Maybe if he'd spent the night with me in my monstrous form, that's not how it would go. Maybe there'd be bandages or wary stares, or he'd simply slip out at the first chance.

A bell blared over the speaker above the door. The moon had set, the electricity would be turned back on, and we would all scramble into our showers and hope the hot water lasted long enough to wash away the blood or sore muscles. It never did.

Maybe anything is better than this, I thought, not for the first time, and then I braced myself against the wall and struggled to stand.

CHAPTER 11

Rafe

The farther you got from downtown, the lower the roofs settled, like the peak of a mountain rolling down into hills. The average gargoyle in Chicago—there were few, so an average was meaningless, really—did what they had to for the budget to live in one of the better downtown high rises. Maybe at one point in my MSA career, I might've considered moving in that direction, but with a gradually shrinking client list that was out of the question. And actually, I liked Edgewater, far north of the crush and close to the water.

I'd managed to snag a good studio apartment near the top of one of the taller waterfront locations last year, and while it'd needed more than a reasonable amount of renovation, that helped keep the price down and saved me from wiping my savings. Which was good, considering it might dwindle if I wasn't careful at work.

I paused in front of my kitchen counter, staring down at my experimental vegetable lasagne. Thinking of work only brought one topic to mind—Hannah.

The sight of the scars rushing over her back, cast in silver by moonlight, still swollen and surrounded by red in some spots. The tangle of limbs clamped around me as I came, and the cling of her as I grew too limp and heavy for her to reasonably bear, though she didn't push me away. The way she was tense and sharp as an arrow when she walked in the door, and then as loose and relaxed as a silk ribbon by the morning, and the way that made me want to twist and wrap her around me all over again.

Except Hannah was the last part of my work I needed to be thinking about, the only client who wasn't dissatisfied with my service. I'd lost another one this week, and I…

I frowned as my knuckles scraped against my mandolin slicer, and I dropped the onion to the countertop.

I couldn't remember her name. She was a chimera, and she'd only been partnering with me for a few months. We didn't talk much during our sessions outside of quick questions and commands. She preferred me silent and obedient.

The phone rang on the counter and I startled, glancing up at the clock and bracing myself.

Right. It was Sunday, it was two, and my parents were calling.

"Hey, Pop," I answered, opening the cabinet in front of me and propping my phone up against the plates so my face was at camera level as I worked on prepping vegetables.

"He's on his way," a soft voice answered, and I blinked, looking up.

My mom was on the screen, the warm sandstone color of her cheeks so uniquely familiar to me—the only face in the world that could make my chest twinge with immediate relief and guilt at the same time. My dad was puttering in the background, a great gray shadow to her slighter, brighter shape, probably grabbing whatever scientific journal he'd gotten recently, articles tabbed and at the ready. Dad had a hard time making conversation and knowing what questions to ask, so instead he usually just came prepped with whatever information he found most interesting lately. Mom's lips twitched as he rustled papers, and we shared a private moment of humor.

My mom's dad was an imp, the only species close enough to a gargoyle to breed with one, and the species least like gargoyles in temperament. My grandpop and grandma hadn't stayed together, but he'd whisked in and out of my mom's life on a regular basis, and he was a staple of my childhood, wily and clever and delighted with my aptitude for mischief and adventure. Where gargoyles were staid, imps were mutable. They liked travel and activity and collecting acquaintances. Gargoyles preferred stability, familiarity, and routine. I wasn't exactly sure how my grandpop had landed my gran in the first place, even for the few years he'd managed to stay still, but while it was clear that where his imp genes had lent themselves to my mom's coloring, they'd trickled down to me in their own unique way.

"What are you working on?" my mom asked, recognizing the surroundings of my kitchen in the picture on her screen.

"New recipe for a client," I said.

Mom blinked, probably as confused by that answer as I was. I cooked for all my clients, although usually not with a great deal of effort. That wasn't why they hired me. It wasn't why Hannah hired me either, but it was one of the stimulation markers in her file that I actually excelled at. I was a rabid eater, cheerfully guzzling down anything edible in reach, but I was a really good cook. Dad's interest in science tended toward the world around us, geology and astronomy, the slow shifting changes of our universe and long-studied discoveries. I liked the faster and more immediate experimentation of the kitchen.

"Trying to see if I can make a lasagne out of just vegetables," I continued.

Mom and Dad knew about my job, and while sex wouldn't suit most gargoyles, it wasn't frowned upon by any means. My life, my choices, baffled my father. Mom, though, had grown up with an imp father who loved her beyond measure, but whose nature didn't allow him to nest for decades in the same apartment complex, in the same city, day after day.

"If anyone can…" my mother said, the second half of the sentence left unspoken, a common trait in gargoyle conversation. It would be you. Gargoyles saved words where they could.

"I found an article the other day," my dad announced from off camera, and I straightened my shoulders and raised my eyebrows expectantly, like I'd been waiting all week for this moment. Mom beamed at me.

They needed this. By rights, I should've been nesting with them for another decade if I hadn't gone looking for a mate. They hadn't raised a fuss when I'd announced I wanted to go see Chicago's architecture, though Mom had cried when I'd called to tell her I was staying and Dad had frowned. They hadn't objected or even seemed that surprised. So every Sunday at two, I answered their call and listened to Dad recite at least two articles from scientific journals word for word, finishing excitedly with "What do you think about that, huh?" And I told my mom about everything I'd cooked and any news from Khell or Elias, whom she'd never met, but it made her feel better to pretend she knew my friends.

"You guys should come visit," I offered at the end, now relaxing in my secondhand armchair by the window that overlooked the lake.

Mom and Dad stirred—they hadn't moved an inch since they took their respective spots in front of the camera—and talked about their schedules for the next three months, the same schedules they'd had for the past ten years.

I smiled and nodded. "When you have time."

I would have to go back to New York for a visit soon, figure out how to propose the idea in a way that wouldn't ruffle their gravel too much. But I always offered a visit here to them, just in case. I had a feeling Mom was gently working one into the future, although it'd probably be a few years away still.