The Flame Game

by R. J. Blain

  I translated that to mean I should put on my fur coat for a while and play guard unicorn. “Okay.”

  Quinn left, and I went upstairs to grab the stash of grade-A transformatives I kept taped to the bottom of my nightstand. I’d have to order a new stash from the CDC, but the grade-A was easier for me to transform through, and I struggled less reversing back to human. I stripped, folded my clothes and put them in a bag, and swallowed the pill.

  Ten minutes later, I carried my bag downstairs in my mouth, set it with the rest of the bags for the trip, and stretched. As there was no reason to not enjoy myself, I sliced open the box of long-burning logs with a claw, picked one up, tossed it into the fireplace, and used my horn to open the flue so I wouldn’t fill the house with smoke.

  While I liked it, my husband adamantly did not enjoy my adventures with the fireplace and a closed flue.

  I snorted to light the log, settled on my favorite rug, and admired the flames, keeping an eye out the window for anyone suspicious.

  Within twenty minutes, most of the cops left, leaving one unmarked car parked across the street with a pair inside, keeping watch on those coming and going. As I’d made a large travel Thermos of coffee, I got up from my spot and grabbed the handle in my mouth, which was positioned on the top specifically so I could carry it while a unicorn, and eased through the house to a window, hitching a lift on a sunbeam to get outside without having to bother with the door. Snorting fire over the chill, I trotted across the street, making use of my claws on the ice to keep from slipping. The cop on the passenger side rolled down his window when I approached, and I thrust the Thermos at him, which he accepted.

  “No dust but good coffee,” I told them, giving a swish of my tail. I stomped my hooves to keep warm, and as that worked, I pranced in place and bucked, giving my mane a good shake, too. “Idiot par-rents no un-der-stand I un-nee-corn.”

  “Seriously? I’m Troy, and my partner is Lucas, ma’am.” Troy handed the Thermos over to Lucas. “We were asked to stick around until you leave, as our chief seems to think the perps might come back to finish what they started.”

  “They are that stupid.” I pricked my ears forward over how well I’d managed to talk despite the cold stabbing away at my fur. “Keep Thermos. It old one. Have new one inside.” We’d just gotten it before I’d gone on my road trip adventure, and it was still in its box. “Give good excuse to get out new one. Odds idiot par-rents coming back to house?”

  “Pretty high. They made their attempt in broad daylight, which smacks of general desperation.”

  “But why? Makes no sense. I leave them alone? They go away, I happy. Very happy.”

  “It’s not uncommon with abusers. They seek revenge when the gig is up, and people like them value their reputation. We’ve been doing groundwork on them as part of the investigation. According to the briefing, they’re part of a somewhat influential vanilla family.”

  “Yes. Hate magic, hate magic users. Hate any-thing diff-er-ent from them. Me diff-er-ent.”

  “Well, yes. You’re in a class of your own. You need a high rating to qualify for your job.”

  “I hate the stupid,” I complained, hanging my head.

  Troy reached out of the unmarked car and gave my shoulder a pat. “We all do. It’s so annoying.”

  I raised my head, and as Quinn kept telling me the cops liked when meat-eating, fire-breathing unicorns nuzzled them, I bumped his fingers with my nose.

  He scratched my forehead below my horn, and I settled in to enjoy the attention.

  “That silver car matches the witness description,” Lucas announced.

  I cracked open an eye to regard the vehicle coming down the street. Sure enough, my idiot, asshole parents were in the vehicle. “So damned dumb,” I complained. “At least no can burn roses now. Or house. Fire-proof house. So stupid.”

  Both cops reached for their firearms, and I got out of their way, stepping back and flattening my ears.

  Smart people would have noticed the irritated black and red unicorn snorting smoke standing beside a suspicious looking vehicle most would believe to be an unmarked cop car, given even half a second to examine it and its occupants. Rather than utilize one of their limited brain cells, my parents pulled up alongside my house. Rather than go the gasoline and a match route, they’d gotten a Molotov cocktail, which they flung in the direction of the big picture window.

  Had my father had a stronger arm or better aim, I might’ve been worried, but he hit wide and low. The bottle shattered on the brick, and the sticky substance caught aflame.

  My poor house.

  I pivoted and trotted along, eyeballing their vehicle. My mother, who was driving the vehicle, continued down the street as though nothing happened, and after she passed Valorie’s house, she sped up.

  Did the assholes really think I would just let them try to light my house on fire again without doing anything about it? I bucked, kicked my heels, whinnied, and charged down the street. Within a few strides, I hit top speed, making use of my claws to maintain traction on the slick roads. When I caught up with the vehicle, I calculated the distance to the hood of their car, jumped, and landed hard, slamming all six hundred plus pounds of my weight on the plastic and metal.

  The car came to a rather abrupt halt, and I yelped, crashing to the icy asphalt. Scrambling to my hooves so they wouldn’t run me over, I blew flames at the vehicle.

  Troy and Lucas joined the party, their firearms out and ready, trained on my idiot parents.

  My mother seemed to believe she would be able to get her car on the move after having an angry unicorn bash the hood in. On closer investigation, not only had I bashed the entire front end of the car into the ground, I’d broken the axle, as both front tires pointed in separate directions.

  Wow. I regarded the destruction with interest.

  “I broke it,” I informed the cops.

  Rather than pay any attention to me, the cops began barking orders, directing my asshole parents to get out of the vehicle with their hands up.

  Amused neither seemed to care I’d trashed my parents’ car, I amused myself circling them, snorting smoke and fire to keep my body temperature up. Sometime after the cops had read my parents their rights, a black SUV with a rental car sticker came down the street.

  I bolted for the house, dug at one of the holes left from moving my roses, and tried to hide in the frozen ground. “Not here!”

  Down the street, the cops laughed at me.

  I didn’t blame them.

  My husband parked the rental in our driveway, and I hunkered down, attempting to escape his wrath.

  “I can see you, Bailey. You don’t fit.”

  Damn it. “Not my fault!”

  “The unicorn-shaped dent in the hood of that car is definitely your fault, unless there is another unicorn hiding around?”

  “May-be?” I turned my ears back and showed him my teeth. “They start it!”

  “Now that I can believe, especially as it seems the side of the house has been lit on fire. Did they use a Molotov cocktail?”

  “May-be. Okay. Yes. Do you think Mol-o-tov cock-tail tast-ee?”

  “Go lick it and find out.”

  I scrambled out of the hole, scrambled to the side of the house, and gave the fire on the brick a lick. Whatever they’d used tasted peppery with a solid punch of diesel and some other accelerant. “Die-sel! Tast-ee!” I enjoyed the flames tickling over my fur, and I went to work licking everything off our house.

  “Just try to leave the broken glass alone. Don’t step on it or cut your tongue. I’ll give Barfield a call.”

  Within twenty minutes, the cops were all back along with a single fire engine. The fire fighters stood around and did nothing while I handled the cleanup, and when I finished my treat, I burped. With a claw extended, I tapped on the broken glass. “This part no tast-ee, Queeny.”

  My husband joined me on the front steps of our house, shaking his head at the damaged bricks. “A few inches to the left,
and we would have had a charred interior, and even then, it wouldn’t have done much damage.”

  “Not much damage because Queeny the best husband and fireproof house.”

  He rewarded me with a stroke of my nose. “A wise man adapts to his wife’s special needs, and my wife’s favorite treat is napalm. Did you enjoy your snack?”

  “Very tast-ee. Not as good as nay-palm, but good. Peppery. Die-sel plus some-thing else.” I considered the taste. “Blue gel stuff for hot plate things.”

  “Methanol blue,” my husband replied. “Easy to get, a good enough gel, and would help keep the fire concentrated enough to light the house up—if I hadn’t fireproofed it.”

  “Par-rents very stupid.”

  “Yes, they are. Did you really have to total their car, though?”

  “Cops would have put bullets in car and may have shot idiot par-rents. May-be earn, but my way bet-ter. No par-rents shot, only car damaged. No tell nice father or mother about this? They be upset. Very upset. Might smite.”

  “Smote, my beautiful.”

  “Might smite,” I replied in my most solemn tone.

  “You’re incredible.”

  I nuzzled his chest before using his shoulder as a headrest. “Think they get bail?”

  My husband wrapped his arms around my neck and held me. “I don’t know. Are you all right?”

  “Fine! Got tast-ee treat, smoosh their car with my not-fat ass. Gave cops coffee. Their Ther-mos now. I make more cof-fee in new Ther-mos!”

  “The pair was across the street?”

  “Yes. Can walk across street by self. I talk with them, give cof-fee. Then par-rents come. I stop them. Did not want to lose to car. Lost to trans-port once. That hurt, no do that again. Fell off car when stop, but no hurt me. Did not burn car.”

  “You did great, Bailey. Not quite to regulation, but we’re allowed to use force to stop a vehicle in situations like this, and you did so with no damage to anything other than their vehicle. I don’t even think you damaged the road.”

  “Leave some holes in asphalt. I blow fire for fixer people and help ree-pair in spring. It cold. Open door, puh-lease? Keys inside. I ride sunbeam through window to say hello to cops. No sunbeams in house. I go change. Talk hard.”

  Quinn kissed my nose before letting me into the house and giving my rump a slap. “Go enjoy your fire and catch a snooze. I’ll be a while sorting this mess out. Since you went through the trouble of lighting it, go enjoy it.”

  I had the best husband. “I love Queeny.”

  He smiled at me.

  Naps by the fireplace were the best, especially when my sneaky husband lit a proper fire and cranked the temperature in the house so I wouldn’t get cold. By the time the cops finished with him, the sun had set. I woke to Quinn running the brush over my coat while talking to someone on the phone.

  “He asked her to call you, but she’s sleeping in front of the fireplace. Cold weather isn’t great for cindercorns, and we had some excitement earlier. No, no. Everybody is fine, so please don’t worry. Ra wanted her to tell you that he wanted to see you in the morning while the moon was still up. As soon as Bailey gets up, we’re going to resume our vacation. All right, I’ll let her know, and I’ll try to have her call you tomorrow night.”

  My mother. Ra had put her number into our phones, but I’d figured out early on the phones only worked when they were active. I hadn’t quite figured out the specifics. Magic worked in mysterious ways, and I’d learned not to think too hard about some of the odder impossibilities—like why I couldn’t call my father when the sun shone brightly on the other side of the world.

  Before I could notify Quinn I was awake, he hung up, and then he smacked my rump with the brush. “Up, my beautiful. I need coffee, and your machine refuses to give me good coffee. It laughs at me.”

  I whinnied a laugh, rolled, and scrambled to my hooves. “Mother okay?”

  “Ah, caught part of that conversation, did you?”

  “Some.”

  “She’s fine. I opted against notifying either of your parents about the incident with the assholes. The last thing our house needs is an angry divine coming over and raining hell on a pair of assholes.”

  No kidding. “Go change, make coffee,” I promised.

  “While you were sleeping, I printed out all of the old banking information I had on Audrey’s accounts.”

  “You have her bank info?”

  “She had me go over her accounting work because she’s hopeless with money, so she dumped all of her transactions into a spreadsheet for me. I never deleted it. Technically, because she never asked me to delete the files, it’s legal for me to have. Even after our divorce, I helped her with her paperwork. She wasn’t exactly a bad woman.”

  “She just not stay loyal.”

  “Right.”

  “You ruined me for other men. Tragedy.” I shook off and stretched. “Go change now. Then coffee. Then we run away in rented SUV. No more assholes try to light things on fire?”

  “We have a pair of cops parked in our driveway to discourage anyone from trying anything stupid. Oh, that reminds me. I saw Valorie flirting with the cops. In our driveway.”

  “Do we have older, single hot cops?”

  “Bailey, we’re not playing matchmaker for our neighbor.”

  “Why not? Else your uncle may get her.”

  “Maybe we’ll play matchmaker for our neighbor, although it depends which devil he has in mind for her.”

  “I worry for world. We may destroy it. Bring ruin.”

  “Or marry everyone we know to demons or devils.” Laughing, Quinn kissed my nose. “Go get changed, lawbreaker.”

  “I such bad cop.”

  “You’ll learn. Just try to keep your general lawbreaking ways somewhat contained for a change.”

  “Break a few laws once…” I muttered while my husband laughed.

  Reversing back to human took a lot out of me, and if Quinn wanted me going anywhere, I’d need a lot of coffee. Some days, I regretted not having a coffee maker capable of brewing my dark brew a pot at a time. It took me almost half an hour to fill the new Thermos and both of our travel mugs with coffee, and as I was not a complete monster, giving the cops outside their fair share, too. I even gave them a light dose of pixie dust to make their night a little happier.

  “House sitting isn’t precisely prestigious, but it’s not so bad you need to dose the cops with pixie dust, Bailey.”

  “It’s cold, so it is that bad.”

  “You realize we’re going north, right?”

  I heaved a sigh. “Unfortunately. I might freeze to death. What will I do if I freeze to death?”

  “You’re not going to freeze to death. I did go over your winter clothing, and we’re going shopping specifically to make it so you don’t freeze to death. Get that pretty little ass on the move. I’ll take the coffee out to the cops, but it’s time to load up the SUV and leave.”

  “You’re way too energetic.”

  “It’s your fault. You’re just so good to me.”

  “Keep talking, gorgon-incubus doohickey. That’s how you get dragged into a shower at a hotel.”

  “Strangely, I figured that one out on my own.” Quinn took the older Thermos he’d stolen from some of his cops at work outside to the cops on duty so they could enjoy a warm drink while I cleaned my beautiful machine, polishing the stainless steel to a shine.

  I hadn’t quite finished when he returned, and he wrapped his arm around my waist and dragged me out of the kitchen. “Hey, I wasn’t done!”

  “Your baby will be fine without having every inch of it washed four times before we leave.” To make it clear it was time to go, he hauled me out of the house, took me to the SUV, and shoved me into the front passenger seat, buckling my seatbelt for me. “Stay, you.”

  Pouting earned me a kiss. He gave me his phone to play with while I waited, and I opened my favorite puzzle game and went to work trying to beat a hell level determined to drive me insane.
>
  In his typical, efficient way, within ten minutes, he had the SUV packed to his liking, and he’d brought everything I’d packed, plus his own contributions. “It’s a good thing your grandfather has the kids, as they would not fit right now,” I observed.

  “They really wouldn’t. I wasn’t sure how long we’d be doing this, so I may have overpacked while you were napping. You were too peaceful to disturb.” Quinn gave me my new bag with my laptops, and he handed my new cindercorn purse to me, too. “Your guns and ammo are in the new purse.”

  “They’re both new.”

  “The one bag isn’t really a purse.”

  “I am using it as a purse, so it is a purse.”

  “Is that how purses are defined? If it is a bag you use as a purse, is it a purse?”

  “Well, if designers would give us more pockets, we wouldn’t need purses, so they deliberately keep the pockets on pants small so we need purses. Your day comes, Quinn. One day, the manufacturers will realize men can use purses, and pockets will go extinct.”

  “That’s pretty fucked up, Bailey.”

  “So is trying to buy pants with pockets when you’re a woman.”

  “I’d offer you my pants, but they look better on me than they would on you, and I would hate if we were to both suffer because you wore my pants.”

  Damn. “That was a good one. Do that again, but with something else. I haven’t been put in my place enough for one day, apparently. Encore, encore!”

  “It’s a good thing you hadn’t run out in front of your parents’ car, as if they’d hit you, I would have probably burned down the whole street with some help from the Devil.”

  “That’s not quite what I was aiming for, but for once in my life, I had completely thought that through before I jumped on their car. I remembered. Transports hurt. Cars probably hurt less than transports, but I figured I would prefer landing on their car rather than being squished by their car.”

  “I’m not sure how I’m supposed to argue with that, Bailey. That’s what you’re supposed to do. Good job. Also, I took the liberty of loading in my ex-wife’s banking records onto your work laptop so you can play with that while I drive. As you went through the effort of digging out her paper records, too, I also loaded in the digital version of the files, although I don’t know if there’s anything missing. She built the digital version after I showed her how. Honestly, if she’s hiding anything, it should be easy enough to find. We’ll just cross-reference the digital records and the paper records. Call me a fool, but I trusted her with the paperwork when, perhaps, I should not have.”