Chapter 9
Greyson’s call came in while we were still in the SUV, the tracker sitting useless in Tegan’s lap.
Faith glanced at her phone and answered without slowing her breathing.
“What’s up?” she said, then hit speaker.
Greyson’s voice filled the vehicle, steady but clipped in the way that meant he was one more alarm away from punching drywall. “We have a problem.”
Eve shifted in her seat. Tegan stopped fiddling with the tracker and listened.
Faith didn’t apologize. “What is it?”
“The containment wards around the egg are going off,” Greyson said. “Something is affecting baby Cal.”
My stomach sank.
“Are you at the house?” Faith whispered.
“Yes,” he said. “And the temperature inside the safe is fluctuating. That should not happen.”
Faith’s expression changed. Not panic. Focus. The kind that turned her into a weapon with legs. “We need to warn Cal.”
“I already texted him,” Greyson replied. “He didn’t reply. Which is not normal when it involves that egg.”
Eve muttered something under her breath that sounded like a prayer and an insult blended together.
Nishi glanced at the road. “We are on our way.”
Greyson exhaled. “Good. I don’t like this. Something is pressing on the wards from the outside, as if it’s testing for weak points.”
Faith’s jaw flexed. “Keep your eyes on it.”
“I am,” Greyson said. “The egg is weakening. I can feel it.”
A cold wave rolled through my gut.
Cal had called earlier. He said something was calling the weak. He said the egg was in peril.
Nishi lifted her phone, thumb flying over the screen. “I’m calling him.”
She hit dial.
No answer.
She tried again.
Still nothing.
Faith didn’t swear. That was worse than swearing. Her silence was weighted. “If Cal is flying...”
Eve’s voice went tight. “Or he may be fighting something he tracked.”
Tegan’s fingers tightened around the tracker. “Or the masking spell is interfering with communication. Like the suppression grid did.”
Greyson’s voice cut in again, urgent. “Tell Cal to get here. Now. We need him present if the egg is destabilizing.”
Faith’s eyes narrowed. “He isn’t answering.”
“Then get here and we handle it without him until he arrives,” Greyson said. “Just move.”
Faith ended the call and stared out the windshield as if she could will time to speed up. Nishi drove as if she had a personal grudge against traffic laws.
The city blurred past, lights smearing on the wet pavement. My mind tried to hold too many moving pieces at once. Zombies multiplying, a relic hidden behind a three-mile blind spot, and now an egg that might turn to stone if we failed to keep it warm.
I kept thinking about the word Tegan’s mom had used.
Calling.
Calls the dead, doesn’t control them.
Calls the weak, too.
The SUV pulled into a quiet neighborhood where houses sat behind hedges and winter-bare trees.
Greyson’s place looked like him. Practical, renovated, sturdy.
A craftsman-style home with a porch that had been repaired instead of replaced, boards that showed real wood grain instead of glossy perfection.
Warm light spilled from the front window, and ward lines shimmered on the glass if you knew how to look.
Greyson opened the door before we even reached the steps. He stood barefoot in jeans and a T-shirt, dark hair messy like he’d been running his hands through it too hard. His gray eyes flicked over all of us, a quick count, then narrowed.
“No Cal,” he said.
Faith brushed past him. “Not answering.”
Greyson’s mouth tightened. “Of course not.”
Inside, the house smelled of sawdust and coffee. The entryway held a tool bag by the wall, as if even home couldn’t convince him to stop working. A coat rack leaned slightly because someone, probably Faith, had shoved too many jackets on it without caring about balance.
Greyson led us through the living room to a narrow door under the stairs.
“This is my fault,” he said as he walked. “I told myself the safe could ward anything.”
Faith shot him a look. “Not your fault.”
Greyson gave her a flat stare. “Do not comfort me.”
Eve muttered, “Now is not the time for flirting.”
Greyson glanced at her. “This is not flirting.”
He opened the under-stair door.
A small room sat behind it, half storage, half ward chamber. The air in there felt different. Cooler, denser, as if the house had a private spine made of magic.
The safe was not large. It was about the size of a carry-on suitcase, hidden behind a painting of wolves, with runes carved along the edges that pulsed.
The air around it didn’t just shimmer. It wavered. Flickered as if it were struggling to stay in place.
Faith’s shoulders rose. “That’s bad.”
Greyson stared at it. “That’s very bad.”
Tegan stepped closer, relic in her palm. “The safe should be feeding it a stable heat source.”
“It is,” Greyson said. “Or it should be. I used a spell to mimic Brutus’ flame.”
I heard the reverence in his tone. Brutus was a miracle. The last living dragon.
Eve’s eyes narrowed. “So why is the temperature dropping.”
Greyson’s jaw tightened. “Because something is siphoning or blocking my wards. Or both.”
My skin prickled as I neared the safe. The cold tug under my ribs returned, slight but unmistakable. Not necromancy exactly. More like an echo of that tether I’d felt downtown.
Nishi stood back, scanning corners, listening. “We open it.”
Greyson’s gaze flicked to her. “If we open it too fast, we expose the egg to a shift in temperature.”
Faith didn’t blink. “Then be careful. We need to know what is going on.”
Greyson exhaled, then nodded once. He placed his hands on the safe door, whispered a sequence of words that sounded like numbers and promises, and the runes brightened.
The first lock clicked.
Then the second.
The third hesitated, and Greyson’s expression tightened. He pressed more power into the line, and the third lock finally released with a reluctant snap.
The safe door swung open.
Warmth should have rolled out.
Instead, a damp cold slid across my fingers.
The egg sat in a padded nest inside the safe, cradled in thick fabric that held heat and protection.
It was large enough that I had to remind myself there was a baby inside, not just a magical problem.
Its shell was mottled gray, the kind of stone-like surface that looked alive if you stared long enough.
Except it was changing.
Dark spots spread across one side like bruises made of shadow. They looked dense, heavier than the rest of the shell, as if portions of it were hardening into true stone.
Faith leaned in, eyes narrowed. “That was not there before.”
Greyson’s voice went quiet. “No. It wasn’t.”
Eve’s face tightened. “This is the calling.”
Tegan reached toward the egg, then stopped herself. “We need Cal.”
A scrape sounded from outside, then a heavy thud on the porch.
The house creaked once, as if the structure itself noticed a large presence.
A second later, the front door swung open.
Cal strode into the hallway as if he’d been walking fast for miles, shoulders tense, eyes bright. He looked human at the moment, but there was nothing fully human about how he moved. He had the solid, weighted grace of someone who could become stone and wing and claw without warning.
His gaze locked onto the under-stair room.
He didn’t speak at first. His jaw clenched, nostrils flaring as if he could smell the egg’s distress.
Faith stepped into the hallway. “Took you long enough.”
Cal’s eyes flicked to her. “My phone died.”
Faith stared at him. “It died.”
Cal’s mouth twitched, almost a smile, but worry crushed it before it could form. “It fell when I was flying.”
Eve pointed to the egg. “Can you help?”
Cal moved into the small room, and the air seemed to adjust around him, as if the house recognized something ancient and heavy had stepped into its heart.
The moment he saw the egg, his face went still.
Not blank. Not numb. Controlled. Like he couldn’t afford to lose it.
“What is that?” Faith demanded, pointing at the dark patches.
Cal’s throat worked once. “Petrification.”
Greyson swore softly.
Tegan’s fingers tightened around her relic. “It’s turning to stone.”
Cal’s eyes stayed on the egg. “It’s already stone. But this is different.”
Eve’s voice rose. “Explain.”
Cal finally looked up, gaze sweeping the room, then settling on Faith again. “If the egg fully turns, it kills the baby.”
Silence hit hard.
Faith’s face went rigid. “Kills.”
Cal nodded once, slow. “The shell seals. No exchange. No breath. No heat. The life inside suffocates in magic.”
My stomach twisted. A baby in an egg, trapped, because someone was pulling on the wrong kind of power.
I stepped closer before my brain could talk me out of it. “Let me try.”
Cal’s gaze snapped to me. “Try what?”
“Healing,” I said. “I can push warmth back into it. I can reinforce life flow.”
Faith’s eyes narrowed. “Can you heal stone?”
“I’m not healing the shell,” I said. “I’m supporting what’s inside.”
Greyson’s gaze flicked toward me. “If you touch it wrong, you might amplify the dark magic.”
“I know,” I said, and my voice came out steadier than I felt. “But if we do nothing, the spots spread.”
Cal watched me like he was deciding whether to let a stranger near his heart.
Then he nodded once. “Do it.”
I reached into the safe.
The egg was warm in places, cold in others. The dark patches were cooler, dense, as if they absorbed heat instead of holding it. My palm hovered over one of the spots and my skin crawled, not from fear, but from the sensation of something feeding.
I closed my eyes and called on the part of me that knew how to mend.
Healing always felt like a quiet river. Steady. Patient. It didn’t force. It invited the body to remember how to be whole.
I pressed my hands to the shell.
Warmth flowed from me into the egg.
At first, nothing happened.
Then the shell pulsed under my palms, a subtle thrum, like a heartbeat you could barely detect.
Relief flickered through my chest.
And then resistance met my healing.
Not from the egg.
From outside it.