Grotesque

Nine days into a Detroit heat wave, stone restorer Esme Novak works nights on a swing stage thirty-one floors up, cleaning a century of soot off the Ambrose Building's grotesques. She has told the grim one on the northeast corner things she has never said to a man, including exactly how she likes to be held. Tonight her thumb is in the corner of his mouth when the stone turns warm and the lip moves. His name is Wakeman. Nobody has touched him since the carver. He heard every word, and he has until first light.