The Flame Game

by R. J. Blain

  I smiled, as my husband hated when anything upset me.

  I might one day, with sufficient coaxing from him, get used to that.

  “I can’t tell if that’s your expression upon realization you can easily control me through the power of tears or if you’re simply smitten with my handsome looks and can’t help but smile.”

  “Can it be both? I am rather smitten with your handsome looks, but if I’m honest, I’m not sure I’m mean enough to fake crying to get my way about anything. Unless you’re refusing to come to bed. But that won’t be fake crying. That’ll be real tears.”

  Upon the arrival of Quinn’s salad, I observed with interest while he investigated his appetizer. “This is deceptively normal in appearance, although there is partially cooked fish on this. Why is the fish only partially cooked, Bailey?”

  “Because it’s like the fish version of a steak, Sam. Think of it as a very strange steak, seared for your enjoyment.”

  “Enjoyment?”

  I grabbed one of my shrimp by the tail, dunked it in my cocktail sauce, and chomped on it. “I am going to save you one of my sea bugs for you to try. But you have to eat your manly salad so you have strength for later.”

  “You are the reason you felt the need to run away and go on a road trip to escape my sexy ways. I am going to remind you of this often, mostly so you don’t try to go on a road trip without me in the future. Road trips are much better when you’re with me.”

  I couldn’t argue with him, so I didn’t. “Try your tuna.”

  While his expression remained somewhat skeptical, he speared a piece of his tuna as ordered and nibbled. He blinked, nibbled again, and when the fish didn’t rise up to eat him, he took a proper bite. “I feel like I have been deceived my entire life, warned against the perils of fish. Though, honestly, the stench of fish in the microwave did a pretty good job of warning me away from fish.”

  “Microwaved fish is a sin. Fresh fish, seared for your enjoyment, is a delicacy to be enjoyed. Just watch out for bones. They’re sharp and will poke you if you try to chew on them. I recommend you check for bones, even in a good place like this. Well, I’m assuming it’s good. My sea bugs are tasty.” As my husband had earned his share of my sea bugs, I dunked one into the cocktail sauce and deposited it on the rim of his bowl. “That is your prize.”

  “Why did you not talk me into trying this earlier?”

  “You kept feeding me really good steak and bacon.” I’d considered lobster a time or two at the grocery store, except the price had done a good job of deterring me. “Seafood seems like extra special occasion restaurant food. I am saying that because I don’t know how to cook lobster, and I wasn’t spending that much on a lobster to ruin it.”

  “I have noticed you are infatuated with bacon.”

  “Especially when you make it.”

  “I’ll admit, that makes being your personal chef so much better. You hover while I make it. And the things you’ll do for a greasy burger and fries.”

  I licked my lips and indulged in another shrimp. “I’ve been told shrimp can be grilled, but shrimp were always too expensive for me to get.”

  “I see I will be bringing sea bugs into our home and questing to learn how to grill them for you. What other strange things are you going to make me learn how to cook?”

  “I can tell you what not to cook. Restrain me if I ask for pickles on ice cream at any time. Pickles by themselves? That’s okay. I can work with that. Ice cream by itself? I can definitely get behind that. But do not ever let me mix those two together. I don’t care if I cry. Don’t let me do it. Distract me somehow.”

  My husband grinned at me. “I’m not getting between a woman and her pregnancy cravings, Bailey. If you ask me for pickles on ice cream, I’m going to shudder from horror, but I’m going to provide it for you. That was the first piece of advice my father gave me upon learning you’re pregnant. A wise man does not come between his wife and the pregnancy cravings, no matter how strange those cravings may be.”

  Crap. “That’s terrifying. If you make it, I’ll have to eat it, and that sounds wrong.”

  “It really does.”

  “Do you think we can beg Sariel for an aversion to make sure I never walk down that dark road?”

  “That will be the first thing I do when we get home. I’m going to ask a rather odd question, so please don’t think too badly of me.”

  “What?”

  “How are we going to deal with Morrison if your father sends him our way?”

  “Isn’t it premeditated murder if we discuss how we’re going to deal with him in advance?”

  “He’ll force us to kill him, thus making it a self-defense verdict, especially as part of his bail condition is to stay away from you.”

  “There’s a restraining order?”

  “Yep.” Quinn shrugged and ate more of his salad, and I smirked when he eyed the shrimp on the edge of his bowl with interest. “I initially didn’t want to tell you because it would worry you. If there’s a restraining order, then obviously somebody believes he needs to be restrained. That somebody is my grandfather, because he was quite upset over what he found in your memories. He won’t tell me, because he would rather I not be charged with premeditated murder.”

  “Which leads you to believe his actions were closer to the rape scale of things than not.”

  “I don’t think you were raped, but there is a huge spectrum of things he could have done to you that all count as violations. If my grandfather believes it is best to bury it, then it’s probably best to bury it. That said, you were most certainly a virgin when I got my hands on you. There is a reason people say virgins are extra special treats for incubi and succubi.”

  “You are so bad, Samuel Leviticus Quinn.”

  “I am. So, how would you like to bury him?”

  “Big fire leaves little smear,” I muttered.

  My husband frowned. “We probably need to report he was dispatched if he attempts anything.”

  “Probably. But big fire leaves little smear, which in turn, is very little to clean up. I view it as reducing burial fees should anyone actually want that bastard’s body.”

  “And considering how hot you’re rolling, you won’t have to work hard to make a big fire.”

  “But a big fire would be so much better with napalm.”

  “I should have known you would try to work a napalm bender into this somehow.”

  “I bet Perkette would give you the recipe for her special blend, and I could easily con the CDC into giving me the good neutralizer.” I fluttered my lashes at him. “Pretty please?”

  “You are so going to owe me for this, Bailey Ember Quinn.”

  Fifteen

  I can’t win this one, can I?

  Upon learning about Annie, Archambault Quinn did the equivalent of locking down Fort Knox, opting to take precautions to prevent his hive—or other hives—from further falling victim to the demented former police chief still on the loose. My husband rolled his eyes at the development, which involved his grandfather immediately doing a head count of his wives, his bride, his children, his grandchildren, and his great-grandchildren.

  He hung up on us before we had a chance to ask our whelps what they were learning and check in with them.

  I figured we could handle being a little lonely as long as they remained safe.

  The lonely problem I resolved with a little bit of dust and a whole lot of lust, which did a good job of making us skirt the line checking out on time in the morning. Thanks to Sunny, we did wake up before our pets perished from their delayed breakfast, although the trio gave us dirty looks even after we fed them, let them walk around and stretch their legs, and otherwise shower them with our affection.

  “We’re late once with breakfast, and we’re going to be in the doghouse for the rest of the day, Sam. I feel our kitten has taught them some tricks. That’s feline disapproval in triplicate.”

  “Oh, no. Canine disapproval is a real and dangerous thing, Bail
ey. We have failed as pet custodians. We dared to make them wait for breakfast. Shame, shame, shame.” Quinn did a check of the SUV, making sure everything was ready for our pets in the back before rewarding our animals with treats and the pettings they were owed. “Apparently, I sleep really well after that grade of pixie dust. When was the last time I slept in that late?”

  “Good question. Obviously, the solution to my sleeping problem is to exhaust you so much even you’re forced to sleep. Actually, forget that. We slept in. We’d be late to work daily.”

  “Think we’d be fired if we started sleeping in all the time?”

  “Probably,” I complained. “I’m glad you got sleep. You needed it.”

  “You needed it even more than I did. What did I have to do to get you on the move?”

  I grinned. It had taken him dragging me to the shower to wake me up, and I hadn’t gotten a hit of pixie dust, although I had enjoyed the consequences. “The next time we do that, we have pet sitters, babysitters, and a week.”

  “That sounds like a plan. So, where in Maine are we headed?”

  I dug out the receipts for a second bed and breakfast Audrey had gone to, one with weird receipts. “Kennebago. There’s a bed and breakfast there.” I hit the internet to look up the place, and I grunted at the results, which implied the place had gone out of business at least three years ago.

  “That fills me with foreboding. What sort of town is Kennebago?” Quinn asked.

  “Tourist trap as far as I can tell. It has a lake. Currently, there are two resorts there, and they look fairly inclusive. I don’t think there are any actual residents? Well, I guess there are houses here and there for those who run the campgrounds, resorts, and fishing holes. The bed and breakfast isn’t near the lake, and it’s off a remote track. According to the map, we’ll be driving through the underbrush to find it.”

  “We’ll park somewhere sane and walk. It’ll be good exercise for us and the pets. And that way, we can at least claim we were hiking if we find more trouble.”

  I glanced at him. “Still going with the story you want to show me parts of your old life?”

  “Well, that is true. This is a very important part of the story of my life, although I wasn’t precisely present for these chapters. I’m just twisting the truth a little.”

  “A little?”

  “Okay, a lot.” My husband plugged the lake into the navigation system, revealing we had several hours of driving ahead of us. “That’s not too bad, and the pets don’t mind car rides.”

  “For which I’m grateful.”

  “Me, too. It’s a good thing we didn’t bring the kids with us, no matter how useful I think they would be helping us with research. Some things they don’t need to see.”

  “Yeah. This has been horrific. Even if we had brought them, I would have called angels, devils, and demons until I found someone willing to teleport them to your grandfather once my parents had started trying to light our house on fire.”

  “That was really fucking stupid of them.”

  “And they came back for a second go at it!”

  “That was exceptionally stupid of them,” my husband agreed, and he smiled at me. “You handled that really well. But yes, I would have been sending them to my grandfather after that, too. I am sorry about your roses.”

  “They’ll be fine. They’re being cared for, but our next house will have a greenhouse for the special roses, and it’ll be super fireproofed.”

  “Not just fireproofed, super fireproofed?”

  “Well, I am the best cindercorn, and that means you have to do super fireproofing. And I have two really shitty parents balancing the awesomeness that is my cool parents.”

  “Huh. When phrased like that, I guess your parental situation is pretty balanced, isn’t it? You got the worst and the best with them. And you’ll get the rest of your life with the good ones, which I think is fair after having to put up with such a shitty childhood. We will have to discuss sheltering our children too much. They do need to have a base understanding of how the world works.”

  “But we can wait until they’re like at least five before exposing them too much, right?”

  “We’ll take care to make sure they understand early enough to protect themselves. We don’t want our children so sheltered they’re incapable of telling when someone is up to no good. And honestly, in our line of work? They’ll get exposure early. We’ll just have to make sure we show them the good in people, too. They’ll see the bad more often than I’d like.”

  Right. “We are going to use the daycare near work, right?”

  “As much as we can, yes. I like that daycare, and it would let us take our children to work with us and maximize how often we can see them. And it would let us do fun things with them after work every day. Once they’re older, we’ll look into schooling options for them, too. We’ll have them make some of those decisions. I attended boarding school, mostly because of my ancestry. Safer.”

  “Because you’re part gorgon?”

  “Yes.”

  “There are boarding schools capable of handling gorgon-incubus doohickeys?”

  “Well, they weren’t really aware of my unique genetics, but they were capable of handling children with abnormally high magic ratings. If the kids are okay with it, we may send them. It’s a good way to learn discipline. It’s part of why I’ve done so well. The education met my parents’ standards, but my parents augmented that a lot when I was home. It was pretty rigid, but that’s what I needed at the time. Did I like it? Not really. Every minute of every day is controlled, but I learned how to handle that rigid structuring and monotony really well.”

  “That’s important when you’re a gorgon-incubus doohickey with shitty taste in women.”

  “You’re so getting corrective therapy tonight for that one.”

  I smiled. “Until you reward me better for not making that comment, as long as we’re not in front of the kids, I am so making that comment. Corrective evening therapy is a mandatory part of cindercorn care.”

  “All right. I see I did not think that one through properly. I’ll come up with something properly motivating for you.”

  “Or you can continue your corrective evening therapy tactics, which I thoroughly enjoy.”

  “I can’t win this one, can I?”

  “Nope.”

  “All right. Get on the phone with Tiffany and get me the ingredients for your napalm. After what we saw at the first bed and breakfast, I’m expecting trouble.”

  “If it’s like the first bed and breakfast, the CDC will bring the napalm, in vast quantities, to us. Oh. Did the dust sample match? I passed out before the test results came in.”

  “It wasn’t a match.”

  Damn it. “How’d it rate up in terms of potency?”

  “Now that was a little more conclusive. It wasn’t the match we were hoping for, but it had a lot of the same general properties. What we don’t know is if that gorgon was a later or previous experiment. But they think his dust was manufactured in a similar method to the stuff used in 120 Wall Street.”

  “Is that enough evidence to add to Morrison’s charges?”

  “Not quite, but we’re getting there. Ideally, we’ll find the original batch of dust, and we’ll destroy it.”

  “What about that first batch I destroyed? Could it be that one?”

  “No. That batch was traditionally manufactured, and it would have been closer to what we expect from dust. Was it potent? Yes. Was it the same stuff at 120 Wall Street? I really doubt it.”

  Damn it. I retrieved my phone from my purse and called Perkette, wrinkling my nose at the thought of having smacked right into another dead end with the 120 Wall Street investigation.

  “You are such a bitch, Bailey Ember Quinn!” Perkette shrieked.

  I blinked. “I am? I didn’t do it!”

  “True. Tell your husband he’s a bitch!”

  “Sam, Perkette says you’re a bitch.”

  “Found out she’s p
regnant, huh?”

  I giggled. “Can’t have wine?” I guessed.

  “Arthur popped a cork yesterday, and I ended up throwing up my lunch from last week. I spent all day at the damned hospital today. Was there something you may have forgotten to tell me?”

  “Forgotten? No? Neglected to, yes.”

  “I am so fucking proud of you.”

  I laughed at her complete change of mood. “I’m not sorry, but you should be yelling at your husband. He’s the one who lured you to his bed and did wicked, wicked things to you. It’s his fault. I’m an innocent cindercorn. As innocent as a cindercorn married to a gorgon-incubus doohickey can be.”

  “Such a bitch,” Perkette muttered. “First, one of you recruits a what to do what?”

  “You may have been meddled with by an incubis, an archangel, the Devil, and a gorgon-incubus doohickey. Please don’t do anything heinous to my gorgon-incubus doohickey. It’s my own damned fault we’re having twins.”

  “But seriously, Bailey? Quadruplets? Do you hate me?”

  “I wouldn’t call it hate. I call it correcting some unfortunate past events barring you from having entire flocks of children. Upon my close and careful evaluation of the situation, I have decided you want entire flocks of children. I recommend adopting a few to help boost your flock numbers. Adoption is great. I managed to convince Quinn we really needed to adopt a young gorgon lady yesterday. Her name is Annie, and she’s coming home with us because she is too old to go back to her father’s hive, so we’re going to keep her until she’s placed with an appropriately nice gorgon gentleman.”

  “Seriously, Bailey? Seriously?”

  “Yes.”