Page 3 of Etched in Stone
“It wasn't my fault. I was captured, held prisoner. I wouldn’t have left Jessennia, you girls,” he said as he motioned to the chains. “But I got free. And I promise, we'll all go, the four of us, to where it's safe.”
“Four?” There was something in her voice that made his skin crawl ominously. She was stalling, waiting, and in his heart, he knew, deep down that something was terribly wrong. He almost didn't have the breath to ask.
“Olivia. What happened?”
“She went looking for you. Every afternoon, the churchyards, the buildings, anywhere she could think to find a big statue or thing like you. She kept saying, you'd never just leave on purpose, without saying anything,” Olivia stammered, beginning to tear up.
“I wouldn't. They took me,” he remind her.
“I know. I even joked about it. That you'd gone secretly away to Germany, to kill Hitler and get
this nonsense over with quickly so that Daddy would let you... though that was never going to happen.
I mean, you've got wings! Definitely not normal.”
“Olivia.”
“They say she got caught in a raid. Two weeks ago. She's gone. It's just me here now. I lied. Told them I was eighteen in order to stay here with her. But now, it's just me.”
He collapsed onto the rooftop, wanted to crumble into a million pieces. Wanted go into a deep stone sleep and not emerge until the wind had worn away his features to nothing.
“Please,” he heard Olivia cry. Her tears had truly erupted now. She'd probably not allowed herself to mourn either her sister or her father properly. “Please don't leave me alone.”
He held out his arms and she stepped into his embrace. He folded his wings around them. It was not the embrace of love that he had longed for, that his bones ached for, but one of protection. He would not abandon Olivia.
1
JE SSE
PRESENT DAY
The bathroom was trying to kill her. At first, it had been a simple toilet banshee, a high pitched whine in the old pipes every time she flushed the toilet. Then, an entire chunk of tile had crashed down near her toes while she had been showering. With just enough of a rinse to get the shampoo out of her hair, Jesse hopped out around the debris and toweled off. She grabbed the nearest clothing, a ratty t-shirt she normally painted in, and an equally spotted pair of jeans.
“Crap, crap, crappity, crap!” she sang to herself.
She was going to have to see the super. She hated going to see the super. For a start, he was old and grumpy. Secondly, and most importantly, every time she went to see him, she expected him to remember that she owed him money. A lot of money. She scraped up rent when she could, but for the past two years of occupying her studio apartment, she’d missed quite a number of months.
The life of an artist wasn’t easy in New York. She still couldn’t quite see how her Aunt Olivia had managed it for all those years. Probably the same way she had: hoping and praying that the super, Ray, would keep forgetting about the rent.
Jesse missed Olivia. She had been the youngest old person Jesse had met when she’d been dropped off that first summer when she’d been ten. Right away, Jesse had been put to work, holding iron bars while her great aunt welded them in some pattern that only she could see.
That’s where she’d caught the bug. Art. It had seeped into her veins and into her heart. Working a desk job would have probably killed her.
If the tile didn’t get her first.
Jesse had never understood why the building owner let the super live in one of the two penthouse apartments. She would have thought that it would have been the highest rent in the building and therefore premium, but no, Jesse shared that luxury with not a hot, rich celebrity but a grumpy old man that she rarely saw unless she was actively seeking him out. Most of the time, it felt like she had the space to herself.
Her studio was actually two levels, a living level with her twin bed, kitchen and couch, and her
art level, up a narrow set of stairs that opened up to a grand set of skylights. Her apartment opened up to a rooftop garden that she knew Ray must totter around in because it was always watered and pruned. There was enough space for her to take her art outside and paint when the weather was good.
There was a large gargoyle statue in the corner that stooped over the street as if watching and waiting to swoop down upon some unsuspecting person below. It had been there for as long as she could remember.She remembered asking Olivia about it on several occasions, but her aunt had been cagey about its origins. The sculpture didn’t seem to jive with Olivia’s usual aesthetic. Usually, she was in to randomly placed arms and rather abstract statuary. But this was a well sculpted, proportionate male gargoyle that could only be described as handsome.
As a child, he had fascinated her. She’d always imagined that he had his own story. She'd talked to him, even though she'd never given him a name, and stroked the smooth stone of his wing. As a teenager, she'd ogled over his perfectly chiseled chest and his prominent chin. The bones beneath his eyebrows curled out just enough to settle into two small horn points on his head, which Jesse thought made him look more mischievous than devilish, though the frown on his face was sad and heart heavy.
Sometimes, she even fancied that he moved.
Jesse didn't take the garden entrance to Ray's apartment. That would have been a little creepy. She respected his privacy and he respected hers. Instead, she took the hallway past the elevator that led to his front door. She rang the bell and waited. Nothing. She was beginning to suspect that Ray was hard of hearing.
