Alchemystic (16 page)

“Please hear me out,” he said, turning his eyes down from me. “When you were born, I was…disappointed.” After a moment he looked back up with a weak smile on his lips. “I was young and foolish and determined that there must be a male to continue the family’s success. Someone who could grow into a man of business. So before you were old enough to remember, we…adopted a boy. He was meant to take on the burden of business in this family.”

“And you never told me,” I said, anger rising up in my chest.

“I’m so sorry,” my mother said, her hand squeezing my knee again. “The timing was never right, and we kept meaning to, but the more time passed, the easier it got to not bring it up.”

“Since when has Dad ever shied away from anything? He’s got the Lord on his side!”

My father’s eyes turned to me, a mix of fear and anger. “You leave God out of this.”

“Gladly,” I said, standing up to face them. “My point is that I should have known.”

My father turned away from me, staring at the silent television. “I lost a son,” he said, simple and cold, but I wasn’t going to let him shut down on me like that.

“And I lost a brother,” I fired back just as cold and with real anger building. “Or at least I thought he was my brother. And now I’m stuck with his job that I’ve been
busting my ass
on, by the way. Do you think this is what I want for myself? I’ve been doing it to please you.”

“Oh, honey,” my mother said. “Devon was
always
your brother. Even when you two were fighting like cats and dogs, he was always your brother.”

“You haven’t had a bad life, have you?” my father asked, dead serious with a little venom in his words. “You’ve been able to follow your own pursuits…That is, until the accident.”

“I don’t want to come off as a spoiled brat, but yes, and I’m very thankful for that. I’ve been able to mostly pursue what I want, as long as I stayed close to home.”

“The Belarus family keeps close,” my mother said from behind me, but I was still concentrating on my father.

“Everything I’ve studied of our family’s cultural legacy, everything you’ve ever encouraged me to do, every bit of my being wants to be connected to history and art…Now you’re taking that all away from me. And the worst of it is, you didn’t ask me. You just
told
me.”

“Running the family business
is
part of your legacy now,” my father said.

I held up my great-great-grandfather’s notebook. “So is the art and design and…other things.
That’s
the only legacy I care about.”

“We won’t have anywhere to keep any of that legacy if we lose our business,” my father said, his voice turning agitated. “Think of
that
. Don’t be such a selfish girl. You
will
learn the family business.
Think of your mother.
”

The veins in his neck were pressed out so far I thought his head might explode. His tone was so vehement I knew there
was no arguing him, and right now I had better things to think about than the family business.

“Well, for the sake of the empire, I hope you’ll be more forthcoming about the family business than you were about Devon,” I said, standing up. I stormed off, beyond crying anymore. Fury and bitter resolution had replaced my tears. My mother called after me, but I didn’t bother turning back. What good would it do? It wouldn’t change the fact about what they expected of me, and right now the family business wasn’t foremost in my thoughts.

The past few hours had been a roller-coaster whirl of fantastically awesome to painfully shocking. The last thing I wanted to think about was real estate law and zoning codes or whatever it all involved. I headed back upstairs to the library, book still in hand. There were dozens of references in this notebook about Alexander Belarus and his gargoyle, all of them leading to dozens of other texts hidden somewhere around the room. It was going to take hours to make sense of it all, and in the face of being forced daily into a business suit, I welcomed the distraction from that new aspect of my life.

I went about the busy work of gathering reference book after reference book, my mind turning back to some of the darker thoughts at hand, thanks to my talk with the creature. My brother’s death hadn’t been an accident, I was fairly certain. Then someone in a secret order had tried to kill me—twice—and if not for that creature on the top of our building, who knows if I’d even be alive now. Someone wanted us dead, for whatever reason, but I wasn’t going to go quietly—that was for sure. I had a freaking gargoyle on my side. Even with that surreal bonus, though, I was going to need help, but first I had a lot of reading to get started on.

Stanis

I
awoke with my eyes still closed, the image of the maker in my head and his voice still ringing in my ears. The rules, he reminded me, always the rules. They were a part of me—this I knew—but saving the woman the other night by breaking through the roof of the building had brought one of them in conflict with another, and my mind could not quite remedy how to process it, except being haunted by the reproach and disappointment in my maker’s voice, even though he was long gone.

Ready to stretch my hunched form out, I paused. The words I thought were only in my head were not, but instead came from directly in front of me on the roof. They belonged to the maker’s kin, the woman Alexandra. Her voice had the same even rhythm and cadence as his, making it hard to tell her words apart from the ones in my mind’s ear.

When I opened my eyes, she was not alone, a problem for me. Minding the rules, I held myself in place. The blue-haired female and the tall male I often saw her with were there. The three of them stood around mid-conversation by the single door that led down into the building.

“You sure you can’t just tell us your surprise inside?” the
man said, shifting from one foot to the other. He rubbed his hands up and down his bare arms. “I didn’t bring a jacket tonight. I wasn’t really ready for the cold snap yet.”

The maker’s kin shook her head. “What I have to show and tell you can’t be done inside,” she said. “I can’t help it if you haven’t switched your calendar over to October yet.”

“Suck it up, buttercup,” the blue-haired one said to the male. “I like show-and-tell!”

“Can we at least make this a speed round, then?” the male said, hugging his arms around his body now, the wind whipping through his scruff of black hair. “I get sick at the drop of a hat. It’s my fragile gamer physique.”

“All right,” the maker’s kin said, holding up several tattered notebooks. “Well, I’ve been doing some research and I figured out what happened to that man—my attacker—in the park. Why it looked like he jumped.”

“You did?” the blue-haired one asked, stepping closer.

She nodded. “Yes, but I need you two to promise me that you’re not going to freak out.”

“Oh man,” the male said, rocking back and forth on his feet. “You asking that only freaks me out
more
.”

The blue-haired one reached out, grabbed him by the shoulder, and stilled him. “Cut it out,” she said. “You’re making me more nervous than whatever Lexi’s trying to tell us about.” She placed her other hand over her heart. “I solemnly swear not to freak out. I can’t vouch for Marshmallow here, but I’ll try to keep him in line if he does.”

The maker’s kin let out a long, slow breath. “I suppose that’s the best I can get out of you, but, Rory…I
really
need you to keep it cool. What I’m about to show you, you can’t tell anyone, okay? This can’t be like the time we drove up to Montreal when we were eighteen and you caved to my parents when they saw a Canadian leaf sewn onto your jacket.”

“Fine,” the blue-haired female said, her voice testy.

The maker’s kin turned to the male. “Swear on something you hold sacred, Marshall.”

He thought for a moment before answering. “Okay,” he
said. “I swear that I won’t freak out. I swear on my limited-edition original Dungeons and Dragons Red Box set.”

“Okay,” Alexandra said, unsure. “I’m going to assume that’s something really ‘special’ to you.”

“Just tell us, already,” the blue-haired one said in agitation.

“Screw telling,” the maker’s kin said. “I’m skipping straight to the showing.” She turned to face me and walked over to where I stood crouched at the building’s edge. Her mouth turned up in a half smile. “I’m nervous, like I’m introducing a new boyfriend to them.”

“Lex…?” the blue-haired one said. “Who are you talking to?”

The maker’s kin spun around to them. “Arise,” she said.

One rule told me not to reveal myself to others, as it had done so for centuries, yet despite it, I rose up from my crouch to the full extent of my height, wings spread out behind me. The blue-haired one and the male both stepped back from me toward the door, reaching out to grab onto each other in support.

“I’m a big fat liar,” the male said, fumbling to grab the blue-haired woman’s hand. “I need to freak out. You can have my Red Box D and D set.”

She took his hand and stumbled toward me, pulling the man along behind her. “Sweet mother of
what the hell is that
?”

“That,” the maker’s kin said, “is Stanis. My great-great-grandfather crafted him. Stanis, this is my oldest friend, Aurora. Rory, for short. The man cowering behind her is Marshall.”

“It’s a living effing
gargoyle
,” the male said from behind the blue-haired woman. “Jesus, Lexi, step away from it! We fight these things all the time in my weekly campaign. That thing will
kill
us…won’t it?”

“I don’t know,” the maker’s kin said, holding a hand out toward me. “Why don’t you ask him that for yourselves?”

The man gave a sickly smile. “For real?”

She nodded.

He stepped out from behind the other girl, turning to
address me. “What
are
you?” the male asked, then added, “Sir.”

“I am Stanis,” I said, meeting his eyes, “and as you say, I am an effing gargoyle.”

The maker’s kin laughed and I cocked my head at her.

“You don’t need to use the word
effing
,” the maker’s kin said. “Marshall said that as a statement of surprise more than anything. It’s shorthand for a worse one, actually.”

“So noted,” I said. “I believe I know what one you mean. I have heard that word much these many years, but have not had any opportunity yet to use it myself. It has been a long time since I have conversed, since my maker, Alexander, went away.”

The man took a step toward me, then stopped, looking up into my face, serious. “So to be clear…you do not intend us any harm?”

I thought for a moment. “I cannot say,” I said. “That would depend.”

He narrowed his eyes, one foot sliding away from me in retreat. “On?”

“Do you mean any harm to the Belarus family?” I asked.

“Nope,” he said with no hesitation, and I saw there was pure truth in the word.

“Then I do not intend you any harm.”

The blue-haired one approached me and pressed her hands to my chest, her flesh cool against the stone of my skin. There was no fear in this one, only wonder. “Holy hell,” she said. “This thing killed that man? The one who attacked you?”

The maker’s kin nodded. “Apparently, it was built to protect us,” she said.

“From what?”

“There are those who would harm your family,” I said to her, then turned to her friends. “I have seen to their protection.”

The blue-haired one patted my chest. “Thanks for that,” she said, and stepped back from me.

“I need no thank-you,” I said. “I am merely functioning as I was meant to.”

“Whatever,” she said. “Nonetheless, anyone who keeps my oldest friend from being stabbed to death in an alley has my thanks.”

“Very well,” I said.

The blue-haired woman let go of the man’s hand and crossed her arms. “So what do Doug and Julie think about all this?”

“I haven’t told them. I don’t think they know and I’m not sure I’m up for that conversation quite yet. Nor was I up for my last conversation with them, either, where I told them that we don’t think my brother’s death was an accident.”

“You don’t?” the male asked.

Rory held up a hand. “Wait. ‘We’ who?”

“Stanis and I,” the maker’s kin said.

“How can you say it wasn’t an accident?” the male asked.

The maker’s kin turned to me. “Tell them about the building on St. Mark’s that collapsed and killed Devon.”

“I have known of that building for a long time,” I said. “I know most of the buildings fashioned by my maker. The stone was sound in that one. It was strong. That building did not come down by accident, I assure you.”

“Someone wanted Devon dead,” the maker’s kin said. “Not sure why, considering I found out today that he’s not even really part of the family.”

“What?” the blue-haired woman said. “I’m sorry, Lexi. Maybe I’m a bit overwhelmed with sensory input right now, but what are you talking about?”

“Some regrettable patriarchal choices on my father’s behalf years ago,” she said. “Male heir to the throne BS and all that. He was adopted. It’s been a rough forty-eight hours, between learning that, that my brother was probably murdered, and the two attempts on my life.”