Page 5 of The Maestro's Mates
Chapter 3
Pavel
“Maestro?” The voice was a distant echo, and the light knocking that followed barely registered to Pavel’s consciousness at all.
The world returned to him slowly.
Too slowly, slower than ever these days. It had been over a hundred years since he’d last dreamed, and now his slumber was a heavy black blanket. He’d lost his agility, both of mind and body, and could no longer move with ease between the stone form he slept in and his human one.
Little by little, the sounds of the city infiltrated his awareness. Shrill yelling, the blaring of car horns, rhythmic music drifting up from the streets below.
“Maestro Zaslavsky? Can I have a moment of your time?”
Wait. Was someone in his bedroom? Calling his name? That couldn’t be right. He slowly opened his eyes.
The light of the sun was a flash of white, saturating his field of vision. Slowly, his eyes came into focus.
He wasn’t at home at all.
As his sight adjusted, his office appeared infront of him. First, his antique mahogany desk. It was entirely clear of accoutrement, save his laptop and a leather portfolio. Then, the two small chairs, upholstered in a light pink velveteen. Finally, the few carefully curated pieces of art. A hundred-year-old bust of Tchaikovsky. A large abstract portrait of a tiger, its swirls of orange and black shifting in contrast to the gray-white walls.
He had gone to stone in his office. Dammit. That wasn’t supposed to happen. He had an area in the corner of his bedroom at home set aside for dormancy, a small, clear circle he had designated for the rare occasions he needed to sleep.
The problem was, it was becoming less rare. In his youth, Pavel had gone months without returning to his statue form. For the past few years, he’d get itchy after three or four days.
After a moment, it occurred to him he was unusually low to the ground. The top of his desk was at eye level.
The extra weight of his stone form must have broken his office chair. He sighed, although the sound barely escaped from his gradually unfreezing body. This was the first time he’d gone to sleep without actively choosing it.
He’d have to get his assistant to order him a new chair. How annoying. Choosing a chair had been a frustratingly arduous process.
He focused on that, rather than on the bigger implications. He’d gone to stone unconsciously, without intending to do so. It was disconcerting, and not just because he’d lost control. He knew that someday, maybe someday soon, he would go dormant for the last time.
The knocking was louder now that he was awake, three sharp raps. “Maestro?”
“Give me five minutes, Yasmin,” Pavel called out, squeezing the words through his still inflexible throat. Her steps were tentative as she walked away, but she was too professional to ask any questions. That was one reason he liked her.
He slowly stretched his arms out to the sides, gray stone dust falling to the carpet below. This form, his animate gargoyle form, was the hardest to maintain. He was a being of living granite. It took energy and a strength of will which he found to be in short supply. He stood, stretching his wings out behind him, enjoying the feeling of it while ignoring the effort it took to stay like this.
He hadn’t seen another gargoyle in many years. There were times, in the first thirty decades of his life, when he and his friends had stayed in their gargoyle forms for months at a time, reveling in the strength of their stone bodies, marveling at the magic that allowed them to fly despite their density.
After a moment, though, the energy drain nagged at him. Some days, maintaining this form was exhausting. In his mind’s eye, he conjured a familiar image, the human form he had taken for most of his long life. With a surge of silent encouragement, his body began to transform.
His skin shifted from a dull gray to a more vibrant tan, and his wings melted into his back. The weight of the stone disappeared, leaving only the lightness and ease of human existence.
Running his hand over his short-cropped beard, he gazed down at the floor, where the shreds of his outfit lay. His clothing hadn’t survived the unexpected change.
“Damn.” He bent over, picking up the remnants. Thank goodness he kept a spare suit in his officecloset for emergencies. Although he’d never imagined the emergency would bethis.
As Pavel opened the closet door, he tried to muster a sense of urgency, but all he could manage was dread at what Yasmin had in store for him. Part of it was the natural sluggishness and emotional drop of leaving his stone form. But that wasn’t all, or even most, of the problem.
It's not like he hated his job. The opposite, in fact. He loved working with the young artists. They were talented and eager singers in their twenties, some of the best the Manhattan Lyric had engaged in a decade. They all had promising futures in front of them.
But as he slid on a pair of charcoal gray trousers identical to the ones he’d destroyed, he couldn’t escape the sense entropy was overtaking him. He wasn’t as mentally sharp anymore. He didn’t have the same energy and enthusiasm. He’d spent his long life carefully concealing himself from the humans, keeping the supernatural world a secret, and now he’d shifted in hisoffice? That was bad.
And it wasn’t like he had other personal connections to give him a sense of perspective. He didn’t have many friends or any living family. Gargoyles were rare. Other supernatural creatures came with built-in networks. They helped each other carve out an existence, supporting each other and keeping each other safe from human exposure. He didn’t have that. He had his job, and he had the television at home where he watched his reality shows.
After changing, Pavel smoothed out his shirt and took a deep breath. Yasmin was waiting on him. He had to leave his office. He’d probably have to speak to multiple people.
