House of Cards. C.E. Murphy
before he spoke again.
“How do you know these things about the Old Races?” He had no illusions that the power of his voice might stop her, but he asked regardless. “That two sips of a vampire’s blood brings long life, or that I chose Margrit over one of my own. I’ve told no one that. You’re not one of us, just a human wo—”
“Just.” Grace turned her profile to him, pale and sharp. “Now there you might have a problem with your lawyer lass, my friend. Humans don’t take kindly to being just anything.”
Alban gritted his teeth with a sound of stone grinding on stone. “I meant no offense. You are a human woman beneath the streets of New York. Such people aren’t expected to be conversant with the Old Races at all, much less possessed of intimate details about us. How do you know so much?”
“Grace has her secrets, love.” The answer came back to him coolly. “Living a half-life like this one, trying to give kids shelter and food, and keep them out of the gangs and in the schools, means learning things however you can, and playing what you’ve got for all it’s worth. That’s what brought you here.” She turned her gaze on him, eyes brown and calm beneath the startling whiteness of her bleached hair. “My knowing about your kind was enough to give you something to trust. That’s how we survive down here, gargoyle. I learn things and I keep my mouth shut. It’s hours till dawn,” she added as she pulled the door open. “Stay in like a sullen child if you will, but a man would find it in himself to step outside and take a stand.” The door closed behind her with a resounding clang, leaving Alban to bend his head.
“You forget, Grace,” he murmured to the echoing chamber. “As does Margrit.” He lifted his head again, straightening to his full height of nearly seven feet, and spread taloned hands to study them in the candlelight. “You forget.
“I am not a man.”
The blankets weighed an inordinate amount, as if they were warm stone pressing Margrit into the bed. Flowing heat tickled her fingers, running over them like water. It contrasted deliciously with cold wind, though the chill was only a memory. She recognized strong arms and the clean scent of stone: the smell of the outdoors and wilderness wrapping her close and safe. Raw, sensual power, housed in such grace it hardly seemed he could be dangerous.
Her heart beat faster as she shifted closer to her captor, desire building even through the confines of sleep. She knew the long hard lines of his body, harder than ordinary humans had words for. She had shied away from exploring those lines more than once, uncertain of how to breach a distance she barely understood. Now, though, she let herself be bold, pressing herself closer to brush her mouth against a stony jaw. Soft skin tasted of fine grit, like the rich flavor of dark earth and iron. He was too tall, even in flight, and she pulled herself up his body, an open act of intent as she hooked a thigh over his hip. His grip changed, holding her in place, and stone encompassed her as city lights spun below her, broad wings spread to keep her aloft with the man—
Not a man, he whispered.
Is this my dream or yours? Margrit demanded. Surprise coursed through her, then a wash of laughter rough as sand in water.
Neither, I think, he replied. I hadn’t meant to think so strongly of you. Memory rides us. Forgive me, Margrit. Goodbye. A faint hint of wistfulness accompanied his final word: Again.
The dream turned to falling, a short sickening plunge. Margrit jerked awake, covers clenched in her fists, breath cold and harsh. A nearly inaudible click sounded, followed by her radio alarm increasing in volume as she lay on the bed, staring through darkness at the ceiling.
Irrational.
TWO
“MARGRIT?” HER NAME came through the door, hoarse with sleepiness. “Hey, Grit? You awake?”
Margrit bundled herself in a towel, hair dripping in corkscrew curls down her back, and ran to yank the door open. Cameron, the taller of Margrit’s housemates, leaned on the frame with the telephone pressed against her pink-robed shoulder. Her eyes, barely open, closed all the way as a huge yawn squeezed tears from their corners. A second yawn overtook her as she thrust the phone at Margrit. “For you.”
“It’s six-thirty in the morning.” Margrit took the phone in astonishment, putting it against her own shoulder to block their conversation from the person on the other end. “Who’d be calling at this hour? What’re you doing home?”
“My six o’clock client canceled.” Cameron yawned again, this time shoving away from the door to stagger back to the bedroom she shared with her fiancé. “I’m supposed to be sleeping in. G’night.” She crashed into the door frame, muttering a complaint as she reoriented herself and made it through the bedroom door on the second try.
Margrit watched Cam go, then brought the phone to her ear. “This is Margrit. Mother?”
“Oh dear,” a pleasantly light-voiced man said, his voice infused with mirth. “No, I’m afraid not. I’m sure I could arrange to have her call, if you’d like, but it seems as though it would be rather melodramatic. To do it properly I’d have to kidnap her and make her call, angry and frightened, from the wa—”
“Janx.” Margrit closed her bedroom door and slid down it, digging her fingers into her hair to hold her head up. “God forbid anybody should ever subpoena my phone records. Why are you calling the house instead of my cell? How in hell could I explain getting six o’clock phone calls from someone like you?”
She avoided more descriptive terms deliberately, though they danced through her mind. Crimelord was the only one she was willing to give voice to, but it didn’t scratch the surface of what Janx really was. The handful of times Margrit had been in a room with him, it had been all she could do to keep breathing, his presence burning up the air. As well it should have: she’d gone in knowing he was of the Old Races, but not that she was dealing with a dragon. A red dragon, if ginger hair and flame-green eyes told the truth, though Margrit had no idea if it did, or if it mattered.
“It’s six-thirty,” Janx said in injured tones. “And I tried calling your cell, but you didn’t answer. I thought young people today were connected twenty-four–seven. I’m very disappointed. But I could kidnap your mother,” he offered. “If you need the phone records explained, I mean. Or I could—”
“You may not kidnap my mother, Janx.” The absurdity of chiding a man of Janx’s position—either crime-lord or dragonlord—struck Margrit, and she steeled herself to keep a trace of laughter from her voice. “What do you want?”
“Oh, Margrit, you hurt me. Can’t an old friend call up to say hello after a few weeks’ absence?”
“Old friend?” Margrit kept her voice down with effort. “Pit vipers would be safer friends than you, and old friends don’t call at six in the morning unless they’re in real trouble. You can’t be in any trouble I could possibly help you with. The world’s not that capricious.” The accusation left aside the middling detail that Margrit, despite her better judgment, rather liked the fiery-haired dragon. “What do you want?”
“Capricious,” Janx said with admiration. “Well done, for someone who protests she’s just been wakened.”
“I’m a lawyer. I’m supposed to be capable of conversing with an augmented vocabulary in order to obfuscate an argument without exerting myself. Besides, I was already awake. What do you want?”
“Better than a circus act,” Janx said happily. Then his bantering faded, a note of tension replacing it. “I require your services, Margrit. A balance has changed.”
Margrit coughed in disbelief. “You called me up at six-thirty in the morning to give me cryptic messages? ‘A balance has changed’? What the hell does that mean? A balance changed in January when you had Vanessa Gray killed, Janx. Alban told me that you’d breached protocol by doing that. You’re not supposed to go around murdering people’s assistants, especially when they’ve been assisting for over