people’s collective memory, and less than thirty years old when he folded himself in grief and turned his back on all the Old Races. We’re speaking of an era when the fastest method of communication was handwritten letters sent on sailing ships from one continent to another. A time when wars were fought with erratic muskets and horse cavalry. Slavery was still a way of life.'
'Slavery is still a way of life all over the world, Janx.' Margrit refused to look down and mark the color of her own skin, keeping her gaze forthright on the red-haired man’s. 'What’s your point?'
Janx set his cigarette aside and leaned forward, hands clasped together on the table in front of him. 'I only want you to understand how extraordinary it is, then, that your true and brave Stoneheart has come to me and offered his services, all in the name of releasing you from your favors to me.'
At some juncture, the ability to feel shock had to burn out and leave her unable to reel with another hit. At some point, but not yet. Margrit swayed with the impact of Janx’s words, hearing herself ask, 'Did it work?'
'Yes and no. A gargoyle is useless at daylight security, but the nights, at least, you need not worry about Malik.'
'Not that I’m ungrateful, but why?' The back of her head felt slightly detached, as if surprise had taken up
