The selkies have come out, and that changes the Old Races even if I never talk to another one of them in my life. I don’t think they’re going to quietly slink back into the ocean.'
'Then do what you can to keep the ripples from affecting my kids. My world must look like madness to you.' Grace turned her attention toward the park, refusing to meet Margrit’s eyes. 'All of us skulking around underground, on the run from coppers half the time, not for anything we’ve done, but for the idea of what we are. Living where we do, how we do, on the edges of society, it makes folk nervous. But my kids take care of each other. There’s no drugs, there’s no fights. You remember Miriah.' Grace looked at Margrit, who smiled with happy recollection.
'She made the best chili I’ve ever had, the night Alban and I were down there. How is she?'
'She’s going to college in the fall.' Grace sounded justifiably pleased. 'She’d lost a brother to a gang fight and was on the road to leading a pack of her own when she came to me. She’s still a leader, but now it’s in setting an example for other kids to follow, teaching them to cook, to take care of themselves. Maybe it’s the wrong place to change the world from, starting at the bottom, but Grace’s got nowhere else to go.'
'You’re not part of their world, though,' Margrit said softly. 'The Old Races. There’s the building, and Alban’s staying with you during the day, but he could find a new place to live. There’s nothing else, is there?'
'Janx knows I’m down there, and he tolerates me and mine because we don’t steal his business. We’re not so far removed from their world as it seems. Will you do what you can?'
'I don’t know what I can do, but yeah. I’ll try. I don’t want you to lose what you’ve got down there.'
Grace nodded and rose to her feet. Margrit followed suit, hesitating before saying, 'Grace?'
'Yeah, love?'
'Why do you do it?'
'Looking for a new answer, love?' She went silent a moment, then shrugged easily. 'Past sins, that’s all. Making up for past sins.' She took herself away with long, lithe strides. Margrit watched her disappear into dappled sunlight wondering what those sins might be. She didn’t know enough about Grace to even imagine them but she was curious. Maybe someday Grace would tell her.
And maybe if pigs had wings they’d be pigeons. No one conversant with the Old Races on any level seemed especially prone to sharing their life details. Margrit struck off in the opposite direction, as if she was telling herself not to pry by doing so.
She arrived at Trinity Church even earlier than she’d promised Joyce Lomax. The afternoon whisked by in a blur of activity and high emotion, Margrit fielding phone calls when Russell’s exhausted family looked as though they could take no more. It felt good to be useful to ordinary people, doing mundane things like giving directions to the memorial service or handling last-minute catering questions. Margrit only stepped back from being an all- purpose gofer as bells sounded the half hour and mourners began to arrive.
She knew many of them by name, more still by sight. People she didn’t expect, though should have, were in attendance. Governor Stanton nodded gravely to her when he caught her eye after expressing his condolences to Mrs. Lomax. It seemed impossible that it had barely been a week since he’d escorted Margrit around the reception for Kaimana Kaaiai. The mayor and his wife were there, as well as judges and lawyers Margrit had worked with or under. A sizable portion of the city’s legal and political elite were present, and Margrit wondered cynically how many of them were there simply to be seen, or if it mattered.
Light faded as the service began, the gold of sunset bringing life to stained-glass windows. Margrit watched the colors change as family, friends and colleagues stepped up to speak briefly about Russell Lomax. Then it was her turn, and she climbed the steps to face the podium and a hall full of faces.
Later she would be confident that her voice was steady and her words well-chosen, but blood rushed through her ears as she spoke, deafening her to her own speech. She focused instead on the people present, trusting a career’s worth of training to not allow a wobble of surprise in her voice when she picked her mother’s face out of the crowd. Like Cole and Cameron, Rebecca Knight was there for Margrit’s sake; even at his death, she was unlikely to forgive Russell for his transgressions thirty years earlier. A shock of gratitude ran through Margrit, stirring up too much other emotion, and despite herself, her voice shook. It took a moment to gain control again, and in that instant she saw a scattering of others whose presence she’d never have predicted at the service.
Eliseo Daisani sat far enough toward the back as to go relatively unnoticed. His expression was solemn, the lack of animation somehow serving to cloak him. A sense of certainty arose in her that she wasn’t meant to see him, but the slightest tilt of his head told her he knew he’d been spotted. Then, with unerring confidence, she looked toward a corner of the church and found Janx’s fiery hair a bright point in the darkness. Humor tightened her lungs, but not her own; it felt as though Daisani had been caught out, and transferred the reaction to her. Her skin itched, as if her blood were trying to work its way free.
Margrit tore her eyes from Janx and drew a deep breath, steadying herself to continue speaking.
For a moment she could hear herself talking quietly about what she’d learned from Russell Lomax, wryly admitting to the tricks that infuriated her even as she made use of them herself. Then her thoughts darted to places her voice and words didn’t go: if Janx was there, then Malik would be.
The djinn was harder to see, a thing of shadows himself, but light finally caught his cane and drew Margrit’s eyes to him. He stood farther from Janx than she might have expected, staking his own territory, making his own place. Whatever he’d done to earn the right to vote for his people had infused him with confidence. Cold bubbled up inside her. Malik had lacked neither confidence nor arrogance to begin with. She had no desire to learn what new heights he might reach for now that he reckoned himself a force, but was certain she’d find out.
Of all the Old Races attending, Kaimana Kaaiai sat front and forward, at the end of a pew near the governor. His presence was a political choice, a clear decision to be seen. Tony sat beside him, one of three bodyguards. As Margrit watched, Kaimana tilted his head toward the detective and murmured something.
Disapproval contorted Tony’s face, but he nodded, and Kaaiai stood up quietly, padding toward the back of the church. His shoes made no sound on the stone floor, his exit distracting from her speech as little as possible. Very few people glanced at him as he left, though Margrit thought her own gaze on his shoulders would make everyone turn to see what she was looking at.
Instead they watched her, intent on words she once more couldn’t hear herself saying. Gladness at having worked with Russell, sorrow at losing his wisdom and guidance. Sick humor shot through her with an impulse to add, carelessly, that she would be leaving Legal Aid in a few weeks, to go to work for Daisani. She squashed it, swallowing as she finished speaking. A brief, unhappy smile flitted over her face and she dropped her gaze, gathering herself to leave the podium.
When she looked up an instant later, Kaimana was gone, the door closing silently behind him. She took stock of the Old Races once more, knowing the attendance of each was dictated for each by another’s presence: Daisani for Russell, but Janx for Daisani, and Malik for Janx. Only Kaimana stood outside that cascade of dependency, the only one able to leave without setting the others askew. As Margrit expected, Daisani remained where he was, half-cloaked by his own quietude. Janx watched the vampire rather than Margrit, as if aware of the steps to the dance they shared.
Margrit’s shoulders dropped as she found a kind of relief in that. For all the changes that were coming, the structure she’d come to recognize among New York’s Old Races seemed unscathed. That would be something to reassure Grace with. She worked her way back to her seat, glancing Malik’s way only as an afterthought.
The corner where he’d waited was empty.
CHAPTER 31
Stone shuddered and fell away, sunset’s gift even when the sky lay many levels of tunnels and streets above him. Waking rarely brought such a sense of anticipation, and Alban pushed out of his crouch with a smile. There was enough time-just-to change from the silver-shot slacks from the night before and wing his way to Margrit’s apartment. The chance to do that, to see her, to speak with her friends again, held the potential of a new life. It was something that a few months ago-a mere scattering of days, to a life as long as his-had been so inconceivable as to have never crossed his mind. His heart-his heart, usually so steady-betrayed him with rapid beats, anathema to a gargoyle’s stolid nature. Laughing at himself was surprisingly easy, another trait unfamiliar to his people. The rueful idea that Margrit was right about too much isolation curled his mouth again, and it was with near jauntiness
