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I pushed his beak out of my face. “Good to see you, too, Poe. Later, Rynne. Sunday, let’s do a spa day, go to the sauna, and really melt our faces off.” I put down my board and skated off, trying to look normal, to feel normal, but maybe I should warn Rynne about the demon. Was she in danger? There were different levels of demon, and some had chosen to stay on earth and be bound to law after the great war, but they lost a great deal of their power if they gave up their chaos, at least that was the theory, but since I didn’t hang out with demons, I couldn’t be certain.
I could be sure that some force had erupted in the library, and it was extremely dangerous.
At home, my mom was sitting with her feet up by the heater, watching Bride Wars, a wedding competition, on the small tv that she would never upgrade. I asked her for some bruise cream, but then she had to help me apply it, and when she saw my shoulders, she got upset, called in Earl, who was in the middle of watching a cooking show, and then they argued about what was the best fix for bruised shoulders. When my mother pulled my t-shirt down to make a point about what the best bruise healer was, they both stopped talking, instead staring at the marks on my arms.
I looked down, and the broken blood vessels and capillaries weren’t pretty, but why were they staring like that?
“Do you see the points of collision?” Earl asked, pulling my sleeve down so he could point out a mark on the back of my arm.
My mother nodded, frowning in concentration. “Someone almost ripped your arms off.” She looked up at me, close enough that I saw the concern in her blue eyes. “You’re very lucky.”
“Like I said,” Earl said, going back to the argument without any more hesitation. “You need to inject something to dissolve the broken cellular fluid, for example, my favorite slug repellant. I mixed some extra for you when I noticed that your beets were getting devoured.” He sniffed and looked away, like he always did when he’d done something nice for someone. He was like that with most of his clients, a rough exterior, but he never turned anyone away.
“And something for the pain. Sweetie, why didn’t you tell me how much it hurts?” she asked, smoothing my hair back from my forehead.
I shrugged and a jolt of pain went through me that made me breathless. “It’s really stupid. So, why do you think someone was going to rip my arms off?”
“Probably someone who meddles in the sorceries,” my mother said, darkly. “I hope you got their name and turned them in. Once people start losing control, it’s a quick slide down that slope.”
Earl disagreed as usual. “I doubt it’s sorceries, Anna. There are some perfectly stable sorcerers, more stable than some healers I know. Often it’s triggered by an episode. Some soldiers, for example, suffer with PTSD and don’t think clearly in the midst of their stresses. I would say it was a former soldier. Did you turn them in? I’m really surprised that you got away with both arms intact. Still, this is going to be a slow healing. You were crushed. I’ll go get my needle.” He took off, still wearing his apron over his protruding belly.
By the time they were finished with me, I’d taken so many concoctions and had so many shots and poultices and balms that I smelled like an apothecary. My shoulders and upper arms were wrapped like a football player, and it took far longer than it should have to set up the table, chairs, and candles that I’d light later to create a pleasant ambiance. My mother was back to watching her show while I struggled to make the reality of my uninspiring roof into something romantic. Romantic? No. I’d only just met the guy. It wasn’t that I was interested in him personally, but his species more generally, and that’s why I’d fantasized about kissing him several times today.
I set up as well as I could then went to bed, setting my alarm for twenty minutes before he was supposed to come so that I could get kind of attractive, not that I was interested in him romantically. Right. I’d already put that out there, but it was so confusing with everything.
I slept as soon as I closed my eyes thanks to Earl’s slug injections, and it took me a long time to wake up. When I did finally rise to the surface from my weird dreams, many of which involved kissing statues, I rolled out of bed, and then had the brilliant realization that nothing cute that I owned would fit over the shoulder bandages. What did I have that was strapless? Nothing.
The closest I could come was the slip with the straps down on my arms beneath the bandages. Maybe he liked girls in slips, but I felt so delicate and not serious in the stupid thing. Oh well. I’d just wear that and then I’d be wrapped in a shawl so he wouldn’t see what I was wearing, anyway. Maybe he didn’t actually have physical sight, just heat tracking or something. I grabbed my phone and jotted that down as a question. I hadn’t gotten a chance to prioritize my questions list, but that was probably better anyway, you know, following the mood of the conversation instead of an awkward list.
Would he really come?
I fumbled with the candles, anxious to get everything set up so it wouldn’t look contrived and desperate when he finally came. If he came.
When the distant bell tolled the hour, I held my breath, waiting for him to descend from the sky, but nothing. A wind picked up ten minutes later, and I wrapped my shawl more tightly around me while I curled up in my chair.
I woke up when a crack of thunder went across the sky above me, bringing me straight upright, and staring at the gargoyle across the table from me. The lightning showed his silhouette for a moment, pointed ears, curling horns, protruding muzzle with fangs, and then it was gone, leaving us together in the dark, even the lights from the city gone out.
My heart pounded rapidly as I tried to gather my composure. I licked my lips and realized how dry my mouth was. Thanks Earl.
“Hi,” I said weakly. He’d really come, and I felt like a run-over possum trying not to play dead.
“You have soap for me to eat?”
I fumbled for my lighter and lit the candle with the most stub left. “Sorry, yeah, of course I do, but I have to get some light so I could see what I’m doing. I can’t see in the dark. Can you see in the dark, or is it more radar imaging, or sonar, or heat sensing?” I knocked over a cup that was thankfully empty. The hot chocolate in the teapot was no longer warm.
I poured a cup for him anyway, and one for me, and then gestured at the neat pile of rich brown soap waiting for him to take, or eat, or whatever he wanted to do with it.
“You want to know what my vision is like? Why?”
I laughed and sounded hysterical even to myself, so I wrapped that up. “I’m just making casual conversation. I’ve never spoken with a gargoyle before, I mean, other than the other night when we danced.”
His voice rumbled low, “Gargoyles don’t dance,” which was emphasized by a flash of lightning and a long roar of thunder. My skin prickled from the sound waves’ assault.
“I was there, and we danced. It was the most incredible thing I’ve ever done in my whole life. Why would you say that you don’t do something that you very clearly did? It’s like the eating soap thing. I want to know everything I can about you, even though I know that you can’t tell me everything, but tell me what you can say. I won’t tell another soul. You can put a silencer spell on me if you don’t trust me.”
His face showed nothing in the flickering candlelight, but maybe that’s because of the stone.
“What do you want to know?” he finally asked.
