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“Whatever game you and your grumpy friend are playing, I want out of it. Now,” I insist, faking that I’m not fighting panic. If I ask about his friend, maybe he’ll let me down so I can run to mine. I do a damn good job at keeping my voice level. Dealing with family and people at the hospital has given me lots of practice.
“I don’t know about him being my friend.” The gargoyle chuckles, his big body shaking around me. My god, he’s massive. He lifts his chin in the direction of the psycho who’s now flying upside down with Huey. “Atticus is my brother,” he says. “My twin. Hold tight, and we’ll join him.”
My stomach twists into a pretzel more convoluted than the doughy mess I cooked up for a patient’s last wish a few weeks ago. “Whoa. Nuh uh.” I latch on to the giant gargoyle’s face, ignoring his strong jaw and bony protrusions not covered in any anatomy classes. “I’m terrified of heights.”
He stops mid-stride. “Please tell me you’re kidding right now.” He sounds as if he might beg, and I’m not going to lie, the idea of him begging makes me go all warm and tingly. I blame months of obsessing over what I’d believed to be my gargoyle guardian fantasies after a dry spell that has lasted years.
He stares at me as though he sees me instead of looking through me. Why is he doing that? What could I have possibly done to merit his intense level of scrutiny? I force myself to stiffen my spine. I’m not going to let finally having a man, gargoyle, whatever notice me end up with me flying through the air like some drunken hang glider.
“I’m dead serious.” I cringe at my poor word choice. Dead? Why’d I say that when he’s thinking of dangling me high above the ground?
I grapple to get control of my racing panic. He might be carrying me like some bride in a fifties sitcom, but I have hella strength. I help turn paralyzed patients, drag around hospital equipment, and do chest compressions for CPR. Seriously, I aced the fancy bootcamp that Ava hauled me to when she wanted to put some muscle on her naturally thin frame. So when I slide my arms to lock around his neck, I swear I might strangle him if he decides to go bird boy and take off with me.
Only he doesn’t seem to mind me clinging to him.
“Put me down,” I demand.
“No.”
Fear has my voice breaking, scraping up through my throat in the roughest whisper. “I’ll fall.”
“I’ll never let you fall, Rosemarie.” He says my name as though invoking a prayer.
“How do you know my name?” Did Theo—the worst tour guide in existence—mention it to them? I don’t remember him calling me anything other than queen when speaking to them. The other gargoyle called me a queen too. What’s that about? I should ask. Especially if it’ll keep us on the ground longer. “Also?—”
“I’ll tell you once I get you to safety.”
Nope. I’ve been bossed around by enough family and cocky doctors to hold my own against someone ready to launch me into the air like a paper plane. I push aside my need to keep the peace because my need to survive is stronger. “Tell me now. The first rule of living through a kidnapping is not to get nabbed. The second is not letting you haul me to another location.”
“I’m trying to keep you from being nabbed as you put it.” He turns my terror into a gentle teasing, but not in the way that makes me want to smack him. No, it’s reassuring, and I feel a tug of something deep within. A connection. “Worse things will come through this house.”
“Worse than what?” Suspicion has my voice going tight.
“Than us.”
The sadness in his tone unravels a similar hurt inside of me—the feeling that I’ll never be enough for anyone now that Lala is gone. Or I’ll fade until I disappear into the invisible nothing everyone else seems to see when they look at me. “Don’t say that about yourself.”
“Always the giver.”
His assumption irritates me, and I snap, “You don’t know me.”
“A part of me would like to.”
“And the rest of you?” I ask, spite lacing the question like a bitter pill.
“Can’t risk it.” He looks away, but not before I catch haunted pain in his eyes to match the hurt I’ve seen in so many gazes while working hospice. Loss. He has suffered great loss. The same as I have with Lala’s death.
His hold on me tightens. “We have to go now before other monsters come through the portals.”
Portals. Like the lore of the tabletop games that Meg designs? I’m scared to ask but the rest of what he said has me even more afraid. “Other monsters?”
“Monsters worse than us.” He walks us down the stairs and looks toward the sky.
He thinks he’s a monster. My heart cracks a little for him.
“Clear,” Atticus calls. Huey flies in wobbly circles around him.
“You don’t have to do this,” I tell the one holding me. “By not taking me up there, you can prove you’re no monster.”
