Page 2 of Petrified

Medusa joins us several minutes later, her snakes mostly hidden beneath a scarf while the local officer remains a very respectful distance behind her. “His mate doesn’t recognize my ex and has never knowingly met a gargoyle. He did hear scraping outside shortly before his mate came downstairs.”

I gesture toward the wall. “Your ex came through here and then apparently ceased to exist.”

Her gaze moves to the stone, and something uncertain crosses her face. “He always preferred his human form,” she says after a moment. “I rarely saw him stone outside of sleeping or healing. When he did, there was nothing unusual about it.”

That doesn’t explain the missing trail, but it does tell me there’s something about her ex that even Medusa never had reason to examine closely. Considering the bastard cut off one of the snakes attached to her head, I’m beginning to suspect their relationship had a few communication issues.

I straighten and pull Amand’s jacket tighter around myself. “Then we go back to what we actually know. Quarry district. His old hiding places. Anything he used while figuring out how to keep the snake alive. He’s already ahead of us, so chasing whatever he leaves behind isn’t going to help unless we figure out what he’s doing between attacks.”

No one argues, which is probably the clearest sign that this case already sucks.

By the time we reach the car, the unease sitting under my ribs has nothing to do with the gargoyle. Gerald called the unicorn case a trial before handing Medusa’s problem directly to us, and Rowan has been convinced ever since that my boss is poking at my Chameleon abilities to see what happens. I’ve been trying to convince myself Gerald is simply an overly curious mentor with terrible boundaries.

Unfortunately, paranoia has had an irritating habit of being right lately.

I slide into the passenger seat while Amand takes the wheel and Rowan climbs into the back. Medusa heads for her own car, which is probably for the best considering no one needs a head full of petrifying snakes stuffed into an enclosed space with three men who already make questionable decisions.

One petrified wolf. One magical trail that disappears at a stone wall. One gargoyle carrying around a stolen piece of Medusa who has somehow learned to weaponize it.

I wanted another case.

Mother Nature really needs to stop taking me so fucking literally.

Chapter 2

LEVIATHAN

The quarry district is exactly the kind of place I would choose if I were a gargoyle trying to make myself impossible to find. Everything is stone or covered in enough dust to pretend it is, from the retaining walls cut into the hills to the abandoned processing buildings lining the road.

Even the asphalt eventually gives up and turns into loose gravel beneath Amand’s tires, each little rock popping against the underside of the car while I lean toward the passenger window and try to follow a scent that keeps getting swallowed by the landscape.

Medusa’s magic is easier to catch than her ex’s. Hers has that ancient sharpness I recognized at the wolf’s house, while his sits beneath it like wet stone after a storm. The problem is that the entire fucking quarry smells like wet stone after a storm, which makes me want to climb out of the car and personally fight every rock in sight. “Slow down,” I tell Amand as the signature strengthens near a narrow road between two abandoned buildings. He eases off the gas while I breathe through my nose, separating magic from dust, machinery, and the faint scent of a fox shifter working somewhere nearby.

Rowan is in the back while Medusa follows in her own car, which means nobody has to spend the drive pretending a scarf makes a head full of petrifying snakes less concerning. I’m choosing not to comment on how relieved Rowan looked when she headed for her own vehicle because the bastard will absolutely find a way to retaliate later.

“Here.” I point toward an old loading dock, catching something scorched beneath the mixed signatures. Amand parks and I’m outside before anyone can tell me not to wander off alone, his jacket still wrapped around me from earlier because seventy degrees is apparently too much to ask of Mother Nature.

The building feels like it’s been empty for years, but someone has been using it recently. Footprints cross the dust in several directions and fresh food containers sit beside rusted equipment, while deeper inside, the sharp smell of Medusa’s magic becomes strong enough that I stop pretending this might be another dead end.

The first thing I find is a rat.

Or half of one.

Its front legs, chest, and head have been turned to stone while the rest remains fur and flesh, the tiny body stiff beneath the remains of an old conveyor belt. I crouch without touching it and inhale, catching Medusa’s signature tangled with the same mineral scent from this morning. “He didn’t get the whole thing,” I say as she approaches, and her expression hardens when she recognizes her magic.

A few feet away, Rowan finds a bird with one petrified wing and half its chest hardened into gray stone. The next attempt is larger, a rabbit curled beneath a broken crate with its hindquarters petrified while the rest of it remains untouched.

None of them survived, and the progression makes my stomach tighten as I move farther into the building. He didn’t start with the wolf. He practiced until he knew exactly how much magic he needed to force through a piece of Medusa that was never supposed to answer to him.

Amand calls my name from near the back wall, the tone enough to make me move faster. There’s a boot lying on its side beside a dark stain on the concrete, except the gray shape protruding from the top isn’t a mannequin or a chunk of stone. It’s a leg ending several inches above the ankle, the petrification stopping unevenly where flesh should continue.

I crouch beside it and catch the faint signature of another shifter beneath the dried blood. Whoever they were, they were alive when they left here. The amount of blood suggests they didn’t have much time to think before deciding that losing a leg was better than waiting to see whether the stone continued spreading.

“He cut it off,” Medusa says quietly from behind us. Her snakes have gone still beneath the scarf, and for the first time since meeting her, there isn’t even a hint of amusement in her expression.

“Looks that way.” I stand and let my gaze travel over the room again, mentally arranging what we found in order. Small animal. Larger animal. Shifter. Then the wolf this morning, completely petrified from head to toe while still conscious inside the stone. Her ex is learning fast, and every attempt is cleaner than the one before it.

Near the back of the building, an old workbench gives us the clearest evidence yet. There are scorched marks across the wood, several pieces of cracked stone, translucent strips of shed snakeskin, and shallow grooves carved through chunks of limestone. Medusa picks up one of the skins carefully between two fingers and confirms it came from her severed snake, which means the bastard has been keeping it here long enough for the thing to shed while he experimented.