Page 60 of The Flame Game

“Are you saying you like him and act like you don’t so he’ll come visit you?”

“That sounds about right.”

Men. “You’re an idiot.”

He laughed. “Love you, too, Bailey.”

Shaking my head, I resumed my search for the clues that might lead us to where we needed to go and put an end to the rabies and gorgon dust threats once and for all.

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.”