The Gargoyle Gets His Girl Read online

  THE GARGOYLE

  GETS HIS GIRL

  Nocturne Falls, Book Three

  Kristen Painter

  Welcome to Nocturne Falls, the town where Halloween is celebrated 365 days a year. The tourists think it’s all a show: the vampires, the werewolves, the witches, the occasional gargoyle flying through the sky. But the supernaturals populating the town know better.

  Living in Nocturne Falls means being yourself. Fangs, fur, and all.

  Willa Iscove, fae jeweler, has her first stalker. Really, he’s just one of her lovesick customers. The ring she crafted to help him find new love has backfired, making Willa the object of his affections. In a bid to rid herself of her amorous client, Willa makes a wish in the Nocturne Falls fountain using the piece of opal in her pocket and in doing so, unknowingly conscripts as her guardian the sexy gargoyle on duty.

  Former Army Ranger and gargoyle Nick Hardwin has some serious suspicions about the pretty fae who just invoked the ancient pact for protection. Her kind have been at odds with his kind for ages. Now she wants his help? He’s determined to figure out what she’s up to. Which won’t be a hardship considering how much fun she is to be around. And kiss.

  But then her stalker turns out to be the tip of the iceberg and things go really wrong, really fast. When they’re both kidnapped, Willa is forced to make a hard decision. The life of her family or the freedom of the man she’s fallen for?

  THE GARGOYLE GETS HIS GIRL:

  Nocturne Falls, Book Three

  Copyright © 2015 Kristen Painter

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, events, and places portrayed in this book are products of the author’s imagination and are either fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real person, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  ISBN: 978-1-941695-10-4

  Want to know when Kristen’s next book is coming out? Join her mailing list for release news, fun giveaways, insider scoop and more!

  NEWSLETTER

  Dedicated to the Writers’ Camp chicks:

  You guys make a hard job easier.

  May

  Platinum had a mind of its own. All metals did, but platinum was especially stubborn. Not so stubborn Willa couldn’t coax it into doing what she needed it to—that was one of her fae-born gifts after all, the power to imbue metal with certain charms and inclinations, the power to bend it to her will—but it took real concentration and focus.

  One of the ways she managed the trickier metals was by singing to them. It didn’t always work, especially with a metal like platinum, but it was worth a try.

  “Precious flower, rest your head, by the river where you grow. Moon and stars come swiftly in, and now off to sleep you go. In the morning you will rise, bright and new and beautiful. Bright and new and beautiful.”

  It was a lullaby, and when she sang it, she sang it in the language she’d learned it in, faeish. She remembered only the one verse, but she could still picture her mother bending over her bed, her clear voice carrying the lilting tune.

  The memory was bittersweet and best not dwelt on.

  Her second gift was the power over stone. At least, that’s what it was in theory. She came from a long line of stone mason fae on her father’s side (the gift with metal was from her mother’s side), but the truth was she’d never really understood that part of herself. How was she supposed to exercise power over stones? Move pebbles out of her way when she was walking? It just didn’t seem like something that had much of a point.

  Maybe if she’d done what her parents had wanted and paid more attention to her fae studies, or, you know, not run away, she’d know more about those things, but that wasn’t the path she’d stayed on. And her life had turned out all right anyway. She’d taught herself how to use her gifts just fine. More than fine, really.

  But best of all, her life was hers. She belonged to no court and no king. She’d even shortened her name to further distance herself from it all.

  And now she was a jeweler. With a shop of her own. If that didn’t prove she knew what she was doing, nothing would.

  Still, the idea of having power over stone boggled her a bit. It seemed to imply that stone was something to be defeated. The precious stones that surrounded Willa in her shop and at her workbench were more like friends than enemies. She could sense the auras of the stones as if they were speaking to her, but that wasn’t exactly a power, was it? Didn’t garnet seem warm and happy to all fae? Didn’t most know that turquoise helped you heal? That peridot could ease stress?

  Who couldn’t look at a stone or hold it in their hand and understand what it was good for? To Willa, that just seemed like a thing she and most fae could just do, not something that needed to be learned.

  Despite the fact that she’d left home when she was a teenager, she knew a bit about her kind. They were a people closely connected to the earth. Being in sync with natural things seemed as ordinary to her as humans being able to look at a darkening sky and tell a storm was coming.

  So, really, mastering her gifts was just common sense.

  Her gift with metal? Now that was something useful. And probably the one thing that had kept her alive since running away from home. At first, it had just been jewelry she’d made out of found objects. Little things she sold to shops and on the street to scrounge enough money to live. Later, as her skills improved and her pockets deepened, she’d earned her way into an apprenticeship with a master jeweler. The old man had been human, but highly skilled.

  In a year, she’d surpassed him. The memory filled her with pride and, for a moment, she thought about how nice it would be to let her parents know she’d made something of herself. But she doubted that’s what they’d think. In her imagination, her conversations with them always ended the same way. With them telling her she was a shirker of responsibility, a runaway, a disappointment.

  Anger and hurt settled cold in Willa’s belly, partly because even though she was thirty-two, her parents still held enough power over her to get her riled up. She shook it off as best she could. She had more important things to concentrate on.

  Like the ring she was building for a customer who wanted to find love again after losing his first wife to illness. She couldn’t imagine losing a spouse. The pain must be overwhelming. Although she’d have to have a spouse first to really understand. Someday she’d meet the right man. Probably.

  At least she had her work. And her cat.

  Finding love was a common request, and crafting the right piece didn’t usually vary too much. The center of the ring would be a garnet doublet, a polished, cabochon garnet laid on top of a slice of another stone, in this case, moonstone. An unusual combination for a more ordinary ring perhaps, but not for Willa’s work.

  She checked the bezel she’d made, slipping it onto the ring mandrel and tapping it into place with a rawhide hammer. It was perfect.

  Jasper, her sleek orange tabby and the only man who really understood her, rubbed against her ankles and wound around the legs of the stool she was perched on. “Hello, handsome.”

  He chirped at her, stretching up to paw at her knee.

  She glanced at him. “You can’t be hungry again.”

  He meowed that he was.

  “Well, I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to wait until I’m done. I don’t need Mr. Burnside’s ring smelling like Mackerel Surprise.” Although the man was a troll. Literally. And th
at particular breed of supernatural might actually find that ripe scent appealing. She curled her lip.

  Jasper sat on his haunches and glared at her.

  She snorted and went back to work. The sliver of moonstone she’d set beneath the polished garnet cabochon would give the wine-colored stone a subtle shimmer of movement, but more important, the two stones combined would draw love energy to the wearer. Willa’s gift would weave another, more powerful layer of that same effect into the metal as she created the ring, then it would be finished with a final polish of focused magic.

  Her skills weren’t cheap, but neither were the raw materials she worked with. And for the bigger, more difficult spells, like the one she was weaving into this piece, the customer was required to offer up something greater than just the funds necessary to pay for the item being created.

  It had to be something meaningful, something dear, something that would require at least a little sacrifice to part with.

  In this case, the man had sent his late wife’s wedding ring. It would be the last element of the design and would be transformed by Willa’s magic, irrevocably changed.

  She freed the bezel from the mandrel and set it over the round garnet to test the size on the stone. Another perfect fit.

  She picked up a file and started smoothing the top of the bezel. Her workshop window was cracked to let in the night air and the early May breeze felt nice. It was warm, but not unpleasant, and the sweet scent of honeysuckle wafted in, a sure sign that spring had sprung in Georgia.

  Her apartment sat above her jewelry store, a nice arrangement that gave her a lovely thirty-second commute every morning. She’d come to Nocturne Falls on her way to Florida from Texas, headed to the Sunshine State with a job offer to work on a cruise ship in their onboard jewelry store, but the town of Nocturne Falls and its people, especially the vampire brothers who ran the town, had charmed her into staying.

  And by charmed her into staying, she meant that the Ellingham brothers had made her a much better offer than the cruise ship. A store, an apartment and the promise that she could be herself. Pointed ears and all. Not bad for a woman who’d spent the bulk of her teenage years wandering from town to town, never quite sure she’d find a spot that felt right.

  She’d been reluctant to take the deal at first. The cruise ship meant never being in one place for too long, which she liked. But then the Ellinghams had sweetened the offer. They’d promised to protect her if her past ever came calling. Other than running her shop and being a good citizen of Nocturne Falls, the only caveat was that she couldn’t sell the shop or the apartment. If she decided to leave, that was fine, but the shop and apartment remained the property of the Ellinghams.

  Not a big deal. Not for someone used to traveling light. And often. Ultimately, it was too good an opportunity to pass up. She’d called the cruise line and given them the news that she’d found something better.

  She probably would have gotten seasick anyway.

  She smiled as she dropped the bezel into the pickling liquid. Life in Nocturne Falls was better than good. It was great. The money was fantastic, she’d made some friends, and being fae wasn’t something she had to hide. Plus, it was nice to be useful, especially to those who’d made her life here possible.

  She’d just done an engagement ring for Hugh Ellingham. He’d sacrificed a very old, very valuable piece of family jewelry to make sure the ring would protect his bride-to-be as she went through the process of being turned into a vampire.

  Willa had recently sold them matching wedding bands, so the ring had done its job. For her, that was the real payoff from the things she created, seeing the goal of her pieces achieved. Although if she was honest, in her heart of hearts she ached a little to see others in love when that emotion eluded her. She was thrilled for them of course, but it only intensified her own longing to have that kind of relationship.

  But it would happen. Someday.

  She shook herself and gave her muscles a quick stretch to wake them up before she started the job of epoxying the slice of moonstone to the flat of the garnet cabochon so that it could dry for twenty-four hours. After that, she took the bezel out of the pickling and called it a night.

  The next evening, after an enjoyable day at the store helping customers and doing small repair jobs at the workshop in the store, she was back at the bench in her apartment. She preferred to do the big magical jobs here, in the privacy of her home.

  She assembled the components of Mr. Burnside’s ring and began the process of setting the doublet. With the stone fitted into the bezel, she delicately crimped the edges to hold the stone in place. Jasper head butted her leg with greater force than usual in an attempt at getting her attention focused on him. The jolt threw her off-balance, and her tool slipped, slicing across her knuckle.

  “Arn’ta rune,” she swore. It was one of the few fae words she remembered. Probably because it was a curse. Blood welled, trickling onto the platinum and over the garnet. She inspected her finger. The cut was deep, but nothing a Band-Aid couldn’t handle. She frowned at her cat, who was now chewing on his foot with the kind of intense interest usually reserved for catnip mice.

  “Look what you made me do! Naughty beast.” She showed him her finger. “I’m bleeding.”

  He sauntered off to the window, jumped up on the sill and settled in to eye her from a safe distance.

  She sighed. “I’m not really mad. Promise. I know you didn’t mean it. I’ll even let you sleep on my pillow later.”

  She jumped off the stool and went to wash up, bandaging her finger before returning to give Jasper a scratch on the head. Fae healed faster than humans, but not at the rapid rate of most supernaturals. Her finger would be sore for a few days, but it wasn’t going to keep her from her work. She sat at her bench, carefully cleaned up the drops of blood left behind, then finished setting the stone.

  The pain of her throbbing knuckle added slightly to the time it took to get the ring done, but at last, it was completed and she was ready for the final step. The magic that brought her customers to her.

  She scooped up the ring she’d made and the old wedding ring her customer had given her and took them both into her bathroom. Willa rested the two rings side by side in the middle of her empty claw foot tub. The non-reactive porcelain was a perfect surface to work her magic on since the metals couldn’t touch other metals or stone, nothing that might interfere with her spell work.

  The bathroom also had no windows, making it the most private spot in her apartment. There was no risk of anyone peeking in on the second floor, but her magic made its own light. Someone might get curious. Especially in a town where weird was celebrated.

  She shut the bathroom door then kneeled beside the tub, held her hands over the two rings and opened herself up to the metal and stones.

  Heat and energy radiated off them and into her palms. It traveled through her body, settling in her chest with a comfortable pressure akin to the touch of a friend’s hand. She could sense each one clearly.

  The ring she’d made pinged like a beacon sending out a signal. The stones were already searching for love, trying to call the emotion closer. The platinum was cool and quiet, but that would change when she was done.

  The wedding ring, the sacrifice, ached with love but also the pain its last wearer had gone through. She concentrated on that, willing the metal to release the hurt trapped inside it, promising it new things, new chances, new love.

  Both rings sat up, balanced on their shanks. They trembled under her raised hands and the power of the magic coursing through her sending a tinny buzz through the tub.

  She focused her thoughts on the new ring and filled it with all the desires of her own heart while charging the stones with their job. Find Martin Burnside a new love. Draw love to him. Use your nature to heal his heart and provide him with a new joy in his life. Give him a love that will make his days brighter and his heart sing. Someone to laugh with. Someone to grow old with. Someone who will listen and understand.r />
  Then she shifted to the wedding ring. Let go of your pain. Transform yourself. Give yourself over to the future. Love awaits you. A new path with new possibilities is yours for the having.

  The wedding ring shimmered with light and then, like a tiny star exploding in slow motion, it dissolved into a million bright, sparkling specks of metal. The tiny fragments hovered in a cloud beneath Willa’s right hand, waiting for her to guide them.

  She closed her eyes for a moment and looked inward until she latched on to the two separate energies filling her body and then, with a mental push, combined them as she moved her hands closer together.

  When she opened her eyes, the new ring was engulfed in the cloud of metal that had been the wedding ring. The sparkling sphere of metal and magic danced between her hands.

  She smiled. “Find him love. Bring him happiness. Give him a woman to be his partner in life.”

  She brought her hands closer, turning her palms in and pressing the ring and the cloud into each other. The energies resisted with the rounded bounce of two parallel magnets being brought together, but that was typical. She focused her attention, gave them one more push and, with a soft sigh, the wedding ring cloud and the new ring became one.

  The garnet ring clattered on the floor of the tub as the sparkle and light of the wedding ring disappeared. The energy filling her disappeared in a single exhale.

  She sat back on her heels, a little drained from the work. The customer wasn’t the only one sacrificing. Each piece she made took a little from her, but it was worth it, and in a day, she’d be fine.

  A good night’s sleep would go a long way toward restoring her, too. She picked up the ring, took it back to her bench and popped it in a small velvet box, satisfied with another job well done.