Something new came into his eyes, a constrained uncertainty. 'Stoneheart believing I arranged the mugging in the park to draw you back into our world. This game of tit for tat played in lives that touch all of ours. You, my dear girl. Cutting the wind from under my wings in the matter of Malik’s safety, and ensconcing yourself in Eliseo’s camp. I have not been so well stymied in three centuries and a half.' His hands, usually cool, had warmed, and color stained dark shadows along his cheekbones. 'I should like very much to be as conniving as you think me to be, but this one time, I fear I fall far short of your expectations. I had not yet thought out my retaliation for Patrick and the others.'
His lip curled suddenly, revealing a too-pointed canine. 'I’ve lost five men, and Malik not among them, no thanks to Alban. He was attacked a little while before dawn this morning.'
Margrit stumbled over her own feet. 'Malik was?'
'By someone who knew how to fight djinn. Three humans. Unfortunately, his enthusiasm for revenge outweighed his common sense. They’re all dead, and among our other failings, we fairy tales cannot speak with the dead.'
'He didn’t tell me that.' Margrit’s ears, heartbeat drowned out music and voices alike. Malik’s tension, his approach, his offer, made abrupt sense. Made sense, except in no way could she imagine why he might think she would protect him. The disconcerting thought that he imagined her responsible for his assault, and therefore capable of calling it off, passed through her mind and left her shaky with confusion. 'Not that I know why he would.'
'Aside from the two of you having quite the little interlude on the dance floor?' Janx asked. Margrit nodded, though the dance hardly constituted grounds for exchanging intimacies with the djinn. 'And Alban couldn’t tell you,' Janx went on, voice growing colder, 'because he’d abandoned his duty.'
'Because Malik had threatened me. My family.' Margrit shook herself, upsetting her steps in the dance. Janx steadied her, his expression still cold. 'Are you sure Malik didn’t just kill some poor sons of bitches, and invent a story to make Alban look bad and himself look beleaguered?'
Janx smirked. 'You give him too much credit.'
'Maybe.' Margrit glanced across the dance floor, seeking, but not expecting to find, the djinn. 'If you didn’t send him after Russell, why’d he threaten my family?'
'At a guess? Two of us will vote against the selkie in our quorum.' Janx shrugged, then assumed a superior expression and measured, lecturing tones when Margrit wrinkled her forehead. 'The gargoyles won’t shatter tradition, especially not with Stoneheart holding the vote. Even if they’ve changed enough to accept half-breeds, he’s been apart too long to know it. Kaimana himself can’t vote. There will be a tie.'
'So?'
'So then we must turn to the sixth in our quorum.' Mischief replaced the solemnity of his words. 'You hold the decisive vote, Margrit Knight.'
'That’s absurd.' Margrit had no strength to put behind the objection. 'I’m human.'
'As are they. It gives your opinion power. Either way you choose, the weight is significant, my dear. Either way, you change a people’s history forever.'
'It’s everybody’s history,' Margrit breathed. 'All of the remaining Old Races’, even humanity’s. Even if most of us never know it. If I say they’re Old Races, then the injunction against breeding with humans is shattered.' Her heartbeat picked up speed, warmth spreading through her body. 'That allows you all to go forth and be fruitful.'
'God was angry when he said that,' Janx said unexpectedly. The heat building in Margrit’s cheeks broke with her laughter.
'Yes, he was.' She laughed again, then ducked her head in thought. 'Oh. Oh, so if I’m not there, if my boss has been murdered, or my family’s been hurt, or even if I’m just afraid something might happen, and stay away…'
'Then the tie holds and the selkies are rejected. There must be a majority.' All of Janx’s humor drained away as well, leaving him as solemn as she’d ever seen him. 'I’m afraid I wouldn’t be above the plot you’ve accused me of, but this once, my dear, I ask that you believe me.'
'Is that your third favor, dragonlord?'
Something in Janx’s gaze became shuttered, as if Margrit’s light question had struck deeper and more painfully than she’d imagined it could. 'Must I make it so?'
The question hung between them for a few heartbeats before she groaned. 'I’m going to regret this, but no.'
'Thank you.' Gratitude larger than the answer warranted infused Janx’s response.
'There’s something I don’t understand.'
'Only one thing?' His voice regained to its usual teasing charm. Margrit wanted to elbow him, but her hands and arms were caught by the frame of the waltz. She rolled her eyes instead. Janx’s smile sparkled.
'There are more djinn than any of the rest of you, right? So maybe I can understand why they wouldn’t want to take the path the selkies have. But why preemptively condemn everyone else? I know it’s tradition, but you’re dealing with an ancient law whose reversal could save your people. All of you.'
'It might, if we chose to intermingle the bloodlines.'
Astonishment widened her eyes. 'Why wouldn’t you?'
Janx shrugged as he spun her in a wide circle. 'Look at your own people’s racial divides. You shouldn’t have to ask.'
'But the Old Races don’t have the luxury of numbers. Most of even our smallest ethnic groups have at least hundreds of potential mates to choose from. Those kinds of numbers can obviously be wiped out, but there’s a fighting chance of survival within the group. When you’re talking about mere dozens…'
'Then you may be talking about desperate pride that would prefer to die its slow death than contaminate its few survivors with alien blood.'
'What would you do?'
Janx smiled. 'I would choose to survive, Margrit. I would choose to live. And I know you, my dear lady Knight. You won’t condemn my people to death. Not when you find such joy in discovering magic in the world.' His smile turned serpentine and deadly. 'Not when you share the nighttime sky with a gargoyle lover. You’ll give us the keys to the kingdom and change all our people forever.'
More than anything else, it was Tony Pulcella who stopped Alban from addressing Kaaiai. The human male watched over the selkie lord as though ferocity of expression might keep danger away. Despite recognizing its absurdity, Alban respected the detective. Being involved with the Old Races wasn’t easy, especially when their bewildering lives went unexplained. Bad enough for Margrit, whom he’d given no choice, and who had grown to understand and accept what she’d become entangled in. Far worse for someone like Tony, whose nature was as protective as Alban’s own, but who was purposefully excluded from comprehension. Approaching Kaimana seemed too much like flaunting the breach between where Tony stood and where Alban had brought Margrit. Too much like flaunting the woman he’d unintentionally won, for all that she wasn’t now at his side.
As if Alban’s thought brought Margrit to Tony’s mind, the detective looked beyond him, to where she danced with Janx. Alban glanced that way, then drew his attention back to Tony, watching difficult emotions change the other man’s expression. Uncertainty, anger, envy; at least two of those were familiar to Alban when it came to dealing with Margrit Knight, most particularly when she flirted with Janx. Worse for the human male, though, for Janx was a criminal in his world, and for Tony to watch his newly lost lover amuse herself in Janx’s arms no doubt cut deeper than Alban’s own foolish fears. For a moment an ironic camaraderie seemed to join them.
With that sour thought in mind, Alban slipped through the crowd to approach the selkie lord and his human security agent. Tony’s jaw set, though he deliberately looked beyond Alban, his focus roving over the gathering.
'Korund.' Kaimana offered his hand, his voice jovial in greeting. 'That was quite a show you put on earlier. Not like the man I’ve heard stories of.'
'It appears none of us are quite what we seem anymore. Margrit tells me I should come pay court to you and make the others wonder what my agenda is.' Alban hesitated over the last words, uncomfortable with them.
Kaimana chuckled and folded his hands behind his back in a relaxed, broad stance. 'And what is your agenda?'
