Stone Guardian(49)

Should she call out, maybe wave her arms like she had done the first day?

Her reverie was interrupted by Terak dropping beside her.

“Terak!” she cried, her hand going over her heart. “You scared me!” That was what one called an understatement. These days a stray leaf was enough to get her jumping.

“My apologies,” he replied, but that deep voice didn’t quite convey that sentiment. He sounded far away, his mind and thoughts in another place and another conversation.

Leader of a Clan. She watched over one hundred students and she’d explode at the end of every day. To know a whole race depended on your every decision? She added a note of teasing to her voice, to let him know no harm done. “If my life keeps up at this pace, I’m going to have a heart attack by the time I’m thirty.” She took a deep breath, trying to settle her racing pulse, when a thought struck. “Do gargoyles age like humans?”

He turned his attention to her then, finally shaking off whatever shackles he arrived with. “Yes, our lifespans are quite similar.”

She motioned to his wings. “But you guys have that cool healing power.”

His brow bone arched above his right eye. No fair, even without eyebrows he could do the eyebrow arch. Why could she never manage that? “Cool?” And she might be wrong, but there sounded like a hint of tease underlining his words, the same tone he used after he had been healed.

She crossed her arms over her chest. “Are you asking me what it means, or are you questioning my choice of outdated slang?”

He mirrored her body language, though watching those massive arms stretch over his impressive chest brought a pounding of her heart that had nothing to do with fright. “You are a teacher. Do you not know the new slang by listening to them?”

“No, kids only speak new slang when they don’t want you to know what they’re talking about. They use the classics around us old people.” She motioned to his wing again before returning to her arms crossed position. “Healing factor?”

Instead of his usual almost smile she got the real thing, small and quick and unexpected and it wasn’t until her lungs told her to bring in some oxygen that she remembered – breathing, a good thing. “I am glad you approve of it, though I do not think of it as cool, more as necessity. You need every advantage in battle.”

She nodded. “Understood. I’m still going with cool.”

“You do that.” Damn, she really liked that teasing note in his voice. It was rusty, hesitant, and she held close the thought that it might be because he used it with no one else but her. He continued, “I have a gift for you.”

“A gift?” Her inner seven-year-old was jumping up and down with excitement. “What did you get me? It wasn’t necessary.”

“This gift is practical, not celebratory, but as you requested it, I wished you to get it as soon as it was ready.”

Into her hand he placed a small silver ball with an unknown script etched into the casing. “What’s this?”

“A way to contact me. Hold it in your hands and think my name, and I will answer you.”

“We’ll be able to talk telepathically?” Wow, this was… this was… Yes, everything ran on magic these days – from cars to telephones – but in the city people tried to minimize that as much as possible. They used magic only for the necessities, and they never used it in such a way that it was obvious magic was responsible for what was going on.

This was something she’d never had before. Pure magic, and a being who encouraged her to use it.

“Yes. No matter where I am in this world, I will hear your call, and I will answer.”

Her fingers curled around the silver ball, so tight the language might have etched itself into her skin. “Thank you so much.”

“Do not thank me. It is a selfish gift.”

“Selfish?”

His midnight eyes locked with hers. “Now I will always be able to talk with you.”

Didn’t gargoyle men know you couldn’t say that to a human woman? Not if you didn’t want her to lose her ability to think and definitely not if you wanted to keep any kind of emotional distance.

Human men needed to explain the basics. A How to Deal with Women summit. Nothing would bond the races faster.

But this gift also meant another obligation on him, on top of the thousands of obligations he was answerable to every day of his life. And as amazing as this feeling was, she didn’t want to experience it if all he received on his side was the look of burden he had arrived with tonight. Pulling herself away from his eyes, she motioned to the empty expanse of horizon before them. “It’s a gorgeous night. Don’t you get tired of watching over me? There must be other things you could be doing?”