Free Mercy, A Gargoyle Story by Misty Provencher

you, we'll have to do this my way."
    "Not for long,” Ayla grumbles, but she doesn't resist going in.   She even helps Selene herd the younger ones to the door.
    "Maybe not for long, but for now," Selene says, but it's me who gets her one last glowering stare, before she yanks out the workman's boot and slams the door shut.    

 
    ***

 
    A few hours later, I am still trying to understand Selene's glare, when the door hitches open.   It makes a slow, grinding whine, and Ayla emerges with the workman's boot in hand.   There is barely enough time to get back to the same spot where she found me this afternoon.   I pose, hoping it is the same pose as before.
    It doesn't matter.   Ayla barely glances around the rooftop before jamming the boot under the door.   She hardly seems to notice me at all.   Glazed with the moonlight, her eyes wander off the edge of the building.   She drifts past me like a ghost, until she stands at the edge of the high, curled lip of the building.   She fingers something on a chain around her neck, but before she drops the chain back into her shirt, a triangle of cola-colored plastic drops off and falls at her feet.   She doesn't notice.   Instead, she thumps her hips against the ledge, looking out over the street.
    From over her shoulder, I follow her gaze like a zip line.   It is tethered to the very last place in the world it should ever be.
    She is watching The Boy.

CHAPTER SEVEN

 
 
    We both hear the squeak of rubber soles on the stairs.   Ayla backs away from the ledge.   My eyes flick to Selene, standing in the boot-wedged doorway, staring at the girl.
    "I thought I was quite clear about staying off the roof," Selene says, wide eyed and puffing from the long climb up.   Her chin quivers like a turkey gobble.   All of her flesh is even paler in the moonlight than I am.   Her lungs struggle another breath.   My own breath is lodged in the exposed bones of my throat.
    "Because Randall is right," Ayla says.   "It's just a statue.   I don't know why you're freaking out."
    "I'll tell you why," Selene says.   She reaches up and sticks a loose finger in the bun atop her head.   When she scratches, the whole thing wiggles like it will fall off.   She sighs and looks Ayla dead in the eyes.   "Two years before you came to me, Mr. Gate...my husband...contracted cancer.   He was a good man and he certainly didn't deserve the hand he was dealt.   He suffered through a miserable year, and when he was at his worst, one of these things showed up and killed him."
    "Yeah, right.   Statues don't just show up.   They didn’t just walk up here."
    "Ayla, you think you know things and you don't," Selene says.   I want to speak up, to assure Ayla's foster mother that I am as harmless as a winter moth, but I remain breathless, silent.   "I brought my husband up here to get some fresh air.   He was having such a horrible time breathing in our stuffy apartment...and the monster appeared."
    Ayla doesn't say anything.   Her face is flat and unreadable.   She must be trying to figure out if her foster mother is crazy or not.
    "The demon came and it killed him," the woman's voice cracks.   "It landed on the roof.   I wasn't scared of it at first.   I should have been, but I was shocked.   Arrogant, even.   The demon was as small as Randall, but it walked up to Mr. Gate and pulled a hard, little stone right out of its chest."   Selene holds out her fingers, dripping with skin and cupped like a claw, as if she's holding a nest in her palm.   "The demon forced it right into Mr. Gate's chest, and my husband went so delirious, he actually thanked the demon for killing him!"
    "That one, down there?” Ayla asks, pointing to Trickle.   She doesn't sound curious.   Instead, her lips are pulled off to the side like she doesn't believe a word of it.   Selene isn't detoured.
    "No, not that one," she says.   "That one came long after Mr. Gate died...to do his devil work on me, I