The Beautiful and the Cursed: Marco's Story

M
arco stood before the tall lattice racks in Hôtel Dugray’s wine cellar, entirely pleased.

Each diamond-shaped cradle held a bottle, bringing the total wine stores to an even two hundred: champagne, Madeira, Sangiovese, moscato, and malbec, all stationed within their designated and labeled spots. Marco enjoyed looking upon the racks when they were fully stocked. Come Sunday morning, after the Bartolis’ annual midsummer fête—this last one of the century intended to top all others—Marco would no doubt assume the task of refilling the entire cellar. But for now, it was perfection.

As chief steward at Hôtel Dugray, Marco took pride in keeping a smoothly functioning household. He didn’t give a damn about pleasing the Baron and Baroness Bartoli, who, along with their children, maids, kitchen staff, footmen, coachmen, and grooms, arrived at their Paris home in late spring every year. They stayed through September, until the damp autumn air drove them back to their Sicilian barony.

No, the only thing Marco cared for was maintaining order. With order came peace, and with peace came safety. Keeping those who lived within the walls of Hôtel Dugray safe was Marco’s true duty. No butler would ever assume such a lofty responsibility. But then, Marco wasn’t just a butler.

For the last four hundred and fifty-three years he had been something much more.

Satisfied with the cellar, he closed his record book and tucked his pencil behind his ear. It was cool and dry down here. The sweet notes of plum and oak reached through the corks and scented the air. Marco dreaded going up into the steamy kitchens, redolent with onion, garlic, and the tang of balsamic. Preparations for tomorrow evening’s party were well under way. Marco preferred the rush of activity. The focus each servant gave to their tasks left them little time to be idle and invite the devil in for tea.

Humans. They truly did require their hands to be held at all times.

Marco had taken the first step up when the scent of hot buttered rum chased the sweet plum and musty oak from his nose. He stilled, his hand clamped around the cold iron railing, his tall, muscular frame tensing. He inhaled the scent deep into his throat to explore it. This was how he knew all of the humans living and working within Hôtel Dugray—by scent. It never boded well when one surfaced in his senses unexpectedly like this.

Marco let out a sigh. The scent belonged to Grace. She was upset again. Overwhelmingly so, or else her scent wouldn’t have reached out to him. He rolled his broad shoulders and stretched his neck as he dug deeper. He felt nothing more than misery. No fear. No pain. Had he felt those things, Marco would have been forced to go to her, driven by an unnamable yet ever-present need to protect. The command to protect his human charges was fixed and buried deep inside him, as it was in every Dispossessed soul stuck forever on the face of the earth. This was his curse.

Depending on the problem, Marco likely wouldn’t have been in his human skin, but in the cinnamon-red jacket of reptilian scales, the makeup of his true form: that of a gargoyle.

Marco continued up the stairs, into a cloud of bouillabaisse steam rising from a deep copper pot. As soon as the cellar door closed, every back straightened. Every head lifted. No one dared to meet his sooty dark amber gaze.

The rumors were already beginning.

The Bartolis had been coming to Paris every summer for nearly fifteen years, and they had maintained largely the same staff throughout that time. Every year, they arrived looking one year older. It had taken them long enough to realize that the butler who kept their Parisian residence in working order year-round was not aging. At all.

Marco strode through the kitchen. Their suspicions didn’t bother him. He was bound to this ground, master of this territory. Marco was their superior.
In more ways than one
, he thought with a slight smile. He would never leave.

He passed through a short corridor that led to the kitchen garden. He supposed he ought to check on Grace. There was only so much gargoyles could infer from the scent of their humans. Exact location was one.

He found her kneeling in the garden, her starched pinafore tucked up so she wouldn’t press the white linen into the soil. A basket sat beside her, half filled with handfuls of thyme and basil, oregano and rosemary. The sun shone hard on the shoulders of Marco’s pressed livery. The black broadcloth ate up the heat and only craved more.

His long shadow rippled over the ground toward her. “What’s this, Miss Avery?”

Grace looked up, her dirt-covered fingers above her brow to shield the sun’s glare. He noticed a tear-smudged streak of dirt on the apple of one cheek.

“You’re no kitchen maid, and yet here I find you, sniffling into the oregano,” he said.

Grace dropped her hand and plunged it back into a thatch of golden leaves. “My lady wishes for fresh herbs,” she said, failing to tack on the appropriate
sir
. Had they not been alone, Marco would have reprimanded her. But since they were, and this was Grace, he merely sighed.

“What does she want with them?” he asked.

Lady Arabella, the elder of the baron and baroness’s daughters, and the second of four children, needn’t have sent her lady’s maid to the garden for such a menial task.

“She complains her clothing smells musty,” Grace answered.

“Why have you been crying?”

He couldn’t have cared less about Arabella’s musty laundry. The girl was spoiled rotten, and oddly enough, her scent was of fetid goat cheese. This often made Marco smile, but not today. Grace had been unhappy for nearly two weeks now, and he was positive it had something to do with her mistress.

“I haven’t been crying.” She avoided his eyes as she finished filling the basket and brushed off her hands.

“Sir,”
he said, mostly just to see if it would make her smile. It worked.

Grace got up and scowled at him. “Oh, nobody is about,
Mr. Angelis
,” she replied, calling him by the name he had given himself more than a century ago.

He usually changed his surname when he sought employment with every new family who purchased his territory. Angelis had stuck, though, his favorite so far. Sometimes the irony of it still gave him a laugh. Angelis.
Angel
.

But Grace was right. There was nobody else about. No servants. No employers. And by the lack of chiming at the base of Marco’s skull, he was the only gargoyle within a hundred-foot radius.

His secret would remain safe.

For the last three summers, Grace Avery had accompanied Lady Arabella to Paris. And for the last three summers, Marco had experienced the strangest thing: friendship. With a human. And to top that, it was a
female
human.

“You’re avoiding my question, Grace.”

“Because it is none of your concern,” she answered.

If the other members of the baron’s staff knew about Marco and Grace’s unorthodox friendship, they said nothing. Just as they said nothing about his failure to appear a day over his eternal age of twenty-seven. Besides, what they thought would matter little compared to what the rest of the Dispossessed in Paris would do or say should they discover that Marco had befriended a human girl. It would put more than his reputation at stake. His very life could be in danger.

“Grace,”
he ground out. He hadn’t approached her all week about her melancholy state. Now that he had gone to the trouble, he wanted answers.

“Marco, please.” Her voice diminished to a whisper. She peered up at the rear windows of the chateau, where Lady Arabella’s rooms overlooked the garden. “I cannot tell you.”

Grace was a mouse of girl. Short and thin, not buxom in the least. Her hair was an offensive shade of red, the color of maple leaves in October. Her eyes, green as the Seine, were the only feature Marco would deign to call pretty. Right now, they watched the upper-level windows with trepidation.

“All right,” he conceded. No one was harming her, that much he knew. “For now.”

Grace slipped the basket into the crook of her arm. A smile trembled over her lips. “Sir,” she said, and after an exaggerated and unnecessary curtsy, she walked past him, toward the kitchen door.

Marco remained in the garden another moment. He called up Arabella’s scent. All he needed to do was remember it—every human’s scent imprinted in his memory as easily as an image might—and then it was as though Arabella herself slipped inside his skin. He knew where she was (her bedroom) and what she was feeling (impatience). If Marco stood still and listened hard, he could feel the steady beating of her heart echoing within his chest. The soft tug of her scalp as someone ran the bristles of a brush through her long, dark hair.

Nothing telling how Grace was involved.

He pushed Arabella away and she left him, dissolving like a curl of mist. The question of what was bothering Grace pressed upon his shoulders, as burdensome as the sun’s sweltering rays.

This was his territory, assigned to him by the Angelic Order over four hundred years ago. He had served this home, and the humans who had come and gone over the centuries, well. Many Dispossessed saw their duties as penance, but not Marco. He had murdered a priest in cold blood, and because of that one unforgivable sin, Marco had been banned from heaven upon his own death. He had been cast into the Dispossessed, made into a monster. That priest had deserved to die, though, and Marco would not, for one second of one day, ever regret killing him. If that had made him a terrible human, so be it—at least it had helped to transform him into a magnificent gargoyle.

His only problem was Grace.

She was the first human to come onto his territory and claim a role of importance. He still didn’t understand why. Marco had always been careful to keep his humans at a distance. His usual role as butler or as some other servant aided him in that. Humans were a chore; their safekeeping a managerial task. Marco had always existed above them, avoiding interaction whenever possible. He’d treated them with all the affection he might the pages of a bookkeeper’s log.

So why did Grace have him breaking all of his own rules?

“Mr. Angelis?”

At the intrusive sound of a different maid’s voice, Marco turned and cut a path toward the kitchen door. “What is it?”

He’d forgotten this one’s name. Lucia or Lucy or Lucretia. Whatever her name was, she cataloged as warm autumnal leaves,.

“You have a visitor,” she said, flinching as Marco’s heels slid to a halt on the crosshatched brick walk.

“A
what
?”

The maid avoided his eyes and squeaked, “A visitor? Waiting in your office. Sir.”

He took a breath and barreled back into the kitchen, across the tiles, and around a brown splatter of gravy. He stopped, eyed the gravy on the floor, and felt a spike of anxiety in one of the kitchen maids. Marco found her and fixed her with a stare. No words were necessary. The maid blanched, clearly frightened that he somehow knew she was responsible for the mess. She scuttled over, towel in hand, and Marco continued toward the connecting corridor.