CHAPTER 21

“WHAT WAS THAT?” Alban managed to hold his tongue until they reached the street, leaving Janx’s… alcove, Margrit thought, deliberately wiping the word lair from her mind…behind.

“That was his honor getting the better of him. I set out an expectation last night. He couldn’t not fulfill it.”

Alban looked down at her, full mouth set in a thin line. “Why not?”

“Because men like him have nothing but their honor.” Margrit shook her head. “I’ve defended guys like him. You might not agree with their moral code, but they’ve got one. Without honor he’s just another two-bit criminal. He’s got too much pride to let himself go that far. He’d sell you out for a nickel, but if he makes a promise he’ll keep it.”

“He’s not a man at all, Margrit.” Alban spoke quietly.

Margrit frowned at the river across the street, black and smooth, reflecting the city lights. The comment resonated too sharply with her own thoughts, with the rising conflict of emotions she felt when she looked at Alban.

“I don’t know,” she murmured, more to herself than the gargoyle at her side. “He isn’t human.” She folded her arms around herself, still watching the water. “But he’s a person.”

“Be cautious, Margrit.” Alban’s voice rumbled with warning. “Janx is not human.”

She turned toward him, spreading hands whose café latte skin was soured to yellow beneath the streetlights. “A hundred years ago people your color wouldn’t have thought someone of mine was human.” Intensity filled the words, their importance enough that she felt her hands trembling as she held them out.

“My color.” Alban sounded startled, spreading his own pale hand above hers.

She nodded shortly. “Don’t kid yourself, Alban. In this form, you’re a white man. Politically advantageous, economically powerful, socially acceptable. A hundred years ago if someone saw you and me standing here like this, you’d be the human and I’d be something less. A century before that, you and I standing here would have been master and slave. Or I might’ve been lucky. Two hundred years ago I might’ve been a free black, a placée. Know what that is? It’s a rich white man’s dark-skinned mistress. Somebody my color would’ve been a quadroon, very exotic. Light enough to be almost acceptable.” Her heart hammered in her throat, thick and choking. “So forgive me if I’m having a hard time with what makes someone human or not.”

“Margrit, we’re different races. Different-”

“They call it racism, Alban.” Her voice rose, growing sharp. “All the shades humans come in are defined as races, like we’re alien from one another. It doesn’t matter that we can all interbreed and make pretty brown babies.” She clenched her hands, emphasizing their color, then turned away, shoving them into her pockets. “I don’t like the word race, ” she added to the street. “If we have to be defined in smaller groups than just the human race, it should be by ethnicity.”

“What are you, ethnically?”

She swung around on her heel, snapping, “American. On both sides, my people have been in the United States since the seventeen hundreds. I don’t know what else it takes to be just an American. What do you see when you look at me?”

“A human woman.” Alban sounded surprised.

Margrit grunted, surprised herself. “Not a black woman? Not just a woman? A human woman? I couldn’t pass for one of your people?”

Amusement flickered over Alban’s face. “You lack the grace. Forgive me. I don’t mean it as an insult. But humans are more solid, more grounded in their movements, than the Old Races usually are. Even your greatest athletes are so very-” He broke off, struggling for a word, and opened his hands helplessly. “Human. In their grace. So connected to one form, to one way of being. There’s breathtaking magic in it, but it is not the magic of the Old Races. It’s wholly your own. What do you see when you look at me?”

“A white man,” Margrit said, but even as she spoke Alban changed form, trusting the alley shadows to hide him from passersby. Margrit stared up at his heavy-shouldered figure, the wings folded against his back to make him smaller than he actually was, and hesitated. Alban smiled again, barely creasing the stony crags of his face.

“Am I a person?” At Margrit’s nod, he added, “Are the gorillas your people have taught to communicate also people?” She nodded a second time and he shimmered back into his human form, looking down at her. “And are they human?”

Margrit looked away. “No.”

“Neither is Janx, Margrit. Tread lightly.”

“It shouldn’t matter.” She spoke quietly, recognizing too clearly echoes of the conversation with her mother.

“It should.” The disagreement was startling enough to jog Margrit out of her thoughts, making her glance up at the gargoyle again. His expression was unreadable, cast-Margrit flashed a brief, frustrated smile at her choice of phrase-cast in stone.

She lifted her hands, pulling her hair free and remaking her ponytail before sighing. “This isn’t the time to argue about it, one way or another.” The statement had a familiar ring, familiar enough to make her cringe internally when she recognized it. It was the same kind of phrase she and Tony often used before taking a break from one another. For an instant Margrit wanted to take back the words and pursue the conversation, argue the semantics of humanity and racism. Instead she dropped her shoulders and stared at the ground a few seconds before choosing her course. “It’s getting late. Janx said something yesterday about it being dangerous for you to be out near sunrise.”

Alban’s nostrils flared with dislike. “Dawn is a long way off at this time of year.”

Margrit huffed a humorless laugh. “Which doesn’t answer the implied question, Alban. What was he talking about?”

Alban bared his teeth, then shook his head and stepped back into the alley. “Physically, my people are not easily damaged. But we have times of vulnerability. Dawn, most particularly.” He was silent, his jaw thrust out as he stared across the alley. “If we are chained at dawn, in the moments of transformation…iron binds us.”

Margrit stared up at him. “Seriously? How?”

He dropped a hand, opening his fingers. “It becomes part of the stone when we transform. Once it’s been absorbed, we can’t rid ourselves of it. The chains can be unlocked, but not broken.” He glanced down at her. “I believe gargoyles are the only of the Old Races to have ever been enslaved.”

“But-”

Alban shifted his shoulders. “Margrit, it can wait.”

“But what about the other Races? Don’t they have-”

“Margrit.” He shook his head once more. “Dawn comes late this time of year, but it still comes. If you want to talk to Biali before tomorrow night we need to do it now.”

Margrit closed her eyes. “All right. And what about the other one? Ausra. Who is she?”

“I don’t know her. The name-” Alban broke off, silent for a moment or two. “It means dawn. Just as Hajnal does.” He sighed. “She’s probably another gargoyle. We tend to have a rather limited number of names we choose. We’re fond of words that mean dawn and sunset. Our hours of transformation.”

“What does Alban mean?”

Sheepishness crept over Alban’s face. “Dawn.”

Margrit laughed. “I see.” Her good humor faded and she gnawed the inside of her cheek. “So she’s another gargoyle.”

“Probably. Although if Janx is giving out her name, she may work with Daisani, which means she could be a vampire, as he is.”

“A vampire?” Margrit’s voice rose and broke.

“Yes.” Alban arched an eyebrow, looking down at her.

“Eliseo Daisani is a vampire? ”

“Yes.” Open amusement creased the gargoyle’s face.

“Vampires don’t come out during the day, Alban!”

“Oh,” he asked mockingly, “they don’t?”

“No, they don’t! Everybody knows that! Vamp-” Margrit bit the word off, staring up at him.