In Stone by Louise D. Gornall Read Free Book Online Page B

flick my eyes toward the thick tentacle strangling my wrist.
    “That? That’s a curse.”
    “Some curse.”
    “Can I let you go?” I shrug sharply because…because I’m being petulant. He doesn’t indulge me in debate, but he does roll his eyes. His fingers loosen; his tail unwinds itself, and my hands are free.
    “Let’s talk.”
    I’m free. But I don’t want to run. I want to hear what he has to say. I want to know who he is. I want to know about the knife. I want to know why I was almost killed tonight. I want to know…where his tail has disappeared to. I tilt as far right as I can without toppling over and scan the scene behind him.
    It’s gone.
    He laughs, catching my arm before I hit the deck because my tilt has turned into a full on timber! I shake him off me, stand up straight, clear my throat; and feign disinterest in the evaporation of his tail.
    “Go ahead,” I say, sweeping a sarcastic hand through the air. “Talk.” His cheeks swell, and he exhales a deep breath.
    “Do you have it, the knife?” Oh no! No way am I giving that little slice of information away. My knowledge of the knife’s whereabouts is leverage. For all I know it’s the only reason I’m still alive. I intend to tell him this, prove that I know how to play the game, but my eyes have popped, and a sort of whinnying sound is coming out of my mouth. He’s got the message before I can sound out a single syllable.
    “Okay. Fair enough. Why don’t you tell me what you know about the knife.”
    “That’s easy. Nothing. Some crumbling guy falls out of the sky…”
    “Nicholas,” he interrupts.
    “What?”
    “His name was Nicholas. And he was not some crumbling guy. He was a Gargoyle.”
    I think I’ve offended him, but he’ll have to deal. My blood is still boiling; my throat is still being crushed in the Switch. My house is still a shit hole.
    “He’s dead,” I say. Now that was tactless. I don’t mean to be so blunt. The words taste like poison as they skate over my tongue. Jack’s head dips. He already knows he’s dead; he’d referred to him in the past tense. He didn’t need me to reiterate. I feel pride, or empathy, or some nice, wholesome part of my soul curl up in the pit of my stomach and disown me.
    “When you say gargoyle, you mean like…stone?” He nods and then clearly doesn’t feel the need to expand on that.
    “Nicholas wasn’t supposed to die. We’re immortal. We can’t die…”
    “Immortal?” I laugh. The look on his face tells me there’s nothing funny about this situation. “But Nicholas did die; I saw it.”
    “Yes. Thank you. I got that. You really don’t have to keep saying it.” Jack turns and slowly strolls back into the center of the room. His back is to me. My eyes zero in on his butt. I’m looking for a tail, not checking him out. Granted, he has a great ass. And sturdy shoulder blades that sit like rocks under his shirt. But I’m not checking him out. There is no sign of the snaky appendage.
    “I’m sorry,” I say, snarling at him, snarling at myself -- I’m not quite sure. “I’m just trying to make sense of this.”
    “It was the knife that killed him. It’s poisonous. It has the power to shut down our defenses, to smother whatever it is that makes us immortal.”
    A load of images flash through my mind. Nicholas’s cracking skin, his strange luminous eyes, his body exploding into a shower of glitter. And then I see Jack. His tail, his face healing over like that. It makes sense. I wish it didn’t, but it does. I pinch my arm; it sings all the way down to my elbow.
    “That’s what we are -- what we were,” he corrects, turning to face me.
    “You’re telling me this knife is some kind of otherworldly immortal slayer?” Logic has packed its bags, left my brain, and there’s a good chance that I’ll never see it again.
    “Pretty much,” he says with a weak smile. “Beau, I’m going to need that knife back.”
    “You can’t have it.”
    “Weren’t