Stone Cold Magic (Ella Grey Series Book 1)

by Jayne Faith

  He steered off the main road and onto a narrower cement walkway.

  Another golf cart approached, and the guard driving it nodded at Jacob. “Evening, Mr. Gregori.”

  The place was eerily empty, though maybe it was due to the hour—most employees would have gone home for the day.

  Jacob pointed to a building with a cheerful fountain bubbling up in the middle of a round pool at the front. “The cafeteria is in there.”

  “How many people work here?” I asked.

  He flicked a glance at me. “Several dozen.”

  Vague much? What, was he afraid I was going to make some kind of report to the IRS? The place was huge, and I was sure he was lying. There had to be hundreds of people employed here. Gregori Industries had a reputation, sure, but the job market had been weak in this area for a long time, and rumor was that Gregori jobs paid very well. People might not be eager to admit their association with the corporation, but Gregori needed workers just like any other company. I’d also heard that when corporate headquarters moved here from the East Coast, many employees had relocated to keep their jobs.

  “Do you live on campus?”

  He grinned as if I were eight years old and my question were adorable. “I do have quarters on site, and yes, I often stay overnight.”

  I listened with one ear while he pointed out other buildings. We seemed to be making a loose spiral around the grounds, heading toward the tallest structure that was roughly in the center. There was something foreboding about it, though for the most part it looked like any other generic corporate building. When we drew closer, I realized the windows didn’t start until about thirty feet up. No windows on the first two floors? My gut tightened as Jacob slowed at the end of the walkway leading to the building’s entrance. I tilted my head back as I followed him to the double doors, but I couldn’t see anything through the heavily tinted glass above. Despite the heat, I shivered with the sudden creeping sense that someone was up there watching us.

  He placed his hand on the scanner mounted next to the door. A green light illuminated, and there was a heavy metallic chunk sound from the doors. He grasped the door handle, twisted it, and threw his weight back to pull the door open and hold it for me. Passing through the doorway, I noticed the door was seriously thick, almost as formidable-looking as a vault. Inside, overhead lights cast their fluorescent illumination through the empty hallways that branched off from the entrance. The lock mechanism activated as soon as the door closed behind us.

  “To put your mind at ease, we’ll pay a visit on your friend,” Jacob said.

  He turned to the hallway branching off to the right, and I kept pace with him. The casual way he spoke about Nathan and the gargoyle sent ire prickling through me. With each windowless door we passed, I felt a little more closed in. I wasn’t usually prone to claustrophobia, but the building was starting to feel like a thinly-disguised prison.

  “What are you doing with the gargoyles, Jacob?”

  He led us to an elevator, where he pressed his palm to another security scanner like the one outside.

  His lips thinned as he angled his gaze downward, seeming to consider what to say.

  “The work is confidential and still in the early stages, but I suppose there’s no real harm in telling you. I assure you, it’s legal. I want you to know that the boy getting caught up in the trap was a freak accident. The traps are only supposed to trap demons, and it was a very unfortunate fluke that a human got mixed up in the process.” He cast me an apologetic look, the inner corners of his eyebrows drawn in and up.

  I believed that he never intended a human to get trapped in the gargoyle, but his declaration that the work wasn’t illegal sent off warning pings in my mind. Gregori Industries was infamous for finding loopholes in the law.

  The elevator dinged, the sound overly sharp and loud in the quiet hallway, and the doors parted. We stepped on, and again he had to scan his hand before punching the button with the 6 on it.

  “I’m trying to build a better mousetrap, in a manner of speaking,” he said. “Demon trap, actually. Not for the harmless little ones, but for the arch-demons. In my opinion, those suckers are still responsible for way too much misery and death.”

  He shook his head, as if so deeply personally affronted by the tragedies caused by arch-demons he was temporarily at a loss for words. Something about his manner made me suspect he was putting on a bit of an act, but I couldn’t argue with the heart of his cause. After all, I made my living trying to clean up the smaller Rip spawn that bubbled through, and my own brother had been abducted by an arch-demon. And if there was anyone in the world who carried the weight of responsibility for keeping humanity safe from arch-demons, it was the CEO of fricking Gregori Industries. But his methods, his cavalier attitude, rubbed me wrong.

  I squinted at him as indignation began to bleed through me. “You’re using live gargoyles to bait and trap arch-demons. Don’t you think that’s a pretty bad way to treat a rare, intelligent creature? Surely with all the resources you have, you could come up with something a lot more ethical,” I challenged.

  He gave me a look that was something between great patience and pity. “Ella. We’re at war. We must do everything in our power to fight back against what the Rip has unleashed into our world, and war requires sacrifices. If there’s a way to trap arch-demons that doesn’t put any human lives at risk, isn’t that a worthy sacrifice?” He tipped his head a little in question, and I realized he was honestly waiting for my response.

  The elevator stopped and the doors opened, giving me a moment to collect myself.

  “It certainly wouldn’t be the first time other species have been used or sacrificed for the greater good,” he said, seeming to take my hesitation as a prompt to further his argument. “Do you have any idea how many of the things you use every day were tested on animals?”

  I took a slow count to three before I spoke. “There are plenty of people in the world who believe testing on animals is immoral, and subjecting gargoyles to demonic possession is hardly in the same league as testing eye shadow on rabbits. Gargoyles didn’t cause the Rip. Humans did.” It took everything I had to say “humans” instead of “Gregori Industries.”

  He placed a hand on his chest, and his eyes rounded behind the lenses of his glasses. “Everything you say is true, Ella. Believe me, I get no pleasure from it, and I wouldn’t blame anyone for their moral outrage.”

  “How can you do it, then?”

  We’d stopped just beyond the elevator alcove, facing off.

  His face hardened, and his hand dropped to his side. “Because my life’s work is to clean up the horrors that have come through the Rip to torment us, and ultimately to seal the Rip. I will use any means necessary to see it through.” His words became ragged-edged with ferocity, and his cheeks took on a faint flush.

  I stiffened as if he’d shouted at me, though in fact he’d not raised his voice at all. Looking into his eyes, I searched for any glint of madness. But even if he was entitled and ego-driven—characteristics that bled through in the media even when he assumed his public persona—he seemed of sound mind. In fact, his passionate declaration was probably the most honest thing he’d said since I’d arrived.

  I nodded once and then cast my gaze down the hallway. I still didn’t agree with his methods, but I had a mission to focus on. With relief I noticed windows spaced along the walls, and some open doorways, which made it feel more normal and less like a prison.

  “Is Nathan here?” I asked.

  The fire dissipated from his eyes, and he assumed his former fake-ish smile and even-tempered tone. “Yes, but before I take you to him I need to check with his—caretakers.” His tiny stutter over “caretakers” made me wonder what other word he’d had in mind.

  Jacob took me to a conference room with a big TV screen mounted at one end and a long table surrounded by high-backed chairs. It was the type of generic corporate set-up that was so bland I actually felt a faint sense of disappointment.


  “I’ll return for you in a moment,” he said and left.

  I sat down in one of the chairs and leaned back, testing its bounce, and then pushed off with my feet to spin it around.

  When the doorway flashed through my visual field, I planted my shoes on the carpet to stop my twirling. A man stood there—not a man, a ghost. It couldn’t be the man I thought because he was supposed to be dead.

  He took a step into the room, his eyes growing beady. He moistened his lips with his tongue, pulling his bottom lip in as if he were gazing at a ribeye he couldn’t wait to slice into.

  I stood in one swift motion, every muscle in my body stringing tight and my pulse speeding as adrenaline flooded into my veins. The shadows around the edges of my vision were going berserk. The man wasn’t imposing by any means—several inches shorter than me, a good four decades older, and completely devoid of brawn or any physically intimidating feature. But I’d instantly recognized him as one of the most notorious people in the world, and I couldn’t help staring openly even as everything in me recoiled and wished to flee as far from him as possible.

  Before me was Phillip Zarella—the man wanted for some of history’s most heinous crimes and rumored to have done things that were almost beyond belief. He half-raised a hand, either reaching toward me or pointing, and the hungry gleam in his eyes deepened.

  “Reaper,” he breathed, with a rapt look on his face.

  Chapter 13

  MY PULSE STUTTERED, and it took all of my resolve to stand less than a dozen feet from Phillip Zarella, the mad scientist himself. This was no ghost, somehow Zarella was alive and well and here. I’d seen pictures of him, probably even some short clips of footage. But live and in person I could actually feel something dark and dreadful emanating from him, as if his crimes surrounded him like an aura.

  Hurried footfalls in the corridor broke the tension of our locked gazes. Zarella’s expression turned to irritation as Jacob appeared. The Gregori CEO looked deeply displeased, as if he’d come home to find his dog had chewed up an arm of the sofa. I could only stare at the two of them, wondering how in the hell—and why—Jacob Gregori had brought Phillip Zarella to the campus. Then it hit me, and a violent shudder snaked up my spine. He was beyond the reach of the law here. Jacob wanted him here. For some reason my uncle wanted Phillip Zarella free in spite of the long list of atrocities that would have meant multiple death penalties had Zarella not escaped from a maximum security prison last year. Escaped, and supposedly been shot and killed in the ensuing attempt to recapture him.

  “Excuse me a moment,” Jacob said hastily to me, grabbing Zarella’s arm and pulling him away from the doorway and out of sight.

  I stiffened my knees to keep them from buckling as I truly began to realize what I’d seen—what I was positive I wasn’t supposed to see. Phillip Zarella was dead. After his escape, he’d been caught trying to cross the border into Canada. There’d been a shootout, and he’d gone down. At least that’s what had been reported far and wide not six months back.

  My pulse surged again, and my hands began to shake as I suddenly feared I might not leave the Gregori campus alive. I pushed to my feet and ran to the doorway, intending to find a way out. But I nearly crashed into Jacob’s chest. My feet tangled, and when I stumbled, he caught my upper arm and kept me from falling. I looked into his face, unable to mask what was probably a look of pure terror.

  “The feds know he’s here, Ella,” Jacob said. He let go of my arm and moved to the side.

  I blinked several times. “They . . . do?”

  He lowered his lids and nodded once. “They do. I regret that he startled you like that, he wasn’t supposed to be in this wing, but please don’t worry about any repercussions of witnessing his presence here.”

  I took a shaking breath and swallowed, still trying to wrap my mind around the fact that Zarella’s death had been staged. “Why the hell would you give asylum to Phillip Zarella?” I made no effort to hide my repulsion.

  His mouth twisted in genuine disgust. “I know how it must look, but I have him here only for his knowledge. There are things he understands about demons and the dimension on the other side of the Rip that no one else does. As abhorrent a human being as he is, I need him to achieve my goals.”

  “And the feds are okay with it?”

  “We have an agreement.”

  I gave my head a shake as I felt my adrenaline fading and my temples beginning to pound.

  Jacob bent a little to peer into my face. “Do you want to sit down for a moment? Do you need some water?”

  “No.” I gestured down the hallway with a flip of my hand. “I want to see Nathan.”

  I did my best to pull my shit together as we passed more conference rooms and offices, and then I took a left turn into an area that appeared to be part-zoo and part-laboratory.

  “On this floor we keep minor demons for study,” Jacob explained when we paused a windowed room where several of the bat-like creatures were perched like a flock of crows on what looked like a jungle-gym type structure you might see in a park. It was set up at the back wall, and the juxtaposition between the Rip spawn and the brightly-colored plastic toy was almost absurd. “We need to know everything we can about our enemy.”

  Remembering how demons had been reacting to me lately, I stayed as far from the windows as possible without being too obvious about it. The last thing I needed was to cause a scene that piqued Jacob’s interest, or I might end up in one of these cages. In all seriousness, my fear probably wasn’t all that far-fetched.

  He stopped in front of a window and tipped his head at it. “And here we are.”

  Inside stood the familiar stone form of the crouched creature with the narrow feline face.

  “How do I know Nathan is okay?” I asked.

  Jacob stepped over to a panel on the wall. He entered a code and then beckoned to me. The image on the panel showed three separate shapes—gargoyle, demon, and human—and next to each there were vital sign readouts.

  “See?” Jacob pointed to the human. “Vital signs normal. He seems to be in a deep sleep, actually.”

  Or maybe a brain-dead coma.

  I faced him and waited until his gaze met mine. “When will you release him?”

  He blinked and his tongue darted to the corner of his mouth, immediately raising my suspicions that whatever he was about to say might not be the whole truth. “We have to wake up the gargoyle first and then separate the human from the gargoyle.”

  “Nathan,” I said. “The human’s name is Nathan.”

  “Yes, of course. Anyway, once Nathan is free from the gargoyle we expect he’ll still be in a state of demonic possession. So then we’ll have to remedy that.”

  “You still haven’t answered my question. When will he come home?”

  Jacob’s demeanor shifted so abruptly it felt like someone had snuck up and flipped a switch between his shoulder blades.

  His face closed off. “We’d planned to keep the creatures in this state for several weeks so we could observe the symbiosis. In the original study we’d intended to conduct several experiments,” he said with all the concern of someone talking about tomorrow’s forecast.

  My mouth dropped open, but before I could voice my outrage he raised a finger and continued.

  “But because there is a human involved—yes, Nathan—we will attempt the separation after an abbreviated period of observation.”

  I felt my nostrils flaring, and my breath came rapidly through my still-open mouth. “How long?”

  “Another three weeks. But I’ll shorten it to two weeks if you’ll do something for me in return,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Allow me to help you find your brother.”

  I pulled my head back in confusion. “I don’t understand.”

  “I want to do something for you to—well, to help alleviate my guilt, I suppose.” He looked away, scratched the side of his head, and then resettled his glasses and met my eyes with his. “If your
father hadn’t died on that trip, he’d be here today. He would’ve been there when your mother passed, and he would’ve taken care of you and Evan. And maybe if he’d been there, Evan would have stayed out of trouble and he’d be okay. I was the one who pushed your father to go with me into a region we knew was dangerous, and I’ve regretted it every day since.”

  “If you want to find Evan, you can do that on your own. You don’t need me to agree to anything.”

  “No, that’s true. But I want you to agree. I want it to be something we pursue together.”

  The thought of doing anything with Jacob sent a wave of distaste through me.

  I shook my head, suddenly hyper aware of the tightness in my chest and a deep, desperate need to escape this place. “Fine, okay. We’ll hunt for Evan together. But two weeks is too long. We need Nathan released as soon as possible. His sister needs him to come home.”

  “It’s the best I can do.” The words fell like bricks.

  He folded his arms, and his face became an expressionless wall, except for the glint in his eye, the same one I’d seen when he’d spoken of defeating the Rip at all costs. I knew Jacob wasn’t going to negotiate, and I also suspected he was lying. I would bet my paycheck that Jacob Gregori had no intention of releasing Nathan. He would continue to come up with vague excuses about why he couldn’t. And knowing he was working with Phillip Zarella only reaffirmed and deepened my fears in the worst way. Zarella was brilliant, but he was the most notorious psychopath in history, completely devoid of any moral center. He’d think nothing of allowing Nathan to die, if only for the sake of his twisted curiosity.

  I ground my teeth. I wasn’t waiting two weeks, and I didn’t need his help finding Evan. The other had already given me a clue about his whereabouts, and I would find a way to get it to show me more.

  “It’s been grand, but I need to get home,” I said, not even attempting a pleasant tone.