Page 19 of Petrified

“No.”

I look at him. “It’s a book.”

“It’s a large book.”

“I can lift it.”

“You can also ignore medical instructions, grab severed snake pieces, and apparently turn a simple object into a near-death experience.” Lev drags the book away from me and drops a thinner one in its place. “You get this one.”

Amand takes the seat across from us and looks at the exchange without comment for a moment. “He’s probably going to keep doing that until you stop arguing.”

“I’m aware.”

Lev points at me with one finger. “Good. Personal growth.”

Medusa settles at the head of the table and opens one of the old volumes. “Can we focus before one of you gets hit with a book?”

“I’m not the one confiscating literature.”

“You’re the one who can’t be trusted around suspicious objects,” Lev says, already turning pages. “There is precedent.”

I leave it alone because he looks pleased with himself, and because arguing means he wins twice.

The first twenty minutes give us nothing useful. Every reference describes some variation of the same thing: gargoyles turn to stone to sleep, heal, defend themselves, or survive injuries that would kill most other creatures. Some bloodlines get harder than others. Some become almost impossible to break once fully stoned. A few can remain that way for days.

None explain how Medusa’s ex walks toward a wall and disappears.

Lev reaches the end of another section and closes the book harder than necessary. “Stone skin, enhanced durability, healing, protection during sleep. I could have written this myself after knowing one gargoyle for fifteen minutes.”

Medusa keeps reading. “You know one gargoyle?”

“No, but I know what rocks do.”

Amand looks up from his notes. “Do you?”

Lev gives him a flat stare. “They sit there and make my job harder.”

I glance back down at the passage in front of me. “Most of these still describe a recognizable body. Wings, limbs, facial structure. Even when the stone matches the same general color as the surroundings, you’d see the shape.”

“That’s what I always saw with him.” Medusa turns a page slowly. “At home, anyway. If he slept in stone, he still looked like himself. Gray, ugly, and taking up too much space.”

Lev looks over. “You dated him six years and that’s the description you landed on?”

“I have had time to reconsider his positive qualities.”

“Fair.”

Amand slides one of the case photos into the center of the table. It’s the retaining wall from the first victim’s house, taken before we knew the stone mattered. “Then maybe we’re looking at the wrong part of the ability. If the form itself was normal indoors, whatever changes may depend on the environment.”

Medusa stops turning pages.

Lev notices at the same time I do. “What?”

She looks down at the book in front of her, then back at the photograph. “I’m trying to remember something.”

“That sentence would be more encouraging if we hadn’t already spent several days being outsmarted by decorative stone,” Lev says, but he’s watching her now instead of the book.

Medusa ignores him and pulls another volume from the stack beside her. “There were times I couldn’t find him after he shifted. I told you that at the coffee shop. Mostly outside, a few hotels, once or twice around the quarry.”