I faced the yard. The damned statue was missing.
“Shit,” I murmured.
As if my whisper had brought it to life, a large, lean black panther slunk along the edge of the garden, yellow-green eyes fixed on me. He no longer appeared half human but all beast.
The smooth slice of Jimmy’s switchblade announced his presence at my side. The cat shrieked, a wild, furious, primeval call that did not belong in a backyard in Milwaukee.
The animal’s tail switched back and forth. His paws were huge, his claws even huger. The thing snarled and bared teeth that seemed sharper than average, though my experience with panthers was very limited.
Jimmy flipped his knife around, something he did when he was nervous, then stepped forward. I pulled my own knife and joined him.
I was so glad we’d come to Milwaukee. The thought of that thing crashing into Megan’s house, hunting Megan and the kids . . .
The panther charged. I was so preoccupied with the image of finding the Murphys the same way I’d found Xander that I was too slow, and the beast slashed my arm. I dropped the knife.
Jimmy sliced the panther across the back. The animal roared, but he didn’t burst into ashes.
“Fuck,” Jimmy muttered.
Not a shifter. Which meant we could poke the panther with silver until we were old and gray, but he wasn’t going to die. Now what?
In the past, Ruthie would have told me ahead of time what we were facing. We would have found out how to kill him through research—books, Internet, phone calls to other DKs. But now we were floundering around a bit blind, and I hated it.
The panther crouched, belly to the ground, tail twitching, rear end shifting. Jimmy shouted, “Lizzy!” and threw himself in front of me just as the cat launched himself into the air.
As the paws left the earth, the animal became a man; inch by inch the beast arched, going up a panther, coming back down a person. He crashed into Jimmy, who smashed into me, and we all fell in a tangle of legs and arms onto the dry grass.
Jimmy grabbed for the guy, but he slipped away—it’s hard to get a grip on the naked. Instead of running or kicking, biting, scratching and punching, he went to his knees.
“Mistress,” he said, and kissed my foot.
“Oh, brother,” Jimmy muttered.
“I swear my allegiance.”
“Swell,” I said. “You can—uh—get up now.”
He got up; then I wished I’d let him stay down. Standing, naked in the moonlight, he was disturbing. Tall and sleek, he resembled the panther he’d so recently been. His hair shiny and dark, his eyes were an eerie yellow-green.
I glanced at the garden. “You were the statue.”
The man lowered his chin in agreement.
“He was a statue?” Jimmy asked. “And you didn’t think this was something I should know before I stuck him with silver?”
“I didn’t connect it right away.”
“You see a statue of a panther, then a panther shows up, but you don’t connect it.”
“Yeah, weird, hey? How bizarre that I didn’t realize the statue had come to life.”
Jimmy lifted his eyebrows at my sarcasm but didn’t comment; instead he turned to the panther man. “Gargoyle?” he asked.
The man spread graceful hands, the muscles rippling beneath his moon-pale skin. “I am.”
Gargoyles had once been animals. They’d aided the fairies left on the earth after the doors of heaven slammed closed.
The fairies had been lost. They had no idea how to survive. They were suddenly human, and they had no idea how to be.
Certain beasts of the earth helped them, and as a reward they were given the gifts of flight and shape-shifting. Gargoyles can sprout wings; they can turn to stone.
Once the fairies could manage on their own, the gargoyles were charged with protecting the weak and unwary from demon attacks. The more humans the gargoyles saved, the more human they became.
“Summer sent you,” I said.
The man nodded, his gaze on Megan’s second-floor window. “No one will hurt her while I am here.”
There was a slight cant of the Irish in his voice, but not much. I’d been told that many of the fairies had gravitated to Ireland after the fall because the rolling green hills reminded them of heaven. I’d bet money that a lot of the gargoyles had gone along.
Jimmy put away his switchblade. “What’s your name?” he asked.
“Quinn Fitzpatrick.”
“And you just hang out in Megan’s yard all night?” I asked.
“Shouldn’t I?”
“What about during the day?”
He grinned, his teeth no longer sharp and large but normal, if extremely white. “I’m the new bartender.”
My eyebrows lifted. “The one who’s so lame Megan doesn’t believe you can walk and chew gum at the same time?”
Quinn’s grin faded. “She said that?”
“Not in so many words.”
“Well, I didn’t want her to know, you see, that I was sent. So I had to pretend to be more human than I am.”
“By dropping things?”