“The magazine office we’re looking for is at the wrong end of Main Street.” Donovan nodded at the Lincoln’s windshield.
Riga slowed, turning the corner onto Main Street and driving past her old hotel. “You’ve already figured out the wrong and right ends?”
“The right end is the tourist center, where the money is made. Though if things don’t start to change, I’m not sure how much longer that will last. I don’t like those boarded-up windows.”
She pulled behind a familiar-looking pickup. It had taken the last shady spot on the street. Riga cracked her window open.
Donovan stepped from the car, and she joined him in the street.
“A nice example of art deco,” he said.
Rig thought it looked like an oversized crypt. She peered at figures on the roofline. Gargoyles. She’d always had a soft spot for gargoyles.
Jayce emerged from the three-story building. The earth witch pulled out a phone and hesitated on the sidewalk. Something rasped, faint.
One of the gargoyles leaned into the street, as if it would launch itself from the roof. Riga frowned.
And then the gargoyle was bulleting toward the sidewalk. Riga sucked in a sharp breath.
Jayce tensed and leapt forward, directly into the gargoyle’s path.
Automatically, Riga reached for the in-between. She touched warm stone and shoved.
The gargoyle jerked sideways two feet above Jayce’s head. It smashed to the sidewalk beside the young woman.
Jayce cried out and rubbed her calf.
Donovan raced across the street. Shakily, Riga followed.
She’d never done that before. She’d never reached through the in-between to affect something in this world. Hadn’t known she could do it. Why had the instinct taken hold of her now? And why had it worked here, in Doyle, when nothing else seemed to without a protective salt circle?
Donovan took Jayce’s arm and helped her straighten. “Let me see your leg.”
Jayce stood still while he rolled up the leg of her jeans. A gargoyle eye stared up at Riga, accusing. She swayed, transfixed, and saw the fragments of a different gargoyle. A different time, a different place.
“No punctures,” Donovan said. His voice was muffled, as if heard through water. “But it looks like there’ll be some bruising.”
Elegant curves of stone wing. Broken talons. A carved eye. Pulverized granite speckling the thick, white carpet. Scorched stone, and the smell like a dentist’s drill on enamel. And then she was back in the gas station, and the blood…
Jayce braced one hand on the gray building. “What the hell?”
That stone eye… Hot fury exploded in her head. Riga pivoted and raced through the tall, greenish doors.
“Riga?” Donovan called after her.
An elderly man looked up from behind a desk. “What can I—”
“One of your gargoyles fell. Where are the stairs to the roof?” She scanned the oddly dark room. An enormous safe at the back, and a hallway off to the right.
“What? Fell? A gar—”
“Never mind.” She jogged between the desks and to the darkened hallway. Riga strode past two offices, their doors open.
The occupants looked up in surprise.
Ignoring them, she found a narrow stairway. She fumbled for a light switch and touched only smooth wall. Blindly, one hand gripping the rail, Riga climbed to the second floor and touched a wooden door. Locked. She continued upward.
The stairs ended at a metal door. Fumbling, she opened it, the door swinging silently. She moved onto the rooftop and blinked in the brightness.
No one was there.
Cautiously, she walked the roof’s perimeter. Riga studied the remaining the gargoyles, crouched on the ledge, their lichen-covered spines hunched.
They seemed affixed well enough. Though a crack ran behind the masonry of one gargoyle with batlike ears.
She walked to the front of the building and looked down. The gargoyle lay in pieces on the sidewalk. Donovan and Jayce had vanished.
“Hey,” a man shouted behind her. “You can’t be up here.”
Heat flooded her body. “One of your gargoyles nearly crushed a woman.” Jaw clenching, Riga pointed to the empty spot and turned toward him.
“What are you—?” A bearlike man strode to her. He looked down and paled. “Oh my God. What—?”
Jayce and Donovan emerged on the graveled rooftop.
Hayleigh, panting, staggered onto the roof behind them. “I told them they can’t come up—”
“It’s okay,” the big man said. “Jayce. Was it you? Were you the one?”
“The one what?” Hayleigh asked.
“I’m fine,” Jayce said. “And yeah, your gargoyle tried to brain me.”
“Gargoyle?” Hayleigh yelped. “What gargoyle?”
“Stetson,” Jayce said. “Meet my friends Riga and Donovan. They saw the gargoyle fall. Stetson is Mac’s brother. Hayleigh—”
“We’ve met,” Riga said shortly. “Does this building have a back door?”
“Gargoyle?” Hayleigh braced her hands on her thighs and wheezed. “What are you talking about?”
“There’s a back door,” Stetson said slowly. “I’m surprised you didn’t see it. It’s right by the stairwell.”
But Riga’s focus had been on getting to the roof without breaking a leg on the stairs, so she hadn’t noticed in the dark. She ground her teeth. She should have noticed. Riga nodded. “Is it unlocked?”
“Sometimes,” Stetson said.
She walked past the others and made her way down the still-dark stairs. A power outage? Or had someone flipped the fuse?
“I don’t understand...” Hayleigh’s voice drifted behind her.
Riga felt her way down the steps to the ground floor. The hallway was lighter, dirty sunlight streaming through a transom over a door at the end of the hall. She turned the knob, and it opened easily.
Riga stepped outside, into a small, shaded parking area. She let the door clang shut, then tried the door again. It hadn’t locked automatically behind her.
Someone could have snuck into the building this way, and then to the roof. Riga swallowed. If she and Donovan hadn’t arrived at exactly the right time…
She returned inside.
Voices, growing closer, echoed in the stairwell, and Riga waited at their base.
“—starting to think this magazine is a curse.” Stetson stepped into the narrow hallway.
“Let’s hope not,” Riga said. “Where were you last night after seven o’clock?”
He blinked. “I was at Antoine’s. Why?”
“That’s the western bar,” Jayce explained.
“How long were you there?” Riga demanded, her voice echoing off the linoleum.
“Until closing,” he said.
At the end of the hall, an elderly woman walked past the entrance and peered at them curiously.
“And you?” Riga turned toward Hayleigh.
“I was at home, of course. What’s this about?”
“At least one more of those gargoyles may be at risk,” Donovan said.
“I’ll take care of it,” Stetson said.
“I want that yearbook back,” Hayleigh snapped.
“No problem,” Riga said.
Jayce’s green eyes widened. “Yearbook?”
“Have you checked the fuse box?” Riga asked Stetson.
“Yes. It’s not us. Power’s out all over town. They didn’t give us any warning this time.”
Riga nodded. California had been cursed with rolling blackouts during the summer and fall when electricity use was high.
“Jayce,” Stetson said, “I’m really sorry about… It’s an old building. Are you sure you’re not hurt?”
“I’m fine,” she said.
He mumbled more apologies, and the three escaped.
Jayce rubbed her lower leg. “I could use a drink.”
So could Riga. She clawed a hand through her hair. If another innocent had died on her watch—
“I hear there’s a great western bar around here,” Donovan said. “Antoine’s?”
Jayce smiled. “Yeah. Antoine’s.”
The three of them walked down the wood-plank sidewalk to the bar. Donovan pushed through the batwing doors and paused. The bar was dim and shadowy, and its patrons fell silent.
Riga smiled, imagining their figures framed against the sunlight, but her worry remained. “Stop showing off.”
He cast a wicked grin over his shoulder, then stepped aside and motioned the two women in.
Sawdust floors. Antique brass lamps that a gray-haired man in an apron was lighting with a long match. A bar you could dance on. It was the sort of place that suited Riga fine. They made their way to a corner booth.
Jayce eased herself into the booth and sighed, straightening her right leg.
“How’s that feeling?” Donovan sat opposite her and slid over on the bench, making room for Riga.
“It’s only a little achy, I think more from my great leap forward than from gargoyle shrapnel.”
“You were lucky.” He passed Riga a sharp glance.
“What were you doing in there?” Riga asked.
Jayce bit her lip and told them what she’d learned from Stetson. “It seems like Stetson is running that magazine more out of obligation than because he wants it. I don’t think his inheritance is a motive for murder.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” Donovan motioned negligently with one hand. “Oh, I believe what you said, but he could have been lying. And obligation can be a heavy burden.”
“How prominent is Stetson around town?” Riga squinted. The oil lamps were atmospheric, but in their dim light it was hard to catch the details of Jayce’s expression.
“I’d say he’s pretty well-known,” Jayce said. “All the business owners know him, at least.”
“Then we should be able to confirm his alibi,” Riga said. “Who here would be the best person to do that?”
“Antoine. He’s here every night, and he buys ads in the magazine. He knows Stetson.” Jayce pointed to a gray-haired man behind the bar. “I’ll ask.” She rose and went to the bar.
“That falling gargoyle wasn’t a coincidence,” Donovan said.
“No.” And why did it have to be a gargoyle?
“And the falling gargoyle is a little on the nose.”
“Tell me about it,” she muttered. “Jayce could have—”
“But she didn’t. You did your job. You kept her safe.”
“We were lucky.” But luck wouldn’t always be on their side, and mistakes could be deadly. They had been deadly.
Jayce returned and slid into the high-backed booth. “Antoine said Stetson was here all right and drunk as a skunk.”
“Does he usually drink?” Donovan asked.
Jayce’s face creased. “No, he doesn’t.”
The phone rang in Riga’s satchel, and she pulled it out. “Hello?”
“Riga, this is Lenore.”
“Hi, Lenore,” Riga said for the others’ benefit. “What’s going on?”
“Well. Nothing.”
Riga frowned, not in the mood for more riddles. “What do you mean?”
“It’s Brigitte. She’s missing.”