Chapter 7
“You’ve almost finished the house,” Aidan said, in the tone of a male discovering evidence.
He turned a slow circle in the middle of the entrance hall, his head tipped back to take in the ceiling.
“I mean, I knew you’d been working on it.
But this is different. The hall is really starting to look finished. ”
“It is finished.”
Aidan snorted. “You own a construction company. Nothing is ever finished.” He dropped onto the arm of the antique leather chair, one of the original pieces in the house, which Garrick had spent a fortune restoring.
“Still, it looks good. Less haunted ancestral pile. More house where a rich, sad man lives alone.”
“Get off the chair.”
Aidan got off the chair, but only to prowl over to the window, where he leaned against the sill in a bar of afternoon light, looking entirely at home.
Then again, Aidan looked at home everywhere.
Although he was as strong and powerful as most werewolves, the big redhead had an ease to him that most wolves didn’t.
Both humans and Others tended to like him on sight.
Dogs and children liked him even better.
Eric lounged against the other window, working his way through a mug of Garrick’s coffee. His eyes flicked back and forth between the two of them like a male watching a tennis match.
Aidan crossed his arms and gave him a shit-eating grin. “Tell me about the landscaper.”
He refused to rise to the bait. “What about her?”
“Just curious.” Aidan’s grin widened. “There was the newsletter. Then Eric said Flora sent her to see you. Then Robin mentioned her. Purely in passing.”
“Nothing’s ever in passing with you.”
“Robin says she’s pretty,” Aidan went on comfortably. “Robin says she has a kid. Robin says you walked her all the way back to her office to sign a contract.”
“It was on the way.”
Aidan stared at him. “On the way to where, Garrick? It’s your own house.”
He didn’t have a response.
“Anyway.” Aidan pushed off the sill. “That’s not actually why I came up.”
“I assumed it wasn’t.”
“Palisade filed on the ridge above Miller’s Creek. Sixty luxury units, a fancy lodge, and a new road up the north face. They’re calling it Hollow Ridge.” He wasn’t smiling any more. “Your name’s on the bid list.”
“Stonehaven’s on every bid list in four states.”
The bell rang. It was an old bronze pull by the front door, original to the house, and he’d spent a foolish amount of one afternoon getting the mechanism to ring true again. Now it gave a single deep note that carried the length of the hall.
He was on his feet before the note had finished, and he caught Eric watching him.
“Estimate,” he said, as though that explained the speed. “She said today.”
Aidan’s eyebrows went up, but Garrick ignored him and opened the door.
Maris stood on the top step with a cardboard folder held against her chest and dirt under her nails, her blonde hair coming loose from where she’d shoved it back that morning.
Toby stood beside her, small and neat and serious, one hand fisted in the hem of her jacket.
The other held a folded paper airplane he’d clearly been told he could bring but not fly.
Everything in Garrick’s chest settled, the way it had settled every time she came near him since the morning she first knocked, like a wall finding its footing. He had no idea what to do about it.
“Estimate,” Maris said, holding up the folder. “As promised. I warn you, the drainage line is grim.”
“Come in.”
She came in, and Toby followed her, his gaze already examining the walls, the ceiling, the great curved staircase. He took all of it in with the silent thoroughness Garrick recognized, because he did the same to buildings.
And then Aidan joined them.
“Hi there. I’m Aidan. I’ve heard about what you’ve done with the old Dolan place.
Nice to see someone using native plants.
” He extended his hand, grinning at her with his usual carefree smile.
“Of course, there is such a thing as going too native. Garrick’s grounds have looked like a jungle for years, so honestly, whatever you’re charging, it’s not enough. ”
“I’m Maris.” She shook his hand, laughing a little, clearly caught off guard by the flow of words. “It’s mostly just cutting things back far enough to see what’s underneath.”
Aidan was still holding her hand and smiling, and Garrick found he didn’t like that one little bit. His jaw tightened and his wings drew up high and close against his back. His whole body had gone rigid and territorial over a perfectly ordinary handshake he had no right whatsoever to object to.
What the hell is wrong with me?
“She found a rare fern,” he said, his voice flat.
Aidan finally let go of Maris’s hand, slowly, then looked over at him and raised an eyebrow as his grin widened.
“A rare fern? Isn’t that interesting?”
“This is a very big house,” Toby said, oblivious to the tension.
Garrick looked down. The boy had drifted a few steps out onto the marble and was staring straight up at the coffered ceiling, the paper airplane forgotten at his side. His head was tipped so far back that his soft blonde hair fell away from his forehead.
“It is.” Garrick crouched down until his eyes were almost level with Toby’s, although he was still bigger crouched than most males were standing. “It was built in eighteen fifty-seven. That ceiling is oak. Every one of those squares was carved by hand.”
Toby considered this with immense gravity. “Did it take a long time?”
“Yes.”
“Did the same person do all of them?”
“No. Six men. You can tell them apart if you look.” Garrick pointed, and Toby’s gaze followed the line of his arm. “That corner one. See the rose in the middle?”
Toby squinted. “It’s crooked.”
“That was the youngest carver. He got better. By the far wall, his roses are almost perfect. But I like the crooked one best.”
Toby studied it for a long, serious moment. “Because he was learning.”
“Because he was learning.”
Toby nodded, as though a matter of policy had been settled between them, and Garrick felt, absurdly, that he had passed a test.
When he stood, Eric was watching him over the rim of his coffee mug with an expression Garrick did not like at all. Not amused, the way Aidan was amused, but thoughtful, the way he looked at tracks he was trying to follow.
“The kitchen table has the best light,” Garrick said to Maris. “For the folder.”
“Send me the site plan for the ridge when you’ve got it,” Aidan said, as he and Eric followed them to the kitchen.
“I’ll send you the survey.”
“The site plan, Garrick.”
He ignored him and turned to Maris. She spread the estimate out on the long refectory table while Toby wandered the perimeter of the kitchen, reading the labels on cans with silent concentration. Garrick made himself look at the drainage plan. It was, as promised, grim.
Maris had caught the collapsed line under the east lawn and priced the repair three ways. In the margin she had written a small dry note—or we do nothing and it becomes a bog garden, your call—and he read it twice.
“I’d want to see where the old pipe surfaces before you sign off,” she said. “It should be near the wall by the east door. Two minutes. Toby, sweetheart, with me.”
“He can stay,” Garrick said. “If he wants.”
Toby looked up at his mother, and Maris looked at Garrick and then at her son, and something in her face gentled in a way he felt all the way down.
“He can come point out the crooked roses along the way,” she said. “So he doesn’t touch the cans. Come on, bug.”
They went. Garrick heard Toby’s small voice float back along the corridor—“This one’s oak too, isn’t it?”—followed by Maris’s answer, and then the east door opened and closed.
The two males remaining in Garrick’s kitchen said nothing. From those two, silence was considerably worse than shouting.
He turned around. Aidan had his arms folded and one shoulder against the doorframe, wearing an expression Garrick had learned to distrust.
“So,” Aidan said.
“Don’t.”
“She found a rare fern.”
“Aidan.”
“I’ve known you for nearly two years, and I’m reasonably sure that’s the first time I’ve heard you volunteer a compliment about someone’s professional accomplishments while simultaneously looking as though you wanted to remove my hand.”
“You held it too long.”
Aidan blinked, and Eric lowered his coffee mug.
“I held it a normal length of time,” Aidan said.
“You didn’t.”
“Oh, this is excellent.”
“Aidan.” Garrick’s wings snapped tight behind him with a sharp crack. “Drop it.”
The teasing look vanished as Aidan raised an eyebrow.
“Your eyes are doing something.”
“What?”
Heat stirred behind his eyes as soon as the other male said it.
He turned towards the range, where a copper pan hung above it, polished enough to throw back a distorted reflection. His face stared at him out of the curved surface, grey skin warped by the metal, his features stretched almost beyond recognition.
But his eyes were unmistakable, and gold had risen through the usual grey, bright and molten around the pupils. He had never once seen them do that before. How long had they been doing it where he couldn’t see? Behind him, Aidan was unusually silent.
“It means nothing,” he said.
“Doesn’t it?”
He turned back, and Aidan immediately held up both hands. “I’m not the gargoyle here.”
“Then stop pretending you know what it means.”
“I don’t know what it means.” Aidan’s gaze flicked towards the door Maris had disappeared through. “But I know exactly when it happened.”
His fists clenched at his sides. He’d felt the pull for eight months.
He’d awakened to it in January, weeks before he intended to emerge from stone, with the absolute certainty that something had changed.
He had traced it to the back of the property and gone no farther.
He’d investigated the wall and the ground beneath it.
He had done everything except walk around the wall and find out what had changed on the other side.
Then Flora had sent Maris Calder to his door, and the pull had acquired a face. What was he supposed to do with that?
“Garrick,” Aidan said.
“I don’t want to discuss it.”
“Fair enough.”
The immediate surrender was suspicious enough that Garrick narrowed his eyes.
Aidan shrugged. “You told me to drop it.”
“I did.”
“So I’m dropping it.” A pause. “Although for the record, you nearly growled at me over a handshake.”
“I did not growl.”
“You were thinking about it.”
“You can’t hear thoughts.”
“No, but yours get louder when you’re annoyed.”
Despite himself, Garrick almost smiled, and then Eric set his coffee mug down on the table.
“He’s not wrong,” he said calmly, and Garrick’s amusement vanished.
Eric hadn’t joined in with Aidan’s teasing. He rarely did. Eric had known Garrick most of his life, and that meant he knew when not to make a joke.
“It’s nothing,” Garrick said again.
Eric let his gaze shift briefly to Garrick’s eyes.
“I remember your father’s eyes.”
Garrick’s hand closed over the back of the nearest chair, and he heard the old wood complain before he made himself let go.
Eric didn’t explain. He didn’t need to. There were things Garrick remembered about his parents that he had spent twenty years refusing to examine too closely, and the way his father had looked at his mother was one of them. What had happened after she died was another.
Aidan glanced between them, the humor gone from his face. Whatever question occurred to him, he had enough sense not to ask it.
Garrick turned back towards the copper pan. The gold was still there.
“This proves nothing.”
“No,” Eric said.
That was all he said. No argument, no reassurance, no attempt to tell Garrick what he ought to do about something none of them understood, and for some reason that made it worse than advice would have.
Eric drained the last of the coffee and straightened. “We should go.”
Aidan looked at him. “We should?”
“Yes.”
“But I was enjoying myself.”
“I noticed.”
Aidan sighed, but he moved away from the door. “Fine. Apparently the sheriff has decided to protect you from me.”
“The sheriff has decided he has somewhere else to be.”
“Same thing.”
Garrick folded his arms. “Out. Both of you.”
Aidan stopped in front of him on his way past, and the teasing had come back, although only around the edges.
“For what it’s worth, I’ve never seen your eyes do that before.”
“You’ve known me less than two years.”
“Still counts.”
“It really doesn’t.”
“It does to me.” Aidan clapped a hand against Garrick’s shoulder and left it there for a moment, then the grin came back. “Also, I’m going to shake her hand again next time I see her. For scientific purposes.”
Garrick stared at him. Aidan laughed and moved quickly out of reach. Eric followed at a more civilized pace, and at the kitchen doorway he stopped and glanced back.
“The house looks good, Garrick.”
He frowned. “What?”
“It’s starting to look like somebody lives here now.”
Then Eric was gone.
The front door closed, and a moment later two engines started in the drive—Aidan’s battered old truck and Eric’s patrol car—and pulled away.
The kitchen settled into silence around him, and he stood alone beside the table with Maris’s estimate spread open in front of him and the gold still cooling slowly out of his eyes.
I remember your father’s eyes.
He didn’t want to remember. He didn’t want to wonder what the pull meant, or why it had dragged him out of stone in January.
He particularly didn’t want to think about why it went quiet whenever Maris was close, as though there was no longer any distance left for it to cross.
And he had no intention at all of examining why watching Aidan touch her had produced a response so immediate and primitive that his wings had nearly opened in the middle of his own entrance hall.
None of it was useful. None of it changed anything.
Then a small, delighted sound came from beyond the east door and he turned his head towards the sound. Toby’s voice rose excitedly at the end of a question, and beneath it came Maris’s laugh, low and warm.
He could stay in the house. There was an estimate to review and email waiting in his study, a dozen perfectly reasonable things requiring his attention.
Not one of them had anything whatsoever to do with a blonde woman digging holes in his garden, or with a quiet little boy who had decided a crooked wooden rose was worth noticing.
Maris laughed again.
He straightened his shoulders, folded his wings flat against his back, and went to find them.