Page 60 of Guarded by My Gargoyle

“Okay.” Toby eyed the coffees. “Are we going somewhere?”

Garrick looked at her over the top of her son’s head, a question in his eyes.

“Breakfast,” he said. “In town. If your mother wants.”

In town. Where there were people, and a tiny orc with a newsletter that had printed her name twice already. A woman with a tuft of wool in her hair walking in beside a gargoyle and her son was a public confession to anybody in Fairhaven with eyes.

Robin was already telling Eric. Sylvie would have it by noon whether Maris salted the garden or not. And the male in front of her didn’t want to keep it quiet.

“Get your good shoes,” she told Toby. “Not the muddy ones. I’ll go change. And brush my hair.”

Garrick’s eyes went briefly, warmly gold before settling back to grey. She took one of the coffees out of his hand before she headed into the bedroom. Their fingers touched, and neither of them pretended it was an accident.

The River Café had its windows steamed over and paper garlands of orange and black looped along the top of the glass, and the chalkboard out front promised pumpkin fritters, get them before the gnomes do. Somebody had taped a cardboard skeleton to the door and dressed it, for some unknown reason, in a small flannel shirt.

They got about four steps inside before the room noticed.

It wasn’t loud. Fairhaven was too polite for loud. It was worse—a small, satisfied lull, two dozen people deciding at once not to say anything and communicating everything with their eyebrows. A fork paused. A cup hovered. By the counter a fairy she didn’t know murmured something to a troll female she did, and both of them smiled into the menu.

Garrick put a hand on her back and steered them to the corner booth. He folded himself into it with the careful movements of a very large male in a room built for much smaller ones, and Toby scrambled up beside him and started straight in on the skeleton.

“It’s wearing a shirt.”

“It is.”

“Skeletons don’t get cold. They don’t have any skin.”

“No.”

“So why has it got a shirt?”

Garrick considered this seriously. “Dignity.”

Toby thought about that, nodded slowly, and picked up his menu upside down. Rona arrived with the coffee pot a few seconds later.

“Coffee, hon?”

“Please.”

Rona had the cup filled before she’d finished agreeing, and deposited a glass of milk in front of Toby. Then she stopped and crossed her arms. She stood there in her pink uniform with the pot in one hand and looked at Garrick for a good three seconds.

“Rona,” he said.

“Mr. Stonehaven.”

“Ma’am.”

She went away. Two booths over, Gladys Cravets had a clipboard and was informing somebody—this is not an accusation, she said, and she wanted that understood—that the costume contest could not be judged by anyone who had entered it. The somebody said it certainly sounded like one.

Then Rona came back and put a mug in front of Garrick, along with a plate. Eggs, grits, a slab of country ham and three biscuits.

“March,” she said. “I remember.”

Garrick looked at the plate. “I was in a bad mood in March.”

“You were. Eat that.”

“Yes, ma’am.”