by RJ Blain
“Your wife apparently adores you, Chief Quinn.”
My husband sighed. “You know the most eligible bachelor lists? Someone thought it would be funny to name me Manhattan’s Most Wanted Bachelor, playing off the fact I’m a cop. I married to escape the title, and the instant I divorced, I made the list again.”
“It’s true,” I confirmed. “I’m pretty sure he has a rap sheet full of incinerated panties. He walks by and panties spontaneously combust.”
Quinn laughed. “Bailey!”
“What? It’s true.”
“Anyway, let’s just say Bailey and I had a tumultuous relationship at best. With the photos she took, I convinced Audrey to divorce without a fight, and due to her infidelity, the settlement favored me so she wasn’t entitled to a full fifty percent—she didn’t ask for it, either. She asked for a lump sum, which I paid her without argument. The judge decided it was a fair enough settlement. That was that. We went our separate ways. Bailey had gotten her full certifications by that point. Afterwards, I made a point of contacting the CDC and requesting that I serve as her primary contact for the NYPD. I figured her skills at ferreting things out might come in useful. After my divorce was finalized, I made a point of getting coffee at the shop she worked at most mornings before going on duty.”
How could things have changed so much? I’d gone from loathing his stops into the cafe to snuggled in his blanket on his lap. “Cream, sugar, and light on the dust.”
“The dust helped me get through my daily dose of rejection.”
Chief Hollands’s eyebrows rose. “And this continued for how long?”
“I ended up in her shop at least three times a week on average, more when I could manage. This pattern continued until this summer. I admired Bailey’s tenacity and wanted to get to know her better, but I couldn’t figure out how to approach her. So, I asked her boss for a few minutes of her time. I was with Mary for thirty minutes before I went to work. Mary disappeared for the rest of the day, and none of Bailey’s co-workers showed up for their shift. That was when the recent trouble started.”
Trouble was a mild way to put it; I considered the circumstances leading up to marrying Quinn a string of catastrophes. “I guess it’s my turn. Magnus McGee, Audrey’s brother, came into the shop and asked me to find someone. It happens sometimes. Someone hears how I’m good at finding things people don’t want found, so they come to me. I usually tell them no. He offered me a substantial amount of money to do the job, gave me a cell phone, and claimed it had the data about the person he wanted me to find. He also claimed he would call me on it, but he never did. I put the phone in my pocket and forgot about it until I got home that night. Since he hadn’t given me the passcode, I wasted a few hours experimenting to unlock the device. Turns out entering the right passcode detonated the bomb inside, which contained gorgon dust. I locked down my apartment and decontaminated it the best I could with the supplies I had. I always keep the excess neutralizer in case I need it.”
Quinn tightened his hold on me, and startled, I canted my head so I could stare up at him. “Quinn?”
“My turn.” He fell quiet, his expression distant. “Mary called me the next morning. She had reviewed the store’s security cameras and had spotted McGee on the footage giving Bailey something, and she thought something was wrong—she said Bailey looked uncomfortable but took the object anyway. Mary knew McGee was my ex-wife’s brother, so she thought I needed to know. Call it a gut instinct, but I interpreted that as evidence something was wrong. Of course, I had assumed McGee had been attempting to blackmail Bailey.”
Blackmail would have been so much better than a bomb laced with gorgon dust. “I’d like to see someone try to blackmail me.” If I courted disaster when I used my magic, if someone attempted to blackmail me, I’d actually enjoy using my magic to create havoc.
“While it might be entertaining to watch, I’d rather avoid you being blackmailed. Anyway, I went over to Bailey’s place during a long lunch break. She didn’t live far from my house, although her place was in one of the less savory parts of Queens. When I got there, she refused to open the door. She ordered me to seal her in while she tried to clean up the gorgon dust.”
“Mrs. Quinn, you’re qualified to handle even impotent dust?”
Right. I’d have to explain my qualifications for everything to make sense. Sighing, I leaned my head against Quinn’s chest, and he shifted his hold on me and rubbed my back. I stayed quiet for a few moments to enjoy his attention. “The dust wasn’t impotent. It was the real deal—and the strong stuff. Probably the strongest I’ve ever seen. I’m immune, Chief Hollands.”
“Damned good thing, too,” Quinn muttered. “After she finished bossing me around, she tried to tell me McGee had given her the phone, but he had put a geas on her. She collapsed. Since my jurisdiction is Manhattan Island, I lost some time calling in for backup and requesting cross-jurisdiction authorization to handle the scene. The CDC helped, as they were aware we had a somewhat functional working relationship—an accomplishment when she’s involved.”
“Hey,” I protested.
“Sorry, Bailey. It’s not my fault you have a reputation.” With a throaty chuckle, Quinn lowered his head and pressed his lips to my cheek. “I can’t say I mind no one else was wise enough to try to get your attention.”
Chief Hollands cleared his throat. “So the CDC helped you push through a cross-jurisdiction authorization. What happened next?”
“I called in a few people from my station, people who were qualified to handle meters and had basic certifications with the CDC, trained to use custom hazmat suits, and had glass coffin conditioning. Once we were all in dust-rated suits, we broke into her apartment. Fortunately for us, she’s good at her job and had contained the dust source in plastic. She had managed to neutralize the free-floating particles.” Quinn drew in a long breath. “I put her in a glass coffin myself.”
Silence.
“I’ve spent more time in a glass coffin than I care to think about,” I complained. “To add insult to injury, they banged the door into my head breaking into my apartment. Because they hadn’t managed to finish me off by banging the door into my head, they stuffed me in the stupid box for four days.” I wiggled in the blanket and did my best to pout at Quinn. “You helped them napalm my apartment.”
“It was all part of my clever scheme to force you to live with me.”
“You’re so full of shit, Mr. Police Chief Quinn.”
Quinn sighed. “All right. It didn’t actually occur to me that you really needed to live with me until after you were discharged, decided you were going to stay in the seediest damned roach motel you could find, contracted pneumonia, and almost died. I may have been the one to suggest the CDC retest all your immunities, knowing of your unique reaction to transformative substances, but Professor Yale picked my house because of my fireplace and space sufficient for a unicorn. It’s in the file the NYPD has on you.”
“You sneaky bastard.”
“I’m sorry to interrupt, but can we backtrack for a moment? I’m not sure I follow. You napalmed your wife’s apartment?”
“We weren’t a couple then, but yes. Her measures to neutralize the gorgon dust weren’t able to decontaminate the bomb. While we were able to get her into a glass coffin without spreading the contamination, we had to napalm the interior of her apartment twice; the first round hadn’t managed to completely destroy the cell phone and dust inside. It was a lower-grade napalm. The second round we used a higher-intensity napalm. We suspected the same dust batch was used at 120 Wall Street, which is why the CDC agreed with Bailey’s initial verdict to napalm the entire structure. It was dumb luck Bailey was a unicorn. With the level of gorgon dust contamination, there was no realistic way to get her out. She knew it. The CDC knew it, too. Any other CDC agent would have been immolated. That was the second-worst moment of my life.”
I wondered what the first was, but I wasn’t brave enough to ask. “Sorry,” I mumbled.
&
nbsp; Shaking his head, Quinn adjusted his hold on me and flicked my nose with a finger. “You did the right thing, and while I don’t like it, we both know it.”
“Please elaborate on the circumstances surrounding the contamination.”
I echoed Quinn’s sigh and detailed how the glass containers had been set up in the ceiling, wired with C4. It took me almost half an hour to describe how the trap had been set up, my speculations on what would have happened if the CDC had attempted standard decontamination, and what I feared would have happened if the napalm hadn’t lit.
At first, I considered leaving out the part about my napalm bender, but I grumbled a few curses and confessed I’d been so drunk I couldn’t actually remember much after I had finished igniting the twenty-first floor.
Quinn chuckled. “I’ll confess, after I could breathe again once I realized Bailey had survived, watching her completely skunked on napalm was one of the funniest things I’ve seen in my life. Her antics lasted almost two hours. She played in the debris, putting on a show for the reporters and giving New Yorkers some of the best news clips of the year. Fortunately, we were able to keep her name out of the papers by telling everyone we intentionally brought in a magical species capable of igniting the high-intensity napalm.”
“Oh. Quinn. Audrey told me her brother had refused to breathe in any of the dust and provide her sisters with children. She gave him the bomb and the dust. He had no idea what he had. She told me she had killed him. She could have been the one behind the Wall Street incident. She’s a little crazy, Quinn.”
“A little?”
“What else did McGee tell you?”
“Not much. I wasn’t with her long. She left me with her pet incubus. From what I could tell, she wanted him to be the father. It was the same one from the bar, Quinn. He wasn’t quite right in the head, either. He acted like a little kid unless sex was involved.”
Quinn frowned. “How much do you remember from the eight days you were gone?”
“Nothing. I woke up, Audrey talked to me for a few minutes, then she left me with the incubus—he wanted to play poker.” Grimacing, I confessed my sins and my very inappropriate handling of the pixie dust, although I did make a point of emphasizing I only meant to use a small amount rather than the entire vial.
“Do you have any memories you think were a dream? That’s a rather common symptom of sedation.” Chief Hollands drummed his fingers on his desk. “Is there any chance you were assaulted while you were under sedation?”
Quinn tensed and squeezed me so tightly I squeaked. “There’s no chance she was assaulted. I would have known.” Loosening his hold, he lifted his left arm, revealing his golden tattoo. “When the incubus influenced her, I was aware of her panic—and her serious case of lust.”
Crap. “Quinn—”
He covered my mouth with his hand. “Shh, Bailey. You did nothing wrong. Damon, our bracelets didn’t discharge, so I knew the incubus hadn’t managed to catch her in his trap. Bailey, I’ll keep telling you this until you believe it: you did nothing wrong. Incubi can influence just about anyone. Grandfather told me afterwards we can get feedback from the bracelets if there might be a situation requiring it. The bracelets take energy from both of us to discharge. The tattoos were winding up to strike, but you escaped the situation on your own. Also, Grandfather assured me the bracelets would work even when we’re unconscious. No one touched you.”
I deserved a prize. Who else managed to escape an incubus’s influence so many times? “Hah. That incubus must be pissed. That’s the second time I’ve gotten away from him. Look at me, escaping from an incubus without doing anything indecent. Isn’t there a prize for that? You should give me a prize, Quinn. I deserve one.”
A startled laugh burst out of Quinn. “So you do. I will think of something appropriate.”
Yes, please.
Chief Hollands looked through a folder on his desk and tapped a sheet. “Samuel, do you think the bar incident was a deliberate attempt to lure Bailey to the site?”
Shaking his head, Quinn sighed. “No, I don’t. My grandfather spoke to my cousin, who had been at the bar. The incubus had arrived before he did and was just starting to pick out a few lovers for himself. He got caught up in the incubus’s power. There was no evidence it was anything other than a coincidence. Anyway, Audrey had gone to my house.”
“Ah, that reminds me. She wanted to remove me from your evil clutches so you wouldn’t steal my virginity. That was very important to her, Quinn. I got the vibe the incubus knew I wasn’t a virgin, but he didn’t say anything to her about it. She didn’t want me tainted by your evil ways.”
Quinn’s smug smile made an appearance. “I see.”
Chief Hollands sighed. “How often did your ex-wife contact you?
“Every couple of months she’d show up to ask a question about paperwork. She was never the most organized person. I’d give her a copy of the paper she needed. She’d leave. The last time she was at my house, however, she was after Bailey—the night of the bar incident. As soon as I found out Audrey was at my house, Bailey and I decided to go to the Plaza instead.”
“Why?”
I snorted. “It probably had something to do with my threats of killing the whore if she got between me and taking Quinn into his bedroom. I may have still been under the influence of the incubus.”
With a chuckle, Quinn hugged me. “Bailey likes to run her mouth, but I wasn’t going to risk it, not after she had been around an incubus. She’s very determined, and she probably would have started a fight with my ex-wife, all things considered.”
“You two have had an eventful few weeks. I have the report on McGee’s visit to your home, which includes notations about her new status as a gorgon. According to this, none of the petrified individuals were infected with the gorgon virus, fortunately. It’s unknown if she’s an actual carrier or merely became a gorgon after her exposure to gorgon dust. Do either of you know?”
“No,” we replied.
“Are there any other details you think might be important?”
“I already mentioned it was the same incubus, right?”
Both men nodded.
“To confirm, the male gorgon from the bar incident is one of your relatives, Chief Quinn?”
“Yes. He’s been educated about the error of his ways, and my grandfathers questioned him about the incident.”
I stifled a yawn and leaned against Quinn. “You know, we’re really bad at this taking everything from the top thing. We’re all over the place. I’m starting to lose track of what happened, and I lived it. Hey, Quinn? Can we use one of those fancy murder boards they have on television? I think we should. It’ll be fun. I’ve never gotten to use a murder board before.”
“How about a white board and some markers?” Chief Hollands suggested.
“That doesn’t seem as fun as those digital things they have on television, Chief Hollands.”
“Reality is often disappointing.”
“Bummer.”
“Still, it’s a good idea we pool our information, lay it out, and take it from the top. Let’s break for an hour and come back to it. I’m sure you’ll enjoy a chance to stretch your legs, get changed, and get some fresh air, Mrs. Quinn.”
Clothes would be useful, although I didn’t mind cuddling up to Quinn at all. “Sounds good.”
If it meant having a real chance to get rid of Quinn’s ex-wife so she never bothered us again, I’d talk my throat bloody to see it happen. Quinn was mine, and I wasn’t going to let a psycho gorgon ex-wife separate us.
Chapter Twenty-One
An hour gave me enough time to take a quick shower at the station. I dressed in a pair of brand new yoga pants and a black t-shirt too big for me. It smelled like Quinn’s cologne, and I decided possession was nine tenths of the law, so if he wanted it back, he’d have to strip me out of it.
I really hoped he wanted it back soon.
When one of the Vermont State Police offered to pick up a late di
nner for us, I got the feeling Quinn didn’t approve of my choice of the greasiest fast food money could buy. The cop found my request amusing, and when Quinn ordered rabbit food, the man laughed.
I ended up with a huge burger, fries that had taken a bath in a grease vat and were salted into oblivion, and a milkshake. “Are you sure you’re not an angel in disguise? Because this looks like heaven.” The cop chuckled and dipped into a bow. “Thank you so much.”
Quinn claimed his salad, set it on the table, and pulled out his wallet, but the cop waved him off. “I mugged the actual angel downstairs for cash already. Chief’s orders.”
“I like these cops, Quinn. They mug angels to pay for my dinner. Can we kidnap a few of them? I’m sure we could fit a few extra desks on the eighth floor somewhere.”
“Run while you can,” Quinn suggested.
Still laughing, the cop obeyed, leaving Quinn and I alone in the break room. The late hour gave the place an empty vibe, although there were a few cops out in the main area hard at work. I sat, unwrapped Quinn’s blanket, and draped it over the back of my chair so I wouldn’t ruin it with grease, ketchup, and mustard.
“That isn’t healthy.”
Yep, he didn’t approve of my glorious burger one bit. I stared into Quinn’s eyes and took a big bite, making a point of exaggerating my sounds of enjoyment while I chewed and swallowed. Then to drive the point home, I licked my fingers and smacked my lips. “You’re just jealous because you can’t have any, especially my fries. Those are mine.”
“If I wanted fries, I would have gotten fries.”
I gave his salad a dubious look. “I’m not sure that’s healthy, either. How can such delicate fare sustain a big manly man like you?”
Chuckling, Quinn pointed at his dressing. “I’m using dressing. It lost its right to call itself healthy the instant I decided to slather it in liquid calories. Anyway, I had a big breakfast.”
“Was it a healthy breakfast?”
“It involved bacon.”
“Bacon’s healthy. I approve.” I set my burger aside and popped a few fries in my mouth, keeping one for when Quinn tried to claim bacon wasn’t actually healthy. The instant he opened his mouth, I shoved the fry inside, cupped his chin with my hand, and helped him chew. “It’s delicious, isn’t it? Yummy, yummy, delicious grease.”