Alchemystic (15 page)

I pulled away. I had little familiarity with humans touching me. I reached up and felt along the same area where a few of the spots on my arm were worn down. I sighed. “I am not sure my maker could have predicted how swiftly the modern world would wear on a grotesque such as I.”

“Still,” she said, sensing my sadness, “the underlying carving is exquisite. The wings, the claws, the, ummm…demon face.”

I smiled. “Thank you,” I said. “A love of stonework runs in the family, I see.”

“Not really,” the woman said. “I’m the first to even take an interest in the art of it all. My brother, when he was alive, anyway, only seemed to like defacing it. I wouldn’t be surprised if that graffiti were his doing. But when our parents told me about our past, the history of our family, something about that time period and my great-great-grandfather’s craftsmanship just spoke to me. How well did you know him?”

“As well as any piece of stone can know its maker, I suppose,” I said.

She laughed. “You’ve got quite the sense of humor,” she said. “You know, all things considered.”

“Your great-great-grandfather built me with the capacity to learn all things,” I said. “I do not know if he ever knew I would come to feel and joke, though. I wonder often about that.”

I stood lost in quiet contemplation of that until the woman spoke again.

“You said there were three rules? Always protect the family, always return to the building before daylight, and always keep hidden from humanity?”

I nodded.

“Well, two out of three ain’t bad,” she said, holding up two fingers.

“There were more of us to come, but…” I looked to a large block of half-carved stone that sat farther along the
ledge next to me, one I had not looked over at in quite some time.

Alexandra put the notebook down gently and walked over to the block and examined it.

“It’s broken,” she said.

I shook my head. “Not broken. Never finished.”

“Too bad,” she said, sadness in her tone. “I would have loved to have seen whatever my great-great-grandfather saw when he started carving it. He never got around to finishing it…?”

I shrugged, causing my wings to flap.

“What happened?” she asked.

“One night your great-great-grandfather simply did not show up.”

“I’m sorry,” she said with a nod, then turned away from the block. “He died later the summer he carved you, from what I’ve been able to read.” She held up the notebook. “It’s slow going. Half these books are in a mix of Slavonic and Lithuanian.”

“Your kind die so quick,” I said.

“I guess we do,” she said. She stood up and started walking to the far end of the roof.

“Those wings,” she said as she crossed. “You flew away the other night, after saving me. So they’re more than just ornamental, aren’t they?”

I cocked my head. “What do you mean?”

“I saw them work a little when you left. You can fly well, then?”

I nodded.

Alexandra stopped at the edge of the roof and stepped up onto the ledge.

“Good,” she said, and jumped.

Before she could even fall out of sight, I heard the words of my maker in my head as if he were alive today, screaming one of the rules at me.
Always protect the family.

With my inhuman speed, I ran across the roof and dove over the side. The girl was dropping fast, but I flapped my wings and closed the distance as quickly as I could. The wind rushed over me and I pressed myself to close with her.
I reached out, remembering how fragile these humans were, and carefully grabbed for her.

I caught her by one wrist, and before I could begin flying back to the top of the roof, she pulled herself around me, clutching both arms around my neck, the drumming of her heart hard against my chest.

As I flew straight up into the nighttime sky, Alexandra stopped shaking, settling herself against me. I should have landed back on the roof, but something else compelled me and I kept flying upward instead.

This human closeness was strange, but not unpleasant, and the woman stayed there a long while before lifting her head off my chest, looking back over my shoulders. “Your wings,” she said, eyes widening, “they’re so quiet but…but they’re
stone
. I thought they’d make some kind of noise or something, but you’re flying effortlessly.”

I said nothing but continued to fly higher, feeling the great-great-grandchild of my maker tightening her grip even more. Once we were higher than any of the surrounding buildings, I swooped back down through the concrete and metal canyons, angling back and forth through the gaps in the buildings until the Belarus building came back into sight. I landed, setting Alexandra down, and stepped away from her.

Anger flushed through my body. “I do not engage in games, child…”

“I just had to see it for myself,” she said, still breathless and stumbling around as she got used to standing on the solid rooftop again. “If everything my great-great-grandfather wrote in his book and what you say is true. You told me about the rules to always protect, and you did!”

I stood there, unmoving.

“Relax,”
she said, and I felt myself do just that. “Art’s not the only thing about Alexander Belarus I found interesting. His library is full of books and notebooks, a lifetime of learning. I think, perhaps, there’s a bit of truth to some of the magic and alchemy of which he wrote, though it is hard to figure out. You’re living proof. What was it you told me the other night about healing?”

“To heal the stone, to heal the house.”

“Yes!” she said, clutching the talisman once more that I had felt the faded power in. “And I’ll do that just as soon as I figure out where all that information is in the library. So much of his work is partial references that then refer to other partial references in
another
book. But I am fascinated to learn what it took to breathe life into stone.”

“Only the maker could do that,” I said with a shake of my head.

“Yeah, well, I’m going to start small,” she said, placing the notebook to the side and grabbing up her scrub brush from the bucket again. “Getting this paint off you is just the beginning. Most of these blocks up here look unfinished. I don’t think my great-great-grandfather meant for you to be alone. Maybe I can do something about that someday.”

The woman set to work and I joined her as she handed me a second brush, although in truth I had no knowledge of the task at hand. I followed what she did, scrubbing at myself, and soon I found I was fully immersed in the task. The longer I worked, focused as I was, a distracting sorrow built in my chest, but it was not my own, forcing me to look around. The woman stood there, her brush lying at her feet, her eyes wet with tears.

“This pain of yours,” I said. “I feel it. What is the matter, Alexandra?”

Her shoulders heaved up and down in a rapid motion as she cried. She raised the back of her hand to her eyes and wiped.

“You said you were created to protect my family,” she said. “Right?”

“Your great-great-grandfather set me to that task, yes. As I have told you.”

The girl took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “So…why didn’t you protect my brother?”

“I do not understand,” I said.

“My brother,” she said in a low, even tone as her eyes filled with sadness. “Devon. He died in a building collapse. Why didn’t you try to save him?”

I cocked my head at her. “I was unaware of this,” I said.

Her eyes widened. “How can you have been unaware? He was
family
.”

I felt around inside for some sense of connection, but there was none to be found. “I do not know what to say. I have had a sympathetic bond with all of your blood over the centuries, but I did not feel any such distress from him.”

“How is that possible?” she said, her voice cracking. “He was crushed to death when one of my great-great-grandfather’s buildings collapsed on him. He’s
dead
—do you understand that?”

“I understand what death is,” I said. “I have seen many of your kind grow old and pass on. But that does not change what has happened. I did not feel the danger to your brother…but you say one of Alexander’s buildings fell in on him. Where?”

“The Lower East Side,” she said. “On St. Mark’s.”

“I remember such a place,” I said. “The stone was strong there. It was one of the first buildings Alexander ever put up.”

The girl gave a pained laugh. “Well, he should have built it stronger, then…”

“It
was
strong,” I insisted. “I know that stone. If that structure fell, it was by no accident.”

“Someone would do that
on purpose
?”

“I cannot say. I only know your great-great-grandfather’s craftsmanship.”

I did not know what more I could say. Pain radiated from the girl, but I was not lessening it, and that shortcoming in me, the inability to calm it, burned like fire. I wondered what I could say to help, but I did not have to wonder long. Before I could figure out what might ease her pain, she was running for the doors leading back down into the Belarus building.

Alexandra

I
came down the stairs fast, taking two at a time with the old, worn notebook clutched in my shaking hands. I flew past Alexander’s library, down past mine and Devon’s floor, and found my parents sitting together at opposite ends of the large couch directly across from the television. My father worked at an elaborate lap desk with ledgers and printouts weighing it down, my mother staring blankly at some graying talking head on the screen. When she saw my face, her hand darted for the remote, lowering the sound on whatever financial program they were watching.

“Honey,” my mother started in that quiet voice of hers. “What’s wrong?”

“Leave the girl alone,” my father said, stern, not looking up. “She has been through much these past few days. She will rally.”

“I’m not going to rally, dad,” I spat out. My tone drew his attention. Despite my anger, tears escaped from the corners of my eyes and I hated that I couldn’t help it. Still, everything the creature had said…

My father closed the ledger he was working in and set the desk on the floor next to him. “Alexandra,” he said, softening. “What is it?”

“Anything you want to tell me about my brother’s death?”

He glanced at my mother, then back to me. “What do you mean?”

“Like maybe it wasn’t an accident…?” I asked, but there was little reaction except confusion on their faces.

“Alexandra,” my mother said, confusion filling her eyes. “What are you going on about?”

“Come, sit,” my father said, patting the couch, and I went to him like I was four, sitting down. He put his heavy arm around me and squeezed my shoulder. “Miss Alexandra, you should know, there are no accidents in this world.”

I looked up at him. “No?”

My father gave me a soft smile. “Of course not,” he said, pointing to the ceiling. “All of this is according to His plan.”

I doubted he meant the gargoyle sitting on our roof, and I stiffened. I didn’t love the idea that whatever Power there Might Be went around planning how to kill people like some twisted game of
The Sims
. Still, Stanis had been sure the building collapse hadn’t been an accident, and I wasn’t ready to go down the road of blaming the Almighty for carrying out some elaborate scheme just yet.

I wasn’t looking for a lecture on theology, realizing I could investigate the nature of the accident on my own. And now knowing my father’s story about falling through the ice as a boy, I also didn’t want to have the “Your guardian angel is actually a magical gargoyle” talk with him
just
yet. That wasn’t the real reason I had rushed down here so suddenly, anyway. That had been because of Stanis’s reaction to the death of my brother…For someone sworn to protect the family, he had seemed relatively uninterested in Devon’s death. Whatever the arcana was that ran Stanis, it was messed up. If not, there was only one other alternative that made logical sense to me.

“Was Devon really my brother?” I asked.

My father laughed out loud, but not before hesitating. “Of course he was your brother,” he said, waving a dismissive hand.

I searched his eyes, watching as he quickly shifted them away from me. “I mean, biologically. By blood.”

My words were met with silence from both my parents, but it was my mother who finally spoke up after a long moment.

“Tell her,” she said.

My father gave a heavy sigh and nodded. “It is true. Devon was not your biological brother.”

“Why haven’t you told me before?” I asked, my heart hurting.

“Please do not take this the wrong way,” my father said, “but when you were born, while we were very happy to bring you into this world, I was a little bit in shock.”

“Why?”

“We Belarus have always been very strong about our family, about our kin. For generations, the firstborn child was always a male. We held our strength in the belief that a patriarchy was part of what assured our continued success, our continued luck. Call it superstitious, if you like—”

“Your father loves you very much,” my mother impressed on me, putting her hand to rest on my knee.