“Fuck, that’s cold!” he cursed fiercely. Kat hurried away and came back with a stack of fresh towels, pressing them onto him.

“You should have let me go!” she said.

“What’s done is done,” was his only reply. Realizing she wasn’t going to get anywhere, she retreated into the kitchen to tend to her neglected pan. When she turned around, she did a sharp about-face right back again. She’d just gotten an eyeful of gorgeous gluteus maximus as he whipped away his wet towel and replaced it with a warm, dry one. From that moment on she studiously focused on the stir-fry she was putting together for them.

“So … if the newscasters were no’ lying tae us, this storm will blow out in another twelve hours. We can go then.”

“First of all, just because the storm ends it doesn’t mean we can go anywhere. Not for days, considering how far up the mountain we are and how much snow they are expecting. And second of all, what do you mean ‘we’? I’m not going anywhere!”

“First of all, if you want that bloody necklace off you you are going tae have tae come wi’ me. Second of all, I doona bloody have days! Two at worst. Three at best. If I doona get back in time …” He trailed off, running an agitated hand through his dark hair.

“What? What’ll happen if you don’t get back in time?”

“I … it would be bad. ’Tis all I’m going to say about it,” he said, a definitive shutting down of the topic.

“Fine!” she snapped, pushing the meat around in the pan angrily. But after a moment she slowed and reached to fondle the cold metal of the Amulet. “Do you think they can get it off? The people you want to bring me to?”

“I’ve a fair idea they might. There’s a man there, if you can call him a man, named Kamenwati. He is well versed in magics of all kinds. If anyone is going tae know how tae get the bloody thing off, it will be him.”

“If you can call him a man?”

“Douche bag is a better word.”

She burst out with a sharp laugh. “Tell me how you really feel!”

He grimaced. “We have history.”

“What kind of history?”

He moved into the kitchen and retook his stool.

“He was my forger.”

“He wrote bad checks for you?” she asked.

“No,” he smiled with amusement, but it was a wry sort of smile. “Gargoyles are forged, lass. He was the man who forged me.”

“You mean he’s your creator.”

“No. God is my creator. Kamenwati is the man who made an abomination of that creation.”

She whipped around to face him. “You are not an abomination!”

“You are no’ weird,” he countered. They both frowned, inwardly admitting to themselves that they were hard on themselves as far as their feelings about what the outside world would make of them.

“So how exactly is a Gargoyle forged?”

“You take a man like any other, and you take a beast. Using complex spells you can make a combination of the two, but it cannot be living matter into living matter. You need—”

“A stone statue. A Gargoyle.”

“Aye. Usually a Gargoyle. The spell takes the essence of each and combines them into the stone receptacle. The bodies die and only the souls remain. Then the Gargoyle is branded by his maker and becomes slave to his house.”

“Slave!”

“Aye,” he said. “Kat lass, your food is burning.”

“Oh!” She swept the pan from the stove and quickly dished it onto twin plates. She stood on one side of the counter while he sat on the other.

“A slave? You were a slave?” Her eyes fell to the brand on his chest, the burn of snakes wrapping around a dagger like the medical caduceus.

“Aye, I was. For thirty years.”

“Thirty years! H-how old are you?”

“Three hundred and fifty-two.”

“Three hundred and …” She swallowed hard. “How is it possible for him to keep you a slave for thirty years? I mean, you’re so big, and if you can turn to stone, you must be practically invulnerable. How …?”

“He created a failsafe. It’s called a touchstone. A small stone that they cleave from the Gargoyle at the time of his making. That stone must be imbued with a Bodywalker’s energy on a regular basis and every day the stone must be returned to where it was cleaved. The Gargoyle must sleep in contact with that stone again in order to heal and regenerate. If no’ … if no’ they risk permanent being. Turning to stone permanently. Pretty much one of the few ways we can be killed.”

“So in order to be free you had to take the stone with you?”

“Aye. And something that small makes it easy tae lock up and tae hide. And since sunlight turns us tae stone, they make certain we’re in the sun before bringing it out. If they want tae punish us they will push us tae risk permanent being, knowing ’tis the thing we fear above all else.”

“So … how did you escape?”

“My maker had left his stones out of hiding that day. He rarely made such a mistake, believe me. I had been watching and waiting for years before he made this one li’le mistake. But even though it was out in the open it was still protected by spellwork. A lashing out of sorts. Taking the stone meant taking the hit.”

“Oh my God. It almost killed you didn’t it?”

“Aye,” he said softly before turning his attention to the meal she’d made. She let him eat for a short while, although with the speed he was eating at, a short while was more than long enough.

“I was going to say ‘so then you escaped’ but it wasn’t that simple was it? You were badly injured and these people, these Bodywalkers sound very powerful.”

He nodded then ventured to look at her. “The details are no’ important. Only the result. I’ve been a free man ever since.”

Until recently, he thought grimly. But he didn’t feel it necessary to tell her the details of how she had come to find him if she wasn’t flat out asking him for them.

“So how many days without a touchstone does it take before permanent being?” she asked with a delicate sort of curiosity, as if she were afraid he might find the query offensive. He did not. But neither would he tell her just how close he was to the condition himself. He wouldn’t worry her unless he absolutely had to.