AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He saves me from wanting the roof to open and swallow me before I embarrass myself further. “Thank you for coming up here,” he says. “We’ll join you the moment the sun sets.”
“Rest,” Atticus adds. “Regain your strength. We go to the Web of Wares tomorrow night. I’m hoping you’ll have better luck than I did with convincing the Spidress.”
“Spidress? As in a spider?” My heart rockets into scrambling toward terror panic mode, my palms go sweaty, and my throat shrivels to a dry husk. “Not a spider,” I babble.
But it’s too late. Rays of early dawn light hit them, and both my gargoyles turn to stone in a blink. There’s no magical shimmer of light, no fancy CGI tricks. Nope, one moment they’re moving and breathing, and the next, they’re imposing statues.
“Jace?” I reach for him and my fingertips catch on rough, weathered stone that’s cold. All of his warmth is simply gone. A glance at Atticus shows none of the severe bossiness or gruff concern I’ve come to expect from him. His expression’s blank. In an instant, they transformed into the vacant, flat canvases I’d seen around school and work. It’s as though I imagined them coming to life.
Grief—powerful and consuming—crawls across my senses. The air around me feels charged and heavy. The overwhelming feeling of loss takes me by surprise. My pulse slows from its OMG freak out frantic to a dull thud.
Huey hoots next to me and flies in a quick line toward the stairs, encouraging me to follow with the way his little body bobs along as if waiting. A screech comes from a distance, and I glance toward the scarlet sky of the After Worlds. Terrified of harpies, witches, demonic cupids, and more flying forms that I wouldn’t know how to fight if they attacked, I rush toward Huey and away from the roof.
I’d like to say I was brave enough to explore the rest of the tower and introduce myself to Darok, the orc—an actual freakin’ orc?—outside, but I’m not. I head toward Jace’s room, needing to surround myself with his comforting scent. Huey flits next to me.
A sudden noise has me stopping, raising a hand in hopes the owl will stay behind me. He’s so tiny. I can’t risk anything happening to him.
Movement flashes in the hallway outside Jace’s room, scurrying from the shadows cast by light coming from the windows. There’s a shuffling sound.
I swallow, forcing down my fear. Perhaps whoever’s there is as afraid as I am. “Hello?”
No answer.
I try again. “I won’t hurt you.” As long as you’re not here to hurt me. If I’m lucky, whoever’s lurking won’t know that I’m not trained in kung fu or whatever it is that monsters use here.
Dust glitters in the ray of light coming from Jace’s room, revealing a shape no taller than my thigh hiding in the darkness. My breath rushes out. Shit, I’ve terrified a kid while looking for monsters around every corner.
“I didn’t mean to scare you.” I keep my voice soft and soothing as I would for a pediatric patient. Building a rapport was always the easy part of working at the hospital for me. “I’m Rosemarie. What’s your name?”
“Rona.”
I keep my voice gentle. “It’s nice to meet you.”
The shuffling sound comes closer. Rona steps into the light, and I swallow a gasp. My heart flutters as fast as Huey’s wings beat.
She’s the size of a toddler, but there’s no doubt that Rona’s full grown. Her gaze holds the wisdom of decades, if not centuries. The scowl she wears isn’t a new expression for her given the long furrows along her brow and deep creases around her mouth and eyes. Holes in her bonnet allow her ears to stick out from the sides of her head like a sheep’s—full, large, but pointed and four shades darker than her taupe skin. Dark grey hair frizzes beneath the knitted cap. With large golden eyes that have no white, she studies me.
Silence stretches between us until I almost speak to break the tension. But she gathers her mitten-covered hands in front of what looks to be a multitude of layered sweaters, bows her head, and says in a singsong voice, “Queen to be.”
I bite back my instinct to tell her I don’t know about that, especially when she reaches for my bracelets. She trails her fingertips along the crystals, and her touch seems to spark something in them as though she ran a current through the metal clasps. She hums the same tune as she spoke in.
“Rona, I?—"
“The stones call to you. May they come to your aid during the trials. I cleaned and prepared a meal for you.”
The housekeeper. Of course. A brownie, Atticus had called her. I don’t remember much about brownies in the stories that Lala told. I should’ve asked the twins for basic guidelines on how not to piss off supernatural creatures.
I open my mouth to say thank you and snap it shut. What if a brownie is a house fairy? Lala read me enough folklore to know better than to thank a fairy. Only back then, I thought the scary cautionary tales were make believe.
Huey lands on my shoulder, and she nods at him. “Soul guardian, I left food for you as well. If either of you need anything, ring the bell I put with the tray.”
“I—”
She disappears. I don’t mean she runs away or scurries off. She freakin’ vanishes.
“Well then,” I whisper to Huey and push into Jace’s room, shutting the door behind me. Not that it’ll do much good to keep out a brownie who pops in and out of existence with magic, gargoyles with more strength than any human, and an orc who can do who knows what. All the same, I lean against the door and breathe in.
The place smells of polish and citrus. In the minutes since I left this room, Rona managed to scrub the window to a sparkle, dust the furniture and polish it to a shine, change the bed and make it until the corners are sharp enough to cut, and lay out a complete tray of food worthy of room service from a five-star hotel.
