Page 31 of Petrified

Lev pulls his hand from the window frame, and the limestone texture slowly recedes from his fingers. “He’s going to be pissed.”

Rowan looks through the broken window toward the empty alley. His expression hardens rather than changing with the warning. “Let him be pissed. At least, he can’t turn anyone to stone anymore.”

I look at the fresh dust beneath the window and think about how quickly he abandoned this place once Lev began closing the distance. Removing the snake has made the people outside this building safer, but it’s also stripped away the one thing that allowed the gargoyle to attack without getting close.

Now, if he wants something from us, he’ll have to come himself.

Chapter 10

ROWAN

By the time Lev leaves with Medusa to check the restoration yards on the south side of the quarry district, I have already decided I'm done pretending Gerald’s questions were normal.

Amand knows it too. He waits until the front door of Essence closes behind them before looking across the lobby at me, and neither of us bothers putting the thought into careful words. Gerald knew too much after the petrification before Lev even explained it.

Gerald had gone straight from the healer’s findings into questions about exactly how Lev’s magic reacted when my lungs began turning to stone, and the more I replay it, the less those questions sound like curiosity.

“He asked how fast it spread before he asked how I felt,” I say as we head toward the stairs. The office is quieter than usual this afternoon, most of the field staff out on assignments and Gerald gone for a meeting across town. “Then he wanted to know when Lev touched me, when he kissed me, whether the reversal started before or after contact.”

Amand keeps pace beside me, his expression set. “He also asked whether Lev could reproduce it deliberately.”

“That’s the one I keep coming back to.” My hand tightens around the railing as we reach the second floor. “Like he wasn’t surprised Lev could do it. He was disappointed we couldn’t tell him exactly how.”

Amand glances toward Gerald’s closed office at the end of the hall. “Then we stop guessing.”

Gerald’s door is locked, which is the first thing about this afternoon that feels normal. Amand crouches at the electronic panel beside the frame while I keep watch on the hall, and for a few seconds neither of us says anything. Essence security is built around the assumption that most people trying to get somewhere they shouldn’t will be strangers. It is less prepared for two investigators who have spent enough time in the building to know how Gerald organizes things, which doors use the same access system, and where the older security panels tend to fail.

Amand tries his agency credentials first. The panel flashes red almost immediately, and he exhales through his nose before entering the administrative override we use for evidence storage. That one fails too, and I glance toward the stairs while the warning light pulses once. “You’re doing great.”

“I’m narrowing the options.” He keeps his attention on the panel and shifts closer to it. “And before you ask, yes, I know we only get one more bad attempt before this starts making noise.”

“I was going to ask whether breaking the door would actually be faster.” I look down at him while he slips two fingers behind the edge of the panel and feels around for something inside. “Because I’m starting to think it would be.”

“No, because then Gerald would know we were here before we found anything.” Amand presses something behind the panel, and the light turns green. He straightens and smooths the front of his shirt while I stare at him. “I suspected the panel used the same manual release as evidence storage.”

“That is a very convenient suspicion.” I follow him when he opens the door and steps inside. “You could have mentioned you were planning to casually break into our boss’s office before we got here.”

“It worked, didn’t it?” He says it without looking back at me, already scanning the room.

Gerald’s office looks exactly the way it always does. The desk is clean except for two stacked case folders and a tablet resting precisely in the center. Books and reference manuals fill one set of shelves, while the others hold old case files arranged with the kind of order that makes Lev complain every time Gerald asks him to put something back where he found it. Nothing about the room looks threatening, and that bothers me more than I expect.

I shut the door behind us and stand there for a second, remembering Gerald sitting behind that same desk while Lev sprawled in one of the chairs and argued with him about training. Gerald teaching him how to recognize changes in his designation. Gerald acting amused whenever Lev discovered another ability he had not known he possessed. Since Lev came to Essence, this room has been one of the few places Lev didn't treat like enemy territory.

“Start with anything restricted,” I say, and Amand nods before heading toward the filing cabinets. I take the desk and work through the drawers one at a time. Most of what I find is exactly what should be there: current cases, invoices, staff notes, client requests, and the usual collection of supernatural problems people would rather pay Essence to handle than explain to law enforcement.

The first drawer gives me nothing useful, and the second is mostly personnel paperwork. The bottom one doesn't move when I pull it, so I try again and feel the lock catch inside. “Found something.”

Amand crosses the office and looks down at my hand still wrapped around the metal handle. “Don’t break it.”

“I wasn’t going to.” His eyes stay on my grip until I let go. “I was considering my options.”

“You have one option that doesn’t announce what we did.” He crouches and takes a narrow tool from his pocket while I move back toward the door and listen for footsteps in the hallway. The lock clicks less than a minute later, and Amand slides the drawer open.

There are only four folders inside, which makes me more suspicious than a drawer packed with files would have. The first three are marked with case numbers I don't recognize. No client names. No usual color coding. Just numbers and dates.

The fourth folder has one word printed across the tab.

CHAMELEON.