I moved for my hard-won prize—the grotesque. My claws stood at the ready should it also spring to life. Closing in on it swiftly, I wrapped my arms around it, ready for a struggle, but I was met by nothing more than an inert stone figure.
“Hey!” a voice called out from somewhere behind me. I turned, fearing that I had broken one of Alexander’s old rules—that I remain hidden from humanity. Even though I was no longer bound to them, they still pulled at me after all this time. But looking around, there was no one else on the roof.
“Hey!” the voice called out again, and this time I homed in on where it came from—the hole in the roof. “Is anyone hurt up there?”
A beam of light shone up through the hole, catching the fall of rain in a glimmering cone. Despite the old rules no longer governing me, my need to leave before discovery took over.
I turned back to the grotesque, securing my arms around its chest. My wings strained hard as I forced them into action, pressing their limits in my effort to lift the extra weight. Burdened as I was, I rose into the night with part of my task complete, heading high over Central Park and away from Manhattan and out to sea.
• • •
I came down hard on the deck of the ship, using my claws to grab at the wet metal beneath my feet and steadying myself as I lowered the grotesque. It rang out with a dull echo, lost to the sounds of the heavy storm and waves of the ocean.
Kejetan, Devon, and the blond human met me on the deck, the one who had bound me immediately securing the new grotesque to the deck with chains.
His hair, once a spiked muss, lay plastered to his head, but he did not seem to mind working in the rain, unlike the other humans on board, who had made themselves scarce. They might be the Servants of Ruthenia, but only this lone human dared work on the open deck, my father watching.
When the man was done, he stepped away, and Devon walked over and gave me a rough slap on my shoulder.
“Good,” Devon said. “Our dog can fetch.”
I stood there, a silent sentinel. My true voice urged me to strike him for such an insult, but the new one kept me from doing so.
Kejetan circled the figure I had brought him. Even in his jagged form, I could sense an air of approval coming from him.
“Excellent,” he said, further confirming my suspicion. “This will do.” Halfway around the grotesque, he caught my eyes and stopped, shifting his focus to me. “And?”
“And what?” I asked back, unsure.
Kejetan stepped around the statue, heading for me, his face going dark. “What are you still doing here?”
“Where should I take myself?” I asked. “Back to the chains in your hold?”
We were face-to-face by then, the dark pits of his eyes meeting mine. “Are you mocking me?”
“I do not understand,” I said.
Kejetan grabbed my shoulders and pressed me across the ship’s deck before shoving me through the railings of the ship, snapping them like thin branches. My wings fought to take the air, but before I could, my father’s hand closed hard around my throat, holding me in place out over the water.
Deep within me, my voice spoke up. It called out for me to fight back, but the dominant voice held it back.
“I ask you again,” he said, the jagged rocks of his hand digging into the stone of my throat. “Are you mocking me? Where are the rest?”
I said nothing, still unsure of what he meant or what I was meant to say.
We stared at each other until the blond human approached us at the edge of the ship. He reached up and put his hands on Kejetan’s arm.
“Easy, easy,” he said, trying to press down on it, but there was no way the human could move him. “He’s not doing anything. It’s . . . it’s my fault.”
Kejetan turned to him, his eyes first going to the human’s hands, which the man removed in an instant.
“Your fault?” Devon called out. “How?”
The man backed away from both the stone men, hands raised. “This isn’t easy, you know? I’m forcing a new will upon the golem. His previous one is still in there, and it makes it harder to get him to do my bidding.”
“But that is what we are paying you for,” Devon argued.
“This isn’t an exact science,” the man said. “If it were, you’d be able to go and hire someone on every corner who can do this, but you still wouldn’t find anyone better than me. I guarantee you that. I just need time to tweak how we handle your gargoyle here.”
The human waved for Kejetan to pull me back onto the deck of the ship, which he did before dropping me. I slumped to the cold, wet metal.
“Fix him,” he said, dismissive.
The human waited for me to stand before speaking directly to me. “Why did you only bring one?”
“Because that was the task set upon me,” I said.
“Shit,” the human said.
“What is it?” Devon asked.
The human sighed. “It’s what I feared,” he said. “I wasn’t specific enough.” He looked up into my eyes. “Do you understand what we’re doing here?”
“You wanted a statue,” I said.
“But why?”
“For Kejetan to inhabit.”
“Correct,” my father said, “but what about the rest of my people? The Servants of Ruthenia have long held their place at my side with the promise of a new form. We need more than just one. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I said, but my true self did not wish to do such a thing. I spread my wings.
“Hold on,” the human said, undoing the chain around the other grotesque. “Hold on. Take this statue with you.”
“Why?” Kejetan asked.
“Because I can’t do what I need to do out here at sea,” the human said. “This needs to be grounded to its element, set up on land. Find a discreet location that can hold the other gargoyle statues. Gather as many as you can.”
“I know of a place suited for this,” I said, the true voice speaking up from within, and the dominant one let it.
I grabbed the statue and once more forced myself into the night sky, the heft of it feeling much greater than before, but I did as I was told and set my sights on the far-off shore of Manhattan.
Twelve
Alexandra
It took almost a week to convince Marshall to let me borrow the back room of his store for a meeting with Caleb. In the meantime, I kept feeding a steady diet of misdirection to Desmond Locke and his Libra Concordia. He seemed happy to see many of the private notes on the carved angels in Alexander’s repertoire, but nothing I gave him had a thing to do with the Spellmasonry that went into making Stanis.
The rest of that week was spent focusing on two things: poring through the records on Alexander Belarus at the Libra Concordia and spending some alone time continuing to craft the gargoyle form I had started in the destroyed studio back at the Belarus Building.
The former left me with more questions about the Spellmasons, and the latter helped calm my mind and made me feel like I was actually making some kind of progress. Now, here in Marshall’s store, it was time to see if any of the research Caleb and I had been doing was going to pay off.
The back room of Roll for Initiative was just as strange as it should be, stranger still with Marshall, Rory, and two alchemists in it. The surrounding shelves were full of games I had never heard of, rows of tiny, painted figurines, and an odd assortment of nerd-world stuff that I thought maybe I had seen on one or another of Marshall’s rotating array of geek shirts.