11. Have I ever told you I love it when you’re being sneaky?
ELEVEN
Have I ever told you I love it when you’re being sneaky?
I compiled a list of addresses based on Audrey’s receipts, and we began our search at one she’d visited several times before her marriage to my husband.
The navigation system in the SUV had trouble locating the address, but with a little help from an actual map, I found the place at the end of a long, winding road in the mountains of Vermont.
According to Audrey’s files, the last time she’d visited had been five years ago, and judging from the decrepit state of the bed and breakfast, she’d been among the last of the guests to visit it.
Had I not known better—if I hadn’t seen so many gorgon statues over the years—I would have believed the pair of women flanking the road had been art.
“We didn’t bring neutralizer, Quinn.” The oversight annoyed me, especially as I owned an obscene amount of the sparkling substance.
“Do you think our relatives will kill us if we keep asking them to carry things around for us? You know, super powerful divines relegated to fetch duty. I bet they could wave their hand and make all of these problems of ours disappear, and we use them to teleport our pets and stuffed animals around.”
My husband stopped the SUV between the statues and got out of the vehicle, careful to keep from banging his door into the woman.
Someone had dressed her like a Greek goddess before petrifying her, and her expression implied she’d been drugged with something, probably pixie dust, to force her cooperation. The clothes, likely through some form of practitioner magic, endured the elements.
Most petrification victims had startled or disgusted expressions depending on which defenses the gorgon used. I followed his example, careful not to lose my puppies or kitten or damage the statue nearby while getting out. The ocelot pounced on the statue’s feet.
Sunny sat down and barked three times.
I rewarded her with a pat on the head. “Good girl.”
“Bile or dust,” my husband stated with a scowl. “Her nose must be really sensitive to detect it from the stone.”
As I didn’t want Blizzard or Avalanche to be exposed, I put them back into the SUV and kept Sunny on a short leash.
“Call the CDC and request a delivery of neutralizer. There’s no way of knowing how long these people have been like this, and I’m the most qualified to get them safely reversed back to human without potentially spreading more of the contagion.
And however much I like your gorgon-incubus doohickey form, I know you’re shy.
I’ll scout the place with Sunny while you get a team here.
Make sure we have jurisdiction. Just tell them we were visiting blasts from the past. That’s not a lie.
We’re just visiting someone else’s past is all. ”
“Have I ever told you I love it when you’re being sneaky?”
I smiled despite the severity of the situation. “No, not really. I’m not usually the sneaky kind, am I?”
“You’re really not. I’ll take care of getting the neutralizer and help for the vics. Take your gun, unleash Sunny, and let her guard you.”
I retrieved my Glock, checked over the weapon, and set Sunny’s leash on the hood of the rental. “Stay close, Sunny.”
My puppy obeyed.
Someone had gone through a lot of effort transforming the bed and breakfast into a garden filled with statues of women posed to be Greek goddesses, and one of the victims was a gorgon, one who’d been killed before being turned to stone, one of the human women posed in triumph with a sword, heavily rusted from exposure to the elements.
Dark, old stains marred her clothes, and a few tears in her modern shirt revealed where she’d been stabbed through the chest. The stone beneath preserved the killing wound.
I took care not to touch anything, walking around the building and counting victims before returning to my husband.
He hung up his phone while I approached. “It’ll take an hour or two, but a team is on the way. What did you find?”
“A murdered gorgon. She’s been petrified, and one of the women has been posed to coincide with her statue.
I believe she was petrified after she’d been killed.
All the clothes look to be in good condition, so probably a practitioner helped with that.
The sword is probably the murder weapon, and one of the statues is holding it. ”
“Damn it. How do you know she was murdered?”
“There’s a big hole where it looks like she was stabbed in the chest, and the stone is likewise damaged. It’s near the heart, so it was probably quick. Even as a statue, she looks pretty dead to me.”
“All right. Step one is to fully photograph the scene. This place has been abandoned long enough there’s no chance in hell we’d get any useful footprints, but try not to walk anywhere else you haven’t already been to limit the damage to the site.
Take pictures of everything, and I’ll show you how to upload them as evidence into the system once we have a few moments.
Get a good face shot of all victims, and we’ll try to do a black and white facial recognition scan.
It looks like this got significantly more complicated than it already was.
” My husband let out his breath in a gusty sigh.
“It’s as good a time as any for you to start learning the ropes. ”
“I never thought I’d say working with bombs seemed a lot easier than this.” I dug in the back for my holster, strapped it around my waist, and stowed my Glock before arming myself with my phone. “Whose bright idea was it to make me a cop again?”
“Personally, I’m grateful Clemmends had it out for you and wanted to dump you with the NYPD. You have far superior co-workers now.”
That I did. “What a dick. You should have let me light him on fire and shove our marriage license down his throat, though.”
My husband chuckled while he made his own preparations, which included arming himself and zippering up his new bulletproof jacket rather than show off his resilience against the cold.
I pouted over his ability to tolerate snow and the brisk wind better than I could, regretting I hadn’t gotten a scarf, gloves, and the little things that helped make the outdoors during the winter almost bearable.
Within twenty minutes, I’d freeze my ass off, and I deserved to be mocked for my failure to plan accordingly. “Hey, Quinn?”
“What is it?”
“I need scarves and mittens and gloves and a cute little hat to keep my ears warm, assuming I survive this. Winter is bad for cindercorns. There’s no fire. No fire anywhere. I’m going to turn into a block of ice before the team gets here.”
“Check the back of the SUV in my black leather bag. I anticipated your special needs.”
Huh. I really did have the best husband.
I checked the back, and sure enough, there were several pairs of black leather gloves that would fit me, several scarves, and a winter hat meant to keep my poor ears warm.
I bundled up, muttering over how phones were evil and I’d have to wear the pair without fingertips in order to take the needed pictures.
“We need an actual camera, one that doesn’t need me to touch a screen to operate. ”
“Normally, we have one as part of our work kit, but we’ll get one of our own just in case. Until the team arrives, you’ll survive using your phone.”
“But will I?”
“You better.”
The gorgon was the only victim I believed to be dead, but I struggled to comprehend how seventy-three women had been left as statues for so long.
Fortunately, none of the statues seemed weathered, which offered some hope they would survive being returned to flesh.
While I took pictures, Quinn handled running the facial recognition software while keeping Blizzard and Avalanche company in the SUV.
When I finished documenting everything I could, I returned to the vehicle to watch him.
“Have I told you today you’re beautiful and smart?”
“Not sure,” I replied. “I could probably handle being told again. I haven’t had time to recruit the entirety of a mental health department to resolve my self-esteem problems.”
He snorted. “You’re smart and beautiful. I wouldn’t have thought to go this far back in Audrey’s records despite having them, and I probably wouldn’t have thought to come to some little bed and breakfast, as I would have assumed it was just yet another location of one of her trysts.”
“It looks like a lot more than that. What have you found so far?”
“A lot of missing women, the newest of which is six years ago, so they’ve been here a while. The oldest is from eleven years ago.”
“Long before you married Audrey.”
“Bingo. The real question is how do these women connect to Audrey or Morrison? If they connect to them. They might not. However, considering Audrey became a gorgon and killed her brother when he refused to go through the process, I’m starting to think this is far more than a mere coincidence.”
“Audrey had weak snakes, too. Like Michella.”
“And she was just as impotent, so that tells me that the batch of dust, while registering as high potency to the scanners, didn’t have sufficient magic to create strong gorgons. Perhaps it’s got a higher infection rate?”
“Easy to infect, hard to destroy.” I wrinkled my nose. “Which supports my general decision to torch 120 Wall Street. I really thought Yale would kill me for that stunt if the CDC didn’t get me first. In other news, that hangover really sucked.”
My husband shot me a glare, which promised retribution in some form or another.
As his favored form of retribution involved trying to convince me I had value, I expected to enjoy every minute of it.
“Without your napalm order, a huge number of weak gorgons may have been created, and they would have become easy targets for gorgon trafficking—and they would have become excellent pets for the wealthy. They would have fetched a high price on the black market.”