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Theo and I looked at each other, snorted.
“Can you believe?” Theo asked.
“I know, I know,” I said. “Rosantine—can we call you Rosantine?” I asked, then didn’t wait for her response. “First, she thinks we’d actually believe her promise to bring the House back. Second, if we knew the locations of the Cornerstones, would we be here right now?”
“The ones who exiled me made a plan,” she said, with a tone that read of boredom at our antics.
“And we aren’t privy to it,” Theo said, gesturing toward the car. “Our schedule is full, so we’d really like to go ahead and arrest you.”
Her fingers began twitching.
“Hand flick,” I said.
We all looked around. For a moment, there was nothing, either of the improbable variety or of a corresponding ward. But I should have known that chaos doesn’t operate on a schedule.
There was a tearing sound, a wrenching groan, and the earth shook.
“What is it?” Theo asked.
I watched Rosantine close her eyes, breathe in magic.
“It’s not a ward,” I said quietly, as if my voice alone might trigger one. “Just her.”
“So why doesn’t she leave?” Theo asked, hand on his weapon as his eyes scanned the park. “No ward means no Cornerstone. And that’s what she wants.”
“Because she’s hungry,” I said grimly. “Rose, Eglantine, whatever. Stop the magic immediately. You’re surrounded by officers, and you’re coming with us.”
As expected, she ignored me.
“Petra!” I called out, keeping my eyes on the demon. “Do your thing.”
I felt the charge in the air, the light turning a pale shade of blue as Petra charged herself somewhere behind me. And then a vacuum as power was sucked from the air, condensed.
A bolt of lightning flew from my left toward Rosantine, whose eyes snapped open with concern. She hadn’t liked lightning the last time she’d met it. But the warehouse machine’s magic must have been different than Petra’s, as she batted the bolt aside like it was nothing more than an insect. It struck a tree at the edge of the park, which split with acrackof sound.
Rose closed her eyes again.
The scent of sulfur swirled in the air, and we watched, dumbfounded, as one of the white statues—something vaguely gorilla-like—hauled itself out of the ground with its curled marble knuckles. It opened its mouth to scream, showing enormous teeth, but made no sound other than the scrape of stone against stone.
“Shit,”I whispered as sweat trickled down my back despite the chill in the air.
“Is that...” Petra began.
“An animated sculpture of a very pissed-off gorilla?” I asked, pushing down the rush of childhood fear. “It really is.”
It was nearly six feet tall, the lower half of its body stained with rings of green and brown from its decades in the dirt. And it moved with a lurching gate that had every hair on my body standing on end.
“How long for you to recharge?” I asked Petra amid another chorus of thunder.
“Another minute,” she said.
Another rupturing sound; another moving sculpture. This one was elephantine but bulkier, stockier. And then the metaphorical gates were open. While Rosantine watched, fed on the fear and confusion, a dozen stone animals—all of them taller than us—began dragging themselves toward us.
“Dislike,” Theo said. “Really, really dislike.”
“Yeah,” I said. This was a new variety of demon-fueled horror show. We were now surrounded by animals, and they were picking up speed as they moved, becoming more lifelike as they moved.
The gorilla screamed silently again, slammed its fist into the dirt. Dirt flew up from the crater it made, the concussion shaking the earth beneath us a few feet away.
