Page 21 of Take Me For Granite
“I thought you were a statue!”
And yet you were remarkably thorough.
“Oh my God.”
There it is again.
I have discovered that April invokes her deity approximately seventeen times a day, usually when confronted with something mildly inconvenient. A broken faucet. A missing paint delivery. A naked man emerging from a gargoyle.
Admittedly, the last one is somewhat more understandable.
She blows out a breath. “Okay. Fine. I rubbed you. You turned human. Now you’re stone again. Why?”
Ah. There’s the question. The one I’ve been asking myself since the moment I felt her hand against my chest.
I don’t know.
April blinks.
“You don’t know?”
No.
“Well, that’s helpful.”
I assure you, I find the situation considerably more frustrating than you do.
She studies me. For a moment, her expression softens. “Yeah. I guess you would.”
Something shifts inside me. Not physically. I don’t have a functioning body to shift. But something. An uncomfortable sensation I haven’t experienced in a very long time. I dismiss it.
“How long have you been like this?” she asks.
One hundred and forty-three years.
Her eyes widen. “Holy shit.”
Quite.
“A hundred and forty-three?”
Yes.
“Years?”
Unless the calendar has changed substantially since yesterday.
She ignores that.
“So you’ve been sitting here for more than a century?”
Among other places.
Her gaze flicks toward the house. “Other places?”
I’m bound to the property. I can move between certain parts of the house when the magic permits it.
She looks back at me. “Wait. You can move?”
