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“It’s extremely fair,” William says. “I got to watch.”

His wings fold back in. The lamp comes back. He looks up at the steel ring in the beam, and then down at me.

“The ring held,” he says.

I start laughing and I can’t stop.

He unties me and he doesn’t use the shears. He sits on the edge of the bed with my wrists in his lap, and he takes the knots apart one at a time with his fingers, patient, the same way he put them in. I watch him. The claws that went through four inches of steel pick the rope loose a quarter inch at a time. He works each loop loose before easing it over my hand without any hint of rushing. When the last wrap comes off, he turns each wrist over and runs his thumb along the faint pink pattern the rope left behind.

“Any tingling?”

“No.”

“Any pain?”

“No. William, I’m fine.”

“I believe you,” he says. “I’m going to check anyway. I check everything.” He rubs my wrists, one, then the other, slow circles with his thumb, until the marks start to fade. Then he hands me the water bottle from the table and watches me drink half of it.

“Lie down,” he says.

I lie down. He pulls the blanket off the armchair and puts it over me, and then he lies down beside me, on his side, with one wing folded under him and the other half open over both of us like a second blanket.

“So,” I say, after a while. “Downstairs William and upstairs William.”

“What about them?”

“Downstairs William says about nine words a night.”

“Downstairs William is working.”

“Upstairs William said a thing about the brass rail that I’m going to think about every single time I stock that bar.”

“Good,” he says. “That was the idea.”

I turn my head and look at him. His eyes are half closed. The corner of his mouth is up. It’s the closest I’ve ever seen him to smiling with his whole face.

“Did you really have that bell since 1911?”

“I won it in a card game.”

“From who?”

“Merek,” William says, and closes his eyes.

I lie there under his wing and listen to the wind on the roof, and my wrists feel warm and a little tender and good. He doesn’t let go of my hand. Somewhere below us, in the building, a door closes, and water runs in the pipes, and the Club settles down.

At four-forty, I leave him asleep.

I didn't think gargoyles slept. They do. He sleeps on his side with one hand curled on the pillow, and he's so still he really does look like a statue somebody carved and laid down in the bed. I kiss his shoulder. It's cool. He doesn't wake up.

Merek's waiting in Lenart's office to drive me home, and I've already made him wait an hour. I get dressed in the dark and take my bag and close the door with no number on it very quietly behind me.

I take the stairs down to the second floor. The building's dark except for the exit signs. Lenart's office is at the end of the hall, and there's light under his door, and I can hear Merek laughing on the other side of it.

Halfway down the hall, there's another light.

Corinne's office door is open a few inches. Her desk lamp is on. She's in there at a quarter to five in the morning, still in her work clothes, her back to the door, her phone pressed to her ear. Her other hand is flat on the desk, like she's holding it down.