The Flame Game

by R. J. Blain

  “You did just fine with your corruptions.”

  “Are you trying to be confusing on purpose, Sam?” I asked. Why hadn’t he fessed up to being my husband? Did he want me to show him how jealous I’d get in a heartbeat?

  Oh. Right. My gorgon-incubus doohickey liked when I became jealous. Sighing, I shook my head at his antics.

  “It is one of my joys in life. Don’t worry so much. Kendra likes when I’m difficult. I’m just acting normally for her. If I acted like we were best friends and showed too much concern, it might freak her out. Now that I’ve confused you both, I get to enjoy the show while you two figure out what the reality of the situation is.”

  Rather than argue, Kendra shrugged. “The few times we’ve met, we have annoyed each other significantly. It didn’t help I told him he would have been better off marrying me, and that I would have slept with him every night without complaint. I was honest with him. He’d married a snake. Audrey was a bitch, but my mother liked Audrey’s mother and wanted us to be friends, so I was friendly. Little good that did me. If you get a recorder, I’ll tell you everything I know about the bitch and her plans. Well, not that it will do you any good, seeing as she’s dead. Deserved if you ask me.”

  “It’s more that we’re trying to figure out how often she was banging Morrison, his involvement with her plans, and how deep the rabbit hole goes,” I replied.

  Kendra regarded me through narrowed eyes. “You learned they were sleeping together? How?”

  “Receipts,” I announced with pride. “She liked buying condoms from the pharmacy near his house. We even figured out which brand from their cost. And since Sam knew when she was cheating on him, it was easy to piece together.”

  “How did you know?” Kendra asked.

  I grinned while my husband squirmed.

  “You’re liking this too much,” he complained.

  “Well, yes. There is a very good reason for this. I know who—and what—I’m taking to a hotel tonight, and I really couldn’t be happier about it.”

  “I’m confused,” Kendra stated.

  “My father is a gorgon king although he is categorized as a human, Kendra. My grandfather is a rather powerful gorgon. Archambault Quinn. Audrey was not invited to learn about that part of my ancestry. My mother is the product of a triad.”

  Kendra’s eyes widened. “Oh. So you’re part angel.”

  “And part gorgon.”

  “Most importantly, he is also part incubus,” I announced. “Add angel and incubus genes together, and he’s a walking loyalty detector among other things. Because of that, he knew exactly when his bitch of an ex-wife cheated on him.”

  “Huh. So her gig was up before she’d even started it, really.”

  My husband nodded. “I started tracking her infidelity early, and when I tired of her and her home pregnancy tests, I asked Bailey to gather evidence. She’s been dubbed the Calamity Queen for good reason, as she’s exceptionally good at finding things while disasters happen around her. She doesn’t even cause most of the disasters. She just stumbles her way into them. Bailey acquired the photographs I needed to proceed with my divorce. Audrey and I had a civil divorce, she walked away with a lump sum of my choice, which was lower than the half she would have received had she not been cheating on me.”

  “It looks like you got a slow screw, too.”

  “Not at all.” As I hadn’t played his game earlier, my husband snagged me around the waist and pulled me close. I did my best to wiggle free, but he opted to use his unfair manly strength to pin me to his side. “Now that we’ve done the customary dance, this is Mrs. Police Chief Quinn, my wife and future mother of my children.”

  “Future mother? Oh! Do you mean you’ll be having children? I guess it has been a long time. I’m happy for you, Samuel. I knew you liked children, but I just couldn’t see you having any with Audrey.”

  “I couldn’t, either. Hell, I couldn’t even take her home to most of the family. She met my mother and father, and they played stupid. The rest of my family hid.”

  “Smart of them, really.”

  I strained against Quinn’s hold on me. “Did you put steel bars in your arms this morning?”

  “No, I just like you where I have you, and I’m willing to show off to keep you where I have you.”

  “I believe he’s attempting to, in a rather odd fashion, show me you have a different relationship with him than he did with Audrey. With Audrey, he could barely tolerating touching her. You’ve made your point, Samuel. Honestly, you were never the type, and I just never understood what you saw in her.”

  “I didn’t see anything in her. That’s why I married her. She kept the other sharks at bay.” My husband released me, although he captured my right hand in his. “We’re actually honeymooning, as our first was rudely interrupted. By Audrey.”

  “How?”

  “She kidnapped Bailey.”

  Kendra winced. “I’m sorry, Bailey. By the time she turned me into a statue, she’d become cruel. Had she not, I would have exposed her. She’d caught a gorgon male. I think she wanted better dust—dust that could guarantee someone would become a gorgon. The dust she had hadn’t worked on her other chief.”

  My husband sighed. “You mean Morrison.”

  “Yeah, him. Watch yourself around that man, Samuel. He’s bad news, and he was using Audrey as much as she was using him. Of that I’m sure. I don’t know why he wanted to rule a gorgon hive with Audrey, but they were up to something—and they were willing to kill to accomplish their goals.”

  We’d already learned that lesson, and I worried what else we would learn from those who’d been petrified and left to become mysteries.

  Fourteen

  You want to eat sea bugs?

  I learned two important things about Kendra Thames: she trusted nobody, and she hated Audrey with a passion hotter than my flames.

  Upon realizing she attempted to keep everyone at a distance, things went smoother. I could only guess the events leading up to her petrification had left scars, and I could only hope the CDC would help her adapt to having her life put on hold.

  Of the petrified victims, one needed to go to the hospital for additional treatments. I added the woman’s failing health to the list of Morrison’s crimes. If I got my hands or hoofs on him, he’d come to a quick end—far quicker of an end than he deserved.

  My temper frayed, and to keep myself from doing something I would regret, I took my turn keeping our pets company in the rental until the CDC gave us permission to leave. Sunny and Blizzard opted to nap together in the back while Avalanche slept on my foot. With the pets napping off their hard day, I worked at trying to find more information on the rabies outbreak in the CDC’s records.

  My effort proved futile, and I figured our next stop would be the address in Maine that Audrey had visited several times before we headed to Long Lake. After having found so much tragedy at the bed and breakfast, I feared what we would learn at our next destination.

  I appreciated Kendra’s willingness to confirm some of our suspicions, but those confirmations would dump us straight into a mess. With a police chief being confirmed to have been involved in mass kidnapping and murder, the entire police station in the Hamptons would come under fire.

  Nobody believed for an instant that Morrison had participated in such extensive schemes without at least some of his cops being aware of it—like that stupid cadet I’d squished like a grape. Worse, I wondered if that idiot had been planted to hinder the 120 Wall Street efforts. Janet had done a good job of reining him in.

  I suspected her ability to rein in Morrison’s puppet had landed her in trouble as much as her relationship with me.

  Rather than Morrison taking over Manhattan, I worried we’d be sent to his former turf to clean his operations up. But with my involvement with Morrison, would we be given jurisdiction? I didn’t even know how to find out. A headache brewed behind my forehead, and I contemplated texting my husband and whining until we were set free.
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  I wanted to get to our hotel and call my mother. What was she like? Had she enjoyed her brief time with my father? How did they schedule their time? Did they keep a calendar of when the sun rose and set and when the moon happened to be around?

  Could they possess people outside of their general times of influence?

  I had questions, and sometime, after I got to know my parents a little better, I would ask them.

  In the meantime, I would wait. The CDC ultimately decided when we got to leave, I vowed to keep from whining to my husband or bothering our pets.

  I deserved a cookie or some cake for my good behavior.

  When the boredom became unbearable, I leaned the seat back and caught a nap, something I didn’t get often enough. The heat being turned off woke me, and I growled curses at the lost warmth to discover my husband taking the keys out of the ignition. “Hey, that’s rude. I was napping with that on.”

  Leaning across the seat, he smiled and kissed my cheek. “We’re getting gassed up so we can get on the road, my beautiful. You slept through the rest of the festivities, and all three busses have left. It’s just us and the CDC reps with the extra gas at this point. I changed our hotel reservation and asked our angelic visitor to teleport one of the vics to the hotel we were going to use. The CDC is picking up that tab, as she’s one of the more delicate of the women. Morrison had gotten ahold of her.”

  I cringed. “Poor woman. Will she be okay?”

  “She should be. The archangel is staying with her until he’s confident she is in good hands. Right now, she’s a suicide risk.”

  “Please tell me this would prevent his bail if he hadn’t already dodged town.”

  “Let’s just say there is a country-wide warrant for his immediate arrest, and should he resist arrest, lethal force has been authorized. The archangel has offered to take the burden from the victims and has confirmed that what we suspect is likely less severe than the crimes actually committed.”

  “What a fucking dick.”

  “You won’t hear me arguing with that. Are you hungry?”

  My stomach growled at my husband. I poked at it. “Apparently, according to that, I’m ravenous, and may someone have mercy on those who get in the way of me hunting for my dinner.”

  Chuckling, Quinn straightened and closed the door, talking to Alan while one of the remaining CDC reps filled our tank. Several minutes later, my husband slid behind the wheel and restarted the engine. “Do you want the good news or the bad news?”

  “Janet is going to be investigated because of her association with Morrison and her presence at 120 Wall Street,” I guessed.

  He raised a brow. “Did you put that into the good news or the bad news category?”

  “Bad, as it means I’ll have to beat off the investigators to get them to leave our cop alone. Essentially, upon thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that it is probable Morrison sent that idiot cadet to make a mess at 120 Wall Street, but he made a mistake in sending Janet, who wasn’t tolerant of the asshole cadet, so she mitigated the problems he could have created. Basically, their presence at 120 Wall Street implies there is a link between Morrison and the gorgon dust incident and possibly the warehouse incident.”

  “The bad news is you’ll need to be questioned about their behavior.”

  “I don’t see how that’s a problem. The cameras caught everything, and the CDC has a copy. I’ll just support what the camera says. This is not bad news. It’s only bad news if they want us to do it, say, tomorrow morning when I have other plans.”

  “In a week. They want to do some more investigation first.”

  “I can work with a week from now. Am I right? About that potential link?”

  “It’s the most plausible possibility we have right now.”

  “What’s the good news?”

  “We’re good to go and the moon has risen, so you can call your mother. I’ll drive while you talk, and then we’ll eat, make plans for tomorrow, and work from there.”

  I retrieved my phone. “That sounds like a good plan. We’re in New England. We should go find somewhere with seafood. Lobster!”

  “You want to eat sea bugs?”

  “I do not merely wish to eat sea bugs, I wish to conquer them all, escorting them to my stomach with the help of offensive amounts of garlic and butter. And I will expect you to kiss me afterwards, no matter how much garlic butter I consume.” I leered at him. “I hope you like garlic, Quinn. In vast quantities.”

  “Just because I didn’t want garlic toast once doesn’t mean I hate garlic.”

  “That’s what you say now, but I shall put this to the test when you feed me delicious sea bugs coated with garlic and extra butter.”

  “Is there a reason you haven’t asked for sea bugs in the past?”

  “We were not in the land of sea bugs, and Manhattan clam chowder is disgusting. New England clam chowder is the one true clam chowder, and I swore I would have lobster in Maine—or somewhere near Maine but north of New York. Vermont counts. Ish. Why did I swear this? I don’t know, so don’t ask me that.”

  “I see you like your clam chowder creamy, and you have been convinced the only good lobster is one from New England?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re something else, Bailey. But if sea bugs are what you want, sea bugs are what you shall get. I, on the other hand, shall pray for steak. Fortunately for you, we aren’t too far from New Hampshire, which in turn isn’t that far from Maine’s border, so I might even be able to get you sea bugs from Maine. But I shall pray for steak.”

  “Wuss,” I teased.

  To my endless amusement, while my mother answered the phone and did her best to talk to me, she was busy volunteering at an animal shelter in Florida, the pets wanted dinner and they wanted it now, and she couldn’t handle fending off a bunch of starving kittens while managing the phone.

  I took mercy on her, laughed, and told her to call me back when she had a few spare minutes, with a reminder that if I happened to be passed out, my gorgon-incubus doohickey would love to speak with her. I hung up, shook my head, and smiled. “I see the relentless drive to help animals in need is genetic.”

  “I am utterly shocked, I tell you. Shocked.” My husband chuckled. “While I am not quite the traveler my ex-wife was, I can tell you there is a good restaurant that serves the sea bugs you desire about an hour from here, along the New Hampshire-Maine border. It’s part of a hotel, so we should be able to have dinner and go to bed shortly after. However, you’ll have to contact the hotel and see if we can stay there because of our menagerie.”

  “CDC certifications for our pets are useful in moments like this.” Within ten minutes, after regurgitating their license numbers, giving them a contact for the CDC to verify we were legally allowed to possess an Egyptian wolf and an ocelot, and promising to otherwise adhere to the rules of their establishment, I had reservations for us. Then, because miracles could happen, the hotel was able to book us in for dinner at the sea bug place, too.

  Once I disconnected the call, I dropped my phone on my lap and clapped. “I handled that like an adult!”

  “You really did. It’s like my careful training program has begun to bear results. You have successfully become an adult, Mrs. Samuel Quinn.”

  Damn. My husband was on a roll. “I don’t know what has gotten into you today, but I really like it.”

  “After witnessing me eat spaghetti, you would think you would understand how much I enjoy garlic.”

  “Unless it’s in toast format,” I complained.

  “And now that I know I can rile you up by refusing food with garlic in it, I will use this to add spice to my evenings as required. I win this round, Bailey. I especially win, as you then try to find things to cook containing garlic, and not only do I enjoy your culinary escapades, I get fed along with a fun show.”

  “And you say I’m something else.”

  “You are, but that’s exactly how I like you. As you will fret unless it’s address
ed, what is bothering you about today beyond the entirety of the situation?”

  “I mean, the entirety of the situation definitely bothers me, but Kendra seemed weird.”

  “Kendra suffers from some mental health problems. She doesn’t really mean harm, but she goes through some pretty dramatic phases. She told me she liked when people just went with the flow, so that’s what I do with her. Audrey always kept trying to put her in little boxes.”

  “Audrey was shit.”

  “She was.”

  “Terrible taste in women, Sam. So terrible.”

  “It’s like you want me to take you to our hotel room and go through intensive corrective therapy.”

  I spent all of half a second thinking about that. “Yes, please.”

  He laughed. “Don’t worry about Kendra. She’s no threat to you, no matter how open she is about her past interest in getting in my pants.”

  “I had noticed that.”

  “She’s psychotic, but she’s a fun psychotic. That said, I have no interest in her getting in my pants. Some days, I did regret I hadn’t accepted her offer, as she would have made a far better wife than Audrey. I mean, when being honest about it? I would have at least been much happier on the incubus front, as Kendra is a lot of things, but she’s not a cheater.”

  “I can’t even argue with that, but I’m glad I didn’t have to compete with a woman who would happily take you to bed every night.”

  “I’ll admit, a few years ago, she was really good for my esteem. I couldn’t stand Audrey, and I had done a pretty good job of giving my self-esteem a beating.”

  Huh. I struggled to imagine my husband struggling with any form of self-esteem problem. “Obviously, you need intensive corrective therapy tonight after I get to eat as many sea bugs as possible. Maybe we should invite her over for dinner once this settles down. Surely we have a single cop in need of a loyal albeit psychotic woman.”