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My power nap lasted no more’n fifteen minutes, but when I woke this time, I felt like I’d slept for hours. I could hear Riley and Nora chatting in the kitchen, so I scooted into the bathroom and brushed my teeth, then stripped the bed down and dumped the sheets into the washing machine on my way to the kitchen.
Then backtracked to the bedroom when my cellphone chirped. I got to it just in time to see Preacher Dryman’s name on the screen and thumb into the call. “Hello?”
“Sunshine!” He sounded out of breath, like he raced a marathon right before calling me. A jumble of static come over the line, then the call cut out.
I yanked the phone away from my ear and stared at it, alarmed. Unlocked my phone and called him back, but his phone just rang and rang. Huh. That weren’t good a’tall.
I walked into the kitchen, tucking my phone into my back pocket as I went. Nora and Riley stopped talking when they seen me, which was good ‘cause I was planning on interrupting ‘em anyhow. “Preacher Dryman might be in trouble.”
Riley stood up so quick, his chair skittered back against the worn linoleum. “I’m coming with you.”
I nodded, which seemed to surprise him. That’s what he got for assuming, ain’t it?
We was out in his Range Rover in three minutes flat. Riley drove just over the speed limit. Much as I wanted to hurry him along, I didn’t say word one. Them mountain roads can get mighty tricky. The last thing we needed was to slide off a curve or, worse, come around one and hit somebody what hadn’t kept to his lane.
My phone rung again when we was about halfway there. Preacher Dryman again. I answered and said hello, and he sighed real big into his end of things.
“Sunshine!” he said. “Thank goodness. Liam’s in trouble.”
“We’re almost there. What kinda trouble?”
“Would you be upset if I said this was another one you need to see to believe?” He let out a shaky laugh, and I could almost see him running a hand over his snow white hair. “I found him by that hole out in the woods. He’s a statue, Sunshine, marble or maybe a highly polished granite.”
My innards shrank down to a tiny, disbelieving core. I sucked in a breath and let it out real slow. “Hold that thought, Reverend. We’ll be there in a jiff.”
“Preacher Dryman?” Riley said as I hung up and tucked the phone away.
“Yeah.” I twisted around and caught Nora’s gaze with my own. “Liam was turned to stone.”
“Oh, no,” she breathed.
All I could do was nod and face forward again. Weren’t no hurry no more. Liam weren’t going nowhere no time soon.
––––––––
Preacher Dryman was waiting on us in front of his house, back behind the church. Soon as Riley parked, the reverend walked to us, shaking his head. He was dressed for a hike. Sturdy boots, sturdy jeans, a light jacket. His expression was grim and pale beneath a shock of white hair.
“Preacher,” I said as I slid out and shut the Range Rover’s door behind me. “What happened?”
“Liam missed our poker game last night,” the preacher said. “Toothpicks only, just me and him. It’s a tradition. We’ve been doing it since I moved up here to minister the church.”
“So you went looking for him?”
He nodded and his gaze strayed to the woods. “And I found him, too.”
Nora stepped forward and placed a gentle hand on his arm. “Why don’t you show us, Wiley. Or would you rather stay here?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “No, I’ll lead the way. Least I can do. Liam’s been a good friend and I...”
His voice trailed off and he shook his head again. I didn’t blame him. What else could a body say at a time like this?
We followed him past Liam’s place into the woods, then along the animal trail to the hellhole. Leaf buds had appeared on the trees almost overnight, like spring decided to poke her head out long enough to test the air. Winter was leaving in a hurry, though the bite of the wind reminded us that he hadn’t quite gone to sleep yet.
Fresh scorch marks radiated away from the hole, which seemed bigger to me than when Liam first showed it to us. More jagged, too, like whatever’d come out was in a hurry or maybe carrying something with ‘em and not minding where they carried it.
I looked at Liam, trapped inside a statue with his looking glass stretched out to the side. He was a solid block of stone now, trapped within a statue so detailed it was almost lifelike.
My hands curled into fists at my side and from somewhere deep, anger come rushing out. “Euryale,” I growled.
Nora placed her hand on my forearm, much as she had the preacher’s. “We don’t know that. This could very well be the work of Medusa.”
Not Medusa herself, but her head.
“Or Medusa’s other sister,” Nora continued.
“Then I reckon we orta start with the sister we got in hand, don’t you?”
Nora nodded, though her lips thinned into a frown.
Riley stepped close to Liam and cupped a hand over the statue’s shoulder. “So real,” he murmured. “Liam was a friend of mine.”
My eyelids slid shut in a slow blink as the anger bled out of me, quick as it’d come. Didn’t it just figure that Riley and Liam was friends.
“He’s still a friend of yours,” Nora said.
“Is he?” Preacher Dryman crossed his arms over his chest, laying one on top of t’other. “Can he be revived from this state?”
“I don’t know.” Nora let her hand slide off me and touched Liam’s cheek, gliding her fingertips along his bearded jaw. “It seems like such an invasion of privacy to touch him like this, without his consent. Such an intrusion. Should we try to carry him back to his workshop, out of the weather?”
Riley backed off immediately, hands raised, palms out. “I don’t want to be responsible for dropping him. If he breaks, we’ll never get him back.”
“Yet it seems so undignified to leave him here, subject to the whims of nature and whatever’s using this portal.”
My gaze sharpened on hers. Portal, huh. That was a new one on me, though it made sense. If the afterlife, such as it was, rested on another plane, didn’t it seem fit that you’d need a portal to get there? Walking there like in the stories seemed too easy, but maybe that was just me. I weren’t used to doing nothing the easy way.
Preacher Dryman let out a huge sigh. “We’d need a cart of some kind and more than the four of us to move him. That would mean letting other people know what’s going on, which could start a panic or even a witch hunt.”
The back of my neck prickled right before a familiar male voice said, “We can’t have that, can we?”
I whirled around, searching for the source, and saw diddly squat other’n a passel of trees.
“Eros, I know that’s you,” I called.
He stepped out from behind a tree onto the animal trail, frowning. Amazingly enough, it only made him more handsome. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a spoil sport, Sunshine?”
“Ever body and God,” I said right off. “What’re you doing here?”
“Picking up a sword from Master McCracken.” Eros nodded at the statue as he glided toward us. “I take it he’s had an encounter with Euryale.”
I arched an I-told-you-so eyebrow at Nora, who promptly said, “We don’t know that it was Euryale.”
“Don’t defend her,” Eros said, his voice dark and terrible of a sudden. “She’s been a terror for years. Picked up where her little sister left off before Perseus lopped Medusa’s head off.”
Riley was eyeing Eros like he was a new species of fish. He held out his hand to Eros and said, “Riley Treadwell.”
Eros had the good grace to shake Riley’s hand, which kindly surprised me, what with him being an immortal god and all. Above such things, I’da thought, but what did I know?
“Eros,” he said, then dropped Riley’s hand and turned his gaze on Liam. “I can take this off your hands if you don’t have a use for him.”
I stepped forward scowling. “Hold it right there, mister. Liam ain’t going nowhere so long as there’s a chance we can get him back.”
Eros threw back his head and laughed so hard, the birds roosting overhead took to wing and scattered. “Get him back? Darling mortal, there’s no cure for what ails poor Liam.”
My heart sank right down to my knees. “Says who?”
“Says everyone,” he said, so offhand I coulda choked him. “I do wish he’d finished my sword before he was turned to stone. The man was a genius at metalworking. Touched by Hephaestus himself, I’d wager.”
Nora sucked in a sharp breath, but when I glanced at her, she just waved me off.
Eros put a possessive hand on Liam, and I strode forward and knocked it away.
“Don’t you dare touch him,” I said.
Eros glanced at me, his expression so alien, he didn’t look near as human as he had a minute before. “I’ve warned you, child.”
“Yeah? Wanna warn me again?”
Riley stepped between us with his back to Eros and looked down at me. “Sunshine,” he said softly. “Remember that talk we had about chasing trouble?”
“Fine,” I said. “But he ain’t taking Liam with him.”
Eros laughed. “I do love a woman with spirit, especially one with a destiny like yours.”
I peered around Riley and glared at Eros. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
His grin held a touch of meanness, and yup, that only made him look the handsomer. “You’ll see. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve a sword to retrieve.”
He turned around and glided off, whistling a tune I didn’t recognize.
“You’d best leave payment for that sword,” I hollered at his back.
Riley pinched the bridge of his nose, but Nora and Preacher Dryman just laughed. Likely ‘cause there weren’t a thing I could do to make good on that threat and we all knowed it.
