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“Ah…” I wasn’t going to tell him about the kiss, even if there was torture involved, and this, finding out that my mother was a sorcerer, was some kind of torture.
“I see. He rescued you, danced with you, and initiated other contact of a nature you are too embarrassed to explicate.”
“He only kissed me to distract me from the healing spell. There was this episode with almost getting my arms ripped off, but the kiss wasn’t personal.”
He nodded soberly. “You have feelings for this gargoyle?”
“Maybe? I mean, I dream about him, but it’s not that weird. I’ve been obsessed with gargoyles my whole life, because apparently it’s part of who I am, and then there’s this heroic, attractive person who I’ve always dreamed about, so it’s hard to tell what are my real feelings and what is my obsession.”
I shouldn’t have called it an obsession.
He stood up and held out a hand to me. “Come with me. There’s something else that you need to see.”
I slowly put my hand in his and let him pull me to my feet. “This sounds ominous. Is it worse than the other thing?”
“I don’t know. You’ll have to tell me afterwards.”
Yep, this had ominosity all over it, oozing out of its pores and running down the cracks like a creepy horror doll. We walked across the roof, him spreading his wings any time I needed more balance, so that he could brace me.
We reached the end of the house with a long drop down to the front walk.
“Don’t tell me that you want me to jump,” I said.
He shook his head and smiled the nicest smile he’d ever given me, probably the first real smile, and then he pushed me off.
Chapter
Fourteen
Ishrieked as I fell, the drop long enough for me to really freak out. I stared up at my father’s face high above me, his wings outstretched like an angel as he watched me plummet towards the impossibly hard pavement. It wasn’t even grass. I was so toast.
I squeezed my eyes shut and tensed my whole body, anticipating the impact, and then I fell into a random vat of acid, or there was another reason that all of my skin ripped off me and got put back on inside out. I screamed and arched my back as daggers speared me, and then something hit me from the side. We tumbled awkwardly over grass and through bushes until I came to a stop sprawled half on top of my gargoyle.
I would have been more excited to see him, but I couldn’t breathe, because my skin was still inside out, and it hurt so much down to my very brain. I whimpered and shook my head, trying to clear it, to stop the pain.
He curled around me, crooning while he stroked my forehead, his cool fingers and contact helping with the pain. I rubbed against his hand, pressing harder and harder until my dad landed next to us and things got awkward, or I realized how awkward things were.
“Welcome to my home,” my dad said in an echoing voice that gave me shivers, or maybe that was the acid vat thing. My whole body ached beneath the sharp pain so strong that I writhed in misery.
My gargoyle snarled at my dad before he continued rubbing my head like I was a dragon popped out of an egg, all fresh and knobby. “You pushed her!” he growled, a deep gargoyle rumble of an avalanche rolling down a mountain.
“And you caught her, like I have caught you. No more lies, my child. Make amends if you can, and live wisely going forward.”
A flare of bright lights went up around my gargoyle, showing that he was pinned by my dad’s magic. His gargoyle flesh flexed and struggled, but he couldn’t move. I forced myself upright and turned to snarl at my dad. He was hurting my mate.
He studied me, looking vaguely pleased. “It isn’t complete, but for your first shift, it will do.”
I looked down and then everything got quiet, as still as stone, like the stone fingers that couldn’t be solid, because I could move with even greater dexterity than I had with my usual human flesh. I rotated my wrist as I examined the strange pale flesh, mottled with red, like streaks of sandstone that went all the way up to my elbows. I was still on my gargoyle’s lap, and I turned to gaze at him expectantly. Now that he saw me like this, would he stay?
His low gray brows were drawn together, and he trembled against whatever my dad’s magic was doing to him.
I whipped my head around to bare my teeth at him. “Don’t hurt my mate or I’ll rip you apart.” I froze after those words, because that wasn’t exactly what you went around calling somebody you’d met three times, even if he had kissed you and healed you like a real prince charming. Mate? Hadn’t my dad mentioned something about one’s love-mate? He was mine.
I turned back to the gargoyle and touched his face with my spongy fingers. I could feel his silence, his weight, his depth, his soul. He was so beautiful and wonderful that I wanted to squeeze him until he cracked.
A sudden ripping sensation left me gasping and doubled over, in a position where I could see my cool, living stone hands melt back into human flesh, weak flesh that my gargoyle might not like.
I checked him, and he looked so wracked with pain until, with a growl, the stone dissolved, leaving his human skin. He opened his eyes wide as they met mine, gray with flecks of green, eyes that had smiled every time he did something cruel and awful to me for my first two years working at Gray College.
