You start to miss the simple things when life turns upside down and you find yourself with a team of gargoyles and a witch. Okay, maybe you don’t miss those things so much, but you realize that ideal of who you thought you were had vanished.
That was my situation as Steph and I stared through the window of the used textbook store, our hands wrapped in each other’s with fingers intertwined.
“My nose would’ve been buried in those books like twenty hours a day,” I said, shaking my head at the idea. One was an economics book about the world being flat, another something to do with world powers. My aunt had advised me to keep up the charade, to go to school and make something of myself, but that didn’t seem realistic until we could be sure we had made the world safe. Oh, and since she wasn’t really my aunt, I didn’t have to listen to her.
“You prefer that, or where we are lately?” Steph asked.
“Hmmm.”
I ran a hand through my hair then pulled her close, taking a bit of her white hair in my hand, feeling how silky smooth it was between my fingers. We had come out for groceries, now that we didn’t have Fatiha to take care of the house. Since Steph’s recent witch attire would make her stand out a bit, especially in D.C., she had magicked it back to a cute, light blue sweater and black mini-skirt. I loved it, and was almost overwhelmed, considering the fact that I had recently gone from thinking I had to leave her across the country while moving here to go to school, to seeing her as a murderous witch, to breaking her curse and having her back in my life alongside a new gargoyle lover. It had been a lot to process, and even more so now that I had a moment to breathe.
“You’re making me blush,” she said. It must have been the way I was looking at her.
“That so?” I grinned, adjusting the strap of the Trader Joe’s bag on my shoulder, which was getting slightly heavy. I lifted her hand and kissed it, then noticed the streaks of red and orange in the sky, via the reflection in the window. “Shit, we gotta get back.”
She nodded and we turned, hailing a taxi. It was easier getting around that way since we could sneak away from my aunt’s mansion and find a car, instead of driving ourselves and being a large target.
We drove past a cell store and I glanced back at it, longingly, my hand fidgeting with the Liahona in my jacket pocket. All the magic in the world, and I didn’t have a cell.
“There are other ways to communicate,” Steph whispered as she leaned against me, earning a glance back from the driver. We ignored him.
“I know,” I replied, assuming she meant magic. “But there’s more to it. Checking in on my parents, my boys back home.”
“Oh.” She stiffened slightly, then laughed. “I totally forgot about all of them.”
“Even…” I ran my hand over hers, very aware of it on my leg. “I mean, even Krista?”
Steph let out a long sigh. “Planted.”
“No shit?”
“Not one of them, though. Just, someone who was ‘adjusted’ slightly, to admit me into her circle so I’d seem normal.”
“Fuck.”
“You think even if we got new phones they’d be able to trace ‘em?” Steph asked.
I considered this. “More likely than not. We could figure it out. When we have a down moment, maybe give it a try?”
She nodded.
Another glance back from the driver, and I remembered to watch what we discussed in the car.
Steph, seeing this, squeezed my leg and said, “We don’t need them. We have each other now, and Ebrill. The others.”
“And my parents are out touring America,” I added, wondering when I would hear from them next. Email would be their most likely way of checking in, as they had never exactly been the type to hop on the phone for a conversation.
Given my current situation, I was perfectly fine with that.
“There you go.” She leaned back, watching D.C. fly by.
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.
I was glad for the air conditioning in this cab. Even in the evening, the humidity sucked royally. We paused at a red light and a guy walked past, the back of his shirt completely drenched in sweat.
Stifling a laugh as a car rolled by and someone shouted, “Sweaty back” at him, I couldn’t help noting how his short brown hair and long beard reminded me of my buddy Andy from back home. Not that we’d been in touch much even before I took off, but I kind of missed hanging out with the guy. A simpler life of going to try and find dive bars, but nine times out of ten giving up and hitting Rida’s down the street from my house. Drinking beers, talking punk music and movies from our youth. I somehow still hadn’t convinced him of what a great movie Total Recall was, even though I’d sworn it as a life goal. He simply wasn’t into the sci-fi stuff, so wouldn’t give it a full chance. At least we both agreed that the Back to the Future movies ranked among the best, but then again, I couldn’t stand when he tried to refer to those as sci-fi. Ugh. All the excitement I had now, and I was focusing on those simpler times.
“We should… grab a beer,” I mumbled.
Steph shifted. “Grab a beer?”
“Right. I mean, not right now. But when we have time. With the others, too.”
Her eyebrow raised, her cute lips forming a hint of a smile. “The heat must be getting to you.”
I knew exactly what she meant. Going out with Steph was fine, since her stark white hair could be explained as an outlandish personality or homage to a television character. Going out with large gargoyles who had horns and wings wasn’t as easily explained. They could illusion themselves to appear normal, but that took focus, and beer tended to drive that away.
Unless we wanted the gargoyles to be the designated drivers, the whole idea didn’t work. Maybe I’d find a way to reconnect with Andy, or my other buddies back home, someday. Explain to them what a douche I’d been for spending so much time studying and prepping—and with Steph—before moving east. Then again, it wasn’t likely that we’d get each other anymore, anyway. They had their bands and their part-time shitty jobs, while I had magic and a team of gargoyles plus a witch, with a mission to restore magic back to the world, and fighting nine magical ladies… or less, as I thought two had separated from the others, if I remembered correctly.
“Maybe when all of this is over,” I finally said. “Not going out, but I could rearrange the den to have a bar feel, and we could pretend.”
She chuckled, a hand on my thigh, and nodded. “Sure, sure.”
“Here you are,” the driver said. I used my credit card but gave him a cash tip, then we were out and moving along the neighboring block, ducking through trees to get out of sight and make it home without prying eyes noticing.
“Faster,” Steph said, taking the lead as I used my powers to unlock the door and let us in under the haze of dusk, then we pounded up the stairs and darted down the hall to reach the bedroom before sunset.
Aerona and Kordelia were in their statuesque poses, while Ebrill had turned to stone on the bed with her legs spread. Being the considerate guy that I was, after a quick glance of curiosity to see the way her spread legs looked, I had draped the sheet over her. It would have felt wrong to leave her exposed, and Steph had given me a nod that showed the act had earned points in her book.
“No attacks, then?” Steph asked, eyeing me and then glancing past, to show that Shisa had entered. The little, living stone dog-dragon stared at us, then turned to look at the statues, waiting.
“I’ll take that as a no,” I replied. With the traps we had set up and magical defenses, we weren’t too worried about the house during the day. It helped that Shisa was badass and never needed sleep, while the enemy’s magic worked best when fueled by the darkness of night.
As the scattered clouds moved from pink to near black, the sun nothing but several lines poking up from behind the houses and distant buildings, I wrapped an arm over Steph’s shoulders and we waited.
It was such a magical moment, these transformations, and we both wanted to be there to observe. More touching than any fireworks show, although less showy. My eyes roamed over the curves of Kordelia’s stone skin, only barely covered by her armor, wings folded back and long horns like thick streamers flowing back from her head. Aerona was every bit as beautiful, although the most petite of the three and with horns that reminded me more of a halo in the way they curved around her head toward the front. A halo, or perhaps a rare ram, while the other two had horns that reminded me more of those of an antelope, maybe. Thinking of them in animal terms felt wrong, so I let my eyes move back to their curves, letting my animal instinct take over.
“They’re beautiful,” Steph said, glancing at me.
“I know.”
“So…” She looked down at herself, causing me to do the same. To think of Aerona as petite meant Steph was downright tiny, but only by comparison. She was only five-foot-two, with not much in the chest region. Her eyes met mine, and there was vulnerability there as she asked, “Why am I here?”
“You mean… here, here?” I gestured to the bedroom, and she nodded. “Steph, seriously?” I moved my hands to her waist and kissed her briefly. “You know, I had a thing for you even when you were apparently possessed.”
“Cursed,” she corrected me. “Maybe a bit of mind-manipulation, but not possessed.”
“Well, you get the point. I care for you—and there was some of the real you then, I have no doubts. So… what? You’re not some super-buff gargoyle?”
“Not helping.”
“I’m saying you’re sexy in your own way. A way that I can’t get enough of.” I picked her up in a way that forced her to wrap her legs around my waist, causing her to laugh. Kissing her chest over her shirt, then moving up to her neck, I let her down again and said, “If we didn’t have work to do, I’d take you right here, right now.”
“Maybe we should, anyway,” she said, glancing to the window. “We have… actually…”
“What?” As my eyes followed hers to the window, my smile faded. “Shit.”
“I was going to say we have a minute or two, but we shouldn’t. Right?”
We both moved to the window, hand in hand, and moved the curtains completely out of the way to get a better look. The streaks of sunlight were gone, dusk upon us, but the gargoyles hadn’t woken.