“How do you plan to do that?” Austin asked, his gaze intense.
“I have no idea,” I mumbled, and took another sip. “I have absolutely no idea.”9I really wanted to say today’s situation was déjà vu of the last time I had tried to fly. I really did, but this situation was infinitely worse.
“Starting a new thing on a Monday is a terrible idea, everyone knows that,” I told Edgar. The frigid wind whipped the words out of my mouth.
“This isn’t a new thing,” Edgar replied, raising his voice over the howling wind. He adjusted his bicycle helmet. “You tried a week ago, remember? Right before your first failed attempt at dating a Dick.”
“Is the reason you’re wearing that helmet, because you know I’m going to throw you off this cliff?”
“Thrown, jumped—what’s the difference? At least you have wings. I’ll have to get caught and carried. Or dropped and killed.”
“The new thing I was originally talking about was jumping off an enormous cliff on the side of a mountain, high above a bunch of bone-crunching rocks. Now, however, I think the new thing is having you as my moral support to go through with it.”
“Oh yeah, I’m well known to be terrible in these situations, but I’m the only one without wings. I can fashion myself into a swarm of insects, as you might remember, but that’s more for hovering and moving quickly. I maintain a relationship with the ground. If there is no ground, I cannot sustain the form, have to change back, and go splat. This support role is the sole purpose I can serve when it comes to flying. I’m supposed to talk you out of running, but I don’t really have to, since it’s a long walk back to Ivy House. Fear-induced hide-and-seek is only a fun game for a little while, and then you’d have to come back and face the music. Though, I will say, it would take them forever to find you in the trees back there.”
He hooked his long thumb over his shoulder at the dense trees on the mountain side, the incline slight for about a hundred yards before climbing rapidly again toward the peak not terribly far above us.
Niamh had chosen this spot, about an hour away from town. Only the most advanced rock climbers attempted the cliff, and it was likely too cold for that. Hikers wouldn’t be able to see me through the thick canopy of trees below. Patches of glistening white snow clung to the rocks around us and dusted the leaves behind, not sticking to the ground way below us.
Way, way below us.
“It’s a long way to fall,” I said, my toes pushed up against the edge and shivers racking my body.
“Yes, it is. I don’t much like heights, did I ever tell you that?” Edgar watched Niamh fly by in her nightmare alicorn form, deep shadows swirling in her wake while the sinking sun slid across her oily black feathers. “This is a little torturous for me. You know what they say, though—what doesn’t kill you will haunt you for the rest of your life…”
“That’s not what they say! Of all the people in the world that could be standing next to me in a supportive role, you are the absolute worst.”
“Yes. Probably.”
“I should’ve begged Austin to come.”
“And have one of those young gargoyles fly him up here like a sack of potatoes? Hardly. He might’ve done it because he has a soft spot for you, but I doubt he would’ve been any better at this than me.”
“He would’ve, trust me. He would’ve been so much better.”
He shrugged as if to say fair point. “So, what’s the plan?”
The brawny, purplish Cedric flew close to the cliff, his giant wings beating lazily at the air as he sailed by. Thick slabs of muscle coated his large gargoyle form, his lower half clad in flowing pants. I sure wished he and Alek would fit Mr. Tom for some of those pants. He typically stayed nude when he shifted.
Speaking of Alek, he flew by a little further out, circling in the opposite direction. Though his human form was shorter than Cedric’s, their gargoyle forms were of comparable size. His body was deep brown, covered in chunky muscles, and his thick arms hung at his sides as his wings beat the air.
Mr. Tom, his form a darker brown than Alek’s, almost black to match his midnight eyes, sailed below on a lower plane, his wings slimmer in breadth and needing more beats per minute to compensate.
“Alek and Cedric are really great flyers,” I said, working on my courage. “Look how graceful they are in the sky. They were born for this.”
“Gargoyles are born to fly, yes. Except for you—you were made to fly—and the females of the species have smaller wings. They will need to aggressively protect you when you’re in the sky.”