Page 42 of Petrified

I almost do when the scent reaches a limestone retaining wall and disappears. Every instinct I have tells me to keep moving, check the other side, circle the wall, find wherever the bastard came out, but I stop instead and plant my feet before the impulse can take over.

Rowan stops with me, and Amand does the same. “Good,” Rowan says quietly, earning a glare from me.

“Don't congratulate me for basic impulse control. It feels patronizing.” I turn back to the wall before he can answer and force myself to let the place separate instead of trying to rip an answer out of it all at once.

Dust sits thicker near the base except where something disturbed it. A broken weed bends toward the wall instead of away from it, and a darker scrape marks the limestone several feet higher. Beneath the gargoyle’s signature, I catch Medusa again, weaker but fresh enough that my pulse jumps.

“She came through here with him.” I crouch near the broken weed and study the dirt without touching it. “There’s weight through this section, but not enough for a body being dragged the whole way. She was on her feet for at least part of it.”

Rowan points toward the scrape on the wall. “Something hit there.”

I follow his hand and find three thin scratches carved across the limestone. They are too narrow for claws and too uneven for a tool, but after spending the last several days around Medusa, I know exactly what made them.

“One of her snakes.” I stand and look toward the abandoned buildings beyond the service road, keeping myself from chasing the next scent the second I find it. “She fought him here, which means he didn’t take her quietly.”

Amand studies the wall for another moment before looking toward the quarry district beyond it. “And he knows we figured out how he hides.”

“Exactly. So if he dragged her back into the quarry, he isn’t going to use the same trick the same way and hope I’m stupid enough to miss him twice.” I catch Rowan’s expression and point at him before he says anything. “That wasn't an invitation to comment on previous stupidity.”

His mouth pulls faintly at one corner, but he leaves it alone.

The gargoyle’s scent returns around the far side of the retaining wall and leads toward the oldest part of the district. We passed through here earlier in the case, back when every stretch of limestone looked equally useless and I still assumed a disappearing trail meant he had gone somewhere else. Now I recognize the narrow service road leading between two abandoned processing buildings and the cut through the rock where old quarry carts once ran.

Medusa told us he worked this district for years doing restoration, structural repair, and old stonework. At the time, that sounded like background information. Now it means the bastard knows every place where the quarry folds in on itself, every building with more than one exit, every section of stone deep enough to hide against while someone searches five feet away.

The trail takes us toward a broad yard filled with discarded restoration pieces. Broken columns lie on wooden supports beside carved lintels, damaged statues, architectural fragments, and several half-finished gargoyle figures waiting beneath weathered tarps. I stop at the edge before stepping into it because the whole place looks like it was designed specifically to piss me off.

“You have got to be fucking kidding me.” I stare across rows of gray stone in every possible shape. “He brought her into a yard full of decorative camouflage.”

Amand looks over the nearest stacks. “If he knows you learned to look for differences in a flat surface, this gives him more places to disappear.”

“Thank you. I had reached that horrifying conclusion on my own.” I keep my attention moving slowly instead of snapping from shape to shape. The gargoyle’s scent is stronger here, but it overlaps itself enough that I can tell he crossed the yard more than once.

Rowan moves close enough that the back of his hand brushes mine. “He’s trying to make the trail useless.”

“Not useless. Loud.” I take another breath and find Medusa beneath it, weaker than before but still there. “He wants me following everything he touched instead of asking why he touched it.”

Amand’s gaze shifts toward me. “Then don’t follow him.”

“He’s laying too much of himself down.” I gesture toward the nearest row of carved stone. “We spent days barely catching him. Now suddenly he’s rubbed his magic across half the fucking quarry?”

Rowan scans the yard more carefully. “He wants us searching here.”

“Yeah, which means I’d very much like to stop giving him what he wants.” I close my eyes long enough to separate Medusa’s signature from everything else. Without the severed snake connecting her magic to the gargoyle, there’s no reason for her scent to be spread anywhere she hasn’t physically been, which makes hers more useful than his now.

When I find the strongest thread again, it doesn’t continue deeper into the restoration yard. It cuts left toward an old stone passage running behind the processing building, and I open my eyes and point toward it. “She went that way.”

Rowan starts moving before I catch the back of his shirt and jerk him short. He turns fast enough that I nearly lose my grip, eyebrows lifting when I tell him, “Slow. Yes, I heard myself, so shut up.” I let go and move toward the passage with Amand beside me. “If he wants us charging through here, I’d prefer not to make his day.”

The passage narrows quickly, limestone rising on both sides until the yard disappears behind us. Old metal rails are still embedded in the ground from when carts moved stone through the quarry, and several doorways cut into the rock lead toward storage rooms or tunnels I absolutely don't remember from our earlier searches.

Amand slows beside the second opening and looks down the passage. “This connects to the old cutting chambers. We passed the plans when we searched the district. Most of the public access points were sealed years ago, but restoration crews still used some of the lower rooms for storage.”

Rowan looks into the dark opening. “And he worked restoration.”

“There it is.” I rub both hands over my arms as the temperature drops around us. “Wonderful. He kidnapped the woman who can turn people into lawn ornaments and took her underground into a maze built out of his favorite material.”

Amand catches my wrist as he starts forward, his palm cool against my skin. The contact settles some of the irritation scratching beneath it while he reminds me, “You wanted the route he would choose.”