Heart of Stone

He smiled, a ghostly expression that rent the craggy ruin of his face. “No,” he rumbled, “but she didn’t choose me.”

Margrit closed her hand uselessly around the sapphire as the gargoyle pitched himself from the building and disappeared into the sky.

Evasive answers and half-truths. Margrit left with an unfocused destination in mind, not wholly surprised to find herself climbing the stairs to Cara’s apartment not too much later. She had questions she wanted to ask Alban, but with no way to contact him, Cara or Chelsea Huo seemed the best people to talk to, and Cara’s apartment was closer than the bookstore.

For the second time that day, there was no response at her knock. “Cara, are you home?” Margrit tried the knob again, startled when it turned under her hand. She cautiously pushed the door open. “Cara? The door was- shit! ”

The apartment was empty. Even the bedraggled furniture was missing, the rugs picked up from the floor and posters gone. The floor had been swept clean and the walls seemed to have been scrubbed, as if someone was trying to erase all signs of recent habitation. Margrit took a few steps inside the door, looking around in dismay. “Cara?”

The girl’s name echoed through the empty rooms, frighteningly loud. Only that afternoon Cara had promised she could handle her neighbors, and now she had disappeared, so utterly that Margrit could hardly believe she’d ever been there.

Margrit took the stairs down in leaps, breaking into a flat-out run once she hit pavement, to find a pay phone and dial Tony’s number. His answer was composed mostly of silence, before he made a tight promise to be there as quickly as he could. Margrit paced outside the building, keeping warm through movement, until the detective arrived, looking as if he hadn’t slept.

“I’m only on my way back to the station, Grit. I can’t stay. I’ll take a look, but…” He shrugged, a movement of exhaustion and anger. “You know we can’t file a missing person’s report until she’s been gone twenty-four hours. Come on. Show me the place.” He brushed by her without further greeting, frustration in his movements.

Margrit hung back a few steps, eyebrows drawn down. “Tony?”

He stopped just inside the building, shoulders pulled back and full of tension. Margrit reached out to touch him, then stayed her hand, unsure how the gesture would be taken.

“There’s been another murder, after the two last night. One of those was Gray. The other happened in the park, over on the east side.”

Margrit slid her hand into her pocket, tightening her bruised fingers around the sapphire Janx had given her. “I’m sorry, Tony. Another?”

“In the last hour. Down on the park’s southern end.” He swung to face her, defeat clearly written on his features. “This guy’s going to disappear, Grit. He’s got one on each side of the park now. He’s done. I can feel it. He’s going to get away with murder, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.”

“Maybe you’ll get lucky,” Margrit offered hollowly. “I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I know I said thanks for coming here, but thank you again. I didn’t know there’d been another murder. I’m surprised you could come.”

Tony pulled a thin smile. “It lets me put off going back to the station and getting busted for letting the city go to hell in the past week. Let’s go upstairs. I’ll see if there’s anything left that might be helpful.”

“Thanks,” Margrit repeated quietly, and took the lead. Guilt was assuaged by anger as she pushed the door open, the room’s emptiness echoing back at her. “She’s gone.”

Tony sighed, looking around. “So’s everything she owned. It doesn’t look like a kidnapping to me, Grit. It looks like she packed up and moved away.”

“Inside a few hours, without telling me?”

“Margrit.” Tony reached for her hands, then stopped, unsure of his welcome. The distance between them she thought suddenly seemed uncrossable, with too many sharp words lying there, waiting to cut again.

Too many secrets. Only a handful of days ago they’d stood on the edge of trying to build a life together. More had changed in that time than Margrit could wholly fathom. She had changed more in that span of days than she could explain.

She put her hand out abruptly, bridging the space Tony had hesitated to breach. He took it carefully, his grip warm and strong, and stepped a little closer, ducking his head toward hers. “Maybe she’s just found a better place and hasn’t had time to tell you yet.”

“In two hours? ”

Hope slid out of the detective’s eyes. “Grit, I know you’re upset, but yelling isn’t going to help.”

She sighed and manifested a brief smile. “I thought you boys from big Italian families solved everything by yelling.”

“Well, you know,” Tony said with a deadpan shrug. “It’s all that NYPD sensitivity training.”

Surprise caught Margrit out and she laughed. “That must be it.” The laughter faded away as she glanced around the apartment again. “Tony, I’m worried about her. I’m afraid the neighbors who tore up her apartment came back to finish the job. If I’m going to pursue this injunction, I’m going to need her as the plaintiff, and to be there looking fragile and pathetic. Her and Deirdre. Dammit. Dammit!”

Margrit pulled away and stalked to the window, frustration and anger reasserting themselves as she spoke. “Russell may not even agree to go forward with this if we don’t have her. Cara’s a great victim.” Hypocrite, she told herself. Even hating to have her own physical aspects played on, she would still use Cara’s for every advantage they could provide. “Things are totally out of control.”

“It can’t be that bad.” Tony followed her, stopping just far enough away to not be intrusive. “Look. I’ll put out an APB on her, okay?”

“Yeah. Shit.” Margrit turned to slide down the wall, lacing her fingers behind her lowered head. Her fingers protested and she flexed them cautiously, trying to work some of the ache out. “This just feels like a last straw. You wouldn’t believe some of this shit, Tony.”

The detective slid down beside her. “Try me.”

“I would if I could.” She lifted her head enough to stare at her own feet. “Janx tipped you off about Alban being at my place the other night, didn’t he? That’s why you asked me about him.”

Tony didn’t answer. Margrit glanced at him, discovering his expression was tight. She lifted an eyebrow and he wet his lips, evading answering with a question of his own: “Why’d you go to him?”

“A friend of Alban’s said he might know something about the murders.” Margrit huffed a laugh at her fast and loose version of the truth, but shrugged it off. “It was the first time I’d heard of him, except when you’d asked me who he was. Your turn.”

“It was him.” Tony sighed. “We’ve always got somebody on him. He made a pay-phone call the same time the tip came in. Besides, I’ve listened in on enough of his conversations to know that voice. Sounds like a used-car salesman. Oily.”

Alarm clustered in Margrit’s stomach, making hairs stand up on her arms despite her sweater. “You’ve got him bugged?”

“No. We try, but the bugs never last for more than a couple hours. Something always fritzes ’em out, even in public places. It’s like he’s got some kind of antibug aura.”

Malik, Margrit thought, though aloud she said, “Great. Just what you need. An unbuggable bad guy. Is that how you found the room beneath Trinity Church? A helpful tip from the friendly neighborhood crime lord?”

Tony slid another glance at her, then looked away. “I lost you outside Huo’s on Saturday night.”

“Dammit! I knew it! You were following me!”

“You were my only lead, Grit,” he said without apology. “When we lost you I…” He exhaled a deep sigh. “I went to see Janx myself.”

“You what? Jesus, Tony, you don’t know what you’re dealing with there.” Margrit clenched her teeth, torn between wanting to protect her erstwhile lover and being unable to betray Alban and the Old Races’ secrets. Worry bubbled in her stomach and she wrapped her arms around herself. “You’ve got to be careful.”