Free Incarnate (A Spellmason Chronicle) by Anton Strout Page B

somewhere within the unnatural shadow.
    “Neat!” Rory said.
    “There’s not a lot I can do when we’re out on the hunt,” Marshall said. “Other than take notes for my monster manual. I don’t possess any skill like Spellmasonry and I certainly don’t fight like Rory can, but I
can
do some things that can help keep you two safe. There’s already enough footage popping up online involving gargoyles and some blurry footage of you two scurrying away from dealing with them. These should at least help keep your identities better hidden.”
    “You know what this means?” Rory asked, looking really creepy talking while faceless. “We’re superheroes now!”
    I laughed. “A costume kind of cinches that, doesn’t it?” I asked.
    Marshall nodded. “Now try to take them off,” he said.
    A statement like that instilled a little ball of dread in me, but I did as he asked. I ran my fingers up over my forehead to swipe the hood back, but they met with resistance. Closing my hand over the edge of the hood, I gripped it tight and pulled. Only then did the hood come off, and only by using a good deal of strength to do so.
    Running my fingers through my hair, I let out a sigh of relief. “You’re lucky this didn’t take my hair out in clumps,” I said.
    “This is great,” Rory called out, whipping her head back and forth like she was head banging back in our high school days. “It’s staying in place.”
    “Exactly,” Marshall said. “The wind won’t catch it, and anyone who tries to pull it off of you is going to have a hell of a time doing it. Plus, it’ll keep the elements out.”
    I walked over to Marshall, hugging him. “They’re perfect,” I said. “Thank you.”
    “Someone’s been working on his alchemy,” Rory said. “Caleb taught you well.”
    Marshall blushed. “This wasn’t all me,” he said. “I called in a few favors from some of the people I met through Caleb.”
    Rory shook her head at him. “Careful, there,” she said. “I wouldn’t trust them as far as I could throw them. Which, come to think of it, is pretty far. Never mind. You get what I mean.”
    “You include Caleb in that group?” I asked.
    Rory scrunched up her face as if she were giving it serious thought. “He gets a pass,” she said. “For blowing himself up to aid our escape that time.”
    “I
am
being careful,” Marshall said, sounding like a scolded child.
    Rory pulled her hood off, her head finally reappearing. “So . . . now that the band is back together, what’s the plan?” She looked at her watch. “I’ve got to go hurt myself in a make-up dance class in a few.” She grabbed up another bag off the counter and pulled out a sticky bun the size of my head.
    “How do you keep that body?” I asked. “Seriously.”
    “I’m carbo-loading,” she said, already biting into it. “Do you have any idea the amount of calories I’m burning through in my dance intensive? Almost as many as I do all night when I’m chasing down gargoyles with you.”
    “You were talking about a plan before . . . ?” Marshall said. “Focus.”
    “Oh, right,” I said. “Like I said, we’re not stopping, just being more cautious. We get back to hitting the police scanners. I’ve got Stanis trying to get a lock on who might be trying to vine me to death. That means we take things slow until I figure out how to deal with whatever arcanists are after me.”
    Marshall couldn’t help but give me a dubious look. “So you’re
not
going to keep us out all night?”
    I shook my head. “Nope.”
    “And if the weather sucks . . . ?” Rory asked with a glimmer of hope in her eye.
    “We go home,” I said. “I promise. We track down one gargoyle a night, and we can call it a night. Starting tonight.”
    “I’ll bring the rope,” Marshall said, pulling out a small pad and making a note of it.
    I didn’t even bother to tease him about his obsession with rope. We
would
need it, and it was nice trying to get