Page 21 of Fated to the Gargoyle

I make myself let go of the rail. She can’t give anyone a chance if she knows the position is filled, and she can’t know that while I’m crouched out here in the rain letting a podcast introduce me.

The episode winds down behind the glass. “This is Messy Jay reminding you—where there’s smoke, I’m probably the fire.”

Treasure sits up straight, clicks one more time, and slams the laptop shut.

“HA! I knew it. I KNEW I wasn’t going crazy.” She’s up out of the chair now, pointing at the dark window with no idea what’s on the other side of it. “And I know you wake up at night. Tomorrow? I’m gonna be standing right there when you do, and you are GOING to give me answers!”

She stomps down the hall on the last word. Water runs, then a toothbrush, then the shower, the pipes knocking the same way they did the last time I clung to this brick.

I stay where I am and give her that much privacy. After a while she pads back out in pajamas, crosses into her bedroom, and the strip of light under her door goes dark. Her breathing stretches out long and even.

The sun comes in a few hours. I don’t want to spend them on the wrong side of her door.

The balcony door has a simple latch, and my claws were made for finer work than humans ever gave them credit for. It gives without a scratch on the frame. I tuck my head under the doorway, step inside, and ease it shut behind me.

For something my size, I know how to be quiet. The apartment smells like her in every direction, strawberries over dish soap and coconut, and for a moment I forget I came in here to do anything but stand in it.

The picture frames are up on the walls now, hung straight and level, every one of them empty. I smile at them anyway, because a woman who decorates is a woman who’s staying.

Would she ever put a picture of us in one?

Her door sits half open at the end of the hall. I step through and stand at the foot of her bed, towering over it, careful of my wings in the small room.

She sleeps on her side under a pile of covers, her braids wrapped in a silk bonnet and her hand curled under her chin. Her scent owns the whole room.

“Every treasure I ever guarded was practice for you,” I whisper.

I reach out slow, my claws careful, for the edge of the blanket.

Her eyes snap open.

Something whistles up off the nightstand and cracks across my face. I straighten up wincing, and she’s already moving, throwing the covers off and getting her feet under her until she’s standing on the mattress with a stick in both hands, ready to swing again.

“AH!” she shouts. “So not only are you a moving monster who’s got this whole town thinking I’m crazy. You’re a creep, too!”

The stick comes around and slaps the side of my head, and I take it, because catching it out of her hands would frighten her worse than anything else I’ve done tonight.

“Treasure.” I raise my hands, my claws open and empty. “Forgive me. I⁠⁠—”

“Oh, and he KNOWS MY NAME.” The stick levels at my chest. “You’ve been watching me! You better start talking, or I will beat your big ass up and down this apartment. And don’t you dare underestimate me either. I’m from Los Angeles. Your big gargoyle ass would’ve been the least of my worries out there.”

The sting is already fading from my face, and I’m smiling through what’s left of it. She’s standing on her own mattress in a bonnet and pajamas, swinging a stick at a monster twice her size and lecturing him while she does it, and she looks exactly like what she is, a goddess with her hair wrapped.

My feisty mate. I love her already.

11

TREASURE

Ikeep the stick pointed at him from up here on my mattress, and I want it on the record that I was right—after this whole town had me feeling like I’d lost my mind, my proof is standing right here in my bedroom, working his jaw where I cracked him.

He shakes off the hit and settles, claws loose at his sides and wings folding tight behind his back. His skin is blacker than the dark of my bedroom, pulled taut over muscle stacked on muscle, and his eyes burn a low, steady gold, the only light this room has going. I keep my swing ready and look him over slow, head to claw, and my grip on this stick is doing more praying than holding.

I groan and lower my arm. “What on earth are you doing in my apartment?”

He turns his face away from me and says nothing. He has the nerve to go quiet in my apartment after everything he’s put me through.

“Well, you weren’t gonna eat me, that’s for sure,” I mutter.