Bock swallowed and shrank back a little. He had a good idea who the Winter Lady was, and what she might do.
“Molls,” I said.
She glanced at me, then rose away from Bock slowly and said, “I suggest you follow the advice of the Winter Knight,” she said in a low, hard voice. “Or I may come collect from you sooner and more dearly than otherwise. Am I understood?”
Bock looked down, jerking his head in a quick nod.
“Enough,” I said gently. My head twinged with the beginning of a headache, a very vague sensation behind the pain-masking effect of the Winter mantle, though it still managed to be almost as annoying as the real thing. “I bought you a little time today, Bock. Use it wisely.”
Bock nodded jerkily. Then he and his folk hurried back inside.
“Well,” Molly murmured, after they’d gone. “You and I have just assisted a batch of warlocks in covering up their use of black magic from duly appointed Wardens of the White Council.”
“Feels good,” I said.
Her face spread into a merry smile. “It does, doesn’t it.”
“Could be it isn’t the best idea,” I said. “Black magic. You know what it can do to someone.”
She nodded once and spoke in a cool tone. “Which is why I wanted to scare them a bit. Winter’s honor is involved in this now. Winter will keep an eye on them.”
“It will, huh?”
Molly nodded. Her voice softened slightly, though her eyes stayed hard. “I don’t want anything bad to happen to them, either, Harry. ButI don’t want them to hurt anyone else like they did Daniel. They aren’t playing softball.”
I looked back at the door to Bock Ordered Books. Someone reached up and flipped the sign from readingOpentoClosed.
“No,” I said quietly. “They’re not.”
Chapter
Forty-One
“So,” I said to the assembled residents of the castle. I was standing in front of them all in the main hall, several days after our confrontation with the Wardens, with the gargoyles lined up motionless as statues behind me. “In conclusion, the gargoyles here are real, yes. They will move and talk and things. They’ll also help defend and protect everyone here in the event of danger. I mean, if there’s a fire or whatever.”
The kids, including Maggie, were all sitting up front. Hands went up like in a classroom.
“Uh,” I said. I pointed at a boy who was about ten, one of Matias’s kids, whose name was Jorge. “Jorge, yes?”
“Can we climb on them?” he asked brightly.
“Uh,” I said. “Maybe treat them like you would teachers at school. They’re not really playground equipment.”
Jorge took this in with a frown. “Will they give us rides?”
“Only if it’s an emergency,” I said, “and they need to keep you safe for some reason.”
Maggie waved her hand. “Do they turn to stone in daylight? Like in that old show?”
“They’re kind of stone all the time,” I said. “No, it doesn’t work like that.”
The kids were all leaning forward curiously.
“Look,” I said. “Most of the time they’re going to be in the rock of the walls and floor and so on, out of sight, because there’s enoughpeople out there who are freaked out about supernatural creatures.” I nodded in the direction of the protesters. If you listened hard, you could hear them when they got going. “If the gargoyles come out, it’s because I’ve got them doing something, or because there’s some kind of problem or danger. So if one of them shows up and tells you that you need to go to your room or get outside or whatever, just know that they’re good guys, and they’re on our team.”
“They can climb on us,” Basil said calmly in his resonant voice. He turned his leonine features to Jorge. “We have a number of graspable outcroppings. We like children, though they often make little sense.”
The littlest of the gargoyles, Cinnamon, with the head of a monkey and the body of a cat, nodded vigorously in silence.
