Myths and Gargoyles by Jamie Hawke

Author:Jamie Hawke [Hawke, Jamie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Double Down Press
Published: 2021-03-17T22:00:00+00:00

BOOK 4: Stone Cold Mage

71

I had always envied my aunt in her large house atop a hill, until the day I had to move into it. Leaving my old life behind, my friends, Steph, all of it… fucking sucked. We’d only ever driven by it when staying in D.C., on our way to the cheapest hotels we could find on the southeast side. That had been enough of a taste to tell me I wanted more.

While I was starting school in the fall at Johns Hopkins University, my family didn’t have the money to put me up anywhere in the meantime. Well, when I say my family, I mean my parents, because apparently my aunt was loaded. But that didn’t translate over to my mom and dad, who were on the far side of the spectrum. I mean it—I still remember days spent in the rain of Portland, Oregon, wearing trash bags with holes cut out as we asked for money to catch the bus home. It fucking sucked. So I would look at pictures of Aunt Gertrude’s house and remember the times we’d driven past it the one time we’d gone to D.C. for my dad’s new job—the one that allowed us to move from our ratty apartment to our first townhouse—the way I had asked my parents why we couldn’t stay there, and how they had avoided the question.

Not even invited over once, and their excuse was that Aunt Gertrude liked to keep her place clean, not liking little kids. It wasn’t until much later that I learned she and my mother had both been in love with my father, and that they’d essentially sworn off their relationship.

So it was that I’d never even met her until that hot, muggy day of summer three months before school was supposed to start. Three months, because my father had apparently lost the job he’d come out here to get, so my parents decided they’d be taking that road trip around the U.S. they’d always been talking about.

Essentially, they were homeless and didn’t know what to do with me. There I was, dropped off outside this huge mansion, and staring up at the tall, arched windows with pillars on either side. And at the top, leaning out over the edge and staring down at me… were those gargoyles. I had to laugh, wondering who the fuck built houses with gargoyles. Even more, who bought them? There was no doubt, my aunt wasn’t only crazy rich, she was stupid rich. Why that was and where she got her money was a question neither of my parents could answer, and was something I meant to get to the bottom of during my stay. I was determined to be more like her, less like my parents—in the good sense, anyway.

Hell, even the air smelled richer out here. Pure, like someone had taken bottles of air from some tropical island and dumped them all over this neighborhood. For all I knew, that might’ve happened.

My phone

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