Page 20 of Fated to the Gargoyle

“Sure.” Jalen doesn’t move an inch. “Is that why she thinks she’s crazy? Too afraid to approach your own woman and tell her who she belongs to?”

I turn to Sable. He shakes his head once, a warning to leave the dragon breathing. I want to hurt him anyway, badly.

“Relax, big man. I figured you just needed a little push.” Jalen flashes his teeth again. “I might have brought it up in my nightly recording. Which airs…” He lifts his wrist and checks his watch. “…right now, actually.”

My wings snap open and send a stool over. “You did what?”

“There’s a statue moving around at Stanley’s Diner. The humans who remember it moving, the ones your Settling spell has been working on, deserve to know they aren’t crazy. The town is.” He shrugs. “And now that the humans know you’re here, the spell wears off quick. That’s how it works, isn’t it?”

“The bartender is right,” Sable tells him. “You are messy.”

“If you’re gonna live in Shadow Wolf Creek, don’t play with us.” Jalen spreads his hands, all hospitality. “We welcome you to town. So long as you behave.”

David sets a glass of water in front of him unasked, and Jalen drains it dry.

“And by the way,” he says, setting the glass down, “there’s been a string of robberies in town. I know. Robberies, in a shifter town. Magic’s involved, if you ask me. Feels like a witch looking for something she lost.” He turns on the stool to face us. “So it’s quite the confidence, you two strolling in right in the middle of it. We all know the debt your kind owes the witches and warlocks. That conniving little Settling spell they put in your blood for protection.” His green eyes hold on us, and there’s no play left in them. “Stay out of trouble. I’ve got my eyes on you.”

“Robberies?” Sable asks.

“I have not seen one,” I answer, and I barely hear my own words. The dragon put me on the air. His episode is playing right now in every home in this town, and Treasure is sitting alone in hers, hearing a stranger confirm that the statue she touched is alive. My chest goes tight around the thought. She shouldn’t have to learn what I am from a podcast.

Sable reads me without a word and tips his head toward the door.

“Go,” he says. “I’ll stay and untangle this with your dragon. Go protect your mate.”

I’m through the door hard enough to nearly take it off the hinges, across the lot, and up into the rain, the Shadow Bar’s neon shrinking under my wings as I bank toward her side of town.

10

SOREN

Her building comes into view in minutes. I drop out of the rain onto her balcony rail without a sound, then step off to the side where the brick hides me from the glass door.

Light spills out of her living room. She’s at the little kitchen table with her laptop open, clicking through page after page, a tuna sandwich waiting on a plate beside it. And filling the whole apartment is a voice I just left across town.

It’s the dragon’s podcast, playing right out of her speakers. I huff at the glass. I flew here to be rid of him, and his voice beat me to her door.

She scrolls past old sketches of hunched stone monsters, and the wings are wrong on every one of them. My mate is researching gargoyles, exactly as she promised that empty roofline she would. If she wants to know what we look like, I could save her the search.

“Shadow Wolf Creek has gargoyles?” Jalen’s voice says through the speakers. “And would anyone like to explain the statue on the diner roof that was there at dinner and gone by close? Because statues don’t keep hours.”

Treasure slaps the table. “THANK you!” she shouts at the laptop. “One person in this whole town with working eyes, and it’s the messy podcast man.” She takes a triumphant bite of the sandwich.

The dragon rolls on. “In other news, Stanley’s Diner can’t keep employees. Stanley’s is on its sixth new hire in two years, and Andy still wants us to believe it’s a coincidence. While we’re at it, someone bring me Stanley, because I’ve lived here my whole life and never met the man.”

She cackles with her head thrown back. “Andy, baby, the shifters are not your problem,” she tells the screen, pointing what’s left of the sandwich at it. “You are the whole problem.” She shakes her head, still grinning.

My mate and the dragon agree on everything. I file that under problems for later.

Her laughing winds down after a while, and she leans back in the chair and stretches until her back pops.

“And Andy better dust that Help Wanted sign off,” she tells the ceiling, “because Lamar’s about to quit on him behind me and my one little rule. Talking about Shadow Suds is hiring.” She shakes her head. “That man would really change jobs just to take me to dinner.” Her fingers drum the tabletop, and her voice comes down to almost nothing. “Shoot. Maybe I should let him.”

My claws punch through the balcony rail. The want comes up my back hot and fast, and I spread my wings. Everything in me is ready to go through that glass and end the discussion.

Mine.

She’s been mine since her scent climbed that diner wall, and she’s in there talking herself into the cook because I haven’t given her one reason not to.