Chapter 2: The Petrified Parents
The service corridor was a throat of concrete and humming machinery. Mandy moved with a focused urgency, Ben a half-step behind her, his body tuned to her lead. The man in the dark suit had vanished around a corner where the hallway branched toward storage.
“Jeeves, thermal overlay on my feed, now,” Mandy whispered into her phone’s mic. A moment later, her screen shimmered with a green-and-orange ghost image of the corridor. Two bright human-shaped blobs were stationary about twenty yards ahead, behind a door. No sign of a third.
Felicity, Bruce, and Mai caught up, their footsteps echoing softly. Bruce had his wrench loose in his hand.
“He went in there,” Mandy said, nodding toward a heavy door marked ‘Archival Storage – Authorized Personnel Only.’ The lock mechanism glinted with a faint, oily sheen that had nothing to do with the fluorescent lights.
“Could be a trap,” Felicity murmured, her tablet now showing a scrolling analysis of local mystical resonance. “There’s a low-grade containment sigil on that lock. Basic, but effective. Keeps noise in.”
“Or keeps people out,” Ben said, flexing his hands.
Mandy didn’t hesitate. She reached for the handle. It was cold. She turned it. It clicked open easily—the sigil wasn’t meant to lock it, just to mute. She shoved the door inward.
The smell hit them first: aged paper, dust, and the sharp, familiar musk of sex. The room was small, crowded with metal shelves holding cardboard boxes and rolled canvases. And there, between shelves labeled ‘1980-1990: Kinetic,’ was Rick Williamson, his dress pants bunched around his ankles, his pale ass clenching as he drove his cock into Stacy Steinberg with deep, practiced strokes.
Stacy was braced against the shelves, her elegant dress hiked up around her waist, her ass pressed against Rick’s thighs. Her head was thrown back, silver-streaked dark hair swaying. One of her high heels was off, dangling from her toes. Her mouth was open in a silent, breathless ‘O’ of pleasure. Rick’s hands were gripping her hips, his fingers digging into the soft flesh, pulling her back onto him with each thrust. The wet, rhythmic slap of skin on skin filled the cramped space.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Mandy said, her voice flat with exasperation.
Rick froze, mid-drive. He looked over his shoulder, his face flooding with crimson horror. “Mandy? Ben? Oh, god. Oh, no.”
Stacy didn’t startle. She slowly turned her head, her expression shifting from ecstasy to unflappable calm. She reached a hand back and patted Rick’s thigh. “It’s alright, honey. Just my backup.” She didn’t move to cover herself. “We saw a suspicious person tailing your family, Mandy. We came back here to… secure the area. And one thing led to another. The stress, you know?”
“The stress,” Mandy repeated, pinching the bridge of her nose. Ben was staring resolutely at the ceiling. Bruce let out a low chuckle. Mai was already subtly angling her body, her livestream mic hopefully offline, to get a better look.
“What is it with my family and broom closets?” Mandy snapped. “Can you… disentangle? We have a situation.”
Rick was frantically pulling out, his softening cock making a soft, wet sound as it left Stacy’s body. He scrambled to pull his pants up, his movements clumsy with shame. “I’m so sorry. We just… it’s been a long week with the new bakery and….”
Stacy calmly lowered her dress, bent to retrieve her shoe, and slipped it on. “The man you were following,” she said, businesslike. “Early fifties. Dark hair, going grey at the temples. Carries himself like private security or low-level military. He didn’t come in here. He passed this door and went out the exterior loading bay door. I heard it cycle shut.”
The casual, post-coital debrief was surreal. Felicity, ever the scholar, nodded. “That correlates with the drop in thermal signature on Jeeves’s scan. He’s outside.”
Before Mandy could process this, a new sound sliced through the distant gallery murmur and the hum of the corridor.
A scream.
It was short, sharp, and ended in a choked gasp. It was unmistakably Beth.
Every other thought vaporized. Mandy spun, shoving past Ben, and sprinted back toward the main gallery, her heart hammering against her ribs. The others followed, a thunder of footsteps in the sterile hall.
They burst back into the glittering world of the gallery. The scene had changed. The gentle jazz had stopped. A crowd had gathered in a loose, uneasy circle near the far wall, where Beth’s largest, most dramatic pieces were displayed. Conversations had died to whispers.
Beth stood frozen, her back to them, Marty holding her shoulders from behind. Her body was rigid with tremor. She was staring at two life-sized figures that hadn’t been there before.
They were positioned between Beth’s photos, a grotesque installation. A man and a woman, captured mid-gesture. The man had one hand slightly raised, as if in awkward greeting, his tie crooked. The woman was turned toward him, her mouth open as if laughing, one hand reaching out to straighten that tie.
Their skin was a uniform, matte stone grey, from the tips of their fingers to the individual strands of their hair. Their clothes were rendered in the same seamless, stony texture. The details were perfect, horrifyingly intimate: the laugh lines at the corners of the woman’s eyes, the familiar hang of the man’s suit jacket, the wedding band on his stony finger.
They were statues. They were Mike and Casey.
“No,” Mandy whispered. The word was airless.
Beth made a small, wounded animal sound. Marty was murmuring into her hair, “It’s okay, it’s okay,” but his own face was bone-white.
Calista was already there. She stood directly before the petrified figure of Casey, her slender elven hand hovering an inch from the stony cheek. A low, dangerous heat began to shimmer in the air around her, a precursor to her fire magic. Her silver eyes were wide, not with fear, but with a cold, building fury.
Mike and Casey’s faces were not serene. Their stone features were twisted, mouths caught in the beginnings of shock, eyes wide with a sudden, trapped awareness. They had been turned to stone in the instant they realized what was happening.
Aunt Judy pushed through the crowd, her professional composure cracked. “What is this? Some kind of sick performance art?” She looked at Beth, then at the statues, and her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, my god. Casey?”
Stacy was suddenly beside Mandy, her bodyguard’s reflexes overriding everything else. Her hand was inside her clutch, undoubtedly on the grip of her 9mm. “Everyone, step back. Do not touch them.” Her voice cut through the murmuring, commanding obedience.
Rick stumbled to a halt beside the petrified form of his father. He reached out a trembling hand. “Dad?”
“Don’t, Rick!” Felicity’s voice was sharp. She was scanning the statues with her tablet, the screen’s light reflecting in her glasses. “The magical residue is… it’s complex. It’s not just a transmutation field. There’s a binding component. A sympathetic link. Touch might destabilize it or… or hurt them.”
“Hurt them?” Rick’s voice broke. “They’re stone!”
“They’re alive in there,” Felicity said, her own voice trembling with the effort to stay clinical. “The spell signature has a sustaining matrix. It’s keeping their biological processes in a state of magical stasis. It’s a prison, not an execution.”
Bruce moved to the periphery, his wrench held low, his eyes scanning the now-silent crowd. “Who did this?” he growled, his accent thick. “And where did they go?”
Kim Powers emerged from the crowd, her elegant dress seeming to borrow the eerie green of her Order. Maryam was at her side, no longer smiling. Kim’s gaze swept over the petrified forms, her lips thinning. “This is not Green Moon work. This is something else. Something old and mean.”
Mandy’s mind, which had frozen for one terrible second, clicked back into motion with a cold, sterile hum. The fear was there, a block of ice in her gut, but she layered protocols over it. Customer service mode. Analyze the problem.
She stepped forward, past Beth, and stood squarely in front of the statue of her father. She looked up into his stone eyes, frozen in a moment of kind, bewildered alarm. “Okay,” she said, her voice surprisingly steady. “Okay. We have a contained biological stasis event. Non-contagious, focused delivery. Witnesses?” She turned to the stunned gallery patrons. “Did anyone see what happened? Anyone approach my parents in the last five minutes?”
A soft, cultured voice spoke from the edge of the circle. The man in the dark suit. He hadn’t left. He stood calmly, his hands now visible and empty. “I did.”
All eyes turned to him. Ben moved instantly, putting himself between the man and Mandy. Bruce shifted his grip on the wrench.
The man smiled, a thin, professional expression. “My name is Alban. I was sent to observe. And to deliver a message.” His gaze traveled from the petrified forms to Mandy’s face. “The message is: ‘The sapling is remembered by the forest.’ The medium was, regrettably, necessary for emphasis. A proof of concept.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Judy demanded, stepping forward, every inch the formidable advisor.
“It means,” Alban said, his eyes settling on Calista, who had turned her burning gaze toward him, “that a debt is called due. Aemelia’s daughter has enjoyed the shelter of mortal fools long enough. The Unseelie Court remembers its strayed blood. And it remembers the humans who have been… annoyingly resilient.”
The air went out of the room. Calista’s shimmering heat intensified. “My mother’s court,” she whispered.
Alban nodded. “They want you back, child. They allowed your… sojourn. Your adoptive family’s persistent ability to survive irreverent nonsense was considered a mildly amusing curiosity. But now, you are of an age. Your power is ripe. And the Court has decided the joke is over.” He glanced at the statues. “This is the opening negotiation. You have forty-eight hours to present yourself at the convergence point in the Everglades. Coordinates will be provided. Fail to come alone, and the next transformation will be permanent. And will involve far more than two mortals.”
He gave a slight, polite bow. “My role as messenger is complete. I advise against following me. The consequences would be… petrifying.”
Before anyone could move, Alban took a step backward into the deep shadow between two large display panels. He didn’t so much vanish as the shadow simply swallowed him whole, leaving no trace.
For a heartbeat, there was utter silence in the Lumina Gallery, broken only by Beth’s choked sob.
Mandy looked from her stone-still parents to her terrified sister, to her furious elfin adopted sister, to the shocked faces of her friends and family. The ice in her gut melted, replaced by a familiar, stubborn fire. It was the same fire Mike and Casey had always carried into impossible situations.
She turned to Felicity, her voice clear and cutting through the silence. “Flick. Get Jeeves on full spectral analysis of the spell matrix. I want to know its every weakness.” She looked at Bruce. “We’re taking them home. Figure out how to move them without damage.” She faced Kim and Maryam. “I need everything the Green Moon has on breaking Unseelie bindings. Everything.” Finally, she walked to Calista and put a hand on her arm. The heat was palpable. “We are not giving you to them.”
Calista’s silver eyes glistened with unshed tears of rage. “They have Mom and Dad.”
“I know,” Mandy said. The perpetual smirk was gone, replaced by a hard, determined line. “So we’re going to get them back. And we’re going to be really, really annoying about it.”
She looked back at the petrified forms of Mike and Casey. Her dad’s crooked tie. Her mom’s outstretched hand. They looked so stupidly, wonderfully themselves, even in stone.
“Okay, guys,” Mandy murmured, just to them. “Time to do that thing we’re best at. Let’s be a pain in the ass.”
Shiv pushed through the clustered onlookers, her movements deliberate and calm amidst the panic. She moved past Mandy, gently guided a trembling Beth aside, and placed a weathered hand on each frozen face—Casey’s stony cheek, then Mike’s. She closed her eyes for a brief moment, her fingers tracing the stone as if reading braille.
She nodded, opening green eyes that held a universe of weary experience. “They’re intact. Conscious, in a manner of speaking. And they are royally pissed off.” A faint, odd smile touched her lips. “Casey’s thinking she does not want to stare at Mike’s crooked tie for all eternity. And Mike says his nose itches.”
A choked sob-laugh escaped Beth. Still weeping, she stepped forward and reached up, scratching the tip of her father’s stone nose with her fingernail. The gesture was heartbreakingly tender and utterly futile.
“He can’t feel that, love,” Shiv said, her voice soft but firm. She turned to Mandy, her tone shifting to practical brogue. “The spell’s a clean cage. It’s safe to move them. But breaking it?” She shook her head. “That’s deep elf magic. The ones who did this are Unseelie, nasty pieces of work. The friendlier Seelie Court might have the counter, or at least a bargaining chip.”
“Judy’s beach house,” Mandy said instantly, her phone already in her hand. “Basement’s shielded, big space. We move them there.” She started tapping the screen, her voice switching to a clipped, logistical cadence. “Bruce, Ben, Rick—we need a secure transport. Get the van around back. Use every cushion in the place. Judy, I need you to clear a path through the gallery with the owner. Tell them it’s a… a guerrilla art piece relocation. A statement.”
As Mandy orchestrated, Calista stood like a silver statue herself, but one radiating a palpable, violent heat. The air around her wavered, and a faint, smoky smell of ozone mixed with the gallery’s champagne-and-canapé scent. Her fists were clenched, her elegant features carved into a mask of pure, unadulterated fury.
Rick watched her, his own fear for his parents momentarily overshadowed by awe. He understood. Her half-human heart usually tempered the legendary passions of her elven heritage, smoothing those sharp, intense edges into something more manageable. But this was a direct attack on her family, on the people who’d chosen her. An elf had made it personal, and the dam holding back that ancestral fire had shattered.
“Calista,” Beth whispered. She turned from their stone parents, her own face streaked with tears. She didn’t hesitate. She walked into the shimmering heat emanating from her sister and wrapped her arms around Calista’s waist, burying her face against her chest. The heat was intense, almost uncomfortable. “Don’t,” Beth murmured, her voice muffled. “Don’t burn up without them. We need you here.”
Calista trembled. The heat pulsed, then began to recede. The dangerous light in her eyes softened from incineration to a grim, smoldering resolve. She slowly brought her arms up and held Beth close, resting her chin on the shorter girl’s blonde hair. Beth’s silent tears soaked into the fabric of Calista’s dress until her own shaking stopped.
Mandy watched the exchange, then locked eyes with Rick. The shared understanding was immediate. The shock was crystallizing into strategy.
“Okay,” Rick said, rolling his shoulders. “So. Snobby elves.”
“Snobby elves who picked a fight with the wrong annoyingly persistent family,” Mandy finished, the perpetual smirk returning, now edged with titanium. “We need a plan. Not a frontal assault. We need leverage, information, and a way to break that spell.”
One by one, their extended family closed ranks. Kim and Maryam nodded together. Bruce hefted his wrench. Felicity’s tablet was already compiling data on Fae negotiation tactics. Stacy’s hand was still on her concealed gun, her posture that of a soldier awaiting orders. Aunt Judy was already on her phone, voice low and commanding, dealing with the gallery owner.
“We’re in,” Mai said simply, her livestream charisma replaced by solid determination.
“All the way,” Ben affirmed, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Mandy.
Shiv gave a single, approving nod. Marty clung to Beth’s hand, his face set.
Mandy scanned their faces, this chaotic, brilliant, loyal network she called her own. Her family. Her weapons. She took a deep breath.
“First,” she said, pulling up a contact. “We call the best lawyer in Chicago. A family friend.” She put the phone on speaker. The line rang twice.
A crisp, professional voice answered, the sound of a busy office in the background. “Mara Henderson.”
“Aunt Mara? It’s Mandy Williamson. Mike and Casey’s daughter. We have a situation. An interdimensional custody and petrification case. The opposing counsel is… the Unseelie Court. We need your best negotiated offensive.” Mandy’s voice was calm, clear, and absolutely serious. “And we need it yesterday.”